Not going to make any friends this way. But we tried this out, it was fun:

1. Find Digg frontpage stories
2. ‘Blog it’
3. Repeat for every frontpage story [for at least 100 stories]
4. Wait 6 months, voila - PR4-6

Mind you this was an experiment, and we already shut it down. But something to note.

UPDATE March 8: Someone asked me what they could do with such a ’site’. Ideas include:

• Nothing. Leave the pages as they are. Start adding pages about different content. Once in, things become easier.
• 301. Just 301 every single page to whatever site (same domain or not). I know of people who basically get something Dugg once a month, and after 4-6 months, just 301 it somewhere else.
• Make sure you digg only topics relevant to your point. Once you have Digg linking to you, just have that page link to something related to the point. Digg’s article on X -> your post about Digg’s article on X -> your site on X. Relevancy is key.

I’m sure you can come up with other ideas

American Capital just plunked 160 million into GeoSign. This wasn’t a purchase - it was an investment.

GeoSign is one of my favorite companies on the internet. I ran across them roughly two years, but really got to know what they were upto about a year ago. They do domains (owning fantastic domains like GolfCourses.com and Hockey.com), they do content (a ton of writers/editors), and they do local search (TrueLocal). Take my company, giantize it by a factor of roughly 15, and you have GeoSign

As a follow up Frank has an interview with Tim Nye, GeoSign founder.

This likely won’t make the news on sites like TechCrunch or Read/Write, but this is a significant investment. GeoSign is a strong company, claiming over 35 million unique visitors a month. And since I highly doubt they gave up more than 50%, we can say that this investment values the company at over $300,000,000. In seven years, Tim has taken the company from nothing to such a valuation. Kudos to that success.

I can only guess what they are going to do with that money.

I’m an avid commentator. I don’t really subscribe to a blog unless I comment on it.

There are many kinds of commentators. Some are found everywhere. Others are rare. I have observed them for years, and have summarized my learnings below:

Narcissistic bastard - Bastard is just the beginning. This person doesn’t care what you posted about. The only point was to vaguely connect their website to the subject matter of the original post. Usually talks a lot, and spews out marketing rhetoric, tries to impress with some big numbers, and then suggest you ‘check us out at xxxxxxxxxxxxx.’ The worst offender I have seen is Mr. Kevin L of MerchantCircle. I was tracking about a dozen different posts when InsiderPages was acquired, read about another 20, and almost every single one had a comment by Kevin L. You can see his work here, here, here, here, and so forth. It consisted of him saying how no one cares about the business-owners (marketing rhetoric), mentions 90k merchants ’signed up’ (trying to impress us with big numbers), then suggests you check out their site. You can read my linked post about some truth behind their numbers.

Scrambled brains - marked by lots and lots of text. Hitting ‘Enter’ twice to create paragraphs is the equivalent of kryptonite to such a commentator. Often comments about stuff that has nothing to do with the original post. ‘In my opinion …’ is a favorite phrase.

Link Whore - consists of few words + link to their site. The super-strain (just like a virus) goes for glory, usually throwing in two to four links. Commonly found at TechCrunch.

Trackback Machine - never actually bothers to comment. Uses the trackback like a shotgun. Gibberish is the most comfortable writing style for such a person.

The Blog Owner who replies by editing a comment - Extremely rare, I have seen one blogger that does this in the wild. Observe this post where both of my comments were edited with an ‘—-Answer—-’. I can only guess that the blog poster was as annoyed as I was by TypePad’s retarded captcha.

The Cheerleader - 99% of comments involve ‘great post’ or a synonymous statement. Common variants are ‘nice work’, ‘well written’, ‘thoughtful post’. The exclamation mark is this person’s best friend. The more, the merrier.

The Troll - marked by jealousy, posts anything contrarian to the original blogger. Revels in pointing out mistakes. Cries and dies a little bit inside when his contrarian viewpoint turns out to be wrong.

The Blowhard Fanatic - Posts a comment no matter what. Desperate plea for attention. The post could consist of ‘I have nothing to say’ and still the fanatic would still comment. This type of person is usually a 2-in-1, combining both Cheerleader and Blowhard styles into one.

The Prepubescent - can be spotted due to lack of punctuation/grammar, and/or excessive use of ! and/or ? Other common words used include ‘ur’ and ‘kewl’. Run-ons are a dead give-away. Actual pre-pubescence is optional. Commonly found congregated at celebrity/fashion blogs.

Mr. Two Cents - every comment refers to the addition of his ‘two cents’. Often times uses the phrase “… to add my own .02 cents” not realizing that he actually said $0.0002.

Intelligent - A dying breed, the Intelligent commentator is though provoking and gracious. I would cite myself as an example, but that should be obvious

These are not single entities - they often mix and match. A Cheerleader mixed with a Blowhard is a common occurence. More rare (but far more interesting) is the combination of a Cheerleader, a Blowhard, and a Troll. In such a situation, the person not only loves the blogger and cheers the blogger on, but also tries to prove his own merit by trying to point out the teeniest mistakes the blogger made. The solution: ban the nutcase.

Any I miss?

I’ve bought dozens of sites. From smallish ($250) to largish ($xx,xxx) one of the first pains we go through is - what to do with the site.

One thing I hate about PHP is how simple it is. If you thought BASIC was easy, PHP is even simpler. It makes complex things so simple anyone can do it.

And to a certain degree, that is a problem. I’ve seen code mangled as if a werewolf attacked it. Horrible SQL calls that could easily be sped up 100%. Ugly ugly magic quotes and global variable usage that made me sick. Form mails that didn’t do a single check (so easily exploited by spammers).

So every time, we have had to re-write. Sure there are some damn good coders out there. But 90% of amateur programmers, having had no formal learning, and only a simplistic tutorial to base their knowledge on, write some horrendous crap

Pros:

• Can write the code more efficiently.
• Can write SQL interaction more efficiently (even the usage of indexes is a foreign concept to many.
• Proper separation of code and appearance.
• Proper data handling. All input is properly cleansed, all data is stored as UTF-8, etc.
• Easier to integrate later on.
• Easier to manage (both administrative and programming).
• Ease of mind.

Cons:

• Costs money.
• Takes time.

In the end, the only thing I care about is my ease of mind.

There is more to buying a site than just transferring over cash. People often forget that.

I’m actually using the weekend as two days of break from work. It was one of the toughest things I have done (honestly, the computer keeps calling my name out), but it has done wonders for my productivity.

It is easy to fall into the trap of equating productivity with time-spent working. Too many people like me (running a business) fall into the trap. Its hard to get out of it, but worth it.

Not that I let up on my brain. I read. I did Sudoku. I played games. I just used it in different ways.

FTP. MySQL. HTTP. LOCALHOST. The internet is confusing. For all the talk about how easy WordPress (and others) are easy to install, that only applies to people that know nonsensical words such as FTP and MySQL.

Back when we were still affiliated with Evo-Dev (a disaster story is for another day), we realized that installing web software isn’t a simple process (wth is CHMOD?). So we offered free installation. But installation turn-around wasn’t instantaneous - the customer still had to wait on us). So we created (this is two years ago) an AJAX Web Installer.

The steps:

1. User is told that he/she must supply us with FTP server address, login information, and MySQL server address, login information. Ask your host for that (there is a big difference between getting FTP information and actually having to FTP files)
2. User was then asked to select what product (evoTopsites, evoTopsites Pro, evoArticles)
3. If a paid product, user’s login was cross-referenced with paid product. If no info, asked that user login first.
4. We asked for necessary FTP and MySQL information.
5. We did an FTP connection. We then asked user what folder he wanted to install to, and gave examples (eg /articles/, /topsites/)
6. Files were uploaded (complete with a status indicator). Once files were uploaded, other necessary operations were performed (chmodding files, etc).
7. User was told that the software was successfully uploaded to his/her server, and would you kindly click to complete installation.

The user was then forwarded to the setup script, where the installation was completed.

Unfortunately, this never saw the light of day. It wasn’t cheap to develop, but it was awesome (worked on IE, FF, Opera, and Safari). It was quite fast (we had bought bandwidth directly from Internap), was straightforward, and our beta testers loved it. Errors were dealt with beautifully (incorrect FTP information, incorrect MySQL information, cannot chmod files, etc).

And yet I see nothing like this for any popular script out there. I guess I should get it re-created (that code went when Evo-Dev split off from us).

UPDATE: March 9 - People seem to think I’m just jumping on the AJAX bandwagon, when I’ve written about keeping AJAX in perspective (over a year ago) and about how web 2.0 is mostly crap (almost a year ago).

But in this application, AJAX makes sense.

To think it through, here are some steps:
1. User selects product
2. User inputs information (FTP, MySQL)
3. User either lets it auto-install or chooses a directory
4. Files are uploaded and configured.
5. User is forwarded to the installation script.

Think of #2, #3, or #4 in a non-AJAX manner. A horrible user-interface. I put in the information, and you make me reload the page. Then I want to choose a directory - are you going to reload the page every time? (We had a dynamic folder viewer which let you browse like a normal FTP client). When uploading files, is the user just going to wait around while you upload 10 megs?

No no and no.

User puts in FTP information, you want to show them (using AJAX) the connection in progress (resolving DNS, connecting, putting in password, etc)
User wants to select a directory, you let them browse dynamically.
User waits for files to upload, you want to dynamically notify them. Eg: “5 of 232 files uploaded (0.42/24.1 megs). ETA left: 5:30 minutes”

The AJAX-version would be far superior than the non-AJAX version.

You read right. When it comes to commenting on blogs, I only bring the A+ thoughts (more about different commenting personas later). And yet adding a comment is becoming more and more annoying.

I don’t always agree with Matt of WordPress, but I have to say his Askimet product is top-notch. I refuse to subscribe to any blog that doesn’t let you comment. At least, if it claims to be a blog. But with all the spam abound these days (we get hammered over at both Blog Top Sites and Blog Flux), keeping comments clean can be tough. And Askimet is an absolute godsend for that.

And so I have decided I hate Typepad. The stupid service makes me enter a captcha every time. Not only is the captcha on a different page (who does that?), but they make me fill out the captcha every damn time. You would think that after commenting over a dozen times without a single comment deleted, they would have the intelligence to add 1+1+1=3 and figure out that same IP, same email, same username = okay person, don’t hassle him. You would imagine with their ‘large-company approach’ they could have a programmer figure out making commenting easier.

I want to comment. But pissing me off (because that is what you are doing, purposefully or not) doesn’t help me.

As an aside, I just came across a weird commenting habit. The blogger, instead of adding his own comment and referring to individual commentators with an @xxx, actually edits the original comment with an ‘—Answer—’. This is rather odd - has anyone else ever come across such a habit? It bugs me because it ‘breaks’ Commentful, so I don’t know if my comment has been replied to or not.

Such odd behaviour.

I never understand people who try to build a large web-presence on the back of a $7.99 hosting plan. The same people that will spend 10x that on lattes in a month.

What I do find amusing is when people claim that hosting fees are a negligent part of a web-business. Ugh. Hosting is one of the nastiest expenses I have come across. I started off from a virtual host back in 1997, graduated to a Cobalt RaQ in 2000, upped to my first colo server in 2002, and last year setup our own rack. Things to consider:

• Servers - We colocated, so we built our own servers. We purchased a dozen servers with dual dual-core Opteron 265s, 4 gigs of ram, and 2×73 GB HDs. We upgraded one of the servers to have 16 gigs of ram and 8×73 gb HDs (to be used as a database server).
• Router - Needed to direct our traffic. Later on we can connect directly to carriers without having to go through our current host.
• Firewall - Getting DDoSed is old hat. We get a DoS attack roughly once every 6-8 weeks. The reasons vary, from a jilted webmaster to an angry competitor. While we never had the pleasure, one of my friends once had a competitor write a worm that DDoSed his site. It wasn’t pretty - he peaked at roughly 1500+ mbit/s
• Power - Power ain’t cheap. The most common circuit is 20 amps. We suck enough juice that we need two circuits. When setting up our servers, we put them all in an infinite loop to see the max amount of power each server would suck.
• APC - Servers go down. Act of God, damn script kiddies, or just Apache going bonkers, they do go down. You need a way of resetting them without having to call in your host. You can get an APC that either takes up 1u or one that hangs on the side (taking up no server space).
• Cost of Rack - You are basically ‘renting space’ from a host.
• Bandwidth - This ain’t ev1 here folks. You need to be concerned about two things - throughput (amount of data transferred per second) and carrier (who you are connected to). The more carriers, the faster your site will load, but the more expensive it is.
• Console / KVM - A console/KVM allows one to administer a server as if you are there yourself. Using our console, we can see our server boot up through the BIOS and so forth (basically the server has a serial output that connects to the console. You then connect to the console, letting you control the server as if your keyboard was connected directly to it). Unless you want to send your server admin every time there is a problem, a console is a requirement.
• Phone line (optional) Our APC and console units have a telephone line connected to them. In case of emergency, we can actually dial into our setup and manipulate directly.
• Spares - HDs, RAM, etc. - Computer hardware dies. And nothing beats up on computer hardware like the web. RAM will die. A hard disk will die. You better be ready.
• Server Admin - Sort of an obvious one, but something many miss. Your job is to run a business, not to worry about how the servers are doing.
• Functions - In our current setup, we have 10 web servers, one database server, and one ‘monitoring’ server. The monitoring server does mail, it records information on all servers, it does DNS lookups, and so forth. Having one server that did everything (web, mail, SQL, DNS) was nice when you begin, but you need to specialize as you scale. As our sites grow, we will add other servers (for stuff such as memcached, etc)
• Backups - We backup every day to a separate server. We also backup once a week to an off-site server. Once a month DVD burn. This is your livelihood - screw ups happen all the damn time. Make sure you protect yourself.
• Insurance (depends) - If a fire breaks out, who is gonna cover the cost of hardware? Some hosts provide for it, some don’t. Ask.

Fun ain’t it?