OMG I am SOOOOO fangirling. I have been a diehard fan since high school. I don’t really buy music, but I buy EVERY IG release. And I have always been down-to-pennies broke when they come to town. Today, close, but not so close that I didn’t jump at the chance to go. I will even gladly bear traffic and parking to get there early and eat ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the rest of the month. I can’t tell you what a thrill this is…if I had ONE concert to see for the rest of my life, Indigo Girls would be my choice. Now I can say I’ve finally seen that concert. Holy crap I am giddy like a teenager.

YAAAAAAY!

My home inspector,Bob of  Precision Inspection recently contacted me to have ‘title tags’ put in his website, an understated informational site with a design featuring his logo, about 5 years old. He was looking for a quick fix to increase his search engine rankings, had been doing some reading, and learned that his site didn’t have them and they might help.

Before rushing in to do the work I gave the site an inspection of my own; knowing that simply adding title tags might not be enough, and in fact might hurt more than help. A quick once over and a look at the  internet archives and google cache for the site told me I was right.  I knew Bob wasn’t looking for a total re-design, jut better search engine rankings; but the reasons for his poor rank required in essence, a total overhaul, at least.

Why? Bob’s information for the site hadn’t changed since it’s design over five years ago. His logo is the same, and he likes the look of his site. The reason is, it was designed over five years ago; and design standards have changed. It used frames, which are essentially separate browser windows- one for each menu, header, and content area….plus an extra for the active state of the menu; totaling four separate files making up one page. Pulled together using frames, this caused search engines to read each frame as a separate page on the site, whether it was a menu repeated on every page, or the content of a page. The site had been designed without much META information in the header, including title tags, description and keyword tags. And it had no robots.txt file or .htaccess rules keeping the spiders from crawling the many duplicate files in the site.

I offered Precision the option of keeping the look and feel of the site identical, and simply upgrading the code from a table and frame based design to current valid XHTML, adding META information and search engine specific rules. This acheived the goal of better search engine results; but left the long standing branding of the company in place and offered a much less expensive and intensive process than a complete re-design. I call it an overhaul or a tune up….and we were done in a week.

While adding more, fresher content regularly would certainly help any static and informational site, keeping the site error free and meeting current validation standards is a basic must to get good search engine listings.  Doing this alone took Bob’s site from well past page ten in local search results for “Austin home inspector” to page three of the results. Not stellar ranking, but much better than page seventeen! And over time, I hope to help Precision Inspection improve their results even more by adding easy ways for them to publish new information to their site as often as they wish.

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.
3. Its always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the  time to do it.
4. Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
5. Always remember that you’re unique. Just like everyone else.
6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
7. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
9. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is probably not for you.
10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and  drink beer all day.
11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably a wise investment.
12. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
13. Some days you’re the bug; some days you’re the windshield.
14. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
15. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
16. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
17. Duct tape is like ‘The Force.’ It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
18. There are two theories to arguing with women.  Neither one works.
19. Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.
20. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
21. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
22. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping  pill and a laxative on the same night.

Thanks Samantha for sending me this. I had to post it. If I’m overstepping any copyrights, just let me know and I’m happy to credit the author or take it down.  But this pretty much nails my ‘Zen’ on the head…

We settled upon using WordPress; the new 2.5 release was in candidate stages when we set up…this caused no small amount of nail biting and teeth gnashing on my end, but I wanted the Hills to have the best experience possible and not to have to learn to work with the old’ WordPress, then turn around and re-learn ‘new’ Wordpress. And I wanted to avoid installing plugins for image galleries and other functionality now included in the core WordPress files…we wanted to reduce maintenance overhead and keep things as simple as possible.

A custom logo was created that establishes an excellent brand image, and we went through several iterations of theme mockups before landing at this one, inspired by the new brand. It is actually not that far from June’s original idea of a simple and traditional layout; but the use of the stunning background image and page opacity makes it seem much more complex. Adding ‘road safety’ related styling such as custom pilot car flag bullets and safety border boxes for emphasis further fleshed out the branding and style to create a truly unique theme.

Training for WordPress as well as ongoing customizations are being provided to allow the site owners to maintain and operate the website internally, cutting overall costs. Hosting and DNS management services were also included in this project.

The Hills have been truly wonderful to work with; it is rare to have a client so explicitly trust a designer’s judgment. They maintain several resources for beginning pilot car operators, including a yahoo group, Pilot Car 101; and are active in their web communities. I look forward to seeing how they use this new platform to present their ideas and company.

My daughter has been looking forward to this trip for months and it’s all she’s talked about for weeks now. Seeing her so motivated is … well… it just makes me so proud! She promises to log in here and upload pictures and video as the trip progresses. I suspect that might not happen quite that way, and I’ll be spending next week posting galleries and videos for her…but I think I can let it slide.

Anyway, if you want to send some kudos and well-wishes the LASA Robotics Team way, just comment and I’ll pass it along.

“Self… You cannot possibly put one more thing to learn on that to do list.”

And then I catch some iffy behavior from visitors poking at wp-admin files on various installations. Mainly, those I upgraded. (specifically, some jquery includes and the browse happy image.) And I go about spending the day tracking down offenders and making a plan for hardening my installations…the day that was crucial to spend doing something else so I stayed on track with my precarious budget. And with resign, at the end of such a day I read about the rumors of a sql injection attack on the wordpress admin login . Damnit. I really, REALLY need to sleep. And see the sun before summer hits. But as it is…I.Never.Will.Ever again.

I really advocate to people who operate a blog on their business website (like myself) to avoid complaining and sounding whiney. But … I just can’t help it today. I’m not launching into the litany that IS the personal financial crisis I find myself in or what it’s done to my health or mental state. Just suffice to say….GRRRR.. Can’t you hackers pick on someone more important, with more resources? Just this once? I’m a struggling single mom who hasn’t seen daylight in months, I’ve been working so hard to keep afloat. There just isn’t the time left in my days to suss you out. And there’s millions of WP blogs out there. Can you just stay away from mine for a week or two so I can catch up on my mortgage payment, please?

I spent a short time working with the release candidate and was happy to see the public release come out so soon. Despite the many disagreements amongst various WP users, I happen to find the changes refreshing. Many of them accomplish what I’ve been spending hours hacking for on client’s sites…an easier to navigate admin area. After about a week with it on this site, I went to another site I haven’t upgraded yet, and the admin felt so clunky in comparison. And the uploads feature, when one does get it working properly, is really fabulous. I’m looking forward to the next releases improvements to it.

So, if you ended up here cause of my trackback, that’s where it went. I prolly should have just edited it; but, you know…I’m a blonde (and it wasn’t that important).

I know who a few of you are, out there googling away at my name every day like you think you’re going to find something new. Guess what? If you do, it will be right here. RSS is easier. You could just email me. I’ll tell ya whatever it is you’re looking for. I’m not hiding, clearly….this domain name IS my real name, and all my contact information is pretty easily available. So, why not just … you know… contact me?

But let me clear up a few things. First, I’m not dead. And I’m not Brandi Boyd in Pflugerville. I don’t know who IS, but she has an Amazon account listing that comes up pretty often in a search for my name. I don’t have an Amazon account. Also, my birthday isn’t in March. And my name isn’t Brandy with a ‘y’, and I’ve never spelled it that way. I’ve never been married; but I did once go by my stepfather’s last name; long before driving age. That was far too long ago for anyone googling me to be looking for, but if you look around here, it’s easy to find what name that was.

Something else to consider as you search the internet for the elusive Brandi Boyd . In a search of just one public database of drivers license information, over 37 listings for “Brandi Boyd” were returned…for only nine states. And, that’s only the BBs with driver’s licenses that haven’t requested their info be made private (want to do this in Texas? Call DPS and ask for an opt-out form). So, be sure the Brandi Boyd you’re internet stalking is really me. Or, don’t. I’m enjoying the page hits.

Just … not from whoever put ‘dead’ in the mix.

I am also working on some special packages for pilot car and trucking related sites, finding the best places for pilot car companies to advertise on the web, and locating trucking related graphics, links, syndicated content, widgets, and more. You can find my special section for Pilot Car and Transportation Web Sites here. And I’m always adding to my page of Resources for Transportation Websites; many of these resources are free for use….and you can always ask me for help with them.

So, if you’re an owner-operator or have a trucking, pilot car, or related business you’d like a website for, give me a shout!