New site

I didn't have a direction I wanted to take this blog, so it has languished. My tech musings are now at a new site, Talk Tech Now. Check it out, I'll split the photography blogging off onto a different site in the future.

-Trent

Hack attack

Over the weekend I had the displeasure of dealing with two attacks on different sites, both Wordpress sites. I spent a good amount of time cleaning up the mess. Hoping Wordpress 3.0 fixes the vulnerability.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

iPad Peek

In case you've been living under a rock the past week, the Apple iPad came out over the weekend. Roughly 300,000 iPad's were sold on Saturday. Pretty soon, you'll want to make sure your website looks good on the iPad. Fortunately a site has come out to show you how your website will look on the iPad. It's called iPad Peek. This site is worthwhile to developers and as you can see from the screen capture, this blog will need a little work. Not having an iPad myself, this is very helpful.

-Trent

Site Re-Design

It's about time, but I finally redesigned the Funny Name Media website. I'm still tweaking the CSS because I think it needs just a little more color, but I like the simplistic design of it. Let me know what you think, check out the site here.

Fresh start Pt. 3

This is the third installment of this look at a fresh start of a website. The site is currently at around a 2.5 million Alexa rank in just under two weeks with no advertising, just SEO.

-Trent

Site overhaul

My website, in my opinion, isn't what it used to be. I've been at this for less than a year and this would be the second major re-design. The first design was meant to be temporary, and it stuck around too long. This one was supposed to be more permanent and it's held up well, but I think it needs something more...or less depending on how you look at it. After the Holidays I'll have more time to re-visit this idea. In the meantime, what do you think of the current site?

-Trent

Fresh starting point

Yesterday I launched a website for a client. With just a little bit of work over the next few months, I want to see how I can impact it's search rankings and Alexa ranking. It's a good old fashioned test. I will keep you updated on how the progress goes.


-Trent

Halo

When you want to show off your skills, you create a halo. Car companies create a halo car. Me, I'm going to work on a halo site. Admittedly, I'm not the world's most amazing web designer, but I'm always trying to push myself into harder projects. My sister, who happens to be a photographer on the side would like a site to show off her portfolio. I'd like to turn it into a halo site. I want to push my skills even further and fortunately I have an understanding sister who will let me experiment on the site. I'll let you know how it goes.


-Trent
Posted from my iPhone

Pile it on

I was just given the go ahead to start on another large project! These aren't dinky little things I'm doing. They take several weeks/months of work. And the funny thing is, I'm not really advertising either. My 'Services' page on my website isn't even up right now. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. Well, it's a short blog post because I've got to get to work!

-Trent

12,000,000

Just yesterday I talked about Alexa, and I'm going to talk about it again. I have not put as much time and attention towards the Funny Name Media site as I should. Instead, I focus on the clients I have. Well, I've done some very minor SEO work on the site in the last month or so, and my Alexa ranking changed...a lot! It jumped by 12 million spots! That's no minor feat considering the minimal amount of work I've put into it. So, time to work on it this weekend and see where I end up.

-Trent

Social Media

I've been dabbling more and more into social media recently for clients, and the results are coming in in waves. I've worked with a well established website that has tried numerous ways of advertising both through print and online, but their web presence never really would budge from their usual 'couple thousand' viewers. After spending just a couple hours on some projects for them, the viewers came in. I monitored the site traffic through their server and it had stayed steady for about a year. Within a couple weeks, web traffic was up 15%. Not an insignificant amount for the relatively small amount of work. However, with social media, you can't just set it and forget it, so I'll continue to work with it and let you know the results. As of today, it was up 11% from the 15% they originally gained.

-TFAM

I'm still here

I can't begin to explain the busy-ness! I have several projects that I've started and I've been going in and out of town quite a bit lately. Blogging has taken a back seat, but I'm here to show you one project that I am finishing up. It's a Utah Property Management group. They rent homes and will even rent your home for you. Check it out.
I've been doing a lot of web work lately and less 'media' related things, but it's still there. I'll give you an update of the media things I've been doing soon.

-TFAM

Workless Weekend

So over the weekend, I visited some family in Idaho. And when I say Idaho, I mean rural Idaho. This helped me realize my reliance on technology. I can't work as efficiently without internet access which should be obvious since I work on websites and my email is web based. So in the small town I was visiting, I was lucky to get service at all. When I did, there was no 3G. Even in the slightly larger town nearby. At the hotel I was staying out, no internet access. So I was stuck to working on my iPhone on the Edge network and only at the hotel. Less than ideal circumstances to say the least. But I am back in the comfort of 3G everywhere, Wi-Fi when and where I need it, and no longer tethered to my phone to try and edit HTML.

Site redesign

In between video editing, going over project ideas, trying to create more hours in the day, etc. I usually try and refine or redesign the current web sites. Would You Rather Daily has been redesigned, followed shortly by Yom's Random Stats, and now...The Funny Name Media site! It has a unique look compared to the other sites which is good in a way. It is a huge improvement, but still has a few tweaks that need to be done to it. Also only the main page is new right now. The About Us page is still the old design. That'll probably be changed by tonight though.
I also officially started on a new project. I don't know if it falls under the Funny Name Media umbrella though because it is not largely web-based. The website will obviously be done by me, but the idea doesn't rely on the Internet to make it work. This will take several months before I have anything to show for it, so don't expect to see anything soon. In the meantime, go check out the new site and let me know what you think.

Shopping Spree

This is not your usual shopping spree. However, I did do some shopping. I purchased a few domain names for new and current websites. There were a couple I already had in mind and I stumbled upon a couple more. I can't tell you what the new sites are just yet, but I will tell you RandomStat.Com is now registered and pointed to well...Yom's Random Stats.
I met with Yom today to discuss his new idea for a website and I started out thinking his idea was much too expensive for our budget, but he turned it around and made it into something do-able. So, we discussed names for awhile, decided on one and registered that domain. Also, one of the domains I registered was an idea I've had for some time so I fast-tracked it and have already come up with a concept page to gauge interest of the other Funny Name Media guys. Which means no one will look at it, it'll go live, then a few months later have to re-work it all because I'm finally getting feedback. It's how it goes.

-TFAM

Done!

Got it done! I was talking about the work I needed to do on this site just yesterday, but thanks to a late night AND early morning, I was able to get the site uploaded this morning. It's all functioning now, but there are a few minor issues that are bugging me that I'll address over the weekend most likely. Now, I get to move onto the exciting world of starting from scratch on a new website. The last thing for you to do is go check out the new site here.

-TFAM

You have spoken

Power to the peeps...err...something like that. Over the weekend, we posted the very first Would You Rather Daily blooper reel/behind the scenes video. I thought it was pretty hilarious, but I do all the editing and I know all these people so who am I to judge. That's why I threw together a little poll to accompany it and see what you, the viewer, thought. Here's a link to the vid in case you missed it.
Well here are the results, 80% said yes to more blooper vids! And it was split on whether you wanted to see it often or not so often. Considering the 3 minute video compromised of 2 months of filming, I think we'll need some time to get another blooper vid. Maybe a 2 minute video in a month or so.
On the topic of new-ness(was I on that topic), Yom and I are having a meeting tomorrow about new site idea. I've only heard the gist of it, and well, the devil is in the details. We'll have to see what he has up his sleeve. I already have one side project with him(Yom's Random Stats), so who knows how another will go. Not to mention the side project I have with Spyder that has yet to materialize. Oh, and the project I want to do myself. And Asti and I have been throwing side project ideas around. Did I mention that I'm lobbying for 30 hour days?

-TFAM

Weekend work

So the weekends are rarely relaxing anymore. Between working on the house and working on the sites/videos, relaxing usually is not an option. Well this weekend was no exception. Yesterday Asti and I pored over lots and lots of website code. Exciting, I know. But it was very helpful. And he also showed me his latest work on changing our daily polls. They will be easier to use, easier to comment on, and best of all, it'll be easier on me updating the website! Can't argue with that. After we got done working on the site, we went to filming. Bubbles joined us and we knocked out a few videos. Since Asti is leaving to England and Spain this week, we're going to try and meet up again this week to get some more filming done for the time that he will be away. Look forward to the new polls in the upcoming weeks.

-TFAM

Busy week

Haven't been able to blog much as I've been busy working on re-designing Yom's Random Stats and working a little on one of the new sites. Also, we've been short-handed on filming recently and it won't get any better as both Asti and Spyder are leaving the country soon. So I've been digging through old footage seeing what I can turn up. Should be interesting as I have come up with A LOT of bloopers/outtakes which I will compile soon enough.
Tomorrow brings the results of the first Realistic Would You Rather(R-WYR). Sure enough, Yom did eat Spam for a day. Granted he cheated a little, but he still did an admirable job. Look for that to be posted tomorrow in place of our regularly scheduled programming. It will be up over the weekend as well.

-TFAM

Upgrade Pt. 2

So as you know from reading this blog, previously I discussed my USB hub and how I was running out of room and that I needed a desktop rather than using my laptop. Well it's finally to that point. My MacBook Pro which has done all the work on the sites/video thus far is two years old now and starting to show it's age. So yesterday, I took delivery of my new 24" iMac. So far I've only been able to edit one video on it, but it goes much quicker than my laptop did. Plus I was hooking my laptop up to a 19" monitor so I have much more screen real estate to work with now too. Overall I am excited about how this will increase my productivity.
We did get a little filming done last night, but not filming on the road trip has really thrown the schedule off and I am behind in work. I'm also working on re-writing the website from scratch with Asti. I've always known it's needed work, but now I have some spare time to actually try and accomplish something. And after WYRD gets re-done, it's on to YRS, then I can work on some of the new sites I've sorely been wanting to work on. Not enough hours in the day I'm afraid.

-TFAM