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John L. Dilbeck's News Archive
John L. Dilbeck's Ramblings
Whatever strange and wonderful ideas tickle this big brain of mine.
ISSN: 1533-8193
Being a voracious reader, I go through lots of news and stories. When I find one of interest that I think will benefit you, I write about it here. Your feedback is always welcome.
News Archives
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June 2005
Colin Dunbar: Goal Setting Tools for Your Success
Posted by johndilbeck on Saturday, June 25 2005 at 7:50 PM
Category: ramblings
A few months ago, I ran across the eaziGOAL.com website that has been built by Colin Dunbar.
I found the site because it was built by Site Build It! and because Colin had built a website from scratch to being well placed within the top 1% of all websites worldwide. You can read about some of his experiences with this project in his free Journal of an Infopreneur ebook where he discusses the day-by-day story of how a goal is achieved.
One of the things I am most interested in is helping others achieve their dreams, thereby helping me to do the same. I succeed by helping you succeed.
Colin shares this willingness to help others.
I have not yet ordered his tools for setting and achieving goals, but it's on my to-do list, especially after reading the sample chapter that you can get for free -- Free Chapter: The Power of Goal Setting.
While I'm not interested in the software, since I use a Macintosh and Colin's software won't run on my system, I'm very interested in reading his ebook and using some of the forms he's developed for setting and managing goals. Hopefully, I'll find time to do this in the next few months.
In the sample chapter, Colin discusses the differences between dreams and goals. He makes some important points about how you can go from a dream to setting goals and working to achieve what you want -- rather than just wandering through life.
Goalsetting applies to just about anything you want to achieve, accomplish or complete. By setting realistic goals and finding ways to reach each one, you can take a huge, unwieldy, never-to-be-finished dream and convert it into a map of step-by-step directions on how to make your dream real.
Do you want to develop a better relationship, get a new job, graduate from school, start a home business, or do anything that's more complicated than going out to buy groceries? If so, then the more you learn about goalsetting, the more likely you are to achieve what you want.
I think Colin offers some good tips, tools, and resources at eaziGOAL.com.
Never let anyone destroy your dream!
Posted by johndilbeck on Friday, June 24 2005 at 7:17 AM
Category: websites
(Context Tag: Act On Your Dream) Sometimes it gets so discouraging that quitting -- not usually an option -- seems like the best way to deal with a setback.
Normally, I'm highly-motivated and don't let setbacks get me down.
However, in mid-May, 2005, after spending about nine months building A Portal For Cherokee County, NC, someone came along and destroyed it in a matter of several hours.
I was crestfallen and nearly heartbroke when I went to work on that site on the morning of May 15, 2005. All my hard work was destroyed and, in its place, was an obscene message.
Some misguided individual in Egypt destroyed my site, which is designed to help my local neighbors promote themselves and what they're doing, and replaced it with a hate-filled slogan about the United States and Israel -- neither of which were related to the site.
I don't promote political agendas and I don't discuss my politics in public -- yet, here I was the victim of someone half-way around the planet who destroyed my site and nearly a year of hard work to express his political views.
I think everyone has a right to express their views, but I think nobody has a right to destroy someone else's hard work.
So, what did I do when I found this?
I turned off my computer, poured my fresh cup of coffee in the sink, and went back to bed.
When I woke up a couple of hours later, the initial shock had worn off and my willingness to quit had been replaced with a resolve that I would rebuild the site and make it even better in the process.
I looked at why and how this destruction was accomplished.
Part of the reason was that the person who destroyed the site thought that was a legitimate form of expression. There was nothing I could do about that except go through my log files, track down where and when the destruction had taken place, and report it to the FBI.
That took a few hours. Once it was done, there was nothing else I could do, so I started thinking about what I had control over and what I could change to lessen the likelihood that this problem would reoccur.
When I initially dreamed of A Portal For Cherokee County, NC, I wanted to build an interactive site so that others in the community could easily participate. So, I decided to build it using PHP-Nuke, an open-source content management system that is very popular for building community sites.
Unfortunately, I was not aware, at that time, of the propensity for others hacking and destroying sites built by open source content management systems (CMS). After the destruction of my site, I did a search on Google for "hacked PHP-Nuke" and found many thousands of pages devoted to the subject.
I learned, after the horses had escaped the barn, that it is a full-time job keeping all the security patches applied to PHP-Nuke sites. This is not a condemnation of the program, because I liked it. Rather, it is an indication of just how many people revel in destruction rather than building something of worth for themselves.
I learned a long time ago that it was much more exciting to destroy something than it is to build something. Blowing up car models my brother and I made with fireworks was exciting and took much less time than the slow process of building them, but in the long run, it was much less satisfying. Not only did I waste all the time building the model, but I was left with nothing after destroying it.
Over time, I learned that creating a vision of something I wanted to accomplish and then working to make it real -- while harder to do -- was much more satisfying in the long run.
As an aside, from my brother's love of cars and racing, we graduated from building model cars to going to races. Over the years, my brother's love of drag racing grew while mine dimmed. A few years ago, more or less as a present to him, I started working on Georgia Drag Racing and it gives him a way to not only express his love of the sport but to also meet and get to know his childhood heroes. Who would have thought that a hobby site would grow to attract over a million page views per year?
Back to the subject at hand...
One of the central problems was that I was building my portal using software that was insecure and intrinsically prone to destructive attacks.
So, goal number one was to identify a different way to build the site.
Since I had been having very good results building sites using Radio Userland -- JohnDilbeck.com and GeorgiaDragRacing.com, each with about a million page views per year -- and I'd had no hacking problems from those sites, I decided to redesign my portal for Cherokee County, NC, using that system.
Without going into details, Radio Userland is a database that is scriptable and includes tools for blogging, building static sites, and much more. Not bad for a program that only costs $40 per year.
While it is true that we'd had problems with GeorgiaDragRacing.com about a year ago, it was because of programs we were using to show pictures on the site and other scripts that were running. Once we redesigned the site and rebuilt it having eliminated those scripts, the site has run without problems since.
With that background, I was confident that a new portal built using static web pages would not only be less prone to hacking, but would probably rank better in the search engines, as well.
So, with that in mind, I looked at the features that were built into the old portal and had to decide what would be in the new one.
Some of the interactive features were out. The forum, the free journals (blogs), web site directory, reviews, and most of the interactive features had to go.
How could I replace them?
I built a new forum at WesternNorthCarolinaForum.com that could be used for posting news and conversing with others. It takes some time to get a new forum going, but I knew I would be posting a lot of articles and others would eventually find it and jump in.
Why this approach? Because, the people who manage Sparklit's ActiveBoards do all the background work to update the code and install security patches and all I have to do is concentrate on providing content and moderating the forum. Not only that, but they offer as many free forums as you want -- no charge!
I chose to pay for my forums because I wanted the extra control I could get for paying only $5 per month or so.
Now, for that one small monthly fee, I have four forums hosted there -- all in their infancy, but all with real potential for growth over time:
That is enough forums for now, but I may move my forum from JohnDilbeck.com over here if I have many more hacking attempts there.
So, now we have a forum for the Cherokee County, NC portal.
What about blogs?
I'm not going to offer free blogs, but I did want to offer a way for others to create blogs about things going on in the community and allow them a way to syndicate them on my site.
So, how was I going to do that?
Since I do a lot of blogging and plan to do a lot more in the future, I started working on a way to easily syndicate blogs and other news feeds using syndication tools that are widely available now.
As a result of the research I did over the last month, I now have a way to easily syndicate news feeds on my sites. You can see this, if you want, on JohnDilbeck.com's syndicated news feeds and on Cherokee County's Portal syndicated news feeds.
Now that I know how to do this and I've built, bought, and otherwise acquired the tools to get this done, it will be easy to add new feeds and to add these syndicated news sections on any of my other websites that I choose.
Now, if someone in Cherokee County, NC, wants to maintain their own blog, and it relates to the general principles for which the site has been built, I'll be happy to syndicate their news feed(s) on my sites. They don't have to worry about building traffic and all the other things I do, all they have to do is maintain their blog and I'll do the syndication for them.
So, goals one and two are decided upon and achieved.
I still have some more functionality I want to add to the site, but I'm going to be very choosy about how I accomplish them, with the goal of adding usefulness without a greatly-increased potential for hacking and destruction.
Was this easy to accomplish?
Absolutely not. I worked around the clock and put in over 200 hours redesigning and rebuilding the site.
Was it worth it?
Yes.
I now have a site that actually works better, will probably rank better in the search engine results, and I have developed a new set of tools that I can use on other websites in the future.
The best feeling, however, is that I didn't give up or give in to someone else's destruction of my work.
When I hit the obstacle, I found a way to get past it and make things continue in a direction I want to travel.
That is worth all the hard work.
Never give up.
Never quit.
Set your goals and find a way to accomplish them and you can make your dream come true.
Sometimes it takes considerably less than a year.
What can you accomplish A Year From Now?
All the best,
JD
National Heritage Area Conference -- Western North Carolina
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, June 2 2005 at 11:47 PM
Category: western_nc
(Context Tag: western North Carolina) A group of regional representatives from the Far West Mountain Economic Partners attended the Balancing Nature and Commerce in the Gateway Communities of Western North Carolina leadership conference on May 3-6, 2005.
The conference was the next step in the strategic heritage development plan written last year by a committee of the Partners' Heritage Tourism team and regional representatives for the newly-designated Blue Ridge National Heritage Area.
The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, representing 25 counties covering 10,000 square miles, was established by the United States Congress on November 10, 2003 as the nation's 24th National Heritage Area.
Far West Mountain Economic Partners, a nonprofit regional economic development organization, has been a driving force to implement the initiative in Cherokee, Clay, Graham and Swain counties, in conjunction with the Qualla Boundary.
A National Heritage Area is a place designated by Congress where natural, cultural, historic, and recreational resources combine to form a nationally distinctive landscape arising from patterns of human activity shaped by geography and traditions.
Board members, team members, and staff attending the conference included Glenn and Ann Tatum representing Andrews Chamber of Commerce, David and Kirsten Goldhagen of Goldhagen Art Glass Studios, Debbie Jackson representing Clay County NC Chamber of Commerce, Connie Southard representing Swain County Chamber of Commerce, past board president Claudie Burchfield representing Graham County Economic Development, and Partners Interim Executive Director Gwen Caeli of Cherokee County. Partners' affiliates representing the Qualla Boundary were Robert Jumper and Alicia Wildcatt with the Marketing and Promotion office of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.
The Heritage Area initiative is a primary goal of Far West Mountain Economic Partners' Heritage Tourism team to increase opportunities for artists, crafters, musicians, and businesses related to the tourism industry.
In addition to the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, other conference sponsors were The Conservation Fund, Advantage West, the Center for Regional Development at Western Carolina University, and the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
With the unique natural resources located in our mountains and national treasures such as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Appalachian Trail, conference attendees focused on strategic planning for land conservation, building civic engagement, building long-term partnerships, cultural heritage development and management, and sustainable tourism.
Far West Mountain Economic Partners is located in Andrews, NC. For membership information, contact fwpartners@verizon.net or call 828-321-2929 or toll-free at 877-321-2929.
31st Annual North Carolina State Bluegrass Festival -- Cherokee, NC -- June 16-18, 2005
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, June 2 2005 at 9:20 AM
Category: western_nc
(Context Tag: Cherokee NC) The 31st Annual North Carolina State Bluegrass Festival will be held in Cherokee, North Carolina, from June 16-18, 2005, at the Happy Holiday Campground, located four miles east of Cherokee on US 19 North.
(Don't miss Earl Scruggs on Friday, June 17, 2005.)
Performers include:
Thursday, June 16th, 2005
- Blueridge -12:00 noon and 5:00 p.m.
- The Gary Waldrep Band - 12:50 p.m. and 5:50 p.m.
- The Country Gentlemen - 1:40 p.m. and 6:40 p.m.
- Lost and Found - 2:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
- Ronnie Reno & The Reno Tradition - 3:20 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
- Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys - 7:30 p.m. (one 90 minute performance)
Friday, June 17th, 2005
- The Suggins Brothers - 12:00 noon and 5:00 p.m.
- Curtis Blackwell & The Dixie Bluegrass Boys - 12:45 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
- The Bluegrass Brothers - 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
- The Josh Crowe Band - 2:20 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.
- Jesse McReynolds & The Virginia Boys - 3:10 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
- The Legendary Earl Scruggs - 8:00 p.m. (one 90 minute performance)
Saturday, June 18th, 2005
- The Tennessee Heart Strings Band - 12:00 noon and 5:00 p.m.
- Raymond Fairchild and the Maggie Valley Boys - 12:45 p.m. and 5:45 p.m.
- David Peterson & 1946 - 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
- Bobby Osborne & The Rocky Top X-press - 2:15 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.
- Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver - 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
- Mike Snider - 9:00 p.m. (one 90 minute performance)
See their website for more ticket prices, conditions, and more information.
Reserve your motel in Cherokee, NC.
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