If you have not heard of bit.ly I’m sure you have seen a bit.ly link around somewhere. Bit.ly is a URL shortening service that allows you to take large URL like this: http://www.thinkcomputers.org/kingston-mobilelite-g2-usb-card-reader-with-8gb-sdhc-card-review/ and turn it into something like this: http://bit.ly/6IBH75. So what is the reason to shorten a URL? URL shortening makes it easier to remember URL’s, but I really never used a URL shortening service until twitter. With Twitter you only get 140 characters to send your message so why would you want most of your message to be a URL? That’s where URL shortening comes in, to cut that long URL down so you have more room to explain what you are linking to.
There are tons of URL shortening services out there, but why do I use bit.ly? When I first really started using URL shortening services I mainly used HootSuite’s ow.ly URL shortener, which I did like very much. It has stats tracking and everything, but there was a problem. When you would go to an ow.ly link there was a toolbar at the top of the page. This really did not bother me at first, but when I was listening to a podcast someone said that when they see a toolbar at the top when clicking on a shortened URL they immediately would close the page, no matter what it was. I thought if one person thought that way there has to be more people like that as well. So I was looking for a new URL shortening service and I found bit.ly.
Bit.ly is very simple and easy to use. You can easily goto their website and create a short URL, but bit.ly also has an API so it is built into many Twitter applications and Twitter actually uses it as their official URL shortener. You do not need a bit.ly account to use bit.ly, but if you want to track clicks you will have to create one. Once you have an account every bit.ly link you create with your account is tracked. When you login to bit.ly it will list all of the short URL’s that you have created. Beside each link you will be able to share the link, copy the link, check the info on the link and delete the link.
When you click on each link to that a look at the info for the link it will give you all the information you would want to know about the link including a graph of clicks, referrers, and locations.
Another great thing to check out is your Bit.ly click summary. It will show summary graphs of all of your clicks for the past 7 or 30 days. This is great because it shows what days get the most clicks, your referrers, and the locations of where the clicks are coming from. This gives you an outlook on where your traffic is coming from and when to best post content.
If you are looking for a new URL shortening service then check out Bit.ly.
You notice I have not updated this blog in quite sometime. That is because over the past 2 months I have been working on ThinkComputers like a mad man! ThinkComputers has been run on a flat-file system since I started it back in 2001. We used a simple PHP script to pull pages and help with navigation. Although the site layout has changed a few times, the backend if that’s what you want to call it has been the same. What this meant is that I had to code every review myself and hand code all of the index pages and even the XML file for the RSS feed. This was all so time consuming, so I knew the next thing to do was move ThinkComputers over to a database-driven system that did most of the hard work for me.
Why WordPress?
Many people have asked me why I picked WordPress instead of something like Joomla or Drupal. The main reason is because I’ve had previous experience with WordPress and I understand how it works. Of course this blog is running WordPress so I’ve been familiar with it for quite some time. Also it seems that WordPress is constantly getting updated and made better, you don’t want to base your website off something that might not be developed for that much longer. The thing that really sold me on WordPress was all of the addons that can be used with it. If you want to add a feature to your website there is probably a WordPress addon or plugin for it. So I decided on WordPress!
A New Layout Too!
If you have been to the site lately you can see it looks nothing like the old site at all. After many days of looking for a good theme and considering getting a custom theme I finally found a theme that I though would work, but it would need a lot of hacking for it to really work for ThinkComputers. One thing I really like about the new layout is the 4 “featured” placements on the top of the site. This allows us to features articles that might get burried in the front page. Another thing that really makes the site different from previous versions of the site is that it only has 2 columns now, not 3. This was a hard decision for me to make, but I think the 2 column design makes it easier to read the actual reviews.
Less Ads
This new layout does one thing that we have gotten complaints about for quite a long time, that is the ads. The old layouts had ads all over them. With this new layout we have 3 main ad placements (728 x 90 on the top, 300 x 250 on the right, and 160 x 600 on the right). We will occasionally throw ads in the reviews themselves but they are for the most part ad-free. You will notice at the top and bottom of each review there are Just Relevant ads. We first had them at the bottom of each review, but then decided to add them at the top as well as our clicks were down ALOT! The top section of each review was custom coded by me and the Just Relevant ads are dynamically generated by using a custom field in each post. That way I don’t have to make up an ad for each review. If there is not an ad to display it will play a default ad from another network. I also coded all of that myself.
Disqus Comment System
Instead of using WordPress’s built-in comment system I opted to use Disqus. I had heard about it for quite a while and wanted to give it a try. The main reason for this is that with Disqus you can post comments with your facebook login, twitter login, OpenID, Disqus login, or post as anonymous. I trusted that Disqus was a good platform since large sites like Mashable were using it. So far I am very impressed with Disqus, it makes it very easy to moderate comments and it very feature rich with the widgets they offer as well.
New Hosting
ThinkComputers was hosted on a server we had Co-located at a local datacenter. This server has been there for a few years now and is not that powerful. When we first setup the server I had a friend install everything on it, but lately he has not been around so there is VERY old software on it. Once we switched the site over to WordPress the server completely crashed! If you know anything about WordPress you know it is a resource hog and our server just couldn’t handle it. I considered getting another server, but that would cost a lot and as I said I really didn’t have anyone to set it up for me and manage it. So since the site was down I hurried up and went with a normal hosting company. They provided me with a semi-dedicated server and once we moved everything to there the site loaded, but load times were very slow. Sometimes it would like 30 seconds to load a page, which was not acceptable. Since the site was at least functioning I did some research and came across The Rackspace Cloud. It seemed that many people were happy with their service and they had a 30-day money back guarantee so I decided to give them a try. Everything about their service was superior to the previous host and pages load extremely fast! If you have a high traffic blog I would really recommend The Rackspace Cloud, I am very satisfied so far!
Makes things easier!
So as I said the old site was a flat-file system so once I completed a review it would take a good hour to get it posted on the site, now it takes maybe 20 minutes? This extra time allows me to do other things with the site and make it even better. Also not having to write the RSS feed, review index pages, and main page by hand is really nice. Everything is automated and its such a relief to finally be on a system like this. Also WordPress makes SEO, indexing and linking to our page easier. This is probably one of the biggest updates to ThinkComputers and I’m relieved that it has been completed. It has been one crazy month!
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Wow what a crazy month it has been! First you may have noticed I have not updated this blog in a over a MONTH! That is way to long without an update! There is a good reason for this, if you head on over to ThinkComputers you will notice the new design. Not only did ThinkComputers get a new design it was moved to the WordPress platform and we even gave it it’s own hosting! So this past month has been pretty crazy, but things are slowing down a little bit. So thinking back to October my favorite post would have to be Old Media using New Media. That session was my favorite at PodCamp and was very interesting as well as funny.
Popular Posts
So what was everyone checking out this month? Let’s take a look…
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1. Motivation: Movies
2. ColorSplash iPhone App
3. Get 1000 Followers on Twitter Easily
4. Old Media using New Media
5. SEO 101 with Jami Broom
Awesome that the PodCamp articles are getting some traffic!
Traffic Sources
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1. John Chow
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. ThinkComputers
5. Jon Waraas
Nice to see some new traffic sources up there!
Top Commentators
Looks like I forgot to do this again, I really need to make a script that does this!
Stats
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RSS Readers 863 (+64)
Twitter Followers 6101 (+135)
Facebook Friends 1377 (+75)
All of the stats keep on going up!
On to November
Well November is already almost over, but I want to get a few more posts in before the month is over! Also stay tuned for a lot of WordPress-specific posts as I am using it on a daily basis with ThinkComputers!
When I was registering for PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 I noticed that 96.1′s Morning Freak Show hosts Mikey and Big Bob were leading a session called, “We Do a Radio Show … But Not Really”. I listen to the Freak Show in the morning and I also follow both Mikey and Big Bob on Twitter so I was interested in seeing what they had to say. I also figured that the session would be funny and it ended up being the best session of the day. The reason I titled this post “Old Media Using New Media” is because Mikey and Big Bob do a show on traditional radio, which is considered old media.
Twitter
Being a Pittsburgh Blogger I try to follow as many people from Pittsburgh as I can. I started Following Mikey and Big Bob on Twitter a good while ago and always enjoyed their tweets. Being the hosts of Pittsburgh’s most popular morning show they are sort of celebrity’s here in Pittsburgh. So it is cool to see what they are up to by reading their tweets and check out their twitpic’s, except for Big Bob’s poop pic’s! Having Twitter accounts allows them to connect with their audience by other means then just the radio show.
In their session they also talked about using Twitter to run contest for Penguins tickets and other prizes. They said that Twitter allowed them to tell people about the contest when they did not have access to the radio station since they received the Penguin tickets after their radio show was over. Also Twitter allows them to say things that they may not be able to say on the radio.
YouTube & USTREAM
Mikey and Big Bob have used YouTube with huge sucess. If you can make any video you make become viral you can bring a tremendous amout of attention to yourself. This is evident from iJustine’s 300-page iPhone bill, Chocalate Rain, and many others. Probably the most popular video Mikey and Big Bob have made is the In a Snuggie video. It has got over 130,000 views on YouTube! The song has actually been played all over different radio stations too! Because of the popularity of the Snuggie video 96.1 and Mikey and Big Bob did a Snuggie bar crawl on the southside, which was a huge sucess.
Both Mikey and Big Bob have USTREAM.tv accounts where they boradcast their shows and whatever else they may be doing while at work. This let’s people who may not live in the Pittsburgh area watch their shows and it also gives the listeners of the show some insight into what they do. During their session they recalled a funny moment when they were in the office and the Pitt cheerleaders showed up and Mikey was in a wrestling mask for no apparent reason.
Does it Work?
So does traditional media using new media work? I think Mikey and Big Bob are great examples of how well traditional media can use new media to give them more exposure and build their audience. It is great to see that they are doing it right, hopefully more traditional media will follow in their footsteps.
Like I said this was one of the best sessions at PodCamp, thanks to Mikey and Big Bob for taking the time to lead the session!
As most of you know I moved to Shadyside not that long ago. Since moving I’ve been discovering new places and things. One of the places I’ve been spending a lot of time lately is Schenley Plaza in Oakland. Schenley Plaza is located between the Carnegie and Hillman Libraries and directly across from the Cathedral of Learning. If you live in Oakland or the surrounding area’s you probably know where Schenley Plaza is. If you have ever driven down Forbes Ave. you probably have passed it.
Schenley Plaza is sort of like a mini park in the middle of Oakland. There is a large field, many benches, chairs, tables, a large tented area for shade, bathrooms and even places to eat. As I have always said it is good to get out of the house or office at least once a week and my escape lately has been Schenley Plaza. But how can I get work done at Schenley Plaza?? It has WiFi! Free WiFi too! When I heard that Schneley Plaza had free WiFi I knew that I had to check it out.
Going down to the Plaza I grabbed a table and sure enough I was on the internet in seconds. It is nice being able to relax and get out of the office, but still be connected to the internet and be able to work. Schenley Plaza is a great place to do work too, being in between Carnegie Mellon University and The University of Pittsburgh there are always students around and things going on. Also you can spend the entire day there because they have 4 dining kiosks, but you can also walk up to Forbes Ave. and grab food too.
There are also many events that go on there throughout the year. I few weeks ago I was able to catch Jessica Lea Mayfield perform and she was great. If you’ve never heard of her she has done some great songs that are actually on the Starbucks playlist. Check out their Music Schedule to see who will be playing there next.
Schenley Plaza is run by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, they have a blog that is updated quite often so check that out.
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