Tralfaz

Category: Tech

  • Battle of the Simple Website Creators

    I have been working on a fun project lately, creating a website and online personas for my adopted greyhounds. Since I started the bit of an advice column for how to create a website, and what tools to use, I figured that I would try one of the simple builder sites.

    The two I played with are Weebly, recommended by my friend David Kendall Grant, and Virb, a spin off of the hosting I use, Media Temple. They both are simple to use, intuitive, and pretty straightforward website creation package. Both are attractive, and have pretty complete components to place and drop. Naturally, they both do all the hosting and back end maintenance.

    Weebly, is a startup, VC funded. They have a free offering, and two tiers of paid services that add capabilities. It can connect to an ETSY store, it can create static pages, blogs, and even simple discussion forums. It automatically connects to Facebook and Twitter to alert the world that you published something. There are a pretty extensive collection of templates that offer some customizability, and flexibility of the design.

    Virb is fairly new. It is still under development, and you can see some rough edges. Their collection of templates is smaller (but growing) and some of the goodies and components that are available on Weebly are not yet implemented. But their bits and pieces that are done work well. Additionally, they have a blog that keeps you informed of what they are developing and when to expect it. I did like the facilities for customizing the CSS and getting some access to the bits and pieces, but naturally, once you go there, you are on your own for support.

    What I liked:

    It was really quick and easy to get a site up. Adding pictures, posts, quotations, and connections to social media were easy peasy. Modifying the templates on Weebly was hit or miss. Some elements were easy to figure out how to edit, some were a bit harder.

    Virb had great controls that let you alter almost anything on the templates, from fonts, to colors, and background images. I thought this was a bit better thought out than Weebly.

    Both give you quite a bit of flexibility for your free or trial period (Virb offers a 10 day trial and then it is $10 a month, Weebly has a “permanent” free offering, but sells you features and very expensive domains).

    Both seemed to have solid hosting, and while I am not sure about Weebly, I have always been really happy with the hosting at Media Temple. Great uptime, speed, and access, as well as just awesome support for when shit goes wrong.  And it does go wrong.

    What I didn’t like:

    While I am not a pro web designer, I do like having flexibility at my fingertips to get in and muck around. I also like having some control over the plugins and extensions that I use. With both Weebly and Virb you are at the mercy of what they offer.

    I also like to take standard templates and modify them.  Edit the CSS, change classes, and alter the layout to my whim.

    These things are a lot easier if you roll your own.

    Who should consider these services?

    If you are creative, but not web savvy. If you have an idea of what you want it to look like, but the whole idea of buying hosting, installing software, and customization is scary. If you want to get something up quick and easy, without headaches. Then these two offering fit the bill.

    A note on the “Fremium” model by Weebly. First, I am not a fan. Since if you are a “free” user, you are not really a customer to them, they spend a lot of time trying to get you to buy one of the paid tiers. I literally get one or two emails a day from them prodding me to upgrade. One today was offering me the paid tier at 33% off. Virb was up front and said that you get ten days of trial, no restrictions, and then $10 a month. That is one reason why I am a fan of Media Temple. They don’t try to sell you crap everytime you log in.

  • So you want a website – Weebly update

    After my first “So you want a website” post, one of my faithful readers, David Kendall Grant mentioned that Weebly is an awesome, free, and very flexible website creation option.

    Weebly-LogoI recall hearing about them in the past, but thought nothing about it, so I thought I would give it a try.

    First, a basic setup is free. Like WordPress or Blogger, you can easily get a site up that is <your cool name>.weebly.com.  I started setting up a website. It is pretty easy, and they have a huge variety of templates that you can use. You are sure to find something you like.

    The creation of the site is done by dragging and dropping features. Pretty intuitive, and almost fun. You can create text/articles, picture galleries, insert advertisements, and have interactive items like Forums pretty easily. Really slick.

    I didn’t see any way to really modify the template. For example, many of the templates have photos in the header area. No amount of hunting by me found a way to change those images. In a way this makes sense, that the templates have some rigor to them.

    How can they do this and make money if they give you a pretty solid experience for free?

    Well, say you want to have your own domain name (<your cool site>.com instead of <your cool site>weebly.com), they will register and set it up for you for a fee.  A pretty pricey option at ~ $40 a year.  (For comparison, WordPress.com will do this for $18 per year, and if you host your own, it will be about $12 a year).  So that is some revenue.

    There are also upgrades, two tiers of that you can graduate to. The starter tier ($3.29 a month) adds some support options, and the ability to remove the Weebly branding from the footers. The next tier is “Pro” that gives you a lot more flexibility, and adds things like site search, slideshows, Video and Audio players (boo, I hate web audio), and the ability to have other collaborators on your site.

    My impressions:

    I played with it for a couple of hours. I felt frustrated by the rigidity of the formats and the templates.  Of course I am the “free” user, and I am thus limited to what they give away.

    I am not sure I would want to play with it enough to go pro.

    I did see that you have the option of downloading your entire website. I didn’t play with that to see if it is in a format that can be moved to blogger or wordpress.

    I am also not their target demographic.  I am much more likely to roll up my sleeves and dive in to tweak the stylesheets, or the templates of my own site. But for the creative, but not very technical user, I am sure that Weebly provides a great entry point.

    I am not giving up on the experience, but I think the next step will be to cough up some green and get access to the premium features.

    One thing that is a turn off is the constant “hints” to get my own domain, and to upgrade. Heck, yesterday I got three different emails to find out why I didn’t finish my site, or buy a domain.

    I understand that as the free user, I am not really a customer, and they are incentivized to coerce me to pay more, but the hard sell is not very effective for me. As I said, I am not their target demographic.

  • So you want a website – part 2

    Yesterday I talked about the different avenues to putting up a website, and mentioned some of the pros and cons. Today, I will talk about some of the mechanics. It will be boring, because you aren’t doing anything, but planning at this point.

    What sort of site do I want?

    Ask yourself what you intend to do with it. Are you a photographer and want to share your portfolio? Do you want to write about current events, or your views on a variety of topics? Do you want to sell something (products, yourself, your services)? Do you want to have advertisements (banners or other related ads) to help fund your site/lifestyle?

    List out what you want to accomplish, in as much detail as you know at this time. There are no wrong answers.

    What should I be called?

    The first step is to obtain something called a domain name. This is something catchy that is related to your what you want to do. For example, the Greyhound rescue group I work with is sagreyhoundadoption.org A web name that is unique and descriptive. Before buying a name, it is good to look for names you want.  I usually use register.com to explore names, but pretty much any hosting provider will be able to search for the availability of your chosen name.

    Don’t worry if most of your clever ideas are taken. Be diligent, and creative, and you will find something.

    Do I want to host it or use one of the services. 

    This is a trickier decision. If you are a rank novice, I would strongly recommend using Blogger or WordPress.com. They will both get you up and running pretty easily, and free.  Both can have a custom domain name, and there is a pretty wide variety of themes you can select and customize.

    If you are a bit more tech savvy, don’t be afraid to go the self hosted route.  You can’t use blogger, but it is about a 20 minute process to get WordPress up and running. Trivial to say the least. This way you will have a very granular level of control over the look and feel of your website. I will post a blog about the learning path of self hosted wordpress.

    I want to go hosted, what should I do?

    First, select a hosting company.  There are many that will offer robust, reliable, and safe hosting for about $5 – $10 a month.  They will include almost endless storage, a reliable database, and all the infrastructure to handle your hosting. They will also be able to register your domain (and I recommend doing it from where you host) and keep all the records up to date.

    You are going to what a basic Linux hosted service. Pretty much all the hosting companies are good. Hostgator, Network Solutions (they are register.com) and GoDaddy are all fine choices, and will get you up and running quickly. There are another tier of hosting companies that are a bit more professional to deal with, but it comes at a price. I personally use MediaTemple and love their service and support. They never try to sell you crap you don’t need, and when you have a support issue, they are super responsive and fix things right away.

    All these hosting providers will have an option called VPS (or DV). That is a “Virtual Private Server”, essentially you will have provisioned a full VM with its dedicated disk, cpu, memory, and database. You will not have to share resources, which sounds like a big benefit. But it comes with a mighty cost. You have to update and maintain the linux installation, applying patches, and configuring the services that are used (like PHP and Apache). Unless you are comfortable mucking around in the Unix environment, I would avoid this at all costs. Also, these services will come at a premium price. Expect it to start at $20 a month and go up depending on your resource use.

    How to install the software.

    When I first started, this was a major deal. I had to download the package, upload it to y hosting site, and then follow the setup process. Pretty easy, but still a manual process.

    Now, for the common packages, you can just use something the hosting company will call a “1-button install”. All the most common packages can be installed and a basic configuration setup in a few minutes. No need to mess with MySql databases, or user accounts. Literally, push the button and in a couple minutes you have a WordPress install. Or a Joomla install. Or a Zencart (e-commerce software) installed.

    Now you have a basic site. Next in the series is how to set it up, how to customize it, and how to begin populating it with content.

  • So you want a Website – let’s get started

    I get a lot of people asking me how to create a website.  They see this page, or the site I run for the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption group, or my professional site, and wonder what they need to do to play. It can be confusing to a neophyte, but hopefully I can clear the confusion.

    First, you need to honestly assess your technical ability. Do you view yourself as a bit of a nerd?  Are you comfortable with supporting yourself on your computer, do you like to tinker?  Then you might want to look to hosting and running a site on your own. But if you get nervous when you hear terms like FTP, SSH, linux, apache, PHP or the like, you might want to go with one of the completely managed solutions.

    Second you need to decide what you want to publish to the web. Most common is the blog format. This is a series of articles that can be arranged by category, and give you flexibility on what you want to post (text? photos? videos? all of the above). Or do you want to be a bit more formal, run a site that is more of a portal or a magazine or newspaper.  The Greyhound site that I run is like this. Most of the content is static, but there are dynamic parts of the site.  Additionally, there are tools to help less skilled people contribute without giving them access to the back end. Do you want to do e-commerce?  Integrate ads to help offset your costs? It is best to get this down on paper up front.

    If you are a neophyte, and you are scared of terms like FTP and PHP you can go with one of the hosted solutions. Both Blogger (a google property) or WordPress.com will be able to get you up and running very quickly. Both sites give a reasonable service for free, and are very simple to use and setup. Both can host your own domain name (your address on the web).  The wordpress service is what I am using here, and it is pretty solid.  One downside is that they will constantly try to get you to buy extra services (custom typography, custom templates).  Still, for many people, this is the best path.

    If you are curious, and not afraid of computers and technology, you might decide to roll your own. Typically you buy hosting from one of the major hosting services (Hostgator, GoDaddy, MediaTemple) and then setup your site. Fortunately, it isn’t too geeky, as you can easily FTP your files over, create a database, and run the built in installer and you will be up with a basic site.

    There are some terms to learn. The software that runs on the host to deliver your website to the visitors is called a CMS (content management system).  A content management system (CMS) is a package that provides the logic, the maintenance behind the scenes, and utilities for adding content. They typically have a front end (what the public sees) and a back end (where you add articles, posts, or pages).

    Templates are sets of files that alter the look and feel of the website. The packages typically have a couple of default (read: ugly) templates to get you started, but you are probably going to want to use a different template. Don’t worry, you don’t have to create your own, there are tons of free and paid templates for all the major packages.

    Plugins/components are additions to the web CMS that extend and enhance the experience. Things like a tag cloud, or a twitter feed, or archive access are common. But there are other plugins that can be used. Perhaps you want Disqus for comments to your posts. Or you want to have Facebook “Like” icons. You can add these and more and not have to know anything about HTML.

    All the major CMS platforms have some common attributes – they store their content and settings in a database (typically MySql), they have some type of hierarchy or taxonomy to arrange and group content, and they are typically built on PHP code that creates the HTML and styles that are seen by the public.

    The major CMS’s

    wordpress logoWordPress: The most used CMS. It is very simple to setup (I can get a new site up in about a half hour), and straightforward to manage.  It doesn’t require a lot of skill to keep it going. There are an amazing number of plugins that gives you infinite flexibility in layout and pizzaz. Additionally there are thousands of templates to give you a site that stands out from the riff-raff. I started with WordPress.

    Joomla! logoJoomla!: The second most popular CMS software, Joomla! is quite flexible.  It is what I use for my tralfaz site, and the Greyhound site. It is more of a general purpose CMS, unlike the “blog” focus that WordPress takes. There are lots of automation options for contributors, and a very rich user management environment that allows you to have many different access groups and control who sees what (I don’t really use this, but private sites, and member sites are trivial to setup in Joomla.) Joomla also has a very powerful ecommerce option, called Virtuemart that is pretty easy to setup, but very powerful.

    Drupal logoDrupal: Drupal is probably the least friendly CMS that is commonly used. It is more for web professionals, and keeping it up to date is a pretty hefty job. The basics are easy to get up, and built in are things like forums, and some great content bits built in. But the major sites that use Drupal have a lot of customization, and a full IT staff to keep it going. One site that does use Drupal, is the Economist. It is a good example of what can be achieved with Drupal.  I have played with it a little, but it really is not for a hobbyist.

    In the next article, I will discuss how to choose a hosting company, and the basic steps required to get online, and sharing your passions. I will also touch on maintenance and how to avoid being hacked.

  • I thought I could live with iPhoto

    As part of my migration to a MacBook Air (from my macbook pro with beaucoup disk space) I figured I would just live with the “as delivered” iPhoto.
    Alas, that was not to be. I did one (small) import of photos, and I about barfed. For a program that takes about 1.5 G of disk space, it pretty much sucks when you are used to using Aperture. iPhoto lacks a lot of what I have come to expect in my photography workflow with Aperture.
    iPhoto is great for built in software and casual users, but I moved away from it 3 or 4 years ago when my photo library became 60G’s of space on my disk (now it is well over 150G).
    The tools for managing, cataloging, creating light boards, and albums/collections are addictive to serious photographers (I am sure there are better tools, but I am a hack, and I just like tools that work for me.
    The real dilemma I have is do I buy (rent) a copy of Photoshop CC.
    Fortunately, it was pretty easy to move it over and to get it properly licensed here.
    So far, I am loving the MBA. I am on my third day since I charged it and I still have plenty of juice in the battery. It is astounding how liberating it is to not need to charge often. With my MacBook Pro, after an hour or so, I was looking for a spare socket to charge it.

  • Google Analytics weirdness

    I have a few websites, and I have all of them (except this one) in my Google Analytics account.  I don’t obsessively watch it, but I keep track of trends.

    My main site, Tralfaz, I run on Joomla! which does a pretty good job of internally monitoring the page visits. I find that on days where I make a new post, I typically get 100  – 130 page views of that (mostly from the Product Management community). But Google analytics usually only tell me that 15 – 20 page views happened.  I don’t do aggressive SEO, but I do set the meta data and the tags to help the search engines find my content (and they do, most of my visits are not return visitors).

    Then yesterday, I put up a new post.  It quickly had 100 page views, and today I went to check on my analytics graphs, and wow, it spiked.  It is almost identical to what Joomla! tells me that page views was. I wonder if this will continue? (I am not hopeful)

    My last month on tralfaz.org
    My last month on tralfaz.org

    I suspect that google fiddles with the metrics to try to convince me to buy adwords, and to promote my site.  But since I run this for fun, and am not looking to commercialize it, the entreaties to use their tools to increase traffic fall on deaf ears.

  • More on life with the Nexus 7

    I have been trying really hard to use my Nexus 7 as my tablet and media consumption device. In general, it is a worthy competitor to the iOS based iPad’s, but there are some notable differences.

    1) The built in Safari “Reader” function is something I use heavily. If you are unfamiliar with it, it takes a web page, strips out all the marginal things, formats it in larger, more legible text, and makes it easy to read.  This is built in and “free”.  On a PC, it is not a big deal, as I usually have plenty of screen resolution, but even on a tablet, it is nice to have a clean copy to read without distraction. I have not found a good replacement in Chrome yet. Why won’t Google replicate this awesome feature?

    2) Google can’t help but fucking with their applications. I guess the drive to “Google+”-ify everything is a top down directive. What it means though is that they have pretty much ruined the Gmail application in the stock Android.  It has avatars of the people, linked to their profile, which isn’t terrible, but it takes up valuable screen real estate on a device that has limited space to begin with. Yes, I could set up all my Gmail accounts on the “other” email software, but then I lose the goodness of the Google integration (like Apple, it “just works”)

    3) (Again) The auto-brightness feature is pretty funked up.  When I read in bed, it is constantly adjusting the intensity, making appear to flicker.  Google needs to tune that control feedback loop to make it less sensistive.

    4) It eats battery.  I am charging it every other day, where with my generation 2 iPad, I could often go 4 – 6 days of normal use before I needed to plug it in. I am not even listening to music, or doing much streaming, just reading my ebooks, or playing solitaire.

    But, all in all, it has been a not too unpleasant experience.  I am still not looking to give up my iOS devices, but I have a new appreciation for the Android ecosystem.

  • Is the music collection headed for the dustbin of history?

    When I first started making money (delivering the San Jose Mercury News), I put together a hifi system (old components, amplifier, and turntable) and started buying music.  I was addicted to the extension of my collection, which ran to hundreds of LPs, including some rarities, and bootlegs. I remember the thrill when I first got a car and was able to drive to Santa Cruz, not to visit the beach, but to visit the huge used record stores on Pacific Grove.

    Then the Compact Disc revolution started (1983, I bought a very expensive for me, Technics CD player).

    Fast forward 27 or so years. I no longer have the LP’s (they were sold during a move, sadly), but I still have hundreds of CD’s. Of course, I have jumped on the digital bandwagon, and have bought a few thousand tunes from the ITMS and Google Play store.  My collection runs to some 18K tracks, spanning many genres, as well as some rarities.

    But that is at risk of becoming obsolete. I have found that a 150G music collection is formidable to keep sync’d across all my devices and computers. It is just too big.

    Fortunately, the Google Play and iTunes Match means I can stream it to my devices as will. But even with that convenience, I find that I am using itunes or google play less and less.

    This is because of my subscription to Spotify. Their streaming is so good that I don’t miss my tracks. And the selection of music is wide.  I have discovered some great bands that I would never have taken a risk on buying a track (Panzerballet is one).

    Of course, there are some downsides.  Some artists are absent (AC/DC, Paul Gilbert, and Led Zeppelin come to mind), so I will need my catalogs of these songs. As the licensing deals are reached, I expect those gaps to lessen, and while they won’t disappear, it will become much less annoying.

    I welcome the change. Managing and preserving a 18K track, 150GB music collection takes a lot of work. But for everyday listening, Spotify rocks. I do worry about the economics. While getting the major labels less pivotal to the music distribution game, I fear that the remuneration for artists will remain low (An excellent piece in the NY Times in January highlighted this), and thus make them less likely to open their catalogs.

    I still buy tracks from the various stores, and occasionally a CD when the tracks aren’t available (Paul Gilbert’s band “Racer X” comes to mind), but Spotify has disrupted the music market for the better.

  • I make contact with Windows 8

    A week or so ago, my wife and I were shopping (at a local office supply store), and they had the two Microsoft Surfaces.  The RT which is ARM powered, and the other one (pro?) with a Core i5 and full windows compatibility.

    The Microsoft Surface is surprisingly usable. Too bad it was far too late to compete.
    The Microsoft Surface is surprisingly usable. Too bad it was far too late to compete.

    I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but the Metro interface, and the responsiveness of the product was surprising.  Metro (the Windows 8) UI is well suited for touch interactions. The tiles are intuitive, and the system is quite snappy. As I played with it, I found it very well designed and easy to interact with.

    I am not in danger of giving up my iPad, but if Microsoft launched this in 2010 at the same time as the iPad was launched, it might have had a chance. But now, it is too little too late, and the ship has sailed.

    Shame, because it is a nice platform. I definitely like it better than the stock Android 4.2 on my Nexus7.

    I also played with the laptops with Windows 8 (the wife was busy exchanging toner cartridges and finding the binders).  After playing with the Surface, it was impossible to not reach out and touch the display. Even though only about 1/4 of the demo units had touch screens.

    While Metro is fine for the tablet, I am not sold on the desktop. Again, there is minimal risk of me abandoning my Mac’s anytime soon for a Windows 8 system.

  • Oh crap. I think I am in trouble… (GarageBand edition)

    I was cleaning up some programs that I am not likely to use on my new MacBook Air (iPhoto, iMovie), and I figured I would also blow away Garage Band. 

    Garage Band is actually a lot cooler than I thought. Damn
    Garage Band is actually a lot cooler than I thought. Damn

    Before I deleted it, I thought I would open it up and see what it was all about. Then I found the Lessons part.

    Damn, that is cool.  Really cool. Now I need to buy widget to get my guitar plugged into my Mac.

    I bought the Artist Lesson of Alex Lifeson teaching how to play Working Man. 

    Damn, I am going to waste a lot of time with this.