Dayshift

Adventures In Domain Parking

In an attempt to increase my revenue from domain parking, I've been trying to move away from Sedo so that I can control my own content and advertisement while at the same time keeping my labor overhead low (by overhead, I mean MY time :).  I'm currently trying two different options and I'm weighing them by different criteria.  Oddly enough, revenue isn't a major focus of the comparison.  I'm assuming that because I'm able to use Google AdSense on both platforms,  I'll have a comparable revenue per visitor (rpv) on both.

The two different platforms I'm currently experimenting with are ExpressionEngine and Typepad.   Here's a breakdown of the criteria I use to compare.

1. Operation Cost (per domain)
• ExpressionEngine
• For multi-site management, there's a $25 fee per domain that you add to the system.
• The one time licensing fee for this CMS is $99.95 personal version and $249.95 for the professional.  This includes one year of free updates and applies only to major release version you purchased.  Each additional year of updates is $20.
• TypePad
  • With only one low monthly fee of around $15 I can have an unlimited number of blogs/domains
2. Ease of setup (per domain)
   • ExpressionEngine
     • Once your preferences are set, adding new sites/domains in the system is easy.  However, you need to set up a virtual host for each new domain and copy over the index.php, .htacces, and a 'path.php' file that contains all necessary global variables. (all sites have to be hosted on the same server for the multi-site management feature to work)
   • Typepad
     • You need to add a new blog, which is really easy.  Then you need to map your domain to your primary typepad domain name (myaccount.typepad.com).  This is a very easy process.
3. Design/Template availability & ease of implementation
   • ExpressionEngine
   • • There aren't very many 'out of the box' templates available for EE, but once you create one generic template it can be copied over and used with any other domain.  I created one template but it's very ugly and customizing it per domain is a little bit of a pain, but isn't that hard.   For some full sites that I host on EE, I've taken WordPress templates and tweaked them to work.  Overall, the templating capabilities of EE are very powerful and flexible, but getting up and running can sometimes take longer than I desire for just seeding a new website.
   • Typepad
   • • The number of layout and theme combinations on Typepad is really impressive.  I can have a near perfect look and feel for my site in about 2 minutes.  I give the design/templating feature in Typepad two thumbs up!
4. Ease of content addition
   • ExpressionEngine
     • Once you're set up, adding content to ExpressionEngine is super easy.  It's a little more flexible than typepad in that you can create separate 'weblogs' and assign them custom fields.  I've used this to have a main content blog and a seperate product or links directory blog.  Even though they are named 'weblogs', it doesn't mean that they appear that way to your visitors.  It's just data after all, and with EE's powerful templating system you can do whatever you want with it.  The ability to separate content like this, but have it all in the same db for potential cross reference is something that I think is very valuable.
   • Typepad
     • Adding content to Typepad is as simple as posting to any other blogging software.   The only 'content separation' you have is through assigning categories to your post, but it works more like tagging than a hierarchical category structure.  You can however, add 'pages' to your blog which appear as .html pages in your webroot.  This is pretty good SEO for content pieces that you want to appear as more permanent.
5. SEO
   • ExpressionEngine
     • You have a fair amount of control over how your URIs are structured.  Since your article file names are automatically suggested by breaking apart the title, you can set a preference for using '_' or '-' as a word separator.  With content, you can adjust the WYSIWYG bold and italic button html to have either <strong> or <b> or <em> or <i>; whatever your preference may be.   Overall, there are very few limitations in EE that directly affect your ability to search engine optimize your structure or content.
   • Typepad
     • For normal posts, you're pretty much stuck with the way t\Typepad names and organizes them.   However, even if you have a theory on URI structure that would discount Typepad's value, I've seen some really high performing Typepad blogs that would make you second guess yourself.   
     • The two biggest SEO gripes I have about Typead are:
       • The images you upload have a path associated with your primary domain (myaccount.typepad), so it's difficult dis-associate your sites if you're using images.
       • You map your domain to a Typepad IP, you have to create a cname record to point to your primary domain.   This makes it practically impossible to dis-associate completely.
6. Expandability
   • ExpressionEngine
     • There are tons of really good modules for EE that allow you to grow your site more if you ever decide to make that energy investment.   Adding a forum is super easy and the user base for one site can be the same for all sites.   This is the same for the Wiki module as well.
   • Typepad
     • If I wanted to really build out a site that I started off on Typead, I'd probably need to export (if possible) or scrape the content and rebuild it in EE or whatever CMS I intended to use.   
     • However, there are tons of cool widgets available for monetization and content that are easy to plugin if I just want to increase the 'meat' of the site.

Overall, I don't think I'll decide completely on one or the other.   I'm definitely sticking with ExpressionEngine for my serious site development and parked domains that I expect to eventually grow into full sites.   The ease of use with Typepad though is so high that I can't resist using it when I'm concerned about my available time.    Both are very good alternatives to just parking your site with a 3rd party.   Especially once you get picked up by a search engine and start to see the real value of your traffic and their clicks :)

Rsync and Find/Grep Shell Script

I'm not an expert at shell scripting, but I wrote this little ditty over a year ago and I use it ALL the time. It really makes my life easier. If you work locally with code that needs to be tested on a remote server, you change multiple files at a time, and/or you're using FTP to transfer these files, then this might be a great solution for you. It's a super simple concept, just a nested switch statement used in combination with find, grep, and rsync. However, the uses are so convenient for me that if you were to scroll through my history of my cli commands 70%+- of them would reference this script. I'm posting about it because I want to see if anyone has suggestions for other useful Web Developer functions to add to it.

Here's how I use it. I save the script as /usr/local/bin/my, then just call it like so (example result included):

user@host:~# my find 'some_function_name'
./some/folder/File.php:193: protected function some_function_name($arg1){

The 'sync' option just rsync's the current working directory to the specific server, so be mindful of your working directory!

user@host:~# my sync dev

Number of files: 208
Number of files transferred: 173
Total file size: 844041 bytes
Total transferred file size: 844041 bytes
Literal data: 7851 bytes
Matched data: 836190 bytes
File list size: 4577
File list generation time: 0.009 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 15799
Total bytes received: 11572

sent 15799 bytes  received 11572 bytes  7820.29 bytes/sec
total size is 844041  speedup is 30.84

And here's the code. Like I said, very very simple. If you're a *nix guru you'd probably snort your nose at it, but if you're just an average developer with budding skills, this might change your work-flow quite a bit. Hope someone finds it useful :) If you have suggestions for additional functionality please post them!

case $1 in
find)
        find . \( -name "*.php" -o  -name "*.py" \)  -exec grep -Hn $2 {} \;
        ;;
findall)
        find . -exec grep -Hn $2 {} \;
        ;;
sync)
        case $2 in
        dev)
                rsync -rz --stats . dev.yourserver.com:/path/to/directory
                ;;
        staging)
                rsync -rz --stats . staging.yourserver.com:/path/to/directory
                ;;
    esac
    ;;
*)
        echo "That option is not recognized"
   ;;
esac

Generic YUI Chart Class

I built this for one small project then found myself using it all over the place. It's basically a generic JavaScript 'class'* that allows you to easily build YUI charts with very little JavaScript code.

If you use YUI charts as suggested in many examples you'll need configuration code for each individual chart which, if you have more than 2 or 3 charts on a page, can make your code appear cluttered. With the ChartsAjax class, all the chart options can be set with JSON data built dynamically on the server and retrieved from one AJAX call. This includes not only data for the datastore but also styling and column definitions.

Below is a breakdown with code examples. Feel free to offer suggestions on how to make it better!

1. The very first thing you need to do is go to the YUI developer page and select the components you want to use then include the CSS/JavaScript per their instructions.
2. Include the ChartsAjax and AjaxObject code in your page.
   

   function ChartsAjax(){
       var statType='';
       var chartType='';
       this.buildChart = buildChart;
       this.useData = useData;
       this.handleFailure = handleFailure;
   
       function buildChart(type, chart){
           statType = type;
           chartType = chart;
   
           var sourceUrl = '/stats/get_chart/'+statType+'/';
   
           var callback = {success:this.useData,failure:this.handleFailure};
           AjaxObject.makeRequest(sourceUrl, callback);
       };
       function useData(o){
           try {var json = YAHOO.lang.JSON.parse(o.responseText);}
           catch (e) {return false;}
   
           YAHOO.widget.Chart.SWFURL = "http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.7.0/build/charts/assets/charts.swf";
           var msDs = new YAHOO.util.DataSource( json.Response.Results ); 
           msDs.responseType = YAHOO.util.DataSource.TYPE_JSARRAY; 
           msDs.responseSchema = {
                   fields:json.Response.Fields
           };
   
           var targetDiv = statType;
           var chartDefinition = {
               series: json.Response.Series, 
               xField: json.Response.XField,
               yField: json.Response.YField,
               style: json.Response.Style 
           }
           switch(chartType){
               case "line":
                   var chart = new YAHOO.widget.LineChart(targetDiv, msDs, chartDefinition);
               break;
               case "column":
                   var chart = new YAHOO.widget.ColumnChart(targetDiv, msDs, chartDefinition);
               break;
   
           }
       };
       function handleFailure(o){
           //do something with o.responseText
       }
   };
   var AjaxObject = {
       makeRequest:function(url, callback){var request = YAHOO.util.Connect.asyncRequest('GET', url, callback);}
   };
   

3. Create an empty container div. Remember that the chart takes on the dimensions of it's parent container so you could either apply a class to this div or a style attribute (ex: style="width:500px;height:200px").
   

   <div id="products_sold" >Loading...</div>

4. On page load, create a ChartsAjax instantiation. Notice the second argument in the buildChart method. You can choose to display the chart as 'line' or 'column'. You can also add options to the ChartsAjax class as you wish. ex:
   

   function load_charts(){
       var products_sold = new ChartsAjax();
       products_sold.buildChart('products_sold', 'line');
   }
   YAHOO.util.Event.onDOMReady(load_charts);
   

5. Return data from server. The class will use the sourceUrl variable to request data from your server. You can configure the url to fit your needs. The JSON can be built using any server side language. My favorite is python because the list and dictionary data structures are virtually identical to the resulting JSON. Example json:

   {"Response": {
       "YField": "", 
       "Style": {
           "legend": {
               "display": "bottom"}, 
               "xAxis": {"labelRotation": "-90"}, 
               "yAxis": {"titleRotation": "-90"}}, 
       "Fields": ["date", "total"], 
       "Results": [
           {"date": "05-27", "total": 147}, 
           {"date": "05-28", "total": 105}, 
           {"date": "05-29", "total": 160}, 
           {"date": "05-30", "total": 40}, 
           {"date": "05-31", "total": 66}, 
           {"date": "06-01", "total": 136}, 
           {"date": "06-02", "total": 243}], 
       "Series": [{
           "yField": "total", 
           "displayName": "Total Products Sold"}], 
       "XField": "date"}}
   

6. Presto!
   

Awesome Regex Tool

Regular Expressions can be an elusive art. Even when you understand all the rules, you still can easily find yourself having to 'hack' at a pattern until you see the results you expect. Here's an awesome regular expressions tool that I've been using for over a year now.  Using AJAX, it sends the pattern/subject to the server and and then populates the result boxes seamlessly.  It does this as you type so you can very rapidly iterate through a problem.  

If you bookmark it you will use it ;)