Archive for July, 2009

There is a fairly lengthy list of tasks when first starting a website. This is a compilation for my future sanity:

1. Choose a website name (do this first because you need it for all subsequent steps. Don’t continue until you’ve done this because it’s almost impossible to change later.
2. Register the URL. I recommend hosting with Dreamhost. They’re great value for money and the support is excellent. In general, it’s easier to register your URL through your hosting provider.
3. Submit the URL to all the search engines as soon as possible. The crawlers will take a while to getting around to your site.
4. Download the Aptana IDE. It’s a great, free editor.
5. Download and install Firefox. Install the Firebug plugin.
6. Make sure you have 301 redirects to ensure that Google sees your website as a single URL and not two different websites (one for www.domain.com and another for domain.com). If you’re using Dreamhost this is easily achieved by selecting your preferred URL format under the ‘Manage Domains’ section of the Dreamhost panel. There is no need for a .htaccess file if you’re using Phusion Passenger.
7. Sign up for Google Analytics, Google Webmaster and (if you plan on advertising) Google Adwords
8. When designing your initial web layout, leave space for ads if you plan to add them later.
9. Good link for embedding video
10. After a month or so, use Hubspot to check your search engine hygiene.

I’ll add more to this list over time.

René Girard scrutinizes the human condition from creation to apocalypse. He sees:

the Bible as “anti-myth”— a description of humankind’s long climb up from barbarity. Violence, retaliation and a vengeful God evolve over centuries into themes of forgiveness, repentance and the revelation that the scapegoat is innocent.

Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC gave a great talk on what caused the recession, why the oil price is going up, and the future of globalization.

I use the Rails console mainly to poke around in my database. Unfortunately the display of the records returned leaves a lot to be desired. Hirb solves this problem perfectly! Here are the quick steps you need to get the basic functionaliy:

1. Install the gem: sudo gem install cldwalker-hirb –source http://gems.github.com
2. Start the console: ruby script/console
3. Require Hirb: require ‘hirb’
4. Enable it: Hirb.enable
5. Try it: x = Model.find(:all)

It’s a pity that Yahoo is still maintaining the 5000 query limit per IP address. 5000 stock quotes is the equivalent of 10 years of daily data for two companies only.