It is time for that all important announcement that I know you have all been waiting for.  I would now like to proclaim the ultimate in the internet/computing industry - well, ok it isn’t that big of a deal but the new DoubleClicks.info site is up and waiting for your input.

First, I would like to thank those of you who volunteered to test out the site after I asked for help last week.  The suggestions that I received were greatly appreciated with most of them being incorporated into the overall implementation of the site.

Second, why the heck would I take the time and effort to reimage the site when it was working perfectly well before?  Well there are many reasons but several of them were most evident to me.  First you need to just plain redo a site over time to keep it fresh.  Next, the site wasn’t working as well as the day it had been created a couple of years ago.  Over time hackers, spammers and other types of meanies on the internet had been cracking at it and it was wearing down from the barrage.

For instance, I may have 5-10 readers sign up on the site a week; however, I averaged 35 spammers signing up on the old site each day.  That meant that each night I had to go online to the site and delete their usernames.  They really couldn’t add posts to the Double Clicks site but their usernames alone were too disgusting to work with.  By-the-way, a spammer signs up on websites to have their username posted along with their product, website or whatever they are trying to get you to use and peruse.  The more places they appear the more chance they have to making money on worthless and/or inappropriate things. 

The old site I had was based on a phpBB template.  PHP is the programming language used for the site and the abbreviation stands for PHP Bulletin Board.

The new site is based on WordPress (Wordpress.org).  WordPress is a publishing system also written in PHP and run by a database.  At this point in my life it appears to be slightly easier to keep spammers off WordPress which, other than helping users learn computers, is one of my major goals.

I have all of my columns since June 5, 2007 at the new site so take a look for the one that you missed. You can use the search engine on the site to find a column if you just remember a word or two from it, remember the title (although they are usually different titles than the printed versions) or even find them by date if you remember when the DNR published it.  Of course, I also want you to register at the site which allows you to post your thoughts and questions about a column if you would like to.

You can receive RSS feeds from the site, read my latest Twitters (boring) and even see some of the pictures I have taken in the past couple of years (no I’m not a photographer, but even a blind pig can find an acorn every now and then).  Please sign up at DoubleClicks.info soon and let me know what you think!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 5:05 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.