Minor security stuff today...

Not a lot going on this morning. Today's focus was to be finishing up some security stuff on the server, which I did. Today was simple stuff like accounts/passwords that needed to be changed for added security.

Not that everything's done by any means - security's an ongoing process. It's all about trying to keep things as secure as you can make them, and keeping constant local backups archived for the times you find out it wasn't enough.

Wow. Blogger's not so bad!

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away....

Well, just a long time ago. I used to have a blog here, and ended up moving to self-hosted Wordpress for multiple reasons. I don't regret it - Wordpress is pretty sweet.

But coming back and creating this new blog, things looked to be very much the same.

It's easy to pick a template, and start up a blog. What I didn't realize until just now is what's changed.... customization.

See, after my last post, I popped open the blog and noticed the links in my posts were light grey and hard to see. I thought "I may as well pop open the template and change it", something I'm familiar with doing in both Joomla and Wordpress. I noticed the entries I was looking for referenced other fields though. "Hmmm...." I thought. Must be an option from within the blog.

In a matter of seconds I was at the page that lets you customize every single color extremely easily.

I then went on to the adsense stuff. The ads were as dull as the other links. Sure enough, you can customize there too.

Short version of this post: Blogger has improved. I like it.

Yet another glasses site

Update: I ditched the site and transitioned info from the charts to EGRR.

Yes, it's getting crazy. Spent some of last night and most of today starting up a new site... Buy-Glasses.net .

It's got information I probably could have integrated into EyeglassRetailerReviews.com . There's a few reasons for doing it this way though. I'll go through the thought process here.

1. EGRR works great for people looking for reviews. It lags behind though when someone is searching for "buy glasses", even though a list of retailers and reviews on them would probably be extremely helpful. Really, it's designed around the notion that people have already found retailers and are looking for information. That was more or less the intent - to help people who are looking between various retailers trying to get info, and while "getting the word out" was a secondary focus, it did remain secondary. For better or for worse, the majority of the traffic is for people who have already found retailers and are simply looking for information.
2. Designing a site catered towards people just "looking for glasses" has to be done as such. It's not worth twisting EGRR into that. It's better to make a site designed for that purpose.
3. The big theme in Buy-Glasses.net is that someone who's searching for "buy glasses" is probably looking for both info about buying glasses online AND a list of retailers. This site tries to provide both. It does not go into details on each retailer - I suppose it could, but I'd have too much overlap. Better to do it this way. I've got a list of retailers, and a few sections of the site with information that will actually help people who may have some questions.

In any case, Buy-Glasses.net does not focus on the differences between the retailers. It does to the extent that a "comparison chart" allows, but that's it.

Other pages on the site give useful information for first time buyers who might not know what the differences are between lenses - what polycarbonate is, or what an AR coating does. This site fits that need.

And finally, I've done enough to relax for the night. It's been a long day.

Bounce Rates

Some preliminary data...

Facebook ads going to my site not only cost a lot, but have a 100% bounce rate (bad).

AdWords ads on the other hand cost less and so far have had a 0% bounce rate (excellent).

This is based on less than 10 clicks each (so take it with a grain of salt), and was tracked through Google Analytics. I'd add Microsoft AdCenter to the mix, but I can't find a way to distinguish clicks from their ads vs clicks from their search. I've heard the conversion rate is high (which probably means a good low bounce rate), but I'll keep looking around in Analytics and see if anything comes up.

ContactLensRetailerReviews.com: 3 down, 5 to go?

Update: I ditched the site (mainly due to the frustrations listed below) and merged the data into a single page on the EGRR site.

I've been slowly trying to get ContactLensRetailerReviews.com updated.

• Originally, I had the ugly version of EyeglassRetailerReviews.
• Then, I started ContactLensRetailerReviews which was prettier, but the information always seemed to be sparse. I was content with information just plain being there for now, and didn't focus a lot on useability. Really, it just had to look better than EGRR and it did.
• Finally, EyeglassRetailerReviews got it's big update, and I started off with the CLRR design as a basis and thought "ok, how can I combine the best of both worlds, and then make it a bit better".

Naturally, that meant CLRR was lagging a bit behind and everything is in the process of being updated to the new EGRR standards.

Most of the updates to CLRR are pretty superficial. I re-wrote EGRR from scratch, but it would be silly to do it here. I have prices listed, so I update them to be current. I check the BBB and see if anything's changed. I go to the site, browse around, and make sure the things I said continue to be accurate. What takes the most time is reformatting things to follow the EGRR "theme".

One thing that bugs me is that CLRR lacks the substance that EGRR has. There's nothing I can really do about it, but it bothers me anyway. When reviewing eyeglass retailers, the sites all vary significantly. Prices vary significantly. Frames and lenses offered vary significantly. Some have virtual "try on" features. People need more help buying glasses online whether it's a PD measurement, or frame dimensions (gotta fit yer face ya-know), or whether they want CR39 or Polycarbonate, or what index to choose. Whether this stuff is provided or not affects the review I give of the retailer.

With contact lenses.... they're all the freaking same. These guys are selling the exact same stuff, usually for about the same price. Unless a retailer decides to re-label something no-name, crush packages before sending them, screw customers with extra charges or just plain engage in bad business practices, there's little they can do wrong.

Really, unlike eyeglass retailers who have to try to do well, contact lens retailers would pretty much have to try to screw something up. What do I really have to offer or compare?

• list of retailers? done that
• pricing? done that
• bbb ratings? done that
• lens options? haven't done that, but they're almost all exactly the same to the degree that anyone might care
• shipping times? haven't done that. maybe I should. I doubt it varies enough to be worthwhile to anyone, but I could be wrong.
• website experience? can't do that. they're all too much the same. I could nitpick to death but I had 0 problems finding what lenses I was looking for to price compare, so I doubt anyone else would have a problem either.

Maybe one day I'll figure out the magic solution that's going to help people beyond simply listing retailers who sell contact lenses, giving bbb ratings, pricing, and a little bit of thought.

Until then, at least I got 1 more revamp done today. It's LensMart. They're based in the US, they've kept off the BBB's radar so far, and the biggest thing that stands out is that they make you enter your credit card info before seeing the final total. There might also be the additional charge thrown in that some other contact lens retailers feel the need to do. I'd know if I were willing to enter my credit card info before seeing the final cost - I'm not.  Read more about them at the LensMart - ContactLensRetailerReviews.com page.

CoolText for prettying up sites

One of the things I bookmarked when making a favicon.ico was cooltext.com . It's a free service, and you can make text look.. well... not as boring.

I've used it on a couple sites - to make the favicon.ico for rtgenterprises.com , and for better-looking images to use as labels for tables on canada-tax-free-savings-account.com .

Today I used it on EyeglassRetailerReviews.com , and basically changed the way the front page looks by listing retailers the retailers in tables with a snippit of info and the "cooltext" image at the top. I think it looks good and should help the readability. I'll have to see if Google Analytics tends to agree over the next few days.

EyeglassRetailerReviews - getting the word out with Facebook, Microsoft AdCenter, and AdWords (again)

Slowly but surely, word's got out about about EyeglassRetailerReviews.com .

It's been mentioned on an NBC news station (link's been broken or no longer exists) back in either 2006 or 2007, a USA Today column in 2006, and more recently (Jan 2008) by the New York Times.

Fact is, there are still a lot of people who don't know about it. I played with AdWords when the site first came about, but there's still more work to be done. Therefore, I tried playing with:

• Google AdWords
• Microsoft AdCenter
• Facebook Ads

Results are kinda preliminary, but it looks like Facebook is about the worst place you could ever pick to put up ads. CTR's are horrendously low, clicks are expensive, and the bounce rate was 100%.

Microsoft AdCenter is certainly the cheapest way to go. Good CTR's, and the clicks don't cost a lot. I haven't checked the bounce rate yet, although from what I read most people have the best conversion rates with AdCenter.

Google AdWords continues to be one of the best performing number-wise. It's pricier than AdCenter, but gets a lot of impressions and clicks.

In the end, I'll probably dump Facebook Ads when my credits run out unless things manage to turn around. As far as the others go, we'll have to see.

Tax Free Savings Accounts

Update: Dropped the site. It's now a sub-page on the free-info-pages.com website.

So I read a bit more last night about the new Canada TSFA. Information is always either super-dumbed-down or too technical for most. I understood it, but I figured a lot may not.

I did a little search and took a note of the first results that pop up. Next stop was google trends to see what the search term trends for "tax free savings account" and "canada tax free savings account" were. They've gone up a lot.

Time to make a new website. tax-free-savings-account was taken, but canada-tax-free-savings-account.com was available. It's long making it suck to remember, but it's relevant, so I took it.

I fought with Joomla/MySQL last night. For the life of me, I couldn't get Joomla to establish a database connection. Deleted/recreated the database about 4 times through CPanel. Did a manual install. Nothing.

Figured something was messed and that I might have to restart either MySQL or the server in the middle of the night at some point. Decided to put it off until another day.

Today for the heck of it, I chose a different name (smaller) for the database and user name. Tried the automated install and it worked first time.

The site is now up. http://www.canada-tax-free-savings-account.com . There's enough easy-to-read-mostly-simple content there to make it an easy first stop for most people I hope. I put a nice fat disclaimer at the bottom just so nobody starts to think I'm actually certified to be presenting this sort of information.

Should be a good resource though. We'll see.

A new day, a new blog.

I've already got the mattgadient.com blog for a variety of things with some substance. I try and keep that one relatively informative.

This one's more of a "what did I do today" blog. Less focus on substance, and more on keeping a timeline of stuff that I've done. Count on less professionalism.

Website Security - mass changing file and directory permissions

A Joomla install was giving me headaches (stupid "unable to connect to database" errors) yesterday. I ended up browsing the Joomla Forums in the meantime, went from install stuff --> install security --> website security stuff, and found some interesting info on file/folder permissions.

First, I ssh'd onto the server, went to the public_html directory, and did this:

  find . -type d -not -perm 755

  find . -type f -not -perm 644

I got facesmacked by a bunch of files/directories listed with not-so-happy permissions. I ran these to change them all.

  find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

  find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Resource usage skyrocketed and it took a good 30 seconds or so, but it changed all the permissions. Joomla and Wordpress are still working.

I ran the first stuff again. Looks like phpBB creates sql junk in the temp folder with different permissions, but everything else was now fine. Time to start looking for a replacement for phpBB. Not only does it do a lot of stupid less-than-efficient stuff in MySQL, but this too.

One of these days I'll get to it....