John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Book covers: 5 July 2008: I should understand what makes a good book cover, and use that to design great home pages.
BSD Solutions: 4 July 2008: BSD Solutions just called saying they are not listed in Google and can I help? Yes. So let's see how quickly. If I publish this link now (at 18:30), let's see how long it takes for a search for this search to find their website bsdsolutions.co.uk. Here's the link that makes it happen: BSD Solutions Ltd provides commercial Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). There y'go.; Update: I checked it the next morning (08:47) and the site was listed. The *this* link above didn't used to bring up bsdsolutions.co.uk , and now it does. So Google read and processed this blog in at most 12 hours.; Interestingly (but completely unconnectedly), BSD is the flavour of UNIX that's underneath the Apple operating system OS X. Linux is open source Unix.
OSC: 1 July 2008: Wow, the damnedest thing just happened. A client called me to say his OS Commerce installation now contained exclusively product categories from a new OS Commerce installation I'd been working on the night before.; Now .. this is impossible. Yes, OK, probably the two sites might well be on the same server. But they address completely different database accounts and exist in completely different accounts on the web server.; The two databases weren't compromised, they held the correct info. The config files the same.; To get the client's site back working again, all I did was remove three products from the new site. This is impossible.; I haven't cross contaminated the files because I haven't worked on the first client's site for a year or more, so to investigate I had to get his username and password out of the filing cabinet. I really don't think I pushed across any of his files to the new site because .. I didn't, there's no evidence that I did, I installed a completely new setup and these are wildly different versions of the software, so if I'd mixed them up we'd be getting errors.; So. Questions are in at the host (who's never seen anything like this) and at OSC. I'll keep you posted.; Update: Between me, the website host, and the OS Commerce forum, we solved it in just over an hour. Is this a bad example of open source or a good one? I'd say a good one. Open source is tested by users all day every day, so this will be a rare instance. I'll feed my experience back to the developers who will incorporate a fix and the update will be out quickly. And I got support from a fellow user .. that's open source for you, there's a community of like-minded people willing to help.; From that panic and that low point to a phone call, someone found me by searching the net, wants an Internet marketer long term for his new business, and brilliantly, had been searching for a few days and came to me because I seem to be someone he can trust.; That's something that's always worked for me. I'm genuine, it's in every pore of me. When I used to work in the PR industry I used to meet new prospects and they'd just hand over their business. People trust me with their credit card details .. they just give them to me unasked, the CVV, everything "oh you do it" (I never store them, btw). The PR and the Internet marketing industries are the same thing .. unregulated industries full of bullshitters. In that, I stand out as a genuine guy.; So my site and its mixture of technical stuff with pictures of my cat breaks the rules deliberately. I, personally, am the asset here, so how do I deliver that over the Internet? This blog was my solution back when Internet video wasn't practical.; So, from a low to a high in about five minutes. You'd think, just sat here in my office tippety tapping away, my job isn't exciting wouldn't you? I think I need a herbal tea.
Hair loss solution: 1 July 2008: In searching for competitors for the site I'm working on for the keyphrase hair loss solution (see, I'm allowed to do that here in my own blog :-) ), I came across this. Now, I don't usually go with the humour angle (and he does actually nick one of 'our' ads at one point .. bet he hasn't got permission for that), but this is exceptionally well done. That site is top for the keyphrase "hair loss solution" .. just look at all the keyword work going on there. I bet he's not rich on it .. it's still an hourly rate kinda business (it's OK to follow through the links AFAICS to see what the solution is), but .. you know .. it plugs into something deep. I want to know what I would look like bald. I want this as a birthday gift :-) Mind-you, if you do go for it, he's canny, I'm not saying you won't get onto a sucker list, so maybe use a valid but separate email address.