Tim Trott's Blog
The weblog of an amateur Astronomer, Photographer, Programmer and car enthusiast.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Site News category.
And now for something completely different…
Sunday 3rd February 2008
Well, how do you like the new look for my website? I felt the old site was looking a bit dated and I wanted something a little brighter. I thought the old dark blue needed lightening up a little, so I went for a dark on light approach this time. I have made some cosmetic changes, changes to the background working and added some new content; hopefully this will result in a more pleasurable experience for you, my visitors.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 9:31pm
Saturday 18th August 2007
I have always been careful and vigilant when online, avoiding giving email addresses out, not visiting dodgey sites, and I have been quite lucky and have avoided most of the bulk spam. Sure I get some spam, everybody does, but its usually in the region of 20 emails and about the same number of spam comments through wordpress.
That was until last night, when I had over 2000 spam comments, and nearly 400 emails in one night. Mesothelioma was a popular email, as was refinancing mortgages, tax attorney and loan consolidation. There were also quite a few car accident lawyer scams as well, just as well I already have a lawyer. And just what is mesothelioma anyway?
All of these spam comments were successfully blocked by Akismet, anyone running a blog should be using it, and 99% of the junk email was filtered out by Thunderbird. Its a shame I spend over an hour downloading 482 new emails.
Why can’t the spammers just go back to the hole they crawled out from? There mass mailing and bulk spam techniques don’t work and just annoy people. Just think how much faster the internet would be without all that spam traffic…
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 1:52pm
Friday 30th March 2007
A while back I created my own blog engine which worked for me at the time, however I can now see that it does not “cut the mustard” in todays modern blogging world.
I decided to integrate the Wordpress blog engine into my site and I have created a new theme following some very good instructions from Jonathan Wold: http://www.jonathanwold.com/. These instructions made the whole task less daunting and apart from a few minor problems it was quite easy. Thank you Jonathan.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 1:37pm
Saturday 24th March 2007
Clean URL’s seem to be something of a buzzword these days, along with SEO, CSS, AJAX and Blogs. I have also jumped onto the proverbial bandwagon and completely rewritten this site from scratch using Clean URL’s and CSS with some AJAX and XML thrown in. And my blog will be up soon as well!
Clean URL’s are things that can benefit most sites, including this one. Most URL’s on this site consist of a page with a .php extension followed by a few parameters. For example my page on Astronomy Gadgets used to look like this: “doarticle.php?article=astro_toys”. After the move to clean URL’s it now looks like this: “/astronomy/reviews/gadgets”. This clean form looks professional, its easier to remember and type in and it is “Google Friendly”, that is Google does not like ? and & in URL’s and does not rank pages as high. Since most of my visitors come from Google, I want to be nice to it.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are another buzzword at the moment, although its been around for donkeys years. CSS allows developers to separate content from layout and style allowing different browsers and platforms to see the content differently, sometimes with no style at all. Some PDA’s and Mobile Phones only show black and white text, so using css they can strip out all the layout and style to show the plain content. CSS can also make a site look good for people browsing with a desktop PC or Mac.
AJAX, or Asyncronous Javascript And Xml, has been used in a limited fashion on the contact me sections to send visitor comments to me without reloading the page. There is also AJAX at work on the Top Gear Quotes page where you can see a random Stig introduction quote.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Search Engine Optimisation, Site News by Lonewolf at 7:48pm
Sunday 18th June 2006
My website has been awarded the ArtSpace2000.com World Web Award of Excellence for “originality, overall design and appearance, ease of navigation, and content.” “You have obviously worked very hard investing your time, and skills into making a great web site.”
Hopefully this will be the first of many!
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 8:12am
Sunday 21st May 2006
After the recent attacks on my website I have implemented some security features. Hopefully these features should not stop any legitimate users from accessing my site, but will block out all accesses from spammers, hackers and crackers. I have also changed all the background working on the site and added a lot of new content and features.
You can now let me know what pictures you like by voting for them! If you experience any problems on the website, please let me know about them so I can fix it as soon as possible. Thank you.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 9:00am
Tuesday 9th May 2006
This website is under attack from spammers! They are trying to submit links and adult content into my guest book as well downloading a random page with a phoney referrer. I have disabled the guest book to stop the spam hits, but they continue to access random pages. This results in 400+ additional hits per day, which is equivalent to over 120,000 hits per month! It has also resulted in additional bandwidth overheads which I must pay for if I exceed my monthly limit. I have also banned a country from accessing my site as every single hit from there has tried or caused damage to this site. I am looking into implementing security features in the future to help protect against this so there won’t be any further updates for a while.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 7:07pm
Tuesday 14th February 2006
One month on and my website has already attracted over 250 visitors. Hopefully as I add more content I can increase this number. Thanks to all have visited and continue to visit.
Comments: No responses yet
This post is filed under Site News by Lonewolf at 5:41pm
