My ‘new’ website, DiskTuna.com.
Okay, so DiskTuna.com is live for about half a year now. And the following are just some observations and experiences I had ‘managing’ it.
I am not a WordPress or Google expert, I am not a SEO expert and not a Google Adsense expert either. There is a lot of things I am not. Basically I am just a guy owning a young website.
About WordPress
I like it! When I started this website I was planning on some static html pages. But then I noticed my web-host (GoDaddy) allows me to install a CMS (Content Management System) with a single click. As there is more than one option I did some reading on Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Overall, for a beginner with a relatively small website WordPress seemed the way to go.
So, WordPress it is. Installation using the GoDaddy control panel was super-easy. Didn’t have to FTP or anything. Just click and decide on a name for your ‘blog’. There are thousands of templates available to change the appearance of your website. And again, you install a theme with a single click.
WordPress Plugins
If you ever ask yourself, ‘I wonder if it possible to do … with my WordPress website’, then the answer is YES. Yes, you can!
I think the first time I ‘wondered’ was about adding an easy option for people to share my site. So I Googled that to find that there were a zillion plugins for that. A plugin adds functionality to your website. And again, you install a plugin with … a single click.
The first few weeks I got a lot of comment spammers that I just kept deleting. Until I wondered, isn’t there some kind of spam-killer plugin. Of course there is.
Google analytics, I have a plugin for that. Contact form, a plugin. This week I wondered if I would translate some pages to different languages. In fact I already started doing that using Google Translate. Stupid me! Why not install a Plugin to do it for you?
There are some drawbacks too. Plugins are updated on a regular basis. So a few times each week there will be some plugins that need some attention. For a brief moment your website will be in maintenance mode.
Plugins create processes, take some space, and create file IO on your server. During the early weeks I repeatedly exceeded some of the shared server maximum resources. So I upgraded my web hosting package.
And also, the different plugins all come with configurable settings, but they all hide them in different places. So sometimes I get a bit lost when I want to change the behavior of a plugin.
Google and a young website.
If you start running a website, of course you want it to do good in Google. If Google doesn’t notice you then no one visits you. If Google thinks you are doing something bad, then Google will ‘punish’ you.
So first of all you need to create a Google Analytics account. Google Analytics is complex, but it will give you some idea if people are visiting, where they come from, what pages they visit etc.. Analytics gives you so much info that wished there was a setting that would hide all complex stuff, and just showed me the basics.
Secondly you need to create a Google webmasters account. It is the only way to learn if Google is actually indexing your website. Also, it is the place to check if Google is punishing you for something.
You need Google to trust you.
It is quite shocking to find that Google put red exclamation marks next to your site in Webmaster account. There is a problem wit your website! Malware was found!
If you get warning like that, Google is not only warning you, it is also warning people using Google to search the web! People wanting to visit your site will get a ‘malware ahead’ warning, which of course is not a good thing.
The absolutely ridiculous thing is that Webmaster tools doesn’t tell you what it found! At least, for me it didn’t. I literally spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong, and it took a non-Google website to finally get me an answer!
The thing was, that Google ‘flagged’ my website because it found executable files it did not recognize. I can’t remember the exact wording, but the setups for software that I had available for download were new to Google, and weren’t frequently downloaded. Which is according to Google, suspicious. Problem is that each time I upload a new setup, it will be by definition an unknown, not frequently downloaded file.
Solution … to some degree
You stupid Google! However, since I have started digitally signing my software, the problem has become less of an issue. But it still happens. Happened again this week.
So then I contact Google again (using webmaster tools), explain that I have checked my website, include a virustotal.com URL for the software, and a few hours later everything is okay.
Google has received and processed your security review request. Google systems indicate that http://www.disktuna[.]com/ no longer contains links to harmful sites or downloads. The warnings visible to users are being removed from your site. This may take a few hours to happen.
So. Good practice. Check Google webmaster tools several times a week. It does not automatically notify you about problems with your ‘property’.
Google Adsense
At some point I started looking for some revenue from the website because it only cost me money. And it cost more that I had planned as I had to upgrade my hosting plan. Also Google (but also the Windows 10 SMART Screen and lower grade AV scanners) forced me to digitally sign my software.
A digital signing certificate needs to be purchased and there is additional costs because I needed to provide legalized documents. I need to legally prove to the code signing authority that I am who I say I am.
So the idea was born to display Google adds. Google adds are being displayed on this website. Maybe I didn’t put them in the most ideal place but the results are disappointing.
Google’s advise was to display graphic adds. That would bring mos revenue. Problem with those is that they are ugly. So, I changed that to text adds. Thousands of impressions further that got me 0.34 dollar cents. So, starting today I will remove the Google adds.
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