Gig Lovers has been online and running for just over a week ago and while I’ve not been promoting it at all it’s been getting a steady trickle of traffic from Google and for about 3 days StumbleUpon (who sent just over 1,000 visitors in the space of 15 minutes – the site handled that without problem)

Bug Fixes

I’ve fixed a number of small bugs that I’d missed from my own testing of the site. It’s amazing how many of them crop up. I’ve also tweaked a few things for usability and integrated states in to the mix to make it simpler for both Americans and myself.

Indexed Pages [google.com]

For the past week it’s been floating between 390 and 550 indexed pages and we’ve had 1,300 visits from Google which works out at just under 200 visitors from Google each day,

I checked earlier today and the figure had risen to 1,400 indexed pages on a few data-centres so that should bring in some more traffic.

Upgrades

I’m just adding the finishing touches to the ‘Gig Finder’  where you enter your home (or desired) city, choose the distance of miles you’d be prepared to travel, add a few dates and are then presented with a list of gigs that match your settings.

I'm hoping to get this online today at some point along with the new 'Add Gig' form with 'state enhancements'

Gig Lovers was ready to roll out a while ago and I’ve just decided to make it ‘public’.

After an initial period of testing with a few users I’ve been alerted to so many improvements I need to work on over the next few weeks. For example there is a big problem with USA - I need to use Country -> State -> City rather than the usual (for UK) Country - City… I'm currently working on that and should be finished by the end of the day.

Holding Back 

Parts of the site I haven't yet activated or I've had to deactivate for the time being while I re-work and finalise a few things.

For example; with 'find gigs by location' you choose your city and it locates concerts x amount of miles away. It works a treat but I've had to take it down due to the reworking of the database with the USA problem (see above)

Review It?

I'd appreciate any constructive reviews of Gig Lovers, I'll always be looking to improve the way in which it works, and will always take what  you say on board.

Initial Visitors

I uploaded it about 10 days ago and it’s receiving traffic from Google already - over 200 visitors yesterday -  which I know is nothing special  but for a site I’ve not yet launched and is only linked to twice it’s not too bad at all.

Anything Else?

I’ve also been working on a new version of the dated-and-ugly Rockstar Game, it's far too basic and dated at the moment. I spent a good three weeks on this, hence the delay in Gig Lovers.

Well it’s that time of year again; I received yet another letter (snail!) from the ’Domain Registry of America’

For those of you unacquainted they offer a fantastic service where they’ll renew my domain name for one year for the lowly sum of just £18 ($35 USD) – wow – how could I refuse such an offer? IDIOTS

Letter from DROA (Borrowed from here - don't have a scanner!!)

At first glance you’d think the letter was from your current domain registrar or hosting company but this is not the case – it’s spam - and a ‘company’ trying to get you to transfer your domain(s) over to them.

An action that will no doubt mess up your hosting, email and give you a big headache while you scramble to get everything working again. I don’t even have to mention  the money you just wasted on their over-priced “renewal” fees. (they also charge for transfers back to your registrar but, surprisingly, don’t say how much)

In fairness to them it does say in the text “This is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration to the DRoA” – but who reads all the text.

So just be weary if you receive any post asking you to renew your domain name or warning you about a domain name expiring. I’d advise you contact the company you registered the domain name with in the first place and renew that way.

Oh… and always read the small print

I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The homepage is now complete, it's very simple, but like the 'Gig Details' page (see below) I was never happy with it.

The final pieces are about to drop in to place. These are namely:

Widgets

I have an idea of where I want to go with these. An example of one of the widgets is below.

It's a simple one showing a users 'next gig'. If they don't have an upcoming gig then it'll flip back to either 'Last Gig' or 'No upcoming gigs' depending on what the user selects.

RSS feeds

These are pretty straight forward to set up and I have the 'infrastructure' in place. The main problem is knowing what the users want available so I'll include basic feeds such as users/band upcoming gigs and listen to user feedback with regard what they want feedivised.

Gig Details Page

This has been the most difficult page for me to accept as complete, I can't seem to get it right. I'm going to strip out all the existing rubbish on the page and keep it simple. Again, I think this is a page that will need a bit of feedback from users. I've seen it a few times too many.

Check this domain out:

http://www.elizabeth-chalmers-calgary-real-estate-condominiums-condos-home.com/

What the? Talk about stuffing keywords in the domain name, haha. Who could be bothered to type that one out, would it even fit on a business card?

This reminded me of another site I discovered yesterday: Bootmoney (Which is an amusing spoof of the popular ShoeMoney)

Maybe Elizabeth Chalmers has been reading the Bootmoney post 'domain name picking'