My new website

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Ameena
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My new website

Post by Ameena »

Well, I wasn't sure about making a post because I didn't want to look like I was spamming, but Wuffy said it'd be okay ;). Anyway, last week I started up a website (with help from a friend, whose server is hosting it). It's http://wordweaving.co.uk (because wordweaver.co.uk was taken :P) and there isn't much there atm, but basically I'm just talking about computer games I've played...sort of an introduction and starter guide sort of thing, explaining the basics of the game, how to play it, that sort of stuff, but not being a proper walkthrough. I'm just gonna go through games I like, really, and maybe some people will read about it and decide to play those games and have some fun as a result. That's about it, really.
If anyone wants to stop by and have a look, that'd be cool. I tried setting up this thing called Google Analytics to tell me how many visitors I've been getting but it doesn't seem to be working 'cause I've definitely had two people on my site in the last few minutes and it still says I've had zero visits. Oh well, must be doing something wrong there :P.
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Gambit37
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Re: My new website

Post by Gambit37 »

Aha! Nice, good job on getting setup. I see you chose WordPress to blog -- a good choice.

A quick note about that: you should also setup Akismet anti-spam for WordPress (you may need to setup another account to use it). It'll help reduce automated comment spam. And as you're allowing comments, be prepared that you may get all sorts of weird or even unpleasant stuff from random commenters; it can be a bit of a minefield but if you only have a small audience then most people are usually nice.

The analytics thing will take a day or so to collect some data before it will show you anything. Give it time :-)

I would also suggest that you setup "pretty permalinks" so that you get better URLs for your blog posts, see here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

I just used Wordpress 'cause I know how to use it - I didn't physically set up the website. My friend (the server host) did that and as I'd mentioned that I was familiar with Wordpress he went ahead and set that up for me.
I'd seen the Akismet thingy - Wordpress comes with it already installed but I haven't activated it. As I've had sod all visitors so far I figured it's okay to leave off poking around with it for a bit. In the event that I actually start getting numerous visitors I'll probably add a note to the front page to the effect of "If you are gonna post spam or purely negative stuff I'll just delete it - if you dont like something, say why rather than just saying you hate it because that's just flaming and will get deleted". Then if anyone does post crappy stuff, they were warned ;). All comments need my approval before appearing anyway - as of today I now have the grand total of two comments, one from Wuffy and one from Oh Brother - thanks you two btw :).
I checked out that Pretty Permalinks page but erm...I don't really understand it. What is the purpose of using "pretty permalinks" and what are they? It looks like some method of changing the URL of my posts...but why would I want to do that? I'm not very technical and I have basically no clue when it comes to code and complicated HTML and that kind of stuff so I don't know any of the really simple stuff that a web designer like yourself would probably do automatically ;).
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Re: My new website

Post by Gambit37 »

Your current Dungeon Master Introduction post URL looks like this:

http://wordweaving.co.uk/?p=13

... which is awful for usability, findability and SEO purposes.

Most websites now use more friendly URLs that give a sensible URL for every page/post, usually based on the date/title of the post in question. If you also did that and switched to the pretty version URLs, your Dungeon Master post would instead be something like:

http://wordweaving.co.uk/2013/dungeon-m ... roduction/

See? That's much better, and has lots of benefits:

* the URL fully describes the resource - if I see that URL posted on another website without any context, I can instantly work out what the content of the post will be
* the URL now contains keywords which help Google and other search engines index your post
* the URL is editable and creates "find-ability" to other parts of your site. I could read the new URL and guess that if I deleted the /dungeon-master-an-introduction/ part, the URL would now end in 2013 and thus should show me all the posts from 2013. And lo and behold, if I try it, that's exactly what I'd see 'cos that's how WordPress works :-) Find-ability through editing URLs in your browser is a useful way of navigating the web - you've probably done it yourself even without realising.

Whereas if all your posts are simply /?p=13 then all the above benefits are lost.

Please setup these Pretty Permalinks now, and do it before you write any more posts: it's the best option for your site long-term. You can ignore most of the tech speak in the article I linked to, and jump straight to this bit:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permal ... _structure

I suggest either going with the "Postname" option, which will give you something like this:
http://wordweaving.co.uk/dungeon-master ... roduction/

...or I suggest putting the year in there too (it helps with organisation). Select "Custom Structure" and enter /%year%/%postname%/
You'll get URLs like this:
http://wordweaving.co.uk/2013/dungeon-m ... roduction/
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Ahh I see - okay, I hadn't thought about that. Wordpress posts I'd made in the past (on someone else's website, doing Elance jobs for them recently) had the thing where it was auto-naming the URL based on the post name, and I noticed it wasn't doing it on my site but I'd've had no idea how to change it plus I didn't really think it'd matter. But now my posts all have the name in the URL thingy. I must remember to look what "URL" actually means at some point too 'cause it's been bugging me for ages (I probably did look it up once and have forgotten) :D.
Thanks for the help Gambit - that's sorted now anyway :). Hopefully the Google Analytics thing will work at some point too, though it doesn't seem to be working on my site and I have to go to the actual Google Analytics site to see anything. It's still showing all zeroes so presumably I have to wait. Either that or I've done something wrong, but I suppose I'll find out tomorrow or something when I check it again.
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Re: My new website

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Hey Ameena, congratulations on setting up your own blog/website. I'm definitely looking forward to reading what you have to say about the games you've played, especially the ones I haven't heard about, or know about it but never tried it.

Also, another tip if you want to impove the SEO (which stands for Search Engine Optimization) of your site so you get better results on search engines, you can set up links to/from other sites. If you can get other similar sites to agree to cross-link with you, each placing a link to the other's site, both will get better results on search engines like Google, which does partially base the rankings on its keyword searches on what other sites you have links to on your site, and what other sites link to yours.
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Re: My new website

Post by beowuuf »

Uniform/universal resource locator :) Ie - the easy way to type the IP addresses that everyone agrees to use :D
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Well, I've got this forum and my site both linking each other now - in my posts about DM I made sure to put in links to both this forum and the Encyclopaedia, as the two sites combine to produce probably the biggest and best repository for any kind of DM-related information that anyone could ever want (short of talking to the actual FTL peeps themselves, I suppose ;)).
I'm not sure which game I'll talk about next - I'll probably just look through the stuff I've got installed atm and pick one of those. I expect I'll do the same kind of thing as I've done for DM - make a short series of posts explaining the basics of the storyline and the mechanics, and play through the very beginning of the game, providing screenshots, to show people what gameplay actually looks like.
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Re: My new website

Post by beowuuf »

Portal or Portal 2 :D


Or Dungeon Keeper so you can then pimp Rasmus's game, while of course hoping to get a link back to your blog too :p
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Hehe yes, I'd already thought of doing the Portal games...I have a bit of a list, in my head, of some of the games I intend to talk about - it's just a matter of deciding which one I feel like talking about next :).
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Re: My new website

Post by Seriously Unserious »

How about The Settlers, or Frontier Elite, or one of the other games in that series you like. I remember we had quite a few discussions back and forth about the Elite series a while back.
Ameena wrote:Well, I've got this forum and my site both linking each other now
That's a good start, for sure. You should also be able to make a sidebar section that includes a list of links to affiliates, who get their site on that list by agreeing to link to your site. :D
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Yes, I've played Frontier and indeed that was another game I'd added to my mental list. The idea of adding a list of links to a page somewhere might be an idea...I'll have a think about that one :).
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Re: My new website

Post by Seriously Unserious »

Just take a look at other sites. On many of them you will see a list of links labels something like "affiliates" or something to that effect. If you click on those links, you will likely see the affiliate site have a similar section, with a link back to the first site, and many of the second sites affiliates will be the same as the first site's, so this group of sites forms their own network of linked sites. By networking in this way, you can get better search engine results, and get traffic coming in directly from these affiliate sites, so you get networking working for you.
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Hmm, well it's certainly something to think about once I have a few more links. Of course, not all the games I talk about will have any kind of web links - I linked to the DM sites because they're ones I know about and which would most definitely be useful for anyone wanting further information. A lot of the games I intend to talk about aren't ones that I have a go-to site for, so won't be providing any kind of web links because I don't have any. Who knows, I might also start writing some other random stuff as well, not just game chat but made-up stuff as well. I dunno. I'll see what I feel like :).
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Re: My new website

Post by Gambit37 »

Hey Ameena, whatever happened to your website? It seems to have vanished... :(
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

I sort of half-forgot about it and didn't get the thingy renewed (someone else was hosting it anyway) so yeah, I think it's probably deleted itself or something. I dunno...I hadn't been to it for ages anyway. Been too busy with forums and work and games and stuff ;). Actually, I wasn't even sure if anyone was visiting it. I mean, I know a couple of people from here did when I first posted this thread about it, but other than tons of spambots (eventually blocked when I figured out how to auto-block any posts containing specified keywords) it seemed pretty deserted after that. Maybe I could ask the guy to start paying for hosting again (well, he paid and then I paid him back and it was like, four-pound-something for a year so wasn't exactly a problem ;)) but I seem to just start stuff and then lose any motivation/get bored and then move onto something else. Unless it's a game - then I can usually keep it going till I reach the end/run out of stuff to do, so setting myself little goals in Elite Dangerous (which I've been playing recently) means I'm probably not gonna get bored of that any time soon ;).
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Re: My new website

Post by Gambit37 »

Ah, right, yeah I know what you mean. It's very hard to keep momentum on something when there are so many other things vying for our attention. I know the feeling well.....! I've been using my spare time recently to play Alien:Isolation, despite having a ton of creative projects that I want to get off the ground. So now a month has passed, I've finished the game, and my projects have no progress.... such is life I guess, there's just too many things to do and not enough enough time to do them! :-)
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Ameena
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Re: My new website

Post by Ameena »

Yeah, it's usually okay if I'm doing something for someone else - then my motivation to get it done is the fact that the other person wants it done ;). But otherwise I seem to get distracted by other stuff after a while and end up doing that instead :D.
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