Well thank pants for that - i was thinking the blog was going to remain dithering in limbo for another night. My previous posts will be imported, and i’ll get down to some new blogging soon, but for now it’s time for some rest. I’ve spent the last hour trying to get this sorted, after realising my new hosting-provider doesn’t provide mySQL with my hosting package. Anyhoo, i got around that, and here we be.

Posts and photos will be returning post haste. But post haste tomorrow.

It’s not really a common occurance that a blog or news article about Search Engine Optimisation will get me excited. Interested yes, because it my job afterall to know what’s happening and why. But rarely do i find myself thinking screw lunch, i’m going to read this article on how to list top for ‘light fittings’ instead, whoo!.

However (no, this isn’t just a completely pointless whinge about how boring SEO articles are, it actually has a counterpoint!), there is one blog series that really got my attention in the past, and the author is at it again.

A while back, Jennifer Laycock, editor of Search Engine Guide, wrote a series called Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and 30 Days. She blogged every day about starting up a business that had to turn a profit in 30 days. Following the process from scratch was fantastically addictive, and it soon became the case that the first thing me and my SEO colleague would mention (that’s me quoted in her blog) when we came into work was Jennifer’s next post in the series.

I was pretty disappointed when the series ended, and i haven’t checked Search Engine Guide’s pages for quite a while. I popped in today however and was ecstatic to see that Jennifer has started another series! The Hide & Speak project has another interesting challenge - to make money on an online business website without any of the major search engines. The major search engines have been blocked in the website’s robots text file, and Jennifer and her business partner are working on getting sales from the site mainly through social networking and link building methods.

What with SEO careering towards social-networking anyway, it’s going to be really interesting to see how a pro does it, and how successful they are without Google. There is certainly room for the concept that Google is not the be-all and end-all of SEO online, and that nowadays Search Engine Optimisation shouldn’t necessarily be focused on ’search engines’ anymore. I would suggest changing the name to just Optimisation, but i have difficulty enough already introducing myself as an SEO - if i have to go around saying i’m an O i’ll feel like something off Sesame Street.

Cat: “Is that what I think it is?”
Lister: “What do you think it is?”
Cat: “An orange whirly thing in space!”
(Red Dwarf)

There is something to be said for finding your internet tasks boring, because although it’s a pain, you watch the clock like a hawk and break away at the first opportunity to go do something else. Compare this to the times when you find internet tasks gripping, and it’s preferable even through all the fidgeting and endless copy-pasting (or whatever mind-numbing task floats yer boat). The last two evenings have disappeared into this black hole of a computer-screen, as if the second i sit down at my desk Hiro appears over my shoulder and speeds up time, standing there with his hunched shoulders and little furrowed brow.

But roughly 8 hours of ignoring the dishes and forgetting to eat later, my website is finally looking reasonably presentable. Sure the headings are in some kind of burn-your-eyes-out red/orange color, but i like it, so you’ll just have to deal with the pain. The last 4 hours have gone towards skinning this damned Wordpress blog - and for the life of me i cannot work out where the whitespace below my banner is coming from. I’ve checked everything a dozen times over, snarled at the computer, checked every goddamn possible div and class and id and thingamebob, but no joy.
In the individual entry view pages the content is also throwing the whole page slightly to the left, but i’ve not given that any investigation yet. For 5 pixels, i can launch now and fix later.

And launch i shall. It will be exciting - no doubt the blockquote i have used in this blogpost will initiate some kind of self-destruct process in my php coding.