The Hobby Webmaster Blog

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The Chronicles of my Adventures as a Hobbist WebMaster

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Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:26:18 +0000 - The new Mixer in a Box Blog is fully operational at this time. I may investigate adding a few pictures, or I may put up a gallery on the main site. I did complete the template work and learned a bit more about working with the WordPress theme. I also added a new info page [...]

Mixer in a Box Blog

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:41:37 +0000 - I have initiated a new blog in conjunction with the Mixer in a Box site. The blog details the gigs that I do with the Software Audio Console. I have one more show to log to bring the blog up to date. Adding the blog creates an RSS feed in conjunction with the site, and [...]

New Feeder Sites

Sat, 02 May 2009 16:38:48 +0000 - When I put up Mixer In A Box I also bought two .info domain names. When I put up the site I forwarded these sites to Mixer In A Box. I suspect that they may not get indexed without an actual page associated with the domain name, so I put up pages with tickler information [...]

AudioArt Sound Update in Process

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:50:32 +0000 - I have begun an update to the AudioArt sound site. I had put up a blog over the winter and used a different design for the blog. I thought that it looked good, so I have begun updating the old site to match the blog. I did not use my standard parts in the original [...]

Some new knowledge

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 05:59:41 +0000 - I was adding some pages to the new site today. It is best practice to use an unordered list for menu items. I had done that for vertical menus but not for horizontal menus. I thought that since I was making some changes that I should learn how this was done. I have not used [...]

Welcoming Mixer In A Box to the family

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:24:53 +0000 - I have a new website up on the web. There is still a good deal of work to do on the site, but it is up there and waiting for visitors. The site is http://www.mixerinabox.com/ if you would care to check it out. I also purchased to .info feeder domains that are now set up [...]

Possible New Site

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:32:09 +0000 - I will probably add a new site to my stable in the near future. I have assembled a tool for my business, a Software Audio Console. My primary business is in the field of sound reinforcement. The Software Audio Console, or SAC system, is a full featured virtual digital mixing environment that runs on a [...]

Spam Rate has Decreased

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:19:38 +0000 - The comment spam rate has decreased a great deal. I now stand at 96,770 comments marked as spam. There was a time where I was seeing several attempts a minute. It has now cut back to a few attempts a day. The anti-spam software tool in WordPress is a lifesaver. I probably would have taken [...]

50,000 and counting

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:54:01 +0000 - Today this blog logged its 50,000th attempted spam comment. This is a spambot in high gear. Usually if you refresh the comments page after a few minutes the number of comments marked as spam will have increased. The software catches most of them. I have added a few IP addresses to help the software (and [...]

Comment Spam Short Subject

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:45:59 +0000 - It appears that the spam count will cross 20,000 within minutes. Luckily, the software is catching most of them without bothering me. Go WordPress!!

I am in the process of updating the site using more standards complaint formatting. There is a thing called cascading style sheets of which I was totally ignorant when I put together this site last spring. There are many advantages to using css for page layout. The reason that css came about was to separate the content (html) from the layout (css). The layout controls the colors, background and type, as well as the position of various components of the web page. The css styling can be positioned external to the actual page and many pages can be linked to a single style sheet. In this way you can make changes in one place and they will be carried through to all pages using that style sheet. The pages themselves can be significantly smaller, and the computer can cache the style sheet so that it does not have to download it with each page. That can make a site load more rapidly. I am but a beginner in the use of css, but I can see the power and flexibility that is built into the system.

The following paragraphs were written last spring when I initially put up the site in the table for layout version. That was actually version 2.0. Version 1.0 was roughly kindergarten level. 2.0 might be considered third grade level, and the current 3.0 version must mean that I am about ready to enter middle school. There are still many degrees higher to go.

This site is a work in progress. I am now adding things to the site, we hope, on a regular basis. On the 18th of February I registered two domain names. The first is www.winklongnecker.com. The registrar offers the ability to forward the registered name to another URL, so I have directed it to my 'free' web space that comes with my old ISP account with AT&T. I have maintained this account because of the email address that I have printed on my business cards. Now I will get some added value from the account in the form of web hosting. The second domain name that I registered is www.audioartsound.com. I am forwarding that domain name directly to the AudioArt page that is also linked from this page.

This page has links both to myself and my business. The business section can be found at AudioArt in the navigation bars at the top or bottom of the page. I enjoy taking pictures, so there are picture page links here and on the Audioart home page. I also record some of the shows that I do directly to CD. I got the recorder because one of my regular customers wants a portion of their program recorded. I did this for years recording to cassette tape, but then they converted to CD, so I had to get the CD recorder to accommodate them. I have recorded a good bit of material. I find that recordings made on outdoor stages can be of quite good quality.

This is my toy website. I am learning a bit about web design and html coding. The html coding part I am learning because the web editor is still learning, I hope. I have been using the free ware Nvu web page builder. The price is right, but it is not for the faint of heart. This is a 'what you see is what you get' type editor, but I have found that it really is 'what you see is what you might get sometimes'. This editor works pretty good with the FireFox web browser, but not so good with Internet Explorer. I have gone to the Internet and found the tricks necessary to make things display the way I wish in both browsers, so far. There is a lot of help out there if you can think of the right questions to ask. This does make sense because the Nvu editor was developed by the Mozilla foundation, the developers of the FireFox browser. If you don't get what you want you sometimes have to go into the source html code and tweak a bit.