Webmaster Tips & Tricks - The Webmaster’s Blog

Yesterday I was able to at least get that paper I needed and then got to my accountant’s home to discuss what we need more. We settled what my ‘topic’ was and tried to get into the Romanian list of possible activities (the so called CAEN) something related to my topic. For those who don’t know, it’s an old and almost not updated list of jobs .. web development related activites are hard to find and placed wrongly. To be able to create/publish/admin a site (a normal thing we do in site’s case) I have to cover 3 such codes. Illogical, that’s the word.

After spending that quality time there I got home and worked some more on my sites. Trying to recover some of the mess my VB upgrade did to the forums and also posting in other places.

This morning we had to meet to start going to the places I need to “visit” so that I can have my firm start. But the day started in a wrong way. My accountant said there’s a problem with my home contract and she things we’ll have some issues about that. If that’s true, I’ll have to solve that issue first (at least 1 month to solve it and more money) and then just be able to resume the firm’s creation.

I am waiting for some news from her this evening. I assume it’s gonna be bad news and I’ll have another hinderance to get my own firm. But I am willing to solve anything and everything and be able to just start the business.

I am not in such a good mood as you can guess, but that’s life.

Right now, it’s one step forward 2 steps back in my firm’s case. If only I was able to go with my back turned to my walking direction .. then the movement would be forward …

This is one of the “graphical” sayings in Romania. Meaning that till you achive the bigger goal you are constantly put to the “test” ..

In my case … it’s the block administrator.

I was told by my accountant, the one to help me with all the firm’s paperwork to get the neighbours agreement to have my design firm in my apartment. Well, it’s a bit weird since my computer work has nothing to do with them, it doesn’t make noise, there are no dangerous chemicals .. but that’s the Romanian law and we have to do it the right way.

There are 2 ways to get this paper: you can make a list of all neighbours and have them sign individually, or have the administrator sign as the representative of the entire block’s community.

We chose the second option. I contacted my administrator and told her I need that paper. Well, it seems she doesn’t have that. It’s a “template” I can get from the Commerce Camera in my town. I have my accountant there and look for the paper. There is NOT such a thing. All people who had started a firm like that said that a handwritten declaration is OK. But no .. she wants a “paper” .. an official one.

After spending 2 hours on the internet trying to seek such a paper I get to the conclusion that indeed, there’s not such thing. So I have my boss (a specialist in such papers) dictate me one, I print it at work and get home with it.

She sees it and says: “Well, told you there’s a paper at the Commerce Camera”. Yeah, sure.

I just didn’t have the nerves to explain to her that it’s a total lie, there is not a paper like that and she sent me WITH NO USE to that Commerce Camera to come back empty handed. I won’t mention here any details of the fact she has a similar firm and I am sure she tried to make it harder for me.

But I already paid for the firm and I want to have it. With her “dead or alive”.

I just deleted some messages from Wtricks and I notice a new trend. A thing I call REVIEW SPAM.

What does this mean? Well the spammer is a “normal” person, who joins a webmaster forum and looks for the reviews section. Instead of having the brains to just add his portfolio link in the signature and post USEFUL comments and ideas he does something else.

He comes to the thread replying with something like:

Well, the site looks OK, nice colours etc. But I would recommend you to use a professional service provided by: and here goes that link to the portfolio.

Now .. HOW DOES THE MEMBER BENEFIT from this? Does the spammer really think someone will just jump to use his services just because he gave an improper (in the end) review? If the member really wanted a designer maybe he would have hired before. Or maybe that member is a designer himself and won’t consider this reply to be a decent one. I would really go wild if anyone told me to hire him. Now that’s rich.

What does the spammer get from this in the end? I just banned him and censored the link. That means he won’t get the link displayed anymore in the site. Instead of doing some excellent reviews and link “naturally” his portfolio he got banned and lost a chance to display the link in few threads.

Andig you really want an advice: don’t do this. It reflects poorly on your business. In the almost 3 years I run this project we had a huge traffic from forums I post in. I am active in more than 200 forums in this moment. Good messages and informative ideas .. they make people interested in your project. Some came and went. Some are members in here for a long time. A professional approach always pays off.

We have moved the article on our new blog.

Today I spent quite some time into building some links and also learning more about my payment options. Since I am a Romanian I have no access to PayPal so I had to look for something else. I read in a forum about MoneyBookers and I tried to register there.

It looks like I was kinda lucky since it all went well. I can even chose the Romanian language, even if I am so used to English that Romanian doesn’t seem natural anymore.

I have a zero USD account so far, but at least now SOME of the people I might make some deals with will be able to transfer money to me. I will keep you all updated on how it’s going ….

At the beginning of February I got to meet with a fellow web designer from my town. As you can imagine we immediately exchanged links to peep at each other’s work. The portfolio they have is a nice green one, with a lemon or something on the header and in the logo.

Then .. it hit me …

Most of us fell into this “trap”. Fresh innovative design. If I had a cent for each time I said it or read it elsewhere, Gates would come to me when needing money

2 years ago Wtricks.com was born and the main image we had was an orange. I like them. In normal life and design. They do offer the sense of freshness we try to convey. They have bright light colour, another good thing for a portfolio that wants to set itself apart from others.

Still .. just today I saw 10 more portfolios with the orange/lemon in them. 10 more portfolios with that “fresh thinggy”. Is this thing becoming SO USED it’s almost lost any meaning?

In our attempt to be ORIGINAL are we getting COMMON?

I stopped using the lemon image when re-branding the Wtricks.com site. I started using the star as related to the magician hat. It’s not as strong as the “fresh thinggy”, but at least less people use this for branding.

And the Dojo Design portfolio is lucky to be based on my passion for Martial Artists. I just didn’t notice it back then (5 years ago, when I started presenting my online work in that portfolio), but this is less used if we compare it to the oranges and lemons that “float” on all portfolio headers nowadays.

Maybe it’s time for us to leave this FRESH thing and find something really fresh and innovative. Or just try to focus on something even more important: beauty. Let’s give our clients BEAUTIFUL sites and just work on this. Freshness is overrated and in the end we are not re-discovering the wheel I am afraid. Most of use use some techniques that other thousands of designers use. Same software, same tags. The thing that sets us apart is the talent / experience / personal way to combine all the puzzle pieces and make our clients one beautiful site at a time.

I have stopped using lemons. I integrate them into my diet. Same with oranges. But for design .. I think we need to leave this path and focus on something more .. original and fresh. And then maybe renounce that too. Other thousands might use our idea and we’ll have to innovate again. And leave the crowd for our own original ways.

This would be my first post in the category I dedicate to my business venture I call Dojo Design.

Some of my members know that I am on the verge of getting my own official firm. I have been freelancing for 5 years already, created many personal sites and some for other people and as I grew my skills I realised THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO in this life. I am also working as a radio DJ, so, for some time, I’ll work in both places. I know it’s gonna be very hard, but so far I am not yet prepared to leave my regular job. I think I need all the contacts there. And in the end, that’s a more relaxing job than that of a web designer, so I’ll think of this as spending some time with friends far from the actual work

Today I had a chat with the accountant that will create my firm. I already told her that I would like the name Dojo Design since after 5 years I was able to kinda establish it as a brand. The Dojo Design portfolio is under re-construction (it’s been a year since I made the layout, what would you expect? ). And this would mean I can keep the name and also try to make it even better known.

She had 5 options and it looks like I was lucky enough. My new firm will be called Dojo Design. I was so happy when I heard this. Now I have to work on the logo (I need to re-think it a bit and also put it together in a vectorial format.) It’s gonna be quite used in many occasions and I need to have it set right.

I paid almost 300 USD already for the firm to start (small fee in other countries, for us Romanians these are 2 salaries). But the good thing is that I do earn more from my radio job, so I don’t feel this expense as painful as I would with a smaller wage. I still cannot believe I am doing this, I have high hopes based on my willingness to work like crazy to make it, but still worries.

What if I don’t make it?

But … in the end, as I told my folks, I am not starting it to fail. I want to open myself new horizons and also have the freedom I always wanted. I am not willing to work for anyone anymore as a designer. I feel trapped and it’s not something I like. But working on my own means a lot more work (I know that), but also the chance to run my own projects and make my own decisions. Good or bad, doesn’t matter. I’ll learn from all of them and try to become better.

That would be the end of my first post in this category.

Dojo Design .. the firm is now just a name. I have come a long way to this and I hope it will have a nice future. I want to make it something special

There is a saying in my country, that would be loosely translated like this: “Don’t carry a huge sack when going to the praised tree”. And I am getting the feeling that the praised vBulletin script is like that tree that would leave me with an empty sack. But let’s write some more about this.

Many people from the webmaster communities know me for my big love for phpBB. I was “forced” by potential members to buy vBulletin since many complained that a site running on phpBB (even if with a unique theme, you see it now on our forums, and with over 50 hacks installed that gave the script EVERYTHING VB has and some more) is not professional. Some of them are not even able to change a colour in their CSS, but still when they noticed the “powered by phpBB” caption (after minutes of wondering what kind of a script is this one) would immediately diss the project as unprofessional.

Tired of this charade and willing to at least know this script, I made the big move to vBulletin. The moment I changed the forums (even if we did lost many features) some people started noticing the community, and joined because they like a VB script.

I was OK with this too. In the end it’s a good script out of the box, it’s paid, it gives the impression of professionalism (whatever that means to some people). Since I am very serious about this project I don’t regret making the move. Not because the script is outstanding (because it’s far from this), but because I can have more experience in it and can also offer skinning services (which pay well, by the way ).

Back to the issues at hand.

My journey in vB-land started with porting 300+ members and 15000+ messages from phpBB to vBulletin. It went almost OK. Of course the installation guide was hazy and I had to do the import 3 times to make it right. But in the end I managed it. We had a spanking new script to use and I got lost in the admin panel trying to see all the options. It’s huge indeed. So many things I still don’t understand after 1 year. But enough options and features to justify the steep price in the end. Solid script, good first impression.

The second day was a bit more difficult. I had to port the theme we used for only 2 weeks on phpBB. I think I worked for hours just trying desperately to understand why this script hates me so much. But I managed it .. in the end. The CSS system is horrendous for a person who likes a separate .css file, but I kinda got the “moves”. I was able to install a hack to show the right column and then I started changing icons and buttons … the usual work into making the forums not look as the default VB skin.

In the moths that passed new versions were released. I know it’s a good thing to upgrade the script, it’s a good thing to justify those 30 bucks I pay yearly for the updates, but honestly, I’d love less updates and better code when the updates are released. I know there’s a huge army of developers who should justify their wages, but having to upgrade the script almost monthly (or at least at 2 months time) is not the thing I had in mind.

When I was running on phpBB many complained they release too many updates. Well Hello … there have been 1-2 new versions in the last year and 5+ in the VB’s case.

I started being OK with this too, but the moment I wanted to make an upgrade I read some more and was shocked. Wait. You cannot make code changes (as I do in my phpBB sites). And some hacks might not work. Now that’s a problem. I think we have more than 25 hacks installed on the forums already and now I find out that IF I upgrade script I might kill some of them. And that would mean: install another test forum, import data, try an upgrade, see which hacks are dead, try see if they are supported in the new VB version, re-install, look for possible errors. I am contemplating hours and hours of work. The problem is that … I don’t have the time. How can I come up with new articles, threads and graphics, how can I manage clients and forums and still be in time with the updates? We are still on 3.5.5 and I am afraid we’re not moving that fast to any other version. And I just saw 3.6.5 was released

And now… to my latest issue.

As I already mentioned I am a hack freak. I like many features, I am in a constant look for new things to add into my forums. Many of the hacks I installed worked OK. Some were poorly explained in the read me file and I had to spend some extra time figuring out what to put and where. And that comes from someone who installed hundreds of hacks in phpBB forums and other scripts.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came with my attempt to install vRewrite - SEOed URLs for vBulletin.

I tried to keep up with the installation guide, read 100+ pages of the thread trying to amend the code to have results and still nothing. After everything failed I posted in that thread too looking for possible support. Well .. nothing so far for many many weeks. I was thinking of maybe buying VBSEO and some members here are preparing to donate money for us to have this. But now I am wondering .. can we make it work? Will I spend 150 USD for a hack that might not work? And get the same great support I got in the rewrite hack’s case?

And now to these days. After toying with the idea of installing an Adsense revenue share hack I finally made my move. Here are 2 such hacks for the 3.5 series.

vBAds: Sharing System

I chose this one since it had the supported badge. And I thought it’s a good one. Well, the problem is that it wouldn’t show the client ID and I was lucky to have a member notice this. I uninstalled it and looked for another one: Adsense Revenue Sharing 3.5.4 

I spent 2-3 hours to install it and read the installation guide and the thread dedicated to it. The installation guide was almost perfect, except for that it refers to a file that doesn’t exist, as some people mentioned in the topic. And in the code it refers to a file named admin_adsense.php when the file is adsense_admin.php. So if you’re getting a 404 page when trying to make the changes in the admin panel, now you know why.

in adsesne_admin.php you must change everything from admin_adsense to adsense_admin I think … check out the file you should see what is wrong …. and remember to use bob’s plugin and not change showthread file …. everything else is the same as in readme.txt (except editing showthread !!! ) 

This was the solution offered by a member in the vbulletin.org community .. and it works. So from the 2 versions I’d recommend this one. Read that thread with care anyway …
Hope this will be the last badly written code I see. The last problem I have with my VB. And if I have any issues in the future, I have my blog to tell you everyhing about it