Thursday 30 April 2009

I'm going away!

This weekend I'm off to see friends. I know the company will be great, the food will be fab and the drinks will be flowing all weekend, Can't wait!

I think we might rock out over the weekend, maybe do a little shopping and if we are really lucky the sun will shine upon us and we shall turn into beautiful glowing ladies, however my friend may well take on a more lobster type appearance.lol

I would like to think that come Tuesday all the website problems will be sorted and we shall start the next mission of many. I could win the lottery this weekend, should this be the case, I think I shall take myself, kids, partner and my winning to a remote Island, wifi free and live a peaceful and happy life, like the Robinson's. I know this would mean no more blogs from me update people on my new life, but at least you would know I was happy.........

Saturday 25 April 2009

Why are emails such a pain sometimes?

We are still going bonkers over the emails, not bonkers at the website developers, but bonkers/Gaga because some search engines like Yahoo mail, BT and a few others don't seem to like us for some reason. You get a mail, but it will go into your spam, or you get an email but no logo. Things haven't changed. This isn't down to the website developer, he's working hard to try and sort the problem, it's just the servers, why isn't life ever simple?

I've worked all day today, giving up a windy, wet, and cold Saturday to work on SEO, what a socially exciting life I have. Tomorrow being Sunday, a day of rest, I think that's just what I shall be doing, before another busy week begins.

I plan to visit my parents tomorrow, they don't know it yet, but I'm sure they will love the experience. Dad has already been complaining about his ears bleeding through all the phone calls from me today, but in defence, There was a time when he was doing it to me, great how role reversal comes around and bites us on the bottom! I have been keeping him informed of my progress today, and making demands for money, to which I'm still waiting for!

I'm hoping by Tuesday if not sooner I shall be able to give a link to the website and you can have a look, register and even refer a friend or two. Or you might hate it, and never go there again.

Thursday 23 April 2009

Mails

We are nearly there; dealgrabba pre launch website will soon go live. The only reason we are being held up is due to our emails. We are currently having problems with the header and footer, the layout and a delay in receiving them. This however only seems to be a problem with certain providers. Outlook and outlook express seem to be fine; however BT and Yahoo really seem to want to P us around!

I'm sure the website developer now has indentation marks on his forehead, due to hitting the PC monitor with frustration. I know I would be, if I were in his shoes. We plan to do more testing tonight, and if all else fails, some emails won't have headers on them. Not something we want to do, but we would rather people got a mail, than nothing at all.

Not much else to report, I'm still going through Meta Data, which is oh so much fun. Will let you know more tomorrow, tra for now.

Tuesday 21 April 2009

A new look

As you can see the blog layout has changed. After sorting out the logo, I didn't think the green went well, so I changed the template. I'm going to stay with this look now, to follow suit of dealgrabba.co.uk. What do you think, love to hear your thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment below.

I've been a busy bee today. The web developer has given me access to the server so I can do my thing. I've set up Google Webmaster tool and the developer has sorted out the analytics coding for me.

Also I've improved dealgrabba's internal and external links and I've increased dealgrabba's Alexa rating. Dealgrabba's SEO ranking can still be improved upon, but this will come in time with tweaking. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was I educated in one, so hopefully time will tell in my progress.

I got given the clocks to play with this afternoon. I managed to have 6 on the go all at once, all with different times, all changing when hit and I won on everything. Very impressed! With this in mind the hard part is now out of the way. The rest of it should all be quite plain sailing from here on in.

I think the dealgrabba pre launch website will go live this week and then I can get on and do other things that need to be done all in the name of SEO and website marketing!

Monday 20 April 2009

Technical problems

As you can see I currently have a rather large header running across the top of my blog. This is due to me trying to change my blog to the new logo to match the website, but it went wrong. There isn't anything I can do to rectify this until tomorrow. I need the developer to upload a new image to the server and then it should work, I hope.

All very technical, but basically I'm pointing my blogger HTML code header to the header for the website. Unfortunately the website header is bigger than what I need for the blog, hence the over stretched header! I feel like heading my head into the heading table!

I'm also going to put a facebook group together, for dealgrabba.co.uk to tell all about the new site and how to register.I hope to do this in the next few days, all being well. At some point we may start running promotional codes for you to gain further benefits at the dealgrabba website. Feel free to join the group and become a follower to dealgrabba and show your support.

In the meantime we are still waiting for the amendments to finalise and then we should go live, all being well, this Friday.

On a funny note, Dad had to have a tooth pulled out today. The female dentists asked dad what he had planned this afternoon. "Why are you asking me out for lunch" he replied. "No" replied the dentists. "Well, I'm going home to mow the garden" replied dad, why? Well after having a tooth extraction you must not over do it. So on that note dad went home and done nothing. However he didn't follow the not drinking hot drinks or not smoking rule, Men!

Sunday 19 April 2009

A beautiful day

I've spent a wonderful relaxing weekend chilling out. Saturday I went shopping with daughter of darkness. I brought pink curtains for my bedroom to go with the rest of the bedding set, I also brought a picture for my bedroom, some seat pads for the dining chairs and some new cushions for the sofa. Daughter of darkness has got herself a webcam; let's hope she not doing naughties with it!

Sunday has been even better, the weather has been wonderful and I've done as little as possible. Once I got my domestic goddess chorus out the way, I spent the afternoon in the garden reading a book "greatest unsolved crimes" and listening to the birds singing. I think I even saw a pair of birds at it. My boyfriends worries himself that once day he too could be a murder statics, due to the amount of criminal things I watch and read.

Anyhow on a more serious note, me and dad did some testing over the weekend, a few errors still outstanding, plus we have made some further amendments. Unsure how long it will take for this to be sorted out, but I think dealgrabba.co.uk pre launch site will go live next week.

Once this happens my life will turn busy again for a while. I've so much ahead of me, which needs to be done once we go live. I want to improve the dealgrabba ranking and of course increase traffic to the pre launch site. I also have lots of other SEO related stuff to do, which is oh so exciting. As for dad, well again, I wonder what is he doing........

Friday 17 April 2009

Not today

The weekend is here again already, really where does the time go. I remember when I was young time dragged, now I'm wishing it to slow down a little. God knows how I shall feel when I'm my dad's age! lol

As you know the website developer has a list of things to fix, change, amend and adjust. We are still awaiting for these changes to take place. I thought they may have done them all by today, but it isn't the case, so maybe Monday of next week instead. We shall still need to do a re test before it goes live, all being well we might go live next Friday.

Nothing planned for the weekend, just hoping the weather is good and maybe I a can sit in the garden for a few hours and get some rays.

Wednesday 15 April 2009

Testing

We got the dealgrabba pre launch website today to test on this afternoon and this evening. They have given dad a tool so we can delete ourselves afterwards and can start a re test of registration, should we need too.

I sent the link to a friend who then tested it herself and let her 12 year old daughter have a go too. They came back with quite a few points, which was all positive feedback. Kim I have spoken to dad about your request and the answer is no, there won't be any dates with Jensen Button with all the trimmings available!

I then went on to test the site myself. I noticed more errors than they would, as they didn't know what was missing etc. Unfortunately, I came up with quite a page full. Most of them are little errors that should be easy to rectify. Some of the information within the emails was incorrect, but that was down to me, not them. Dad and I have gone over everything with a fine toothcomb and feel we have made a full list of problems and errors. Dad will get these over to him tonight or early tomorrow morning.

I'm not sure how long this will take to put right, all being well I would like to think we shall go live Friday if not Monday. We shall just have to wait and see. I'm finding the whole experience very draining and painstaking at the moment. Due to me feeling like I know the website inside out now and find it hard to properly put my point across sometimes, as I expect them to be able to see what I see in my head, which is just not the case.

Anyway I hope we shall all soon being singing from the same hymn book, tra for now.

Tuesday 14 April 2009

Dealgrabba pre launch coming soon!

The long weekend break has flown by and yet again it's back to the grindstone. Dad is back around again to take on the workload he did before, however I think he's taking his time in slipping back in. The web developer has been informed dad is back, but still he chooses to email me rather than dad, the only conclusion I can come too, is that the web developer knows who's the boss!

I think there's a good chance we will see the finished pre launch dealgrabba website by the end of this week. I would like to think we can test over the weekend and then go live Monday of next, week all being well. The only problem we have is not having any access to the management system yet, so we can't delete the registration and start again.

I'm also hoping that maybe next week the dealgrabba logo will be on my blog. I shall also have a link on my blog for all my readers to checkout should you wish too and I hope you do, even if it's just for a peek if nothing else.

Sunday 12 April 2009

Easter weekend

Firstly I would like to wish everyone a happy Easter and hope all my readers have a lovely sunny day and enjoy their eggs without feeling too sick.

Nothing much to report on the website, haven't heard anything from them since Friday afternoon, so I guess they have either run into some problems or they are enjoying the Easter weekend too. I shall report on more news as and when it comes in.

Yesterday was my friend's birthday. Kim turned the ripe old age of 40! We had a lovely day out, first we went shopping then went for a spot of lunch in a lovely pub overlooking a canal. When we arrived back at her, the house was fully decorated with balloons, banners, her age in years, months, weeks, hours and minutes jotted everywhere along with some really cute baby pictures.

OMG was her reaction when we pulled up, mine was tummy rumbling laughter. The party started at 7pm with plenty of food including a hog roast. Yum yum. Kim looked lovely in her dress and rather high shoes, drinks were flowing and the music was great in places.lol

Once night came round fireworks were lit and no I'm not talking about the birthday cake, lol. Kim's mum put a lovely "this is your life" album together with pictures of Kim from birth to 40. Laughter could be heard as people viewed the crazy haircuts, silly costumes and of course the mad world of fashion in the 80's.

I'm sure Kim is suffering today with a hangover and sore feet, but it was all worth it!

Thursday 9 April 2009

Dealgrabba pre launch is nearly here!

I've been busy the last few days as dad has been away, so I have taken on his work load too, which I must say isn't a lot!

Emails have been bouncing back and forth between the website developer and me regarding SEO, coding, reports, timescales and the pre launch design. We have even had a 40 minute telephone conversation. So lovely to work with people so responsive and helpful.

All being well the pre launch page will be ready tomorrow and we can view it over the weekend. The clocks are coming along nicely. The developer currently has 10 running on a page and all running correctly. We should be able to see this for ourselves either over the weekend or Monday of next week.

Should we be happy with the pre launch site, then we will go live either Monday or Tuesday of next week and Phase one of our missions will be completed, only four more to go. The full website should be up and running in about 60 days. We were going to go with a .com address but because we are UK based we have decided to go with the .co.uk address instead.

The developer and I had a great chat this afternoon about SEO, Geeky stuff and general life. When we started working with these guys, for some reason dad thought they were from Brighton. Due to the fact both were men and from Brighton dad decided to come to the stereotypical way of thinking, they must be gay to live in Brighton. How wrong could dad be....

For a start they don't come from Brighton so who knows were dad got that idea from and secondly he is not someone to look at and even have those thoughts. Turns out he is a Goth, married and with a son, he is also a boy/girl scout leader in his spare time. Because I felt the conversation was going well between us, I choose to tell him of my dad's thought. He couldn't stop laughing and said he was far from gay, but he couldn't speak for his mate. Anyhow, He sent me a link tonight to his Myspace profile. OMG. he makes Marilyn Manson look like Bambi!

We post tomorrow with more updates. tra for now.....

Tuesday 7 April 2009

My 100th posting!

Nothing much to report today, apart from the fact this is my 100th post. One hundred posts of me rambling on about a site called dealgrabba that is still nowhere to be seen!

I've been busy working out what I would like the website developers to do for me regarding my SEO and have emailed some details to them. I've not heard anything back from them, so hopefully I will tomorrow. Most of the work I require them to do, isn't urgent, but thought I would get it to them for a later date.

Some sad news to report today. My friend Shelly was looking forward to a Holiday in Canada this year for three long glorious weeks. Staying in her dad's place and visiting the local area. I say local, most of the drives are 4-8 hours long, but that's local out there. Anyhow, she called me today to say, the house her dad has out there caught on fire last night. It would seem that the tenant came home from work with friends, lit the fire and then went out onto the decking to drink beer.

While chatting away with friends they soon noticed sparks and flames coming from the chimney, so got a ladder to take a look, they could see a hole in the chimney pipe and that there was a fire between the roof and the lower timber. After chucking a few buckets of water down, they soon realised it wasn't going to go out, so the fire brigade was called. One very long hour later the fire was put out.

No one can now enter the property, the tenant is homeless and everything within the property is buggered. To top it off they have a basement, so currently all the water that was pumped into the house to put the fire out, is now resting there. That's not all, nothing is now supporting the main timbers, so in effect the property could still collapsed. The fire inspector will be going round to find out the cause of the fire, then the insurance company to deal with the claim. In the meantime if they get any snow or rain that too will be entering the house until something can be done to cover what is left of the roof!

Shelly was hoping to go away in August, but they will be lucky if anything is dry by then, let alone fixed and live able. Never mind Shell, we can always go away for a holiday instead!

Monday 6 April 2009

Week three

I've not posted for a few days as I haven't had anything to write about. We're now entering week three with the new website developers and things are going along slowly. The developer has made a start on the registration page but not sure about the other pages as yet, as I have only seen this one.

The pre launch site always had three pages, main, registration and the confirmation page. I do believe this has now change to a main page, registration page and a confirmation page combined with a refer friends section. I'm assuming that while he is doing this the other developer is working on the back end.

We received the new logo today from the illustrator. The first one we received was horrendous. The colour had changed for some reason to a sickly orange and his facial expression was hideous. Anyhow dad got back to her and clarified what he wanted and she came back to him within a few hours with amendments. So I think the logo is now completed and should soon be added to the pre launch page. The illustrator still needs to do all of the other images we need, I'm not sure when we shall get to view these as she hasn't given us any idea of timescale.

Easter will be upon us this weekend, which means this and next week will be a short working one. I'm unsure if anything more is going to happen this week while the developer is working on the pre launch page, but if I get any exciting news I shall post it on my blog.

Wednesday 1 April 2009

Logo

Today has been sorting out the logo day. As you know we are starting from scratch, which is driving me bonkers.

The web developer started it off with his idea this morning, to which dad's opinion was it looks utter shit! Reminds me of the books kids have when they first learn to read. Blocks with letters in A,B,C, type of thing. So that was the web developer's idea out the window.

Then came dad's turn, who doesn't really know what he wants and is just clutching at new ideas, He managed to put one to paper and email it to me, which I didn't like, the rest of his brain storming ideas were given to me over the phone, all of which I believed to be utterly shit!

My turn. I have a very creative mind once in the right mood and I just so happened I was in that place. I have asked for the font to be bubbled, and for the little man to be squeezing/grabbing the logo. I feel the little man then fit together nicely and it all makes perfect sense. The web developer thought yet again this was a good idea. Once again daddy's little genius comes to the rescue to save two idiots from any further distress. I should have put pen to paper with my ideas before he tries to pass them off as his own, but I don't have the time to being do this when I have more than enough things to be doing already. What is my dad doing I hear you ask, I still don't know, is the answer!

Regarding work, I linked my blog to other blog rolls yesterday and got a very positive result, over 60 hits yesterday. I'm not stupid, I know not everyone has visited my blog and found it to be what they are looking for, however hopefully if nothing else, maybe soon the name dealgrabba will start to stick in peoples head due to it being catchy, if nothing else.