Gnorb.NET

Ok, so the election has passed and I can now get back to regular blogging, right? Actually, the election’s been over for a while and I’ve just needed a break from real blogging (as if I’ve ever actually done any of that before). At any rate, it’s (about darn) time for another episode of Le Linkage! Today’s episode features all sorts of stuff, random bits I’ve been saving for the past few weeks. Like all Le Linkage episodes, I recommend you bookmark this then visit it whenever you’re bored or (hopefully) when you need something useful.

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This is a not-paid and not-even-requested-but-what-the-heck-I’ll-do-it-anyway advertisement about Web hosting:

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may remember Nate, the Administrator (He was the guy who admirably administered Gnorb.NET until about a couple of weeks ago, when an article showing up on LifeHack, Del.icio.us, and Digg baslically destroyed the “ghetto server” the site was running on and I decided to sign up with a BlueHost). Well, Nate’s gone all wacky and decided — a couple of weeks too late, in my humble opinion — to start up a full-fledged hosting franchise: Fort Onion.

Having mooched off of Nate from about 2004, I know full-well of his capabilities as an administrator, so I won’t hessitate for a second to recommend that anyone give him a shot. So, if you or someone you know needs website hosting services (including dedicated servers), needs email to fax services, wants to start a blog, wants to start a podcast, wants to buy a domain name, wants hosted email or other like
services, go ahead and check out FortOnion.com. You can also be secure in the knowledge that this isn’t a fly-by operation: even if Nate decides years from now to get out of the hosting business, you can be comfortable in the knowledge that all accounts will always be serviced with top-notch quality customer care.

Again, that’s FortOnion.com.

(Nate: If you don’t have a tag line yet, how about “Layers of services so good they’ll make you cry”?)

The following clip is from a post featured in the Weblog Tools Collection, dealing with the lack of attribution and problem of plaigiarism on the Web today. It’s something any even remotely successful site has to deal with at some point. As for me, I’ve only had to deal with it a couple of times, but most of the time the issues have been resolved without much confrontation.

I really like the word attribution and I find the lack of attribution disturbing. I bring this up because there are thousands of websites that absorb and regurgitate information published elsewhere for monetary gain without so much as a line stating where the original item was published. I used to have a major problem with them until I realized that there were just too many to deal with. There are lots of very good resources on how to deal with content theft. I applaud and support Lorelle and everyone conrcerned in their efforts.

By the way, when you read the article, also check out the comments, which just bring the point home (and are more than simple “right on, brother!” replies).

Installing software can sometimes be fun, especially when it’s easy. In the short time after my move, I’ve started to play around with other software for possible later uses. You can check out what I’ve just now started to work with at the following locations

• Gnorb.NET, Drupal
• Gnorb.NET Forums, using SMF
• Gnorb.NET, Xoops
• Gnorb.NET, Joomla!
• Gnorb.NET, Mambo

I haven’t done much with these, so what you see is pretty much what you’ll get after installing these.

From the back end, my favorites up to now are Xoops and Joomla. With Xoops I like the built-in banner-tracking features (which can be used for personal banners for featured articles or advertisers). With Joomla I like the robustness. That said, all of these packages look like they’re very well built and I’m looking forward to learning more about them, although it looks like I’ll really have to hunker down and learn me some PHP.

Anyway, check them out and if you’ve used any of these, I’d like to hear what you think.

Ok, 2005 tapped me on the shoulder last night and told me to check out the Google Analytics page. Basically, if you own a site, Google Analytics will help you see where your traffic is coming from, where it’s leaving from, and will generally help you optimize your site for your audience. From everything I see, my audience is mostly made up of horny males who find me via Google by looking for the term “Elita Loresca”, which of course takes them to the Elita Loresca Pics and Info page I put up a while back. (Never did I guess that page would end up becoming so popular. Behold the power of sex, I guess.) That aside, it seems people enjoy the Bloody Penguin Baseball game an awful (and I do mean “awful”) lot. I guess violence sells, too.

Hmm… sex and violence… Interesting that while I work pretty hard not to include any of those things in most of my posts, in the end, those end up being the most popular. Maybe I should take a hint…?

Nah. Unless she did the weather every morning. “Today, it will rain… BLOOD!” *bites cameraman*. Then it’d be different. Somehow.

I plan to keep playing around with that tool (uhm… Google Analytics… not what you’re thinking… after seeing that picture…) to make the site better, but in the mean time you may have to “pardon my dust” to turn a phrase. If you see strange things happening with the RSS feeds and the site layout you’ll know what’s happening and why. I’ll keep off the whole “sex and violence” thing, though. Unless Square-Enix changes their formula for Final Fantasy, in which case… well, I’ll get off of that subject.

(By the way, for those of you not familiar with the image above, that’s the main character of the BloodRayne video game.)