The Weber Report

Status: This week will be mostly devoted to brainstorming and starting the Blog Directory and figuring out all that we want to do.

I can't really give away much information, but I had a good long meeting with our CEO today about exactly what it is that the Directory should achieve.  We came up with some great goals and I'm honestly excited to see where the project is headed.

I will also spend a good deal of time preparing everything for my vaction next week.  I am hoping it won't interrupt anything around here while I'm gone.  I don't think any problems should arise… but you never know.

Status: I have a myriad of small projects to finish up and work on this week.  I also plan on beginning the Blog Directory project.

I'm looking forward to this next project.  It's going to be really challenging, but very unique and I know it's going to end up owning all the blog directories that exist out there on the web.  We have a great group of people here and I guarantee our brain-storming session will help exponentially with where we are headed with this.

Amazingly, our Alexa rank (daily average) keeps plummeting, which is good news since we've been getting near 5,000!  Simply incredible.  Meanwhile, my site continues to have large amounts of traffic, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Status:  I am continuing/finishing up my work on the Template Manual this week and continuing work on the upgrade system (mainly testing).

Although daunting, I will soon complete the Template Manual which will eventually be located on the Help Blog, my baby.  This thing wasn't as massive a project as the User Manual, but man, it sure is wearing me out.  It's funny how I can spend weeks/months on a single project planning, coding, testing and enjoy every minute of it… but put me to work designing the manual for all that work and it really tests me.  I guess I'm just picky.. or maybe just whiney?

Also, the testing and finishing touches of the upgrade system are getting very close.  We are having a few minor issues with some things, but since the system is handling our customers hard-earned money, we feel it's worth it to take the extra time to ensure it's secure, accurate, and working flawlessly.

Very Exciting News:
On a more exciting side note, last week we disovered Eponym has it's initial Google Page Rank of 5/10.  Now that may sound low (like a F) and you may not even know what Page Rank is, but trust me when I say, that is very good for an initial ranking.  Also, our Alexa Rank has been consistently spiking below 10,000 (go Here to see it)… which is also incredible considering we've only been launched for just a little over a month now.  More importantly to me personally (point of limited pride), http://dustin.eponym.com is bringing in 4% of our gross traffic according to Alexa.. Thanks to You, my audience!

p.s. – If you want to help Eponym expand and grow and want to see my site succeed further, download the Alexa Toolbar by clicking here and keep it installed.  If you have Firefox (and you should by now), get the Search Status extension instead.  I know it's hokie to promote yourself like that, but so what.. I'm hokie.

Status: Testing Upgrades System & Building Template Manual.

This week, I will be building the Eponym Template Manual, which is a guide to using custom templates to make your Eponym blog unique and yours alone.  It should be helpful to the more advanced users out there wanting an edge on other bloggers.  Yes, it's another extremely large project for me… this thing is going to be really extensive.

I will also help test the upgrade system out.  With any luck, we should be able to get the upgrades finished up this week and get it rolled out soon thereafter. 

Due to some minor issues, we decided to hold back on the launch of the FAQ & the Support Form until the upgrade system is launched. 

Eponym is still doing really well and we are pleased with how it's running, the number of users we have, and the quality of the blogs we have.  If you want to see a few examples, go to the Eponym Homepage and check out the Top Blogs! section on the right for a list of our top ten blogs.

Status: Testing Support/Contact Form & additional work on internal efforts.

The Support Form is finally complete.  I'm proud of it, it works really well and is slick in both it's purpose and execution (if I have to say so myself, humbly of course).  I hope testing doesn't find too many holes, lol.  I'm also finishing up our FAQ section that will help people with questions we feel are really important (and commonly asked).

The rest of this week will be focused on some internal projects my boss gave me long before Eponym went live.  I think I can complete most of them by mid-week.

Expect the Support form to be up sometime Thursday or Friday. (now delayed)

Status: Setting up the Help Blog to make it better organized, themed, & setting up a Contact Form for Eponym.

Now that the User Manual & Getting Started Guide have been completely tested, they've been brought live and I'm finishing up making the Help Blog all pretty and easy to use.  When that is over, I will begin work on a Support/Contact form that will really help people resolve problems. 

The upgrades option is near testing and quickly approaching the point at which it will be live.  I'm very confident in the system and excited to see it up and working.  I think we'll have a rush of people to sign up for the upgraded blogs, we sorta have a line already.

Keep your eye out for new changes!

Status: STILL working on the User Manual and Getting Started Guide!

WOW, so this project was a lot larger than I thought it would be.  When I actually started tallying up everything, with the screen-shots, all the pages, all the links between them… it really adds up.

However, I can honestly say that I feel like the User Manual covers most everything in-depth enough that they shouldn't need help from anyone to do anything they might want.  That's quite a statement, but I think it's valid and true. 

This being true means I'm going to have to recruit everyone in the entire building to help me test this Manual though, it's deceptively huge and there are way too many links for me to get it fully tested anytime within this week.

Despite the time needed, it will still be up by the end of this week.  So, if you are really dying for some help, it's coming!

Anyways, I better get back to it.

Status: Looks like I'll be spending the next week or so putting together our User Manual. 

With all that has been going on with the launch, it's been tough to have the time to really get this part done.  Despite the time constraints, it's definitely a very important project that needs completed. 

There are already more than 500 blogs in the system, and we've started to get a trickle of questions from the technical to the basic.  I'll be the first to admit that Eponym is extremely powerful and there are a lot of options, so help is an obvious need.

I think when I finish the User Manual, I'll work on a Getting Started Guide for all the beginners, that'll probably help some too.

Sigh, so much to do, so little time…

Status: I've been working and will continue to be working on the Eponym back-end.

My biggest project right now is the back-end to the Eponym of the Day & Blog of the Day portions of the Eponym main page.  It may look simple enough, but the GUI that our writers use to add the daily eponyms & blogs is fairly daunting.  Tying that in with our database server and other servers is easy compared to the error testing that I've been going through.   It is so challenging to get user interfaces to gracefully handle users making mistakes and any of the other random errors that inevitably occur. 

In the end though, it will be extremely easy for any non-technical user to be able to add content to these two components.  The sad part is, no one outside of the company will ever see my masterpiece, just the data it creates.
Oh well, I'm still proud of it.

My fellow programmer, Jim, has been showing me Ruby on Rails this week and that seems to have some amazing promise.  So, now I just need to learn Ruby, Perl, and understand AJAX better.. then I'll be happy, lol.

Status: It seems as though this week will be devoted to live testing of Eponym & Eponym Search to make sure everything is running correctly. 

We went ahead and launched everything and we already are starting to see quite a few blogs up and running.  We haven't had any major problems yet.. which is good, but sorta scary because something always has to go wrong.  Since we really did our homework with this one, perhaps this will be the exception to the rule?

So basically, this week will be spent determining if we have any problems (none yet) and quickly fixing any that come up.  I'm also working on a few internal projects for the company for various reasons. 

 This is the first post on my new web site which I hope to soon expand and find ways to entertain and keep you all coming back!

My site, accessed via http://dustin.hopto.org, http://dustin.eponym.com, & most importantly http://www.dustinweber.com, is being hosted by our very own blogging system collectively known as Eponym.

There is a huge amount of effort that went into this project, our latest here, and I contributed to the project in varying ways and degrees.  If you have ever wanted your own blog, photo-journal, or other such web-site, now is your oppurtunity to get one for FREE and I guarantee you will be satisfied!   We have worked very hard to make the process easy for novices while still possessing amazingly advanced features for those that prefer to tinker and adjust.

Please go to http://www.Eponym.com to read all about it and sign up!

Also, please tell your friends, family, acquaintances, etc.. and any one else that might be interested.  The more blogs we get signed up, the better we will be better to provide new and unique tools to you all!