CheapVPS: A Full Review
A couple of months has gone by now since my initial review of CheapVPS, and I think it’s about time to finish it up with a fairly quick follow-up.
Archive for the 'Site Development' Category
January 18, 2008
December 28, 2007
Picking up…
Like pretty much everybody else out there, I use Google Analytics to help me figure out how much traffic I’m getting and where it’s coming from. And finally, I’m starting to get some more visitors!
Until very recently, it looked like this site was pretty much blacklisted by Google. I’d type in my name - in quotes - and find this site on about the tenth page. And hell, it’s not like my name is even common. But I noticed a week or so ago that I was getting 30-40 visits per day, which is far higher than is usually logged.
Pretty much the most common keyword is linked into my CheapVPS review; in fact, I was pretty surprised to see that it’s actually the fourth result for CheapVPS. I’ll be writing a follow-up to that story soon.
Other than that, better photoblog integration is on the way, just as soon as I can find some time. We’ve got about ten different things going on depending on the day thanks to Christmas, and finding the time to sit down and figure out something to write is pretty slim (hence why I”m writing this at 3am… whoops).
December 19, 2007
Finally finished
After a week of toiling over JavaScript, Mootools and a heap of other IE rendering bugs, the finished photoblog is finally here! You might also want to check out the cool mosaic feature which shows all the images I’ve posted.
Now unfortunately I ran into a few problems, and so the photoblog is now running on a separate instance of WordPress, but that’s not too bad. In fact, the user tables are shared so that if you do have an account here already, it will automagically work over there as well.
Anyway, go check it out. The plan is now to integrate it a bit more tightly into this blog right this minute, so enjoy.
3:08 pm | Posted in Photography, Site Development | 2 Comments » | Show comments »
December 12, 2007
Changes on the way
I’ve not really been too happy recently about how this blog’s set up. Personally it’s a bit confusing to have my personal blog entries on here, but in-between them have a load of photos that serve no real purpose other than to look good.
So things are going to get mixed up a bit. The photos will be in their own separate website (probably under a subdomain), and the posts will be on the main site. But they’ll all be stored centrally under one WordPress installation - the plan is to use the power of WordPress templates to do this.
More news later when I actually finish this off!
November 23, 2007
Another one gone
The lack of activity from myself has been quite profound lately, but regretfully the thing that’s made me finally get around to writing is the closure of Sayonara’s blog. Unfortunately he feels that he can’t dedicate either time or money to maintaining the site and giving it the attention it needs, hence he’s shut up shop and called it a day.
I believe we’ve both been around for a similar amount of time, and personally I rather enjoyed reading the site so it is a big shame to see it go. So if you want some free hosting, then send me an e-mail me or something.
I can certainly relate to his position. I find that the main problem is finding the motivation to sit down, think about what needs to be said and then actually write the damn entry. The last two paragraphs, for instance, have taken approximately twenty minutes to write because I am only writing in-between simulation runs. Even then I’m not entirely satisfied with what’s been written, and unfortunately most of my posts come out either as rather dull or overly sarcastic - hopefully I am neither in real life!
Another, somewhat different problem is that half the reason for this blog existing is the photography side of things. With all that’s been going on at Warwick over the past few weeks, I just haven’t found enough motivation to get out there and take some shots. However this will change soon, as I have enough money and justification to get myself a shiny new 40D in the next few days!
But fear not - I will soldier on and continue to blog about useless, dull, and mostly meaningless things because I enjoy doing it. Watch this space.
October 10, 2007
CheapVPS: a 2-week Review
So, after nothing for almost two months, the first post is going to be about changing servers! How interesting? No. But read on for a review of my new hosts after two weeks.
Read More »
Continue reading “CheapVPS: a 2-week Review”…
11:15 pm | Posted in Site Development, Web Development | 2 Comments » | Show comments »
August 2, 2007
Not totally useless
Actually had a pretty productive day today, which makes a change. All of the photoblog photos are rejigged in a very exciting fashion so that they all contain the proper shooting information. You can take a look by clicking on the titles of each photo. Some more on that tomorrow, as I have some more code to post up.
Otherwise, did a lot of optimization of the MySQL/lighttpd/FastCGI setup that we have on the server today, and so I can finally get around to cancelling my DreamHost account after migrating the last bits and pieces over.
However right now, I’m going to get back to tidying up the blog and fixing things that have been on the cards for ages - like a complete lack of any decent archives. Brillo.
July 21, 2007
Layout Changes
After many, many days of painful procrastination, I’ve eventually got around to implementing some of the changes to the layout and improvements to the JavaScript running the site. Photos in the Photoblog (and indeed on the index page) are displayed much differently now, as a smaller thumbnail; partially it looks better, but mostly it improves the page load-times.
Other than this, I finally fixed some very nasty IE6 rendering bugs on the sidebar. As you can see, the advert has changed shape; this was the main cause of most of my woes. Eventually the sidebar could expand, but this requires me re-editing images that I don’t have access to at the moment. And the JavaScript tabby slidey thing now works on IE6.
Hurrah! Now back to checking my e-mail with the frequency of an OCD sufferer.
June 14, 2007
New Layout
It’s taken pretty much all day, but finally the new layout is ready. It’s been changed a lot since the last time, since I wasn’t very happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think!
Apart from layout changes, there’s a shiny new toolbar using mootools 1.1. Also, the AJAX search now actually works - shock horror. I’m planning some more exciting stuff tomorrow, as well as reverting to my old lightbox layout with the reflections.
Currently, IE6 support is crapped up, but I really can’t be bothered going through the CSS tonight trying to find the odd pixel jumps here and there which messes everything. I hate IE.
May 19, 2007
WordPress 2.2: Disappointing
I did the upgrade to WordPress 2.2 on Thursday night and I have to say it was a little disappointing. I was expecting the latest tagging features to be implemented, but it looks like they got stripped out at the last minute for 2.3. In any case, I’m now running the 2.3-svn version, so I now have the functionality.
New theme is coming soon if I can convince myself that I’m happy with the mockup… and then I have to tag about a bajillion entries. Win.
6:46 pm | Posted in Site Development | 4 Comments » | Show comments »