Archive for the ‘Wiz Stuff’ Category

For many years now I have been creating custom websites, eBay listing templates, About Me pages, and other HTML-coded pages for a variety of uses. From single listing templates, custom template filler forms, full eBay identity packages, to websites of every sort, working with individuals and other web hosting companies I have created thousands of web documents over the years.

I can create custom a listing template template to match your existing WordPress (or other) website or a custom WordPress theme to match your existing eBay store or listing template. Or I can create an entire multi-venue online identity package.

WAHMS Helper – Premium Coffee Roasters – Vintage Home Arts

I would be pleased to quote on your specific needs for a WordPress website, listing template, e-commerce identity package, custom website, or other web pages.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion on various forums about the power of being part of a venue or community vs. having a stand-alone website. Often the thrust of the comments seems to be that a site like eBay is important because they bring millions of people to the site daily so your items will be seen, whereas having your own website leaves you out in the cold, all alone to find for yourself.

I beg to differ. There are advantages to communities and venues if they provide a way for your listings to be found easily by visitors but many don’t. Often venues are more about getting new sellers (their customers) to the site and less about providing a way for you to be found. I’ve seen venues and so-called community sites that have no mechanism for displaying a list of sellers or for searching for a seller by name, business name, or email address — all of these are important ways a seller could be found.

In particular, for most categories these days, eBay has so many listings and their search is so skewed in favor of key sellers (read “big”) that your listings are often never seen. It doesn’t matter how many visitors a site has in total. What matters to YOU is how many people actually see YOUR listing(s). Put a counter on your eBay listings and see how many hits you get. No one has have shown me a listing with a million or more viewers, or even close to that. Most listings are lucky if they get 100 hits. Sixty million, or whatever the daily traffic number is at eBay is meaningless.

So where do websites come in. Well, first of all, today’s websites are more affordable and offer many more features and functions. WordPress, my personal favorite, is a powerful, feature-rich, content management system for creating both information and e-commerce websites. But traditionally having your own website has meant being out there all alone. And that means little or no traffic.

Not any more. WordPress is an excellent base from which to build an Internet presence. It is very SEO friendly right out of the box and extremely easy to extend for top notch SEO response with an array of excellent plug-ins for the purpose.

But you can go one step further. Find a good, niche market, venue or community site that supports, and promotes, website categories and will help put your site on the map. Harness the power of a like-minded, product specific, group of sites to gain extended exposure and better placement in the search engine return pages (SERPs).

With the right package you can do better — significantly better — than you have done on eBay, and you can do it cheaper — significantly cheaper — than you have likely been paying for listings that haven’t been selling.

I’m interested in hearing from people who are interested in an affordable website that is easy to use and will be part of a niche-market or merchandise-specific community of sites.

Dufferin County’s Premier Bulletin Board System

AMBASSADOR BOARD

A Wildcat! BBS

For six years AMBASSADOR BOARD was Dufferin County’s premier BBS — and the longest running 24 hour board, too! But sadly, in January of 1996, AMBASSADOR BOARD was closed permanently, primarily due to financial and time-contraint considerations.

In it’s hey day it sported five local lines, extended area lines including Flesherton, Dundalk, Feversham, Grand Valley, Orangeville, Caledon, Caledon East, Palgrave, Bolton, Castlemore, Victoria, Brampton, Malton, Woodbridge and the entire 416-metro Toronto dialing area — not bad for a tiny BBS in the little town of Shelburne, Ontario, Canada.

The ‘bass grew to a regular user base of over 1000 and offered over 200 doors (most registered!), over 8000 files on-line (HD) as well as 52 CDs serviced via ROMDOOR database and two CD drives. Puny by today’s standards for even the smallest ISP, but considering this was a time when hard drives cost more than a dollar per megabyte and single speed CD drives were over $400 a pop, it wasn’t too shabby.

Local mail was augmented by echo mail from NANet, WildNET, MSI SupportNET as well as UseNET NewsGroups and Internet e-mail via UUCP using Mustang Software’s powerful wcGATE suite. A satellite feed via Planet Connect guaranteed fresh files and up-to-date news feeds daily.

There were no upload:download ratios, file limits or post:call ratios. Users were free to use their time as they saw fit. For some strange reason the board was never beset by file-base plunderers nor were message conferences bereft of mail. It seems that if you treat callers like human beings they will participate openly and often! The ‘bass set the standard of excellence for others to follow. And many did. Many bulletin boards grew up in the area as would-be SysOps who had cut there BBS teeth at the ‘bass foraged out into new territory and created such virtual worlds as Megabyte, Cat!acombs, Hotel California, AOU, and others. Several of these boards continued to operate successfully for several months after the ‘bass was closed. The last one, Cat!acombs, closed it’s electronic doors for the last time in October of 1999.

AMBASSADOR BOARD was a fun place to visit and according to most callers the best BBS they had found. Calls came from as far away as Madrid, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Dalas, Miami, Melbourne and Igloolik! Many regular users were with us for the entire six years.

Over the years five Co-SysOps shared with Steve in the running of the ‘bass. A special thanks to Ed Howard, Bill Pooley, Don Cortell, Rob Brown and Paul Curtis. Callers and SysOps both will miss the ‘bass!

Maybe someday there will be an AMBASSADOR II…