Flukeit

I have finished with the Pastel template for phpLD versions 3.0.7+

This template features neutral colors and is highly customizable. It is based on the layout of the default template.

I have added a logo.psd file in the /images directory for easy logo creation and can easily be added to the header template.

This template is free for download as long as footer link remain intact.

View a live demo here.

Download Link

I really enjoy being a webmaster. I like designing a new site, creating a new web masterpiece. There are things about it that I really dread. One of those things is verifying links added to my Blog Directory.

I want to maintain a clean directory, so that means that every site submitted must be verified. Earlier this week, I had a backlog of 600 links waiting to be verified. That would take me forever to go through!

Then I began to think. The world is filled with low wage labor, maybe I could outsource it? I went to Digital Point forums and put the bat signal out. I got a bite.

A member agreed to sift through every one of them for the low price of $20. It took him a couple of days to go through, but he got it done. Amazing.

I then started thinking about third world sweatshops, and the possibility that there could be cyber sweatshops out there where young children or slaves are doing this sort of work. I’m sure it’s possible. Why not? After all, who do you think made the shoes you’re wearing?

I own several websites that are link directories. Most of them are run on the phpLD Link Directory script. One of the more challenging parts of maintaining and getting these directories going is dealing with Smarty. Before I knew any better, I would get frustrated when trying to add code, then not seeing the end result on the page displayed.

Smarty does weird things, as I’m still learning and understanding.

A prime example of this is adding Adsense code to template files. I was attempting to add Adsense code to one of my templates, and I simply added my Adsense code.

The result was not what I planned. The ads displayed, but were not correct as shown here.(Image at 75% scale)

The ad just didn’t look right, and it seems as though the “ads by Google” text was missing.

After doing some investigating, I learned that I had to add “literal” tags around the code as such:
{literal}
Adsense code
{/literal}

This was much better, as it produced the desired ad:

I still run across confusion when I attempt to do other things similar, and still cannot figure them out. These are growing pains, I’m sure as I will eventually grow out of them.

Brian Gardner blogged about checking his site statistics and noticing how over 60% of his site visitors were using Firefox, while just over 20% were using Internet Explorer. Just aroused my curiosity, so I checked the stats for a couple of my blogs and found the contrary.

According to Google Analytics on site A, Internet Explorer runs away with the prize by roughly 70% to 20% as shown here:

Checking stats from site B revealed something altogether different. The margin is much wider as shown:

While site A is a blog about reviews and is more consumer oriented, and site B is a blog directory that might be visited by more experienced with the web, we could make the argument that internet users who are more savvy to the internet are more likely to be using Firefox Browser. Most people, in my opinion, simply use what came prepackaged on their computer.

It wasn’t until I was browsing through some stats on one of my websites that I realized the power of Google Images.

This is not a heavy traffic site, but on this particular report, ALL of the traffic is from Google Images!

There are a couple of things, in my opinion, that can help use Google Images to help drive traffic to your site.

1. Make sure the filename is relevant and is catchy.

2. Make good use of alt tags.

These two key items will not only help Google find you, it will give the users reasons to keep clicking.