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General:

This site exists so that I can share my ideas and my visions with the world. It is about imagination, inspiration, and the mutability of the human mind. Many different things went into the creation and maintanance of this site. This page is dedicated to everything that keeps this place up, keeps it from falling down around our heads, and (most importantly) keeps me sane.

Wordpress

I have been an avid web programmer for ages. I never could stand automatically generated pages from programs such as frontpage or any other website wizards. They where horribly designed, produced a ton of extraneous code, and where so inflexible that I couldn’t really develop what I wanted to. So I resigned myself to produce my web pages completely in notepad, with nothing but hard code. That is, until my needs expanded so far that I needed to learn more advanced languages such as PHP… which I still only barely understand. That’s when I stumbled upon Wordpress. I never dreamed that a free service could be so awesome. Yep, it’s free and it powers this entire site. I’ve got absolute control because I’m able to edit the PHP files if I need to modify how the pages work. I can modify the CSS files if I need to change how the site looks. There are tons of templates to work from and expand upon. There are also a ton of plugins that can be used to add functionality (which can also be modified). All in all, I’m very happy with my Wordpress account.

Click here for a list of the plugins I use.

www.GoDaddy.com

I also get my hosting through GoDaddy.com which is an amazing host. Their prices are reasonable (though not always the lowest). However, their customer service is amazing. The few problems I’ve had (completely my own dumb fault) where resolved immediately. Let me give you a few examples of their excelent customer service:

1. After a few days of signing up, I got a phone call from a representative who “just wanted to make sure that everything was going smoothly.” He was very nice, polite, and actually kind of funny. He just wanted to see if I had any questions. I didn’t have any questions at that time so he gave me a number for customer service and told me where to find it on their website.
2. When I first signed up I was planning on programming in ASP. However, I didn’t realize that this required that the server be running windows (not Linux). I had already purchased the Linux server and I was afraid that I had just blown my money buying the wrong package. So I called up customer service and the nice lady walked me through, step-by-step, how to change the operating system. She told me that it wouldn’t be any extra charge (so long as I didn’t upgrade) and that it should take less than 24hrs for the change to be final. I’ve never had customer service be so knowledgeable, nice, polite, and/or accommodating. I eventually ended up going with PHP anyway… and was able to remember her instructions over a year later. Had no problems with that at all.
3. Somehow I managed to change the file permission on EVERY file on my account to a setting that didn’t allow me to so much as see them, let alone make changes to them. I thought I was locked out completely, and feared that my server space was now a paper weight. I had a problem, so I decided to email customer service (at about 1am). I got an email within a few minuets saying that my issue had been reviewed and was being sent to the appropriate people. It also stated that I should have another response within 24 hours. Six and a half hours later, I got an email saying that everything had been fixed.

Hands down, I have NEVER, dealt with ANY company’s customer service department and had such good results. Obviously, though, customer service isn’t the whole story. They offer a host of options, various hosting packages, domain name registration, business registration, and pretty much everything you could ever need. If they don’t offer a service, they know where you can find it. Wordpress does suggest several other hosts that are wordpress ready, however, I like my GoDaddy just fine.

Affiliates:

There are several affiliate services that I belong to simply because they increase traffic or create residual income. Some of them are specifically targeted to blogs, and others are just for websites in general. I DO NOT endorse anything that I think is disreputable. I’ve been using these services for quite some time and am still pleased with how well they work.

• BannersGoMLM is an awesome banner exchange. No one else will offer a 1:1 ratio. That means that every time I show one of their banners, one of my banners is shown on someone else’s page. Just like the title suggests, you also earn impressions from those who sign up under you. They’ve also got some strong anti-cheating algorithms to ensure that everything stays fair. There are a ton of benefits to joining. I’ve got to say that they’re pretty impressive. Check them out and see for yourself.
• TrafficSwarm is an interesting traffic exchange program. You surf other members’ sites and in exchange your ad is shown to other surfing members. I’m not just getting traffic, I’m actually finding some cool offers and sites along the way. It also has advanced anti-cheating algorithms. There is NO WAY to fool their system. This way, you know that the traffic you get from them will be real, targeted, and deliberate.
• Google Adsense just makes sense. It gives my readers/viewers the ability to click on links that are relavent to the content on the page they’re reading, and earns me a little extra dough.
• BlogRush is an interesting little service that works much like Adsense but just for blogs. It displays links to relavent blogs and in return, my blog ads get shown on other BlogRush users’ sites. It just makes sense.