Tag: site

If you’ve actually been hitting the site over the past couple of days rather than reading posts via RSS feeds, you will have noticed the new look. To go along with the new look is something of a new mandate I gave myself.
Retrophisch refocuses its coverage on the Mac world and technology in general, with a few bits of personal fun, like my observations on college football (Geaux Tigers!) and hockey, thrown in. From this point forward, I’m shifting the following topics to respective blogs:

• God and faith (what some would term “religion”): Godblog
• Politics: Ludichris
• Firearms: Forty Caliber

All sites carry a common layout that identifies them as the Retrophisch Family of Blogs™, and all of the above sites link to the others. There may be some crossover posting, going on, as religious liberties might well be discussed on both Godblog and Ludichris, just as firearms freedoms could be discussed on both Ludichris and Forty Caliber. But for the most part, each will remain distinct from the others.
I wanted to do this both for myself and those of you kind enough to frequent my site. I have felt that perhaps I was trying to cover too much in one site, and, heck, I’ve had the domains just sitting around waiting to be used.
I must send out major thanks to Raena for her invaluable assistance in getting the backend code tweaked and the CSS working right. Thanks also to Jon, Lee, Michael, and anyone else I may have bugged over the past few months about taking a look and helping me with items that were wrong. Errors in the content are purely my own.
I’m still working on code for some of the auxiliary pages, so, yes, I know the Photos and Read pages don’t share the same layout. I likely won’t touch the Photo albums until the Trotts & Co. release Movable Type Pro, which will feature photo album creation. (Yes, I know about Gallery and myriad other such products, but I’ve issues with trying to get them to work, and I can only guess how well the whole album thing will work in MT Pro, so I’m content to wait.)
Comments on the new look are welcome and appreciated, as are any bug reports readers may feel necessary.

My friends Jim and Lissa have gone live with their new site, appropriately titled, Jim and Lissa. I’m going to miss seeing Jim at work each day, but at least there’s AIM.
Congrats, you two. You are welcome to pool, and the pool, any time.

So some yahoo is now comment spamming in random posts about discount life insurance. Congratulations, ingrate. Get a new IP, because you’ve been banned.
Granted, I’m flattered that you think my blog is so popular to be spam-worthy for you to waste time on. Moron.

Kottke has the 411 and an open letter to certain news entities.

Ben and Mena’s latest venture is in the growing pain of going live, with a “Preview Release Launch” later tonight. Jon’s been a beta tester, as has Raena. The features are impressive, and the pricing is really, really good. It’s going to kick LiveJournal’s butt, and, unfortunately, may steal business from friends.
I have to agree with Raena in that I won’t be moving my blog over to the service, comfortable in rolling my own, and looking forward to MovableType Pro. I have a sysadmin at my beck and call (pretty much) who owns and runs the server my site is hosted on. If I get in to any kind of Unix-ey or web server-related trouble, Jim’s the man on getting it all fixed. Not to mention that we now have a nightly backup system in place, and Jim’s ‘net connection is a heckuva lot more stable, not to mention faster on the upload, than mine. Our “new” server went online over the weekend, and all of us type-A control freaks are happy with having the nuts and bolts so close.
So lots of luck to the Trotts & Co., and all you TypePadders present and future!

One of the great things about working on a publication like ATPM is that the diverse staff we have. Raena and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we’re friends because of our common interests in things Mac, blogging, and the Internet and technology in general.
Some time ago I was lamenting how IE6/Win wasn’t rendering the site properly when compared to browsers on the Mac. Raena speculated that the issues lay in my CSS, and offered to help. Earlier today, I took her up on her offer.
I’m pleased to report that the font and sidescroll issues have been fixed, and the site now looks the same (albeit without the pleasing antialiasing one gets from OS X) on IE6/Win as it does on Safari or Camino on the Mac. For those keeping score, it appears there are no more font issues with Firebird, either. I haven’t tried OmniWeb, Opera, or iCab yet. Best of all, the CSS validates.
So mucho gracias, Raena-Raena-bo-baena. If you make it to the States, and Dallas, I owe you a brew.

Jim has upgraded our server stat software to AWStats, and I am mightily impressed. I determined long ago that I would not become obsessed with traffic, and by and large, I haven’t. Mainly, this has been because I have avoided looking at any statistics any server analysis software installed might provide. Once I get over how wicked cool AWStats is, I’ll likely revert to this habit.
It is interesting to note that in 28 days of July, my site has moved 400 MB of bandwidth, twice as many people view the site on a Windows box than a Mac (surprising, considering the pro-Mac tone of my computing posts), and while, of course, IE is the browser used by most, Safari comes in second, and is used three times more than #3, Mozilla. Most people get to the site because they’ve bookmarked it, and for that, you have my thanks. The second way people get to the site….anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
The answer we’re looking for is Google. Google.
Two things AWStats shows (and according to Jim, our old stat software did the same; like I said, I rarely looked at it) that fascinate me: the most common search keywords and keyphrases used to hit the site; and what IP domains pages are being served to. I can honestly boast of having a worldwide readership, though by a tremendous margin, most of the traffic is, not surprisingly, from the U.S.
Australia is high on the list (thanks, Raena!), but I have served at least one page to the following: Slovenia, Malta, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, Guatemala, Iceland, Slovak Republic, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Greece, Poland, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Croatia, and the list goes on. I know, there just may be some simple router-hopping going on that returns those values, but it’s still fun to think about.