The Althing

A lot has happened since we last spoke. I was all gung-ho over using Facebook to try and build traffic to www.the-althing.com, but then I hit something of a brick wall. Actually a huge brick wall. My plan was to follow pages on Facebook as my page. As interesting postings from those pages would show up in my feed I would share them on my page. I thought it was a win-win solution. I would get content and the pages I was following would get traffic. Even FB would win with increased ad revenues. But of course FB’s revenue model doesn’t work quite that way. I noticed that I was only seeing postings from a small percentage of the pages I was following on my feed, and it was postings from the same pages. Turns out FB limits how many pages you will see postings from, presumably unless you pay them. I then searched the web high and low for any solution that would workaround those limits. Unfortunately no such workaround exists…except the one I came up with, which relies on simple brute force. In short, I created an Excel spreadsheet, went to each of the pages I was follow (over 200 at present), and copied the URL into the spreadsheet. At that point it becomes a simple matter of going to each URL one at a time on a regular basis, searching for postings of interest to share to my Facebook page for The-Althing. Not the best solution, but one that will work until something better comes along (or the money grubbing Facebook lightens up a bit). In doing all this, I discovered that the links to almost all my t-shirts and other products at Zazzle were broken. They had restructured their link format, so I had to go in and edit almost every link, but that is all back up and running now.

On another front, there have been a variety of changes and updates to the thang. A lot of content was added in various areas, and PHP was more fully utilized in getting that content online for you to see. I went to larger images for the stuff I’m selling through Amazon. I wrote a small script to randomize the content on the front page and other pages, so you don’t see the same old thing every time. I also cleaned up the script the loads the information for the various shops and restaurants, so it automatically eliminates lines that were left when a particular field was empty…say a shop didn’t have a phone number or a website.

Next up will be a rethinking of how I present books and music on the site. I will be going to a dedicated page for each author or musician, along with some biographical information. This will also allow me to integrate links to audiobooks and links to purchase individual songs, something I’ve wanted to add for some time. To accomplish at least some of that I may sell through iTunes rather than Amazon, as it looks like the former has a much better looking interface.

Some time back I had established a page for the-althing.com on Facebook. I routed these blog postings to that feed, and I systematically went through all of the places featured on the thang, checked if they had a FB page, and then liked or followed them. Imagine my dismay when the only postings that showed up on the feed were the blog postings I put there myself. I confess I was looking for a lazy way to build traffic for the site and I was disappointed that was not it.

Which brings us to this weekend. Like most things associated with this site (and with my life) I am self-taught and I learn a lot through trial and error methodology. I’m not too big into buying how-to books or soliciting advice. I had previously experimented with trying to share posts from other sites onto the althing.com feed but they ended up on my regular FB feed, where they do me no good. However, I realized that when you click “share” one of the options that drops down is “share to a page you manage.” Voila! This weekend I really dug in, hit the feeds of the folks I featured on the thang, and started sharing them to my the-althing.com feed on Facebook. This also gave me an ideal time to start to build the calendar of events back up. I had started with a free calendar from Keep and Share, which worked fairly decently. But awhile back I noticed the link was broken, and when I checked I learned they no longer offered the free calendar. At the time I started the calendar it was a close pick between K&S and Google, so I went back and checked Google calendar and found it was easier to work than K&S and I went to that. The only problem was I never got time to populate it with events, so it sat empty for a few months. As I pored through FB entries this weekend it was a perfect opportunity to start to build the calendar.

The bottom line is that this weekend was very productive. There were a few changes to the actual page, consisting of the calendar and an edit for a NYC shop that went out of business. But I really started to build traffic through FB, and hopefully that project will continue this week and next weekend.

Grant watches “Go, Diego, Go” from time to time, sometimes in great back-to-back binges if allowed. The theme music is so ingrained in my head that I, in typical Peterson fashion, have written new, borderline filthy lyrics. I sing them just out of earshot sometimes, to a cautionary, “Daddy?” from Mom, if she is around. If you know the tune, you probably know where I sing, “cause he’s an aaaaaaa-hole. Aaaaaaa-hole. No, Diego, No.” We won’t get into the lyrics I sing to the theme of Thomas the Train.

But I digress, for I speak now not of a-holes, but of Amazon aStores. I first had experience with them when I was doing my mother-in-law’s website using Joomla. Like most Amazon Associate tools, I found it to be fairly straightforward to set up and integrate into a site using iframes. They could be made to look like a reasonably integral part of a site. As it turns out, she had trouble with the content management end of things, in terms of adding products, a problem I never experienced. But she is an older person who does not delve particularly deeply into the technical aspect of the internet or computers, and to some extent needed everything spoon-fed to her.

It was always the plan to integrate Scandinavian products into the Althing. That has been done for film, books, and music, using Amazon product links, but as yet I have not migrated those pages to full use of MySQL, and it would be time prohibitive to add products one at a time that way, so I looked at aStores early on. I even did a few mock-ups to see how it might look, but this past week I took the plunge and started using aStores, with the first featured products being Husqvarna, Lego, and Carlsberg. For the latter, of course I wish I could sell good imported Danish beer online, but the next best thing is to list Carlsberg paraphernalia such as signs and lights. As time passes I will be tweaking the store, adding a lot of new stuff, reorganizing what I have. It also could be time soon to add Lutefisk to the site, and we can all experience the smell of good fish gone bad.

One of the benefits of the move to Tallahassee has been the gift of time. I have now used that time to put into action some of the plans I’ve had for The Althing. The Movie page has been updated through the use of PHP and MySQL and now offers not only the chance to purchase DVD’s of the films on Amazon.com, but the ability to stream the films (when available). There is also information on each film courtesy of the Rotten Tomatoes API. To access that information, I also had to get up to speed on the basics of JSON. In short, diving back into the nuts and bolts end of the page in a big way.

Still, having to take a U-turn on one plan, which was to redesign the Music page, adding in MP3 sales. I really wanted to have the ability for folks to sample brief excerpts of the music, just as you can do on iTunes or Amazon.com, but Amazon does not offer that option in their links. I have done a survey of all available music websites, and don’t see that available from anyone that has an associates program. Not sure which way I will go next. Want very much to get “Lutefisk” up on the site. What is Lutefisk, you ask? Doesn’t everyone know? I’ll just give a hint and say it will be another outlet for my strange sense of humour. One thing I most definitely will be doing is to update the calendar entries in a big way. I have really let that lag since I instigated it, to the point there is no current content on it. That will change soon.