Aaron Says Hey

Hello Friends,

I figure I'd take a minute to introduce myself. 

My name is Aaron (also known as BigA on a few forums).  I work full time as a web developer for one of the largest insurance companies in our line.  I develop for 5 different states using the LAMP stack.  I also have a few hobby sites (see my profile) and a side business as well.

I look forward to seeing whats going on here at webdigity and putting in my two cents when needed... and sometimes when its not

Thanks all and hope to hear from you soon.

-aaron

Hello Aaron,
welcome to webdigity,
hope you enjoy your stay

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Welcome (again) Aaron, which other forums are you a member?

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Aaron welcome aboard. Hope you like our community

Hey - um - I used to be a member of the old hackingzone.org group back in the day, specialized in the web vuln' area... now most members are at hackers.mu.  Also webproworld, criticalsecurity.net, standardshift.com.  I actually could go on for a long time - I'm trying to find my place to fit in.  I don't like the "hacking" named boards much anymore because too many script kiddies - but the other places are usually less technical.  I'm trying to find my middle ground.

Thanks for the hellos!

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Hey - um - I used to be a member of the old hackingzone.org group back in the day, specialized in the web vuln' area... now most members are at hackers.mu.  Also webproworld, criticalsecurity.net, standardshift.com.  I actually could go on for a long time - I'm trying to find my place to fit in.  I don't like the "hacking" named boards much anymore because too many script kiddies - but the other places are usually less technical.  I'm trying to find my middle ground.

Thanks for the hellos!

lol never heard this names
I thought you're a member at DP, phpbuilder, sitepoiont or devshed ...

I work PHP all day and all night.  I really like to go more back to my roots in security and networking when I have the chance

Oh - and standardshift - I just love my rx-8.  hahah.

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rx8? So you like fast cars too? That's another common thing we have

BTW from what you say, I suppose you are a good developer. If you have some time I would love to have your comments - or suggestions - on my open source project (phpuserclass.com)

You know Nikolas, I think thats where I found webdiggity from - your php user class script.  I was searching for something on securing user's privledges by determining their permissions based on PHP's bitwise functions.  (ie, normal user is 1, staff is 2, super staff is 4, admin is 8... using & and | combinations to determine if this user could access this place)...

Is there anything in particular you'd like me to do?  I'm always scared to poke my nose into open source stuff and suggest things - its very hard to make sure to suggest things - without sounding overbearing or like a jerk, you know?

And yes - I like fast cars.  Cept - my winter car is a VW rabbit. hahahhaha

-aaron

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Hi Nick does your class has user levels? I think he found my classs (access_user) hehe...

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It is easy to have user levels in the class. In general my main purpose is to have a flexible class. For instance you can use it in a project that already has users.

Aaron, I think the next step for the class is to make the cookie flexible too. I mean make the cookie format custom, so a programmer will be able to use his wordpress users (that is possible allready) with the script using the same cookie with WP.

Also I think we have to add a class extension to hold session data in database (to know how many users are online, and what they do in your site)

Would you like to code anything of these?

I would be willing to code up something for the session storage - I've done that before.  Why don't you PM me with the requirements.

hello aaron welcome to this forum!

aaron_s I can actually equally pick your brain after checking out http://www.jemdiary.com .  Questions like:

How did you initially market your site?
How long did it take you to reach 100 / 1000 users?
How well do you do with Adsense monthly?

I've started a very niche social network and have the ability to pretty much duplicate it across other niche markets and plan to do so.  The initial waiting for search engines to pick up the site for helpful keyword terms is of course causing me to be impatient.  Getting users to the specific niche is something i'm finding somewhat challenging still.

Initially marketing the site was unique.  I've always wanted a diary website where I could write my stuff, know I owned it, and then add the features I wanted.  I did not care if anyone else used it - or if I made any money.  Because of that, it was a lot slower.  I let it spread word of mouth, the first 20 people were or are new - friends of mine - that i know in real life - or at least over the telephone.  From then on, I just put it in more signatures, and made some SEO changes.  Afer that, I made key postings and links, and then started a few viral diaries - such as diary of a vampire http://jemdiary.com/read/diary_of_a_vampire/1 - a short 30 day story I wrote... and that brought a lot of people in.

first 100 was in the first 2 years, first 1000 wasn't until like 4 years later.  The site has been around in one incarnation or another since 2001.  Its more of my place to test out things - in a live environment - for usage in my real websites

Adsense: I made more with text-link-ads

If you happen to see anything I could change to make it show up better or use diff keywords, let me know.  I have targetted 'free online diary' - and show pretty well in a lot of indexes for that.

Good morning aaron_s,

Thanks for sharing about the site and your success.  I do hope that mine will grow a little faster than that and that my Adsense will bring in a decent amount of money since i'm spending a decent amount of it getting it improved upon.

One suggestion I'd make is to improve upon your Page Not Found / 404 page.  You have a link going back to your home page at the top left that is extremely small but why not target some additional pages that a user... or search engine should be visiting?

You have about 3,600 pages indexed in Google however according to SEODigger you only really rank for about 36 keywords.  That is kind of painful to see considering how well Google likes your site.  There are a few things I might consider doing depending on how you believe your visitors will interact:

#1.  Allow them to give each post tags that describe the entry.
#2.  Use those tags to automatically define your metas so that every page of your site uses different titles, desc and keywords
- Title: $UserName's online Dairy Powered by $Jem...
(Strip out crap like " in titles)
- Desc: $UserName's online dairy entry.  $Post Name - $Tag1, $Tag2
(Strip out crap like " in Desc's)
- Keywords: $Tag1, $Tag2 else $default

This is it for now.  Gotta jet to work.

Very helpful suggestions.  I'll make sure to copy them over to my google notebook for future enhancements

Like I said, this is definitely my playground - places to work on my skills.  I do have a few other playground websites (obviously ...) and the rest of my work is behind closed doors - so a lot less chances to "mess around". 

have a good one.
-aaron

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