If you read my last post you’ll know that I’m moving from google ads to banner ads for affiliate programs run by online retailers. But most retailers only target a single country. Showing ads for an American store to visitors from the UK would simply be a waste of ad space. So I needed some [...]
Last week I wrote a blog posting on the site about a common shrub called Spiraea Snowmound. It’s typical of posts I write on there describing a particular plant variety. The plant name is placed in the pages URL, the title, the text and even the photograph file title and alt text. An search of [...]
With the site released I thought now would be a good time it give a breakdown of the costs of getting to this stage. To convert any costs to US$ multiply by about 1.5. Laptop: £666.13 First up I needed a new notebook. I know I should really do development on my desktop machine, but [...]
I’m pleased to report that I got the first click on a google ad today. ‘ve now recouped about 0.017% of my expenses. Wahey!!!! I’ll admit I was getting a little worried that I’d never get a click, so this has really pleased me. I just really wish that google would give some kind of [...]
So, May was my first month after the proper release. Here are my stats: Visitors: 152 Pages: 574 Active users: 6 Photos: 21 Blog posts: 15 Page rank: 0 Alexa ranking: 7,375,933 Earnings: £0.00 (about $0.00) Not much to write home about, but then it was my first month, I only sent a press release [...]
It’s mid May. The site isn’t quite ready for release but, as far as I’m concerned, I can’t wait any longer and it’s time to start on some promotion. The first step will be familiar to many mISVs – Using Al Harberg at dpdirectory.com to send a press release. Al normally sends releases to the [...]
I’m continually amazed about how fast it is developing in Rails. When I created plantality I knew I needed some static pages for things such as privacy policy and help pages. As a temporary measure I created a controller called ‘static’ and added each page as a separate view. This worked but it meant that [...]
When I started plantality I didn’t have either a graphic designer or web designer I could turn to. I’d seen recommendations for using Design Outpost and posted a request on there for a designer to create a logo for the site. I had a number of replies, all with great ideas, but while refining those [...]
plantality is written in Ruby on Rails and is my first project using this language and framework. I can’t really tell you my reasons for choosing Ruby on Rails, other than the fact that there was quite a bit of buzz about both Ruby and Rails, and when I read the now deleted ‘Poignant Guide [...]
plantality.com is my attempt at creating a dynamic web 2.0 style user driven website. Rudabet.com (this site) is my behind the scenes blog about plantality.com. plantality.com is an interactive website for gardeners to relax and socialise. The first release contains social networking features ala facebook including a social activity stream, messaging, status updates, photo uploads [...]