Tag: website Posts

One of the first things I did when I committed myself to travelling around the world was to set up a blog. Indeed, I recently just assisted two other people in getting theirs up, one for a trip around the world, and one for a yearly RV trip down to Arizona. This post will give you easy instructions for how to set up a blog using WordPress. Part of the motivation I find with most people is the desire to share some of their experiences, both positive and negative, with others. Since so much of travel research is done these days via the Internet, the desire for most people to contribute to that wealth of information during their own trip is great. Using WordPress WordPress is one of the most popular blogging ‘engines’ powering the internet today. If you visit a website that looks like a typical blog, then chances […]

I’ve recently been optimizing a few different WordPress websites, and wanted to share with everyone some of the easy ways to speed up your WordPress website. Some of these tips are intended for server administrators and assume that you have root access to your server and/or cPanel/WHM (if you’re using cPanel). Other tips are intended for any WordPress website administrator. This article has 5 different tips for how to speed up your WordPress website. If you currently don’t have a WordPress website but are considering setting one up, here is information on how to setup a WordPress blog. Install a Caching Plugin Applies To: WordPress Administators Whenever a user views your website on a default WordPress installation, your webserver, which is often a program called Apache, will load all the PHP scripts for WordPress, compile them, execute the scripts, access all your content in the MySQL database, and ultimately send […]

While I’ve tried off and on to make a little money from my website over the years, it’s never been something that was really important to me, primarily because I have another full time job that makes me more than enough money. Another reason is that I personally am not a huge fan of most advertising, as I find a lot of it to be intrusive. That said, travelling around the world and writing about it isn’t cheap. I likely spend anywhere from $6,000 a year or so on plane tickets, and lots of other money on tourist attractions, subway tickets, bus rides, and of course restaurants and pubs. Some of those expenses would exist if I were back home as well, but some of them are exclusive to travelling. I know a few travel bloggers who manage to get sponsored trips to various places and as a result have […]

One of my goals over the holidays was to rework my personal website. I actually really liked the previous theme, but over the course of the last six months or so have received numerous emails from people that either a) didn’t like the black background or b) didn’t like the font usage and sizes (granted, I actually like really tiny fonts, which isn’t that great from a usability perspective). I sat down in front of the TV tonight at around 9pm and decided to try and hack something out that would make it easier for that group of people, while also allowing me to make a few improvements with regards to navigation and site layout. A couple of key changes: I’ve increased the width of the main content from about 500 pixels to about 620 pixels, mainly so that I can start showcasing larger images from my portfolio I’ve added […]

It’s been about three days since I launched the new site, and I’ve had some great feedback regarding it (thanks everyone). I’ve made a few small tweaks based on some comments, so hopefully it’s a bit better. I’ve been watching my traffic, and so far I’ve consistently about double the traffic (actually, a tad bit more) since launching. I’m sure part of that is a transient contribution from launching a new site and Twittering about it, but I’m fairly certain the traffic will definitely go up, since there’s now a lot more to do here now (specifically in the photography section). I’m also tracking bounce rate, and I’m hoping that goes down significantly for the same reasons. I generally don’t care that much about traffic, but as a metric for gauging the effectiveness of a new design and/or content change, I think it’s decent enough. I’ve slowly been tinkering away […]

I was catching up on Tony’s site tonight and stumbled across this photo of Tony from 2006. Apparently he ended up on Hot Chicks With Douche Bags back then, which I think is awesome. Tony spends his days injecting massive amounts of awesome into the LA Times as the head of their 40-some odd blogs, and his nights attending cool music and social events in Los Angeles, so I think it’s pretty funny he’d end up there. But hey, getting your photo taken with a cute girl is always a good thing. I hung out with Tony for New Year’s out in Toronto last year, and we had a lot of fun drinking beer and sitting around watching me spill Chinese food on myself at 2am. I also was down in Los Angeles hanging out with Tony at some raunchy North Hollywood place back in June, which was pretty awesome […]

Well, it was an interesting day in the blogosphere, one that I’m thankful is over. Tonight I was sitting at home debating drinking myself into a coma when Rebecca pinged me online and said I should come over for wine. I was pretty comfy in my flannel pants and briefly debated staying at home. But since I really needed a few drinks, I decided to head over as I was, flannel pants and all. So for the last few hours I’ve been sitting on Rebecca and John’s couch in my flannel pants with a big-ass afghan draped over me. It was pretty much exactly what I needed tonight (although I’m looking forward to a nice long shower when I get back home). If you poke around the site a bit more, you’ll see a few more changes I hacked out tonight. The recent comments are back, although I’ve scaled them […]

I set up a small photography website over at photography.duanestorey.com a while ago. I think I’m going to over haul it this weekend and make it a bit better. I also want to get a domain name for it and make it a proper stand-alone site. If anyone has any ideas for a cool name for a photography site, fire me off an email. I’ve been trying to come up with west-coast oriented names, but so far no go. I’ll give a free 8×12 print and a blog entry on the new site for the person that picks the winner! Thanks!

As I mentioned yesterday, I have launched a photography website at photography.duanestorey.com. I’m going to give the first 20 people who link to it with a small write-up a free 8×12 of their choosing from the galleries. So, if you’re interested, do a quick blog entry and then post a comment here. Send me an email with which one you want and where you want it sent to, and I’ll take care of the rest. Thanks everyone. ** UPDATE – Thanks to everyone for linking. With the emails and comments here I’ve received, I’m pretty sure I have more than 20. So while I appreciate all incoming links should you choose to write about it, the original 20 photos are already allocated to people. Thanks everyone!

One of the first things I wanted to do after getting back from my vacation was to finally put together an online place for people to buy a few prints of some of my better shots. I’m not entirely sure I’ll make a dime, but lots of people have asked me if I sold some of my city shots, so now I can finally say that I do. If you want to check some of them out, you can check out photography.duanestorey.com. If you have a blog and want to help advertise, that would be awesome. I’ve put on some google adwords, so if anyone does a search for Vancouver specific photos, I should start coming up now. Since today was the first day I received a paycheck for taking photos, and also the day I’ve launched a site dedicated to selling prints, it’s obviously a pretty pivotal moment. Thanks […]