Wheel of Lunch - another casualty in the death of the Web as we knew it...

A moment of silence please...

I like fun single-use websites. I've written about The Useless Web and other sites like it a few times, and they are fun and goofy. But there have also been a number of effectively useful single-use websites over the years that I've frequented. And right now I find it hard to believe that I've never written about my absolute favorite.

The Wheel of Lunch

Imagine you are with your coworkers or a group of friends and it's getting close to lunchtime. "Where should we go?" you might ask. And then a long discussion begins.

And here's what you should know about me. I am pretty open to most restaurant options, and don't have a strong preference. Basically, once we've decided to eat, I'm pretty agnostic as to the where. When the conversation goes on longer than 2 minutes, I'm politely ready to pick something at random. And for this exact reason exists the Wheel of Lunch.

The screen shot I've saved here does not do this justice. This website has existed since at least 2009. The original version that I was familiar with used Flash (R.I.P.) as a technology. It was later remade with <canvas>. But that was just the front end. The backend technology was pretty genius.

Loading the site at default would give a wheel with ~20 generic options for what to do for lunch (or dinner). You could spin it and get a generic result (like "hamburgers"). But optimally, the site had a connection to YELP, and if you gave it your local ZIP code, the best feature was triggered. Results for the top 20 local restaurants got loaded onto the wheel and then it would get a spin. If you were interested in a specific type of restaurant --for example, BBQ-- you could enter that as a search query and get a list of thosrestaurant types on your wheel.

This was great! Of course, you weren't forced to eat at the first random option. You can always spin again. In coworker groups, the list at least facilitated inspiration and quicker discussion on available options. It was fun for "hey, have you heard of this place?" New adventures could be had.

My wife and kids? Funny enough, they were not fans. They didn't want to trust the wheel for dinner, and they didn't like the clicking sound the wheel makes. And probably didn't want to hear me suggest the WHEEL. OF. LUNCH. one more time. But they are spoilsports who hate fun! 😝

---

I guess all good things must come to an end. Tonight, I went to try it again when we were discussing dinner options and was greeted with the familiar wheel, missing the search options. On the left column was this note:

July 22, 2024

I am sad to report that after 15 years of The Wheel of Lunch, Yelp has decided to no longer provide free API services to the wheel. Yelp’s cheapest API plan is $230 a month! I can't afford that.

The Wheel of Lunch has always been a labor of ♥, and provides zero $ to me (I stopped running ads a while ago). I have no desire to “monetize” the Wheel.

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the Wheel, while it existed. It was from an older, friendlier version of the World Wide Web that was not exclusively about commerce. Many of these sites are shuttered now, and the Wheel of Lunch is just another casualty in the long march to the death of the Web as we knew it.

Have a nice day! :)

Oof. I felt that viscerally. And it triggers a nostalgic feeling for the early web 2.0 peak of the 2010s or thenabouts. I guess the Useless Web is still around, but I'd suggest we all appreciate it before it fades entirely.

For a Developer, What Does Identity Theft Look Like?

I love the Internet, I really do. deep breath But...

It does by it's nature allow a certain kind of terrible identity theft to take place. Please read through the following blog post and collection of investigative material. For clarity, the "me" in the headline is not referring to me personally.

Someone is pretending to be me.

-Source: hackernews

The commonly understood version of identity theft as far as I'm aware of it, is that someone gets your personal information, like your address, birthdate and social security details and signs up for accounts or credit in your name. This steals money from the creditors and steals (or ruins) credit reputation for the victim. The goal is usually short-term and monetary.

However, the story described in the linked post seems much more insidious. In this era of remote development work that has been around since well before the pandemic, there have been many a developer or coder that has worked for a company and never actually met any of the stakeholders face-to-face. Online portfolio websites, online resumés, and public LinkedIn profiles have created an option for some nefarious actors to entirely pretend to be someone else specifically for the sole purpose of soliciting development work based on the reputation of the victim. The specific victim in the blog post linked above was luckily warned by a potential accomplice that was refused to be roped in.

Long story short, a supposed freelance development company (the bad actors here), were attempting to hire a developer named Andrew (the accomplice) to interview and interface with potential clients (so far, so good), all while pretending (uh-oh) to be a developer named Connor (the victim). Once Andrew got the full picture of what was going on, he backed out and contacted Connor directly to warn him. Connor was lucky.

So I previewed the document and it was scary. It was a document intended for someone to have a cheat sheet for an interview on how to act as me.

• It included a subset of my personal information.
• It included my education history.
• It included my employment history.
• It included my certifications.
• It included a fake cover letter.
• It included a fake email/address that was "near" mine.
• It included information about the company interviewing for.

-Source: connortumbleson.com

Connor was very lucky, and smart enough to follow up and investigate all the possible details of the bad actors, and put them on blast. It's a good job of shaming them publicly. But ultimately the criminals in this case can simply move on, rebrand and start working on gathering work on the reputation of the next victim. Ultimately, the independent developer victims lose money because they aren't really the ones getting hired, and their reputations are most likely hurt given that the work is shoddy.

This is very scary. The only way to combat this is to raise awareness of the existence of this scam. I don't exactly have a big reputation or portfolio footprint at this exact moment so it's unlikely I'd be a target. But it's important me and professionals like me to be aware. It's also important for corporations large and small to be aware and do a proper investigation of who it is they are hiring. Since the bad actors are getting hired as "independent contractors" there's no HR investigation or other due diligence, no verifications. Here's more from Connor...

So it seemed like I was starting to understand the picture now.

• A person/company sets up fake Upwork profiles of real people.
• They apply to jobs in hopes to get an interview using that fake profile.
• They find suspecting victims on GitHub who are willing to go along with this.
• That person uses the identity of someone else to land the job.

-Source: connortumbleson.com

Connor's blog post was only first published a few weeks ago, and updated 9 days ago, so this is all very new and continues to develop. He will likely update the post as more details become available. Everyone be careful out there.

Is This Study Accurate? Facebook Likes Equals SEO Rankings?

I'm not sure I agree with this study 100%, but it is interesting. The summary is that interactions on social media sites are hugely important in search rankings. Visit mediabistro's AllTwitter blog.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about the quality of your backlinks, right?

Wrong. Not any more. At least, not wholly, as an updated study from those good people at Searchmetrics has revealed just how important social media signals are to a strong SEO ranking, with well-positioned URLs almost always having a high number of Likes, shares, tweets and +1s.

All those Facebook Likes, Shares and Comments, Twitter Tweets, Google +1 and Pinterest pins are up at the top of the list of important factors in SEO. In fact, the number and quality of your backlinks is no longer at the top of the list as has always been.

Except…

Where I am confused and not sure I agree is whether these factors are independently causing high SEO rankings or if a certain page or site is getting lots of social engagement because they are listed first in the results. For me, this is a causation vs. correlation thing.

Taking it a step further, I don't think it would be smart for search engines (like Google) to pay that much attention to social likes and shares and let it affect their results pages. After all, it is probably much easier to game the social media links. At least, it seems easier than building fake backlinks.

You be the judge.

Loss of Integrity

I posted about my new job at Integrity back on January 4^th. I'd been working there since December 17^th and having a great time as a contractor for them. But we parted ways on January 10^th and I've been looking for other work since then. I have nothing but love for that company and my coworkers there, so hopefully they are open to working with me once again in the future. Before I move on from there I did want to cover a few quick notes about what the work I did while I was there.

The first small project I did was a single page listing of codes. Integrity had previously created a mobile game for Coors Light called Silver Bullet Throwdown. In the game, you can enter codes from beer cans that give you advantages or temporary cheats. I was given a list of codes that Miller's employees were going to use internally for a promotion and made a simple page with the codes in a straight bullet list. That was super easy.

The big project I spent most of my time on after that was for a regular client of Integrity called Contegix, an advanced hosting provider. They had a massive redesign in the pipeline that had already been done by other folks at Integrity, but I started work on the mobile version of the site. There's a fancy theme switcher WordPress plugin for the site that detects a mobile user and changes the theme to a much simpler and functional one designed for a cellphone. Between myself and a few others on the same team, we hammered that out as quickly as possible. The content was already in place and many of the design elements were the same from the desktop version. There was an existing composition designed for the mobile theme, so most of the work was stripping away elements from a copy of the desktop version and minimizing the width of the template to fit a handheld. This week, Integrity posted to their blog about the completion of the project and I'm proud of my contribution there.

There were a few other projects I contributed to but none I need to go into for my sake. But what I'll remember most about this job is the team contribution aspect. I got introduced to a lot of new tools that I'd not used much before; Git, GitHub, Coda, CodeKit, Bootstrap, LESS --not to mention the whole idea of web development on a Mac, which I've missed doing for too long. But the biggest enjoyment for me came from working on a great team and sharing skills, tasks and responsibilities. I'll miss that job.

Oh, and another cool thing about working at Integrity was the classy location. I've always loved the Delmar Loop and the Tivoli theater is the most iconic building there for me. The office was on the fourth floor of the same building and the window behind my desk looked out right at the big Tivoli sign.

View Larger Map

How cool is that?

Integrity - Front-End Web Developer

My new job posted a quick bio about me as a new hire, based off of a few details I gave them and what they'd learned about me already. I was pretty happy with the way this turned out.

Integrity - Integrity hires Jim Arconati as front-end developer

The Integrity team welcomes Jim Arconati, a front-end developer.

Jim, or “ArcoJedi” as most call him, is a happily-married father of three who was born and raised in St. Louis. He plunged into the web world in 2003 while working at MonsterCommerce in Belleville, Illinois. While there, he dabbled in everything from ecommerce to design to sales.

After leaving MonsterCommerce in 2009, Jim worked with the Ferguson-Florissant School District, American Optometric Association and SoTel Systems.

ArcoJedi is a nickname Jim and his dad coined in 1996. He was called Jedi throughout college because of his love for Star Wars. After creating an email address by the same moniker, it stuck.

When Jim isn’t schooling his friends on Star Wars trivia, he plays trombone for a jazz/rock band called Dirty Soap.

Happy is the Integrity team to have you, Jim!

An Honorable Mention of Mentioning People

I've blogged since 2003 or so and one of the features I've always been hassled with was how to easily link to someone else. I mean, it's very easy to use the built in link tool and simply enter the proper URL of their personal website or blog or ... whatever. But my problem is recalling the right URL. For instance, let's say I want to link to my friend Vincent Le Pes III's website. He's a musician, web developer and all-around cool guy so perhaps I want to share a link to his site. However, I always have a moment's pause here as I try and recall the exact URL of his site specifically -- www.vincentlepes.com -- since I don't go there every day and I don't have the bookmark handy. In case you don't know this, misspelling a URL can lead you down a dark path. If you don't believe me, try going to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. Inevitably, I end up going to Vinnie's Facebook profile and then his About page. Sure, it's handy but it seems like there are too many steps. I've always wanted a shortcut of some kind. I start to type out his name (or the name of some other friend) and the Blogger tool completes it for me and adds in the link. Facebook has had a feature similar to this for their posts and comments for a few years now, so it stands to reason this is not impossible.

I didn't really notice it right away, but it would appear that Blogger has added just such a feature recently. They talk about it on Blogger Buzz and explain how this feature works with Google+ to link your friends' names at your choice to their profile. It does not escape my notice that this is their profile on the social network, which might be somewhat private or might not. But it is not linking directly to their site. Still, it's a potentially cool feature.

It's kind of funny that my second thought regarding this feature was... "I wonder how many people I can annoy with this new toy?" Suddenly this feature seems a bit dangerous. Oh well, time to put the question to the test.

Say hello and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to Lisa Arconati, Matt Armfield, Shashi Bellamkonda, Michelle Behymer, Ian Baird, Eric Berger, Amy Bliss, Amanda C. Peterson, Andy T., Adam Hallas, Andy Scott, Ben Durnell, Eric Baggett, Brad Vonder Haar, Cale Fischer, Chris Coy, Cathy Nicol, Chris Stoddard, Shawn Duncan, Don Krutewicz, Rachel Duncan, Mike Damewood, Dave McCann, Mike DuBois, Dan Kennedy, Erin Moloney, Erin Steinbruegge, Eddie Parker, Cari Schueller, Eric Patmythes, Aaron Eversgerd, James E. Arconati, Jonathan Frazier, Fayth Kleg, Scott DuBois, Alex Foster, Matt Galligan, Gina Ronat, Gina Maness, Mike Goggin, Greg Simms, Angie Garner, Heather VanMeter, Russ Henneberry, Jerry Henderson III, Jason Kevin Hill, Ryan VanMeter, Travis Irwin, Robin Rath, Jeremy Stoeckel, Janet Lackey, Jeremy Polen, Jeremy Zhang, Jacalyn Rausch, Joseph Madden, J.D. Pohlman, Toni Phillips, Scott Kingery, Brandon Kendall, Lisa Keller, Andrea Kuehnel, Jordan Koene, Lexi Long, Stephen Lotz, Adam Lefever, Mark McCoy, Nils Rurack, Robert Noles, Nikomas Perez, Jonathan Needleman, Nathan A. Tuskey, Jayme O'Renic, Jason O, Tracy Papproth, Mark Page, Robert Amos, Sparky Walkup, Tracy Papproth, Tolga Tanriseven, Tony Mast, Josh Brink, Valerie Starr, Wain W, Timothy Yow, Jeremy Zhang ...

Note: As I go through this process, these listings are showing up in alpha order, but sometimes by first name and sometimes by last name,.. and sometimes by email address? With this setup, I'm likely to have listed someone twice... Errrk! Usability fail!

Also notable are a few folks who don't 'technically' have Google+ profiles, but I email them often enough they got invites somewhere along the line. However, if Google/Blogger allowed me to link to them here, I kept it. There were a few names that did not become links. If you see your name and you'd rather I removed you please let me know immediately!

It does occur to me that I just made a very public list of nearly all of my friends, exposing important information about me in addition to possibly exposing their information without their permission. It gets all the privacy-loving hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I'm guessing that you all each got some sort of notification emailed to you OR posted to Google Plus OR both. Perhaps you even have to approve my link or something. Perhaps not. My intent is test the technology a bit and wish you all a sincere Happy New Year. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. If you are mad, I owe you a beer or coffee. Let's catch up.

Job Hunting: Some Stats

These are some personal statistics, specific to my job hunting, followed up with some details. In roughly 85 days of being unemployed, I've applied to 94 different job listings. I've had about a dozen job interviews, some promising and some not so much.

Barring some sort of disaster, I'm starting at a new company on Monday. I'm not going to post the name, as I don't want to jinx it at all. In case you haven't heard there was one company that I interviewed with back in October that I got a semi-official job offer from via email. This was on Halloween at about 4pm if I recall correctly. We all celebrated, ate dinner, took the kids trick-or-treating and everything was great. Then a few hours later I got back to my email and noticed that at about 6:30pm, there was another email rescinding the previous job offer. At first it was "temporarily" then it was permanently. I don't really know what happened there, but that's life. So you can understand if I don't celebrate quite yet for this job until it becomes a little more real.

Something else I forgot to mention was that I had a temporary contract job for about a week working IT for a company hired by (another company hired by) an insurance company here in St. Louis to do computer station moves. They were moving several dozen employees from one floor to another and our job was to make sure the computer systems (PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) were properly packed and secured. Then on the other end of the move, we'd unpack them at the new desks. The individual user's personal stuff would be packed in boxes that someone else was moving. The actual lifting of the packed hardware was also handled by a different company and stuff so it had to be relatively well orchestrated. My job was simple; go to desk F1-104 through F1-120 and pack up the stuff. Then go to F2-060 and start unpacking the computers on that row as they arrive. Attach monitors to the adjustable arm on the new desk. Once the users had their computer on, install the drivers for the nearest network printer. It was actually fun and simple enough for me to do. It was just nice to work again even if temporarily and I got some good feedback too.

Additionally, I've taken on a voluntary web design project for St. Francis Health Services. Still a little early to post anything in more detail about that, but I'm doing it for all the right reasons both selfless and selfish (e.g. padding my portfolio).

Other than this, job hunting is not fun, never fun and I'm looking forward to being done with it for awhile.

Unemployed

I first posted about SoTel Systems back in November of 2010 when I started my first day there, and I haven't really posted about the place much since. As of today, I've been no longer employed there for three weeks.

Regarding blog posts, I haven't posted anything here about SoTel. But I had posted roughly 100 blog posts on www.sotelsystems.com in addition to updating almost all of the 600 content pages on the site for accuracy, content and format. I could go on and on about my time there and I must say it was a great job. In the interest of brevity, in addition to managing the main site, I also did the following:

• Planned and launched two ecommerce sites; one for refurbished telecom hardware and one for VoIP and video conferencing services
• Planned and launched a number of pay-per-click marketing campaigns
• Planned and prepared to launch an internal intranet site
• Planned and prepared to launch a partner portal (twice)
• Oversaw the renewal and expansion of our portfolio of domain names
• Implemented new search feature on main site
• Implemented new slideshow feature on main site
• Planned, built and launched all major social media campaigns
• Planned and launched an acquired company's web assets into an entirely new re-branded company
• Oversaw and collaborated with a talented graphic designer on various projects
• Oversaw and collaborated with two interns on various projects

I'm sure I'm missing something. This is turning into a bit of a résumé, which was not my intention. Come to think of it, my résumé should be posted here, as I'm actively looking for work.

The main thing is that I wanted to say was that I made some really great friends at this place, which when it all washes out, I'm really going to miss seeing every day. But it's a small world and I'm making a point to catch up with them when possible.

In the meantime, I'm updating my résumé and my portfolio and continuing my job search. Onward and upward is the only way to go.

Currently Reading: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman.

Currently Listening: Army Of Me (Sucker Punch Remix) by Björk, From the Album "Sucker Punch: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"...

Online Marketing is Still The Wild West

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog*

People who don't know or don't pay attention may think the web has gotten to some level of maturity and development, but I keep getting reminded that things are still in their infancy. For those that don't know I have a smattering of web sites. A lot of them are just there without a lot of promotion or development. I have a full-time job and a family among other stuff, so I don't devote a lot of time to all of these sites. One of them is Arconati Kid Korner, which I built ostensibly for my kids to share cool stuff with them, but also to showcase kid friendly websites.

Recently I received the following email.

from: ___@guardlex.com
to: ___@gmail.com
date: Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 12:29 PM
subject: Links removal request

Hello,

My name is Michael Jonson, I work in the Anti Piracy Department of Guardlex (http://www.guardlex.com), we provide anti-piracy and Intellectual Property protection services for our clients.

We represent allkidsgolfclubs.com company which is currently experiencing problems with search engines because of the penalties. Our client has received an “unnatural links warning” which says that they need to remove some links pointing to their website from other web resources.

It has come to our attention that your website (or website hosted by your company) contains one or more links to the allkidsgolfclubs.com company website (http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com) which may be causing this issue.

I kindly ask you to remove from the following website http://kids.arconati.us all links to http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com website as soon as possible to help us deal with the search engine penalties and restore our client’s website in search engines index.

Please see the list of website pages in question:

• http://kids.arconati.us/2006/05/all-kids-golf-clubs-junior-golf-clubs.html
• http://kids.arconati.us/2006_05_01_archive.html

In order to find those links, please do following:

1. If this is an online website directory. Use directory's search system to look for "http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com" links.
2. If there are any hidden links in the source code of website. Open the website's home page and view its source code. Search for "http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com" in the source code. This will reveal any hidden links.

It is our understanding the links in question may be authorized for use by our client or its agents, but now needs to be removed in order to restore our client’s website from search engine penalties.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are unsure how to remove those links. We will be happy to assist you in any way to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Looking forward to your positive reply.

Regards,

Michael Jonson
Anti Piracy Department Specialist
Guardlex company
2820 West 8-th str,
Brooklyn, NY, 11224
Tel: ____
Fax: ____
E-mail: ____@guardlex.com

This smelled a bit like crap to me. Sure, my website may not be the best in the world, but I find it hard to believe that it could actually negatively impact this site. In fact, my immediate reaction is that it would be darn near impossible for a link to a website to have a negative affect. This makes no sense to me.

Still, I feel obligated to at least check out the facts. Additionally, I had to think back a bit to why I linked to them in the first place. And after spending a few minutes looking into it, I decided to reply. Note that I also included the first email I could find for the site owner.

from: James A. Arconati ____@gmail.com
to: ____@guardlex.com, ____@allkidsgolfclubs.com
date: Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 12:04 AM
subject: Re: Links removal request

Hello Michael Jonson,

I am the blogger at KIDS.ARCONATI.US, among other sites. I've looked over your request for removal of the link / post to ALLKIDSGOLFCLUBS.COM. I am not sure when and why that link was originally posted but based on the timing and the details of their site, I'm guessing that I created that post when I worked in ecommerce support at their host, Network Solutions. I was in charge of intro consultations for all new clients at the time. Most likely, I saw their site and target market and added them to my blog regarding kid-friendly websites and stores. My link was not authorized or requested by the client, but was posted only with good intentions. For review, the post is here:

http://kids.arconati.us/2006/05/all-kids-golf-clubs-junior-golf-clubs.html

Your email was very detailed and outlined the request clearly, however you failed to properly explain exactly how my direct link to their home page could actually hurt them. Whereas I may not know everything about online marketing, I'm from the school of thought that just about any inbound link is better than none. In fact, in my research on the matter, the worst that an irrelevant inbound link could do to a site is to have zero effect. Perhaps in very, very rare circumstances a very spammy site could end up hurting sites they link to with no relevance, but I can't find any actual proof of this ever occurring.

Let's look at two industry leading resources on this subject.

Let’s Kill the “Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized” Myth | Search Engine Journal

There are few certainties in SEO, but you can stamp this one in steel: An inbound link from an evil or spammy website cannot hurt you, unless you’re dumb enough to link back.

This post did get updated with a reconsideration based on feedback and comments the writer received regarding the possibility that there may be a small rare possibility that it could happen.

Still...

Stop Linking to Our Website or We'll Call Our Lawyers

Funny enough, this article mentions your company specifically.

Saying an inbound link isn't good for a website is different than saying it's bad for a website. There are inbound links that don't provide value for a website -- those that are contextually irrelevant, from domains with low authority, or contain poor anchor text, for example. We've written about it in full in our blog post "Deconstructing the Qualities of High Quality Links" if you'd like to learn more. But those links don't actually hurt the website that's being linked to. In other words, just because someone doesn't provide great anchor text doesn't mean your website will get dinged by Google for it.

The HubSpot post is more recent and I trust their experience.

All this being said, I could understand the link removal request if I was infringing on the intellectual property of ALLKIDSGOLFCLUBS.COM, but in my opinion this is not the case. The heading tag links as follows:

<h3><a href="http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com/">All Kids Golf Clubs - Junior golf clubs and equipment</a></h3>

And the body of the post contains some content from their site at the time, but it's properly cited in a blockquote.

<blockquote cite="http://www.allkidsgolfclubs.com/"> <p>Providing high quality, unique junior golf products so kids can have more fun learning the game of golf!</p> <p>Just arrived...Rising Star Junior Hybrid Sets...Now kids can get better quicker by benefiting from the same over-sized Drivers, soft face Putters and the latest Hybrid club designs adults have used for years!</p> </blockquote>

This is only two paragraphs of content and I feel that this falls within the definition of "fair use".

In conclusion, Michael, considering the open question of whether or not irrelevant links can actually harm a legitimate site in a measurable way, and considering the fluid nature of these search engine variables, it seems questionable to have a business model solely based on seeking these links out and asking them to be removed while charging your clients for the service and time. I'd seriously reconsider your process and methods.

To whomever it may concern at ALLKIDSGOLFCLUBS.COM, if after reading this far and carefully weighing both sides, you feel you'd still like the post and/or link removed, it won't take me very long at all. I only wrote this long of an email to help benefit you. Despite the fact that I haven't worked at Network Solutions for the past three years, I still have a great respect for my former clients and coworkers. I work with a few of them to this day on a consultation basis. A better idea might be for us to work together to alter the post a bit with inbound links you'd find relevant. In fact, I'd be happy to offer a guest blog post to you OR perhaps a permanent relevant link in the sidebar or footer. If you are curious, the site only gets about 100 unique visitors a month all total.

Regardless, best of luck and success to you in everything you do. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

::Jim

I haven't heard back at all, but I did get a bounce on my initial email to the golf web site. It would seem that they are in the process of switching hosts or something and all of the public email addresses I'd found for them bounced. I did a quick whois search and forwarded my message on to the domain owner, so hopefully it gets to the right place.

To keep on top of this concept, I did research it a little further the next day. It seems the most recent authoritative article on the subject came from SEOmoz, specifically regarding Google's Unnatural Links Warnings. The TL;DR is that you may seen an unnatural links warning, but unless your traffic has taken a big dip, you should be fine. But I don't see how this can work in the long run. Google can't tell the difference between spammy links that a business owner set up themselves versus spammy links set up by their competition. Additionally, I should be able to link to whomever I want to link. If you have spammy links, don't chase them down. Build up your high quality links and improve your content. If I'm wrong, someone let me know.

---

Note: Since you asked, the answer is no, I have never seen Dr. Strangelove. It is on my list and I'll get to it when I get there.

SoTel Systems

I started my first day at SoTel Systems. My new job position is Website Marketing Manager and this is a pretty big responsibility that I am so very excited about.

I could gush about my new boss, my new coworkers, my company laptop, my company cell phone... But right now, I've got to get prepared for tomorrow, so goodnight all!

Forget to Mention...

There was something else that I forgot to mention in a previous blog post... I've been contemplating combining and consolidating a few blog projects. Certainly many of them are due for an overhaul and I'm not just talking about their respective designs. Many of the projects are ripe for a re-branding. A variety of things have changed in my life and I need to adjust the direction these things will go if they are to continue. Let me think out loud on this page for a moment. In no particular order...

ArcoJedi's Holocron :: http://blog.arconati.us/

At the moment, you are here! This is my longest running blog and has a variety of personal, professional, private and worldly stuff. I've talked about my kids, my job, politics and whatever. There isn't any strong focus here and there doesn't need to be since it is basically a public journal for my rambling. This site is powered by Blogger.

James A. Arconati :: http://james.a.arconati.net/

The purpose of this site started as a repository for my Delicious tags. The idea at the time was that there was supposed to be a way to have your social bookmarks on Delicious automatically posted to your blog, but even now it doesn't work with Blogger. So I installed WordPress and tweaked it into what I have now. At first this was just to have a locally controlled backup of my linked sites. I expected absolutely no traffic. But this site suddenly became very big and very popular. The only posts are from Delicious with very little other changes. This site could be the best for a blog on my portfolio site, but it needs some work. This site is powered by WordPress (and Delicious).

My Portfolio http://www.arcojedi.com/ & http://www.jamesarconati.com/ etc.

This is my newest site and is still in progress. I am using this to promote myself and the work that I do. I build it by hand without using a blog tool. And since I started building it, I've come to recognize that everything else I manage might need to be reorganized a bit.

For instance, the Arconati network of sites...

• Arconati Family: http://arconati.us/
• Arconati News: http://arconati.net/
• Arconati Surname: http://arconati.name/

I started with these sites and build everything else from there. If I were to draw a thought map of everything I've ever created it would start with these three in the center based on importance. At least, that was the case up until this point. I'm making the adjustment that these sites are moving out of the center and my portfolio is becoming central. The family sites will continue to represent my family at large, our genealogy and history. And links to my portfolio will be prominent. But stuff that is strictly ME will be moved to my portfolio.

And this means that some or all of the domains and sub-domains that I'm currently using for hosting certain blog projects should perhaps be reassigned. Even the address of this site --http://blog.arconati.us/-- makes less sense now since I am the only author here. Perhaps it should be http://blog.arcojedi.com/ instead. I'm still pondering these things, but...

Arconati Kid Korner http://kids.arconati.us/

This site is for sharing links with my kids and generally making a safe site for children. It can stay on this address as I am interested in sharing the responsibility of adding content and updating it without any parent and family member who would like to help. Contact me if you have any ideas.

NOT Tech Life Blogged http://techlifeblogged.blogspot.com/

This site I sort of inherited in a rather long story I won't rehash here. For most of my history with it, I've only been caretaker of this site as a placeholder for the original owner that moved off of Blogger. It has slowly become mine over time as I've updated it with new content as the desire hit me. It's a technology and gadget centered blog. I have thought about redirecting it using a sub-domain like tech.arconati.us or gadgets.arconati.us but just haven't yet. I think that just like the kids.* site mentioned above, I would welcome help from other family members to update a gadget blog. Let me know!

Arconati Comedy Awards http://comedy.arconati.us/

This is a joke blog, where I post any funny email forward and shared joke that I think is worthy. Again, I think this can stay on the current domain since I'd welcome any family member that wanted to post their own jokes that they find. The invite is open...

ArcoJedi's Dastardly Plan

I guess this is the closest thing I've got to a 'photo blog'. Updates are largely infrequent and usually posted tangentially from my Flickr account. The domain used for this has changed around a lot and it's not really very important. I've toyed with other stuff for this, but it's mostly public photos I've shared. I can and should fold these posts into another blog; either ArcoJedi's Holocron or James A. Arconati. I can export the posts and import them into either site with quite a bit of ease. But which one?

Musical Holocron http://music.arconati.name/

This is my music blog, where I write about music and share mp3s. Originally, I meant to use this site just for myself so that I could download my own mp3s directly onto my cell phone for free, but I could never get that to work right with my last few cell phones. Once again, this site could easily stay on the family domain name because I'd welcome any family members and music lovers who would like to write more for this site. Get in touch with me if you are interested.

R-Quotes http://quotes.arconati.name/

This is a directory and repository I created for quotes. I could very easily keep this under the family domain name. Or I could fold the posts into another site, such as the comedy.* site mentioned above. Or ... something else? For those family members like me with a fondness for a good quote (wise or whimsical), you are welcome to start adding your own. I can send you an invite and get you logged in very quickly and simply.

Seamist Inn • Dungeons & Dragons http://seamist.arconati.us/

I've had a little help with this site before but for the most part this is a site about Dungeons and Dragons written by me. The original plan was to document and play campaigns with my in-laws and they had a small hand in the site in it's early stages. However, for a long time, it's been just me. I'm getting my kids into tabletop gaming now, so this project will continue. I see no reason currently to change the domain as I'd welcome help from others with this site the same way I've already mentioned above. I should consider a more RPG related sub-domain for this site. "Seamist" doesn't seem to fit anymore.

Mudhorny http://www.mudhorny.com/

This site belongs to my little brother, but I mostly update it for him. This site's goal is to write about four by four trucks, the hobby of muddin', and promote a "Mudhorny" brand name; a t-shirt with a logo and quirky phrases will be forthcoming. For the most part, no change is necessary here, but I have plans to add a community forum (under the mudhorny.net address. Most of the updates I've posted have been links I stumble on about cars, trucks and other automotive technologies. I need to prod my brother into contributing his own stuff more often.

ColorBurst Video http://www.colorburstvideo.com/

This site belongs to my dad, but again I update it most often. The goal here is to promote my dad's brand name as a videographer, editor and titler. I mostly post links to pages regarding video editing, special effects and movies I like. There is also going to be a lot more information on home video production and services that my dad is looking to do more of now that he is retired. My dad also needs encouragement to contribute more often.

MonsterCommerceBlog http://monstercommerce.blogspot.com/

Here's a prime candidate for re-branding. MC as an entity doesn't exist any more and I no longer work for the company that owns the brand. I initially nabbed this sub-domain through Blogger back when the company was smaller and I was encouraging the leadership to start a blog. Over time, I've used it to discuss specific MC stuff, e-commerce ideas and general web development concepts. Since my portfolio is web services centered, this is a good candidate for alterations. For the future, I've got an idea I'd consider. Fold the content into an existing blog that is linked from my portfolio and redirect the URL. I could create a new sub-domain and keep the content separate. But I don't want to just abandon the site and the content that I've written there for whatever it is worth.

Happy Is The Bride - Wedding Planning Ideas and Products http://happyisthebride.com/

Here is my one active e-commerce site. This was a business idea that my wife and I shared and started in 2007, though it hasn't made much yet. In the long-term, my wife would like to be a wedding planner and event coordinator. The site is powered by Network Solutions Ecommerce, but there is also a blog powered by Blogger. Both sites could use a massive redesign and more frequent updates. What do ya say?

Friends of ArcoJedi http://friends.arconati.name/

I started this site as a link blog for my friends and coworkers who rarely had or launches web sites of their own. Nowadays however, it kind of seems like EVERYONE has their own site, which I consider a good thing if they go about it the right way. This site is a prime candidate for a bit of a shuffle. First off, the use of the family domain name here doesn't seem to fit. If these are my friends, then I should use my own vanity domain instead of the family moniker. So friends.arcojedi.com makes more sense. However, I could also easily fold the content and purpose into one of my larger and more regularly updated blogs. But which one?

Arconati News http://arconati.net/

I mentioned this site above, but I'll bring it up again here because I need to an overhaul to it. First off, I need to decide if I keep it on Blogger -or migrate it to WordPress or some other program. Do I stick to the current host or consolidate it with the other sites? And whatever I do with it, what do I do with james.a.arconati.net, since that is on the same server?

I also manage the site for Ferguson Christian Church, but that is okay for now. I hammered out a decent new composition for it that I will get around to implementing as soon as possible. And I may also upgrade it with it's own CMS of one kind or another. I host a few others, including Ratlifter.com and FrenchClassicalDressage.com, both of which use WordPress. Unless the friends that I host these for have some need, there is no reason to change these.

There really is not just one major dilemma, but a series of small ones. Do I keep using mainly Blogger? Do I move most or all to WordPress? Do I stay in multiple hosts or do I put all my eggs in one basket? Does the Arconati Family really need three separate sites or can these be consolidated into one?

That's where I'm at. Additionally to all of these questions and many more, I'm very excited that I will be starting a full time job next week. I can already tell that this is going to be a great company to work for. However, it would have been better of me to get all this personal stuff finished by now. Indecision causes procrastination.

Well, that's more than enough thinking out loud for now. Gotta wade through this...

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

The post title is alluding to a quote by William Shakespeare. You've probably heard it before.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Another one I thought about using was by Mark Twain.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

An asteroid indeed. I'm not sure where I'm going with this one for the moment. But I just have this feeling lately that I've been posting a lot of little things here and there but not making much besides a bunch of pointless noise.

I'm not feeling low about the quality of what I've been writing. I feel like I haven't been writing enough, and what I have been posting is akin to the usefulness of static. Signal-to-noise ratio?

This isn't even the real problem. It's a matter of a thousand noisy ideas in my head. I'm reading a lot of stuff all over the place and absorbing a huge amount. It goes through my mental filter and I'm very inspired to write about it all. But that's the rub of it, I can't write about it ALL. At times, I've been very good at this, but right now it's all important to me and I can't prioritize. So here is a list of stuff I'm thinking about right now in completely undetermined order.

• Sammy is great. He learned to start climbing the gate into the kitchen this week. He's only a few inches off the floor, but still.. That's not good as there's no way he can get really high without falling forward over the gate OR just knocking the whole thing over. He is much more active than any of our other kids.
• I'm very excited about some job news that ... I'm sitting on at the moment. I can't post too many details other than to say that I had TWO very good interviews at the same company and I've very excited about this likely opportunity.
• Been working on two things at the same time for music. That's right, MUSIC!
  • I'm going to be recording a Trombone solo on a song for a local band my friends and I all knew back in high school. I've been practicing along to a CD for what I'll need to play over and it's going to be hard but a lot of fun.
  • At church, we are working on some special music for youth Sunday (October 31^st) and I've been in charge of this a bit with myself and two boys who play Trumpet and Reese on recorder, and anyone else we can get together.
  It feels like forever since I did anything of substance musically, so this is really refreshing for me.
• Wait, my oldest daughter has a blog now? How did that happen? (Ask me if you want to be added to her subscribers. I'd link to it, but it's set to private.) Next, she'll want Twitter. At least she stopped asking for MySpace.
• My online portfolio is coming along. Visit ArcoJedi.com. I've got more text to write and some images to add and the home page will be done. Even with the possible job news I mentioned above, this doesn't change the need for this site.
• I mentioned here that I was going to run a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for my daughters and their friend. Well the first session went well and if I can manage to keep their attention, we will keep going. The feedback I got was that there needs to be more fighting and less talking. That can be arranged.
• I finished reading the Lord of the Rings books to my girls. Olivia has been in love with these stories since I started reading The Hobbit back last year. Reese is much more into the Rick Riordan stuff. We are still reading from the Percy Jackson series (out of order) and also some R. A. Salvatore. I try and read to them every night.

Each one of these things could be a huge blog post on their own if I had an infinite amount of time for them. Derek Brink is a buddy whose blog I read somewhat regularly. He's a good writer and musician. He also does these "random" blog posts that contain not just one thread or theme but a bunch of short bulleted ideas that he wants to post, but that don't get a full post on their own (for a variety of reasons that probably includes time alloted).

That's good enough for him and he pulls it off well, but I've always shied away from that for my own stuff. To me, if something is worth posting, I want to write a lot about it. Being concise is not one of my stronger skills. So I end up posting the 'short' stuff in microblogging; Facebook and/or Twitter, but that again makes it feel more like noise than stuff I'd file as "Important"...

But I thought this post was better than nothing.

Portfolio, Mine

Template for 960.egg on Aviary.

In case you were wondering what I've been up to lately, this is what I've been working on. It has come to my attention that I am long overdue to have an online portfolio of my work. This all started from some very good advice I got from a friend. If you are reading this, you know who you are, so thanks a lot!

The site is not online yet. This is just the final draft of the design. I can write more about this composition later. And once the site is online I'll obviously link to it. But I'm looking for honest constructive feedback on the design, layout, colors and themes. Please use the comment box below OR the comment space on Aviary if you have an account there. Clicking the thumbnail you see here will take you there and you can see a much larger version of this image. Anything you could share would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

Web Design Work - A Portfolio In Progress

Confidently boasting about what I've done or can do is not something that comes naturally to me. However, it is a given that when selling your services as a freelancer that potential clients will want to see some of your previous work. I can't share everything because of certain confidentiality agreements but here's what I've put together so far in a very rough format.

---

By way of introduction, I've been working in the e-commerce site setup, design and promotion industry for the past six years. Here are a few things that I've worked on personally.

The project that I'm most proud of is the site I maintain and update voluntarily for my family's church, Ferguson Christian Church. I also maintain the church's Facebook pages and Twitter account.

One of my most steady freelance clients is the American Optometric Association. In my role for them, I format email marketing and newsletters for distribution to their paid membership.

I'm the administrator and co-owner of an e-commerce site that sells wedding favors and supplies called HappyIsTheBride.com.

I've set up and contribute to a blog about video editing with my father called ColorBurstVideo.com.

I've set up numerous WordPress blogs including one for a family friend about horse training called FrenchClassicalDressage.com.

Additionally, I have a personal blog, mostly for my own ramblings. So this really doesn't look like much but it's a start. I've left so much out that I simply can't yet talk about. Additionally, if this were a real portfolio it would include screenshots and other examples.

Not to worry, all of this is in progress! In the meantime, this draft will give an introduction.

I Am A Ninja?

My career as a freelance webmaster now has a foundation. I've been working for the past few weeks as a part-time HTML E-mail Designer/Coder for American Optometric Association. I'm helping them with their email newsletters. In summary, I take document files that are sent to me and an existing HTML template that was used for the previous month's newsletter and I integrate the new articles into the newsletter for the current month. The result looks something like this example. This is a great opportunity for me and all I need now is to get a few more jobs just like it. Eventually, I'll have a rotating list of jobs and projects that will help me develop my skills and interests. That's the dream anyway.

Before I continue typing about this, let me take a moment to state emphatically that I don't like the term "webmaster" for the purpose of describing what I want to do. I don't want anyone to use the word in this industry any more. It's klunky. It can variably cover any and all of the following roles -

• Web designer: CSS, graphics, logos
• Web developer: PHP, ASP, SQL, databases
• Web administrator: Server administration, Linux, IIS
• Web marketing: SEO, PPC, SEM, Social Media, Email

But when someone says "webmaster" this sounds too much like "dungeon master" and I picture the dice rolling and a purple robe with stars embroidered on it. We need a new encompassing title for what we do when what we do is some combination of the above.

It's a little bit funny that there are no real standard conventions for these roles or a way for people outside the industry to have a decent frame of reference. From outside, it can seem like magic. From inside, it can too often seem like technical support.

DO NOT WANT!!

My fellow web-workers, I sometimes think we need a new job title. But I get the feeling that the connection with our nerd heritage means that this -master thing is going to stick around.

Wouldn't Webninja be more appropriate?

See this Video at WSJ.com.

I guess we could all be Ninjas. There's even a theme song for this.

Well, I. M. Ninja!
He is Ninja!
She is Ninja, too!
I. M. Ninja!
We are Ninja!
And I believe that you are Ninja, too!

I'm good with that. Just call me Webninja!

Update: Thanks for reading! Tune in next week when I reconsider this "ninja" business and instead go for WebJedi!

Blogger Says Goodbye to Full FTP Feature Support

Blogger has delivered more work for me to do for free. Thanks!

By now, this will be old news in the technology universe. But by the end of the month, Blogger will be phasing out support for blogs published over FTP. You can read more at Blogger Buzz. Previous to this change, you could use their service to host your blog at an "example.blogspot.com" address on Google's servers OR your own domain pointed at Google's servers OR published over FTP to your own hosting account. But the FTP option is going away.

There are changes and improvements internally to how they're systems work and the FTP option has always been a bit unstable and difficult to support. Too many engineering resources are being assigned to fixing these specific problems when only a small portion of the users of this free service need it. Basically, this means that they removed one optional feature used by only 0.05% of their users. This small percentage included me.

Six of the blogs that I use for different sites are posted over FTP this way. It was late at night and I was pretty tired when I found out about this. Before I cooled off and thought about it, I got a little irate trying to post constructive comments.

ArcoJedi said...

Well, I'm so very very very glad to see we finally dropped that very problematic and difficult to follow rule about "doing no evil". That's been slowing you guys down. Do I have your attention now?

I've been using Blogger since 2003. I have a mix of FTP and custom domain blogs (total on Blogger: 17) that I use for a variety of my hobbies and interests.

One of the things that I've used to my advantage is that you can post via FTP to two separate blogs into the same hosting account or even the same folder. For instance, these blogs were all in different sub-folders of the same main site:

• Friends of ArcoJedi
• Musical Holocron
• Mudhorny
• R-Quotes
• Lisa is 30!!!

Since all of these were posted with .ASP file extensions and my own includes on the back end, I got to do some more advanced stuff over the years that 'widgets' just aren't going to cover.

One of my blogs - http://arconati.net/ - is even hosted in the same site as a separate WordPress site - http://james.a.arconati.net/ - and the two do not interfere. I could have the first site also be .PHP, though it's just .HTML files right now. With your plans to drop FTP, I'm not even sure there's a way to continue what I'm doing now. Unless of course, I simply install WordPress and import all posts and be done with it.

Additionally, for clients that want a simple blog added to their existing site in a sub-directory, your FTP was a lot easier to implement than WordPress. I've got some projects on complete hold now because of your changes.

The more knowledgeable 0.5% of us who know what we are doing enough to get FTP to work and care enough to do more advanced things with the blogger tools on our own hosted sites, we are your most loyal fans. When asked the WordPress vs. Blogger question, I have always stated that they both have very valid and useful features with plenty of expansion. I have recommended Blogger just a little bit more because I simply had more experience with it and I couldn't think of anything I couldn't do with it.

Now? Yeah, not so much.

Okay, wow. That's a lot of venom considering this is a free service. I don't normally go that far, but I've loved this service and used it for ... huh, 7 years now! Has it really been that long? Well, anyway, I didn't get a response comment but I owe an apology to whomever might have had to read that poison.

The good news is that the migration tool is actually pretty promising and I can easily get five of the six blogs that this affects moved over with a minimum of effort. The last one, Arconati News, will be a little harder to somehow get migrated properly. As I mentioned above, it's posted to the same account as a separate blog powered by WordPress. I'm not sure yet how to get the DNS settings right for this to work. But I'll keep hammering away until I get the option to work.

And coming from the other side of the fence, I can understand why they need to streamline things and simplify what they can and cannot support. From their point of view, it's got to be hard to continue to support a feature that doesn't work as well as they'd like and to get it to be up to standards will require way too much development and engineering resources than they can commit to a free service.

It still stinks. That's it, I guess.

Update (2010/05/25)

I've gotten all the blogs migrated over except the last one. I've tested some settings that proved to my satisfaction that I could get it to work. I'm a little tied up with other stuff right now to finish this last one so I'll let it sit on the back burner for the time being.

Career Day Presenter

On May 19^th, I presented at Career Day at Trautwein Elementary School, where my mother works as the school counselor. I was a bit nervous about it. One of my roles is the department trainer at work and although I've presented software training numerous times, this was going to be my largest and youngest audience. Also, I only had 25 minutes!

But it was so much fun. I'd like to write about the whole day and my experience in greater detail, but for now I'll just link to the presentation I created. It's very simple and bare-bones.

Around slide 7 I usually skipped on to the web site builder tool test drive, allowing the kids to build their own web sites.

Redesign Project Continued - Color Choices and Typography

I'm working slowly through the design changes I mentioned in my previous post. Here is the color palette I'll likely use as I redesign the site.

Something about the color combination caught my attention and my immediate family responded positively to it so I'm going to dive in with it.

I'm also working on the font spacing and typography quite a bit for better readability. Here is my inspiration and reference guide at Smashing Magazine.

Redesign Project - Arconati Family Website

I'll give you some fair warning ahead of time. This post contains some geeky technical details about web site maintenance. I am creating this post to log some of the changes I'm making to the Arconati Family website. I'm all about transparency and delivering the "how'd-he-do-that?" answers even though no one was really asking. Also, the notes are for my own sake, so I can revisit in the future and recall how it was done.

Applying Method to Madness

First off, I'm upgrading from ASP to ASP.NET. If you ask me my rationale for this, I don't have one but it seemed like the right direction to go. My needs right now don't go beyond the minimum for a language that supports server-side includes and just about anything would have worked here. However, I'm looking forward to learning more and stretching my coding skills and this looked to be the right direction to go. The Arconati News site that I host is on a PHP capable server, so I can grow my skills with that as well (though I'll likely just toy with Wordpress and Joomla customization).

For CSS and layout, I've completely dropped my old style and system and am going in an altered direction. The previous three-column layout was cobbled together from examples on A List Apart's Holy Grail and Holly 'n John's all-float demo. I recall tweaking it a bit, but not sure how much.

If you've never tried CSS from scratch, you may not know what sort of pain it can cause. One of the issues that develops is that browsers have default rendering that they assign to numerous elements and often when a setting you are implementing is not displaying as you thought it might, it takes a little while to think to blame the browser and not something you misplaced. That is why many coders use some sort of "reset" style sheet and I'm going to be using Eric Meyer's Reset Reloaded. It will save me time and headaches.

To achieve flexible three-column layouts, I found a very interesting set of 40 templates that came installed with CoffeeCup's HMTL Editor. They actually have an original source called Layout Gala that I've bookmarked previously. The examples all had the same three columns but you could arrange them any way you wanted simply by changing a few lines of CSS. That meant I could put all the content in place and if I wanted to change the basic layout it wouldn't take very long.

I created a third and final style sheet to cover text; fonts, colors, backgrounds and other style settings not arranged in the layout.

What Software I Used

I've used Dreamweaver before and really liked it, but I'm not installing it on this computer for now. I started to use CoffeeCup's free tool (mentioned earlier), but then later stumbled on Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008, Express Edition. It looked like it might meet my needs now and be powerful later. And it was free, so..

Unexpected Hurdles

So here are the snags I ran into. Firstly, Visual Web Developer uses certain server extensions to connect upon upload that I'm leery of and that I couldn't get working right away. Instead of creating the files and uploading them immediately upon clicking save (as I am used to doing in Dreamweaver) I save them locally and upload as a separate action in FTP.

More distracting were the issues I found in the CSS. The reset wasn't really a problem, but the Layout Gala code contains some goofy default settings for inline links by making them block elements. In translation, this meant every link would take up it's own line even if it was in the middle of a paragraph, which I tend to do a lot. But I'm cleaning these things up right now as I go.

Take the Search Engine Optimization Quiz

I didn't know how well I expected to do for this interactive quiz about Search Engine Optimization. I wanted to do really well, but am humble enough to know that I don't know EVERYTHING about keyword placement and research. I know experts at work in this field that I respect and am in awe of them in some regard. But some of these questions could be subjective or debatable. I don't want to pile on the excuses, but I was also in a bit of a rush to get it done because it's so late at night.

SEO Newbie - 64%

But considering my role's focus is separate, I'm pretty happy with the result. It is just one measurement. Anyway, enough about that.

Are you an SEO Expert? Take the Quiz!

Found via The SEO Investment.com.