|
Find the best deals,
compare prices and
read what other
travelers have to say
at TripAdvisor.
Get travel information, write your own reviews, and talk to other travelers on the forums:
Murphy, NC,
Andrews, NC,
Cherokee, NC,
Asheville, NC,
Gatlinburg, TN,
Chattanooga, TN,
Atlanta, GA,
Greenville, SC, and the
USA.
(Click to vote for this site or to add your site -- Cherokee County, NC sites, only.)
I am a proud member of the
International Association
of Home Business
Entrepreneurs.
Learn how to build a home business from people who are already doing it.
Join Today!
Honey, I fired the boss!
|
Recommended Websites News
I'm not positive about what will appear here. I have a wide variety of interests and I am a voracious reader. As I find websites of interest, I'll post them here. Some will be added to my Directory, others will be of passing interest or related to current events. This allows me the flexibility of recommending a website on an ad hoc and timely basis.
Coming soon - the new and improved JohnDilbeck.com
Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, April 18 2007 at 9:00 PM
Category: websites
JohnDilbeck.com and several of my other sites have been moved to a new webhosting service and are now running a faster server with more features.
Over the next several weeks, I will refocus and rebuild this site.
I look forward to providing interesting information on a variety of topics related to Internet marketing and promoting businesses, organizations, and events in Cherokee County, NC.
Thank you for visiting and I hope you come back soon.
Act on your dream!
JD
Feedburner adds FeedFlare to your RSS or Atom Feed
Posted by johndilbeck on Saturday, December 17 2005 at 3:20 AM
Category: websites
FeedBurner recently added their new FeedFlare service under the Optimize tag for your feed(s).
It is designed to add more interactivity by your readers, and adds links to your news feed items that enable readers to:
- Email this - send a link to your item to someone via email
- Email author - allow subscribers to email you directly
- Technorati Cosmos - displays the number of links to your item from blogs, as measured by Technorati
- Del.icio.us tags - lists del.icio.us tags for an item, if any
- Save to del.icio.us - allows your subscribers to bookmark the item with del.icio.us
- County comments - lists the number of comments posted to an item (for WordPress blogs, only)
- Creative Commons - Displays the Creative Commons license that you may have applied to your feed or feed item.
As I've said before, Feedburner keeps getting better and better.
Are you a lensmaster?
Posted by johndilbeck on Saturday, December 17 2005 at 3:00 AM
Category: websites
Here's why you should consider becoming one.
Squidoo opened their public beta testing a few days ago, and during this period, you can become a lensmaster and claim up to 20 lenses of your very own.
What's a lens?
Basically, it's an outpointing web page on a particular topic. What topic? That's up to you. What do you know about and love to write about. See if the topic is available. If not, find another page name and try again.
Write about yourself, your business, your hobby, the organization for which you volunteer, your family, your town or community. Write about what interests you.
This is a free service, and you may even make some money with your lenses. Now, the main money-making module is Amazon.com and you can sell any of the products Amazon sells from your lens.
There is full information about how the commission cooperative splits the commissions on the site.
After the beta period is over, you'll be able to claim as many lenses as you want. However, remember that frequency of updating your lens may possibly be one of the criteria that determines the lens rank, so you may not want more than you can comfortably handle.
Yes, this is a beta period and there have been some glitches. I've lost some descriptions as I was writing them, and now and then I lose contact with the system, but it has been remarkably easy to use, overall.
I've claimed and published my limit of lenses during the beta test. If you want, you can visit any of my 20 lenses:
21st Century Webhosting
Act On Your Dream!
Blog Feed Syndication
Broadband Data Communications
Business Cards
Cell Phones and Accessories
Cherokee County, NC
Discount Coupons
Domain Name Registration and Hosting
Favorite Travel Destinations
Georgia Drag Racing
Internet Access - Dial-up and Broadband
Murphy, NC 28906
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich
Play Music
Promotional Products
Real Estate Agents, Brokers and Developers
Residual Income Gazette
Site Build It, a revolution in website design, hosting, and promotion from Ken Evoy and Sitesell
Success Cooperative
Custom T-Shirts
Western North Carolina
If you are interested in publishing information about something in which you are interested, you may want to go to Squidoo.com and see for yourself.
WKRK Radio 1320 AM New Top Website in Cherokee County, NC -- Murphy, NC 28906
Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, October 17 2005 at 1:48 PM
Category: websites
(Context Tag: Cherokee County NC, Murphy NC, top websites, radio stations, WKRK, Tim Radford, John Dilbeck)
Ever since I started the Top Websites in Cherokee County, NC list, JohnDilbeck.com, my original website, has been at the top of the list.
Recently, WKRK-1320 AM, with their new website at country.am, has surged to an impressive lead. I'd like to offer my congratulations to Tim Radford, owner of WKRK.
The rankings are decided by average pageviews per month, and, currently, WKRK is ahead of JohnDilbeck.com by over 3,000 page views per month.
If you have a website in Cherokee County, NC, and you'd like to be listed, go to the Top Websites in Cherokee County, NC page and click the Join button and follow the directions. I'll approve your site as soon as I can.
Please note that you will not be able to compete in the rankings if you don't install the graphic on at least one page of your site -- as per the instructions you'll receive. A better option is to install the graphic on all pages of your site, but that is strictly optional.
We'd love to have your Cherokee County, NC, website on our list. Maybe you can take the lead away from WKRK.
Again, congratulations, Tim! Well done.
31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project
Posted by johndilbeck on Wednesday, August 17 2005 at 9:56 AM
Category: websites
Context Tag: Darren Rowse, blog, blogging, Problogger
Darren Rowse is doing something very interesting and helpful during the month of August, 2005. I can't believe I'm just now learning of this today.
He has created the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Project. Although I've only had time this morning to read several pages, I can already tell that this is an important resource -- as is the rest of his blog -- for bloggers of all levels.
If you're interested in getting the most out of the time and effort you invest in blogging, you may find this project to be very helpful.
Never let anyone destroy your dream!
Posted by johndilbeck on Friday, June 24 2005 at 6:17 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
Experimenting with new websites, blogs, and RSS newsfeeds
Posted by johndilbeck on Monday, April 25 2005 at 8:29 AM
Category: websites
Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a lot of work testing blogs and RSS feeds. As part of that research, I've been building some test websites to see how the tools work together.
At 21st Century Small Business, I've been experimenting with the Webmax Studio site builder and I like it a lot. Even on this old slow Macintosh, it works great. I believe that even a beginner can put together a great website using their services. You can get a free 10-day trial (information on the bottom of every page of the site).
I've been working on that site to integrate RSS feeds from PRweb.com and other sites. I'll be adding integrated feeds from some of my blogs, blogs I recommend, news feeds, and other resources in the near future.
On 21st Century Webhosting, I've been working with the new version of WordPress (1.5) that can create both blog entries and stand-alone pages out of the blog chronological structure. I've been creating a number of pages targeted at specific subjects related to modern webhosting and I'm bringing in information from Amazon.com, Yahoo!, About.com, WikiPedia, and other sites. Most of the pages have a lot of dynamic content built using PHP and various feed processors. It's been an interesting experiment and I'm looking forward to building this site with more information as I have time.
On 21st Century Marketing Tools, I've been experimenting with using WordPress and a links program I licensed to store links to sites that I recommend and use in my marketing efforts. I'm not interested in exchanging links on this site -- the directory will be hand-built to point to sites I want to use myself and which may be useful to you, too.
Over the last half-year, or so, I've been working with PHP-Nuke on A Portal for Cherokee County, NC and on Dilbeck Communications.
I like PHP-Nuke, but it can be intimidating to beginners and even experienced webmasters. It helps if you have a very good grounding in both HTML and PHP before customizing and extending PHP-Nuke, but I like the sites and the tools they offer and look forward to extending them in the future.
I've added an RSS newsfeed to my Forum on JohnDilbeck.com and I'll be syndicating it over several sites in the coming weeks. You can see an example of this syndication on the home page of JohnDilbeck.com. I'm looking forward to more conversations there and hope this will help introduce new visitors to the forum.
As much as I like PHP-Nuke, it doesn't do everything I want to do, so I've started a new site at Residual Income Gazette where I'll be talking only about creating residual income through online marketing. This site is powered by Mambo. I've yet to finish customizing the installation, but I'm getting close. I look forward to adding content to the site over the coming months and I invite you to drop in and take a look around.
Between illness, thunderstorms, and probably too much experimentation on new websites for my own good, I've gotten behind on some of my correspondence, and I'm looking forward to catching up on all of that soon.
One of my primary goals for May and June is to add a considerable amount of content to A Year From Now -- Act on Your Dreams!. I have some good ideas on expanding the site in a new direction and I've been talking to an experienced editor and writer to take over the newsletter duties so we can participate more with our valued visitors. Even though the site has been neglected for a couple of months, it's attracting hundreds of new visitors every month and I look forward to working with Dennis to make the site grow into what we've been imagining and discussing.
In the meantime, I've signed up for over a dozen new blogging services and I like some of them and don't like others. When I have some time, I'm going to talk about them and then I'll discontinue the ones I don't like.
I've started at least two dozen blogs over the last few months so I could quickly get some experience with them, and more and more I'm liking WordPress over all the others. I'll probably be cancelling all but a half-dozen or so blogs so I can concentrate on writing about what I'm learning rather than spreading out so wide and learning as much as I can in a short period.
While I like WordPress more than the others I've tried, I also like Blogger and I'll continue developing several blogs there. Some, such as John Dilbeck Musings are hosted on Google's site, blogspot.com. Some, such as MurphyNC28906.com are managed by blogger, but the actual pages are FTPed to one of the servers I use for several of my other sites so that it's actually hosted on one of my domains. I'm doing this for several reasons, one of which is to see whether I get better natural search results using my own domain or letting Google host them for me for free. The jury's still out on this at this time.
One thing I've already noticed is that I get better search results on Yahoo and MSN than I do on Google when searching for keywords I use a lot on my blogs, such as "Murphy NC" (without the quotes in the search). I'm getting first page results on Yahoo, MSN, and Ixquick, but not always on Google. I'm not sure why, but I am very happy to see Yahoo and MSN giving Google some competition.
If you have any comments on any of this, I'd love to hear from you.
Context Tag: websites
New Service Allows Small Businesses to Connect with Consumers Online
Posted by johndilbeck on Tuesday, April 19 2005 at 2:52 AM
Category: websites
Yahoo! Inc. a leading global Internet company, today announced a new feature on Yahoo! Local that provides free Web sites for small businesses. This free and easy-to-use feature builds upon Yahoo!'s leadership position as the number one online destination for local information and small business services. Small businesses can quickly and easily establish an online presence and connect with the increasing number of consumers using the Internet to find comprehensive local products and services. The service is available in beta at local.yahoo.com/freesite.
"As more and more consumers rely on the Internet for information about their neighborhood — from finding restaurants to plumbers to dry cleaners — local businesses are realizing the value of reaching potential customers online," said Paul Levine, general manager, Yahoo! Local. "By providing small businesses with free Web sites, we are not only helping them leverage the Internet, but also adding depth and comprehensiveness to our local product for consumers."
According to The Kelsey Group, over 50 percent of the more than 20 million small businesses in the U.S. do not yet have a Web site. With the launch of this new service, Yahoo! now enables these businesses to establish an online presence by providing a simple interface and template that allows them to create a site in minutes. These new Web sites are automatically integrated into Yahoo! Local, extending businesses' reach to consumers who use search engines to find information about local products and services.
The free service complements other innovative merchant offerings in Yahoo! Local, including Free Basic Listings and Enhanced Listings. These tools give merchants the power to add and edit content about their business on Yahoo! Local. A small business may extend its Internet presence over time as their online needs grow with award winning services from Yahoo! Small Business such as: domain name, e-mail, enhanced Web hosting and e-commerce solutions.
"By bringing together our leadership in essential small business services, our vast consumer reach, and our local and search expertise, Yahoo! is uniquely able to help small businesses get started and be successful online," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Small Business. "This new service complements our industry leading suite of online services that help small businesses get online, sell online and market online."
Context Tag: websites
(For a sample of one Yahoo! Local biz site, see the one I created for Dilbeck Marketing: nc.local.yahoo.biz/dilbeckmarketing.)
Updated list of John L. Dilbeck websites
Posted by johndilbeck on Tuesday, March 29 2005 at 2:51 PM
Category: websites
The list of websites owned, managed, and/or recommended by John L. Dilbeck has been updated.
Context Tag: websites
New links added to the directory at JohnDilbeck.com
Posted by johndilbeck on Thursday, February 24 2005 at 10:24 PM
Category: websites
I just added links to three sites I've recently discovered that are related to writing, publishing and self-publishing on the books page in my directory.
In the Blogs about Writing section, I added the following:
Learning About Writing is a blog written by Dennis Mellersh. This is a new blog, but it is one that is worth your attention. I've spoken with Dennis extensively and I look forward to learning more about writing from him.
In the Places to Sell Your Writing section, I added:
Lulu.com -- offers great resources for authors, including print on demand and online sales. They have an active forum where authors are helping would-be-authors learn the ropes and succeed. They offer a free blog and a web page where you can list all the publications you sell through their site.
In the Self Publishing Websites section, I added:
Self Publishers Club -- The purpose of the self publishers club is to support, encourage and educate writer/publishers.
Powered by Coranto
(Go to Top)
Copyright © 2000 - 2005 by John L. Dilbeck
Last built on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 at 8:55:49 AM by JLD,
using Radio UserLand and BBEdit on Apple Macintosh Computers.
Our privacy statement may be read at Privacy.
|
