Reduced Text Size & New Backup

I have lost 5 pts on the archive box page. I will probably be pulling the prose page soon as it is full of so many links to pages that are yet to be made. I am also currently downloading the first backup of the site at its new location. The way I run uploads these days means that I have a virtual complete copy of the site backed up continuously. But every once in a while it is good to get a full backup just to store, not to edit further. The backup is downloding as I write this.

As long as I submit this post now this will make the backup...

New Hosts

As you may have heard on Friday 27th January 2006 early in the morning 153rd.com/sam ended. Forever. My previous host, FunkgerM stopped using his domain and my site (a subdomain) therefore was chopped. I assume that throughout the day aluminium fans found themselves against error signs. Today on Saturday 28th January 2006 I can announce that the site is back online with new hosts.

DreamHost is now keeping the site online in a 1 year deal. After that I may renew or perhaps move hosts depending on the service experienced and the renewal price. Since the domain was enabled late on Friday I have moved the vast majority of visited pages onto the new server and updated links so it all works. I have not uploaded the huge pile of stuff that is never visited and I will slowly phase this back on, as it is obviously less of a priority. The nature of the hosting is paid, which is very different to ever previously. I am therefore thinking over site advertising very carefully. It is a possibility that adverts will be implemented across the site to help fund the changes. Don't worry though this is a long way off and any adverts will be small text adverts. This site will never support image adverts or pop ups.

I have kept the layout identical, and everything is where it was before but instead of http://153rd.com/sam we have http://sam.davyson.com. More space and more control than ever previously is only good news for the development of the site. Expect to see the site growing beyond what we saw in 2005.

Thank you for your continued support.

Please note the three blogs that run on this site (of which this is one) have been transferred to the new server. But updating the links in previous posts is tricky. So expect some broken links.

2005 Site Back Up

A few days from the end of the year I decided to make another Site Backup. I have just finished downloading the whole site and I can confirm that the site is currently made up of:

Over 1,700 files in more than 230 folders giving a total size of about 65 MB of content.

I am the first to admit that I do not keep everything neat and tidy and there are a fair few MB of stuff that is replicated elsewhere or was only put online for a temporary transfer but hasn't been deleted yet. A few faulty Blogger implementations have left the blog replicated in numerous sub domains, like in this example. However even when I get round to clearing everything up the site is still big, especially when all the pages are only a couple of KB. I am very pleased with the way it has developed. I will get everything cleaned up and sorted out soon. Of course as well as adding new content to the AS, A2 and other directories.

You can view statistics about previous site backups here.

This Year - The Year of Growth

There will be no more site updates until well into the new year. This year has been the first for the site in this form. It has moved from design to design eventually adopting this big text colourful approach. I have implemented a consistent theme across most of the directories and grouped them in an archive. I have also implemented a good search facility and several dummy directories to view the content differently. I have also strived to create high quality content which has developed across the areas but particularly this year in the AS section, this is documented in a Site Blog. The site has seen record statistics and the latest ones are even better. This year the site has climbed up the search engines and now sits proudly is top positions for many search terms. The sub site of the year has been the Aluminium Site which I have recented added adverts to due to its extreme popularity. I have created an all-style sheet to use on every page regardless of the subsection, this helps to add different coloured links to tie the directories together. I have also closed and revamped the Magic Maths site which is due for relaunch early next year.

This site is now huger than ever before. And it is still growing fast. I look forward to adding loads of new content in the new year about February time. Until then, thank you very much for visting.

SD.

Site Round Up

This site is going really strongly at the moment. The main areas which people are visiting are:

• Organics Flowchart (link) - AS Chemistry (link)
• Aluminium Website (link) - AS Physics (link)
• Blog (link) - Web (link)
• Nick Margerrison (link - his blog) - Site Odds & Ends (link)

Most of the rest of the site is not built yet. So you'd hardly expect it to be packed with users. I'd like to see a few more of the people making the trip to the feedback form to help me to further improve the site.

Thank you for visiting, you can view the latest stats at StatCounter.com, currently about 200 unique users per week clicking on 1000 pages.

This post is cross posted on the Main Blog.

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 was released late yesterday. It can now be downloaded as an end user product from Mozilla.com. To celebrate what is the second major release of this excellent browser I implemented a small change to the homepage to include the Firefox Logo. Clicking the logo takes the user to a second page which talks of the release. The homepage will remain with the modification until seven days time. The changed version will be permanently stored as indexb.html.

Aluminium Ads Added

The last day of a fully ad free 153rd.com/sam has gone. The site is now ad supported. However so far only on the Aluminium Website, and I do not anticipate adding adverts to any other part of the site at the moment. The adverts are provided by Google Adsense which serves up ads to suit the content and they appear at the very bottom of each of the pages.

Any money generated from these advertisements will be recycled into site development, to be spread across all sections (not just the aluminium site).

The site will continue to provide high quality content embedded in beautiful webpages absolutely free of charge. Thank you for your support.

Statistics High

October 2005 was the busiest month on the site so far. By far. I got over 800 unique visitors who spawned more than 4000 pageloads. Not a lot for most sites, but a huge improvement for me. November is also going to be busy, the average is currently 149 pageloads a day, and the total unique users is already over 500. As always you can view the full indepth statistics in the directory.

All of this information is courtesy of StatCounter.com which I find to provide an excellent service absolutely free of charge. However my loyalties may be about to change with the release of Google Analytics earlier this week. I have just updated (nearly) all of my pages to include the Google tracking script to allow me to see how this service feels in action.

I have left the StatCounter code in. And I plan to leave it there for sometime. But it is possible that Google Analytics will become my default user detection mechanism.