Dec
14

Utahbands.com

I had been working really hard, trying to find a way to drive traffic to dryearth.com, until about the time of my last post. After which I decided that I wanted to work with Utahbands.com and reform it in a big way, converting it to a full scale social network. The details of the network are being guarded closely, but it’s going to be epic.

With building that site, I have learned that I have a lot of limitations as far as my knowledge in programming. Since the remodel, I have relearned html, including new standards with HTML5 and CSS3 (More than I knew before, anyways) I have come a long way in Jquery as well. I can write JQuery really efficiantly now. I can’t say I know it all, but I can do anything I think I could ever want to do with it.

PHP I began learning years and years ago. Because of my stint as a designer, I never fully developed my skills in PHP. I always could write it, but in a very blocky way, where if I wanted a task done, I would write the code from top to bottom. No functions, no classes. After redundantly programming the site in my usual blocky style, I noticed my code was… well… less than efficient.  If I were to hire someone to assist in my code, they might laugh and turn around running. This lead me to go back to my basics and really learn everything over again. The right way this time.

I dove into OOP – Object Oriented PHP.  Long (long) story short, I rebuilt the website about 3 times in hopes to allow other authors the opportunity to get involved with the project. Now it’s really cooking. The website takes a lot less time to build and hopefully I will be able to get a few other programmers interested about the project.

Sep
27

Analytics

Frustration. I have been poking and prodding at the world of affiliate marketing / advertisement. It’s been since the first of April this year that I made any such attempt and my findings are pretty conclusive.

As you can see in the above chart from Google Analytics, I have been able to bring a fair amount of traffic to the site. I have noticed, the more I post, the more traffic I get. Posting to social networks such as twitter and facebook had almost no impact, but to Digg and Reddit, I saw immediate jumps in traffic. I am now averaging 400+ unique visitors per month and ZERO advertisement clicks, which is how I would earn money.

The spike in the above image is from June, where I posted a topic about Myspace being dead, and posted a link to Reddit, and it jumped and got 1900 visitors one day, 658 visitors the next. How many clicks did I get? 2 (earning $0.98)

What I have come to realize is that you can bring the horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. So what happened? How did I drive that much traffic to the site only to get 2 clicks? (That is a .08% conversion rating, HORRIBLE) The goal is to have 1-3% conversion or more. So for every 100 visitors have 1-3 clicks. Google adsense ads are super cheezy, not appealing and CLEARLY advertising. IMO, no one clicks because of the stale looking advertisements, not to mention, becoming less and less relevant to my content.

Currently I am looking at a more up-to-date marketing strategy. If you look at nettuts.com their whole right side is flooded with advertisement. But it is done so in such an attractive way, it doesn’t detract from the body of the website, AND I have caught myself of several occasions clicking on them.

The goal is to redesign the website with a more friendly, inviting layout, and convert my advertisement links to these more relevant, good looking links. I will provide more of an update when available.

Sep
22

Rejected Cartoons

This short makes me laugh and is a fond memory when Cynthia and I were dating :)

Sep
21

UI Design

I probably could start out by saying “Things have been so crazy” but I think I could say that every time. We have been living with Cynthia’s parents over the last few weeks, and we will do so for a few more months to come, in an attempt to pay off hospital debt from the pregnancy and from Cynthia’s seizure, as well as save for a down on a home. Goal is to be out by February. It’s been an adjustment for sure, and sometimes the itch to move out is almost more than I can scratch, but we couldn’t be more blessed, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

At work I have been focusing on getting current with HTML/CSS (programming language) standards, as they are ever evolving, and I feel I am a little behind. I am just about there, though, and am looking for freelance work. (Contact me if you need a website) I have been found three loves because of my recent work in UI design.

1) Colourlovers.com – An amazing website that is all about colors, and color pallets, which has been super helpful, and entertaining.

2) Patterntap.com – A cool website that shows off cool parts of websites, be it a font, color, button, backgrounds, and more.

3) Dryearth.com – This is my website, and much like the above Patterntap, this is where I am going to be putting all of my favorite resources for cool snippets I find on the web. Picasso said “Good artists copy; great artists steal”

Other than that, Cynthia has been well, and fortunately we haven’t seen any more seizures. I can only cross my fingers and hope that she stays okay. I do lover her, and I dread that memory.

Paris is two and is SO cute! She talks, and tells stories, and it’s amazing how much she loves me (and Vice Versa!) If she is awake when I leave from work, she demands a goodbye kiss, and when I get back from work she runs to me and gives me huge hugs!

Lauren is getting to see a lot more now, and is starting to laugh. She has big eyes just like her sister and thinks taking off her shirt is funny (for some reason) She is three months now and is healthy :)

Long update, so thanks for listening!

- Skyler

Sep
18

Day 7.5 It’s me. :)

Created a new user on this, in an attempt to make this blog a ‘family’ blog and keep it better organized. You will see my posts at lewynandez.com/skyler and cynthia’s posts at lewynandez.com/cynthia. As the girls get older, they will be able to post on their own pages.
I have been working really hard to improve my design skills, and learn how to better implement modern xhtml css3 sites, which are search engine friendly and inviting.

I have also been learning Perl, which fortunately is just enough like PHP that it’s been more fun to learn, than a chore.

That’s it for me. Cynthia should be back to catch up on her posts!

 

-s

Oct
30

Three years of blogging.

Not an update, not this time.

Really I just wanted to say, awesome, we have been blogging for almost 4 years. There was probably 10 plus entries that we lost at the very beginning, and that makes me really sad. I really wish that I would have been able to save those, because they were about my lovely future* wife and I when we were first dating. That would have completed it so grandly.

Anyways, I love you Cynthia, I always have and I always will, and I hope that by reading this blog, this would be proof of that. :)

Love you
Skyler

Feb
08

Few months

School is rough. I have to write a paper a day pretty much for my ethics and values class and cynthia is taking pretty much the hardest class in college -biology. We also are taking a music class and an english class together. Music has been pretty easy, but english has kicked our butts. No more online classes. We have learned our lesson.

Paris is getting to be so big! She was just barely squirming around on the floor and all we had to do to take care of her is sit her on the floor and to make sure that she didn’t go anywhere we didnt want her to go we just put up a wall of a couple of pillows! And now, we cant seem to find a way to keep her in any one location! She is sitting up, almost standing, crawling everywhere and getting into all sorts of mischief. She is even figuring out how to crawl up stairs! She can go all the way up all by herself. Its so insane!

The other day she was hanging out with us in our front room, and next thing you know she was gone. I could hear some ruffling in the other room, and we were jumped up out of our skin, worried that she might hurt herself or choke on something. We find her in our bedroom next to Cynthia’s nightstand, with brown stuff all over her mouth! Apparently Cynthia left her M&M’s on the nightstand and Paris pulled them right off and started eating them! Thank goodness it was just M&M’s!

She also is beginning to learn how to open up things, cupboards and things like that. This morning we left out the baby wipes and she opened them up, and started pulling all of them out!

Man…. Anyways, the other day I decided that I wanted to start a podcast. For now I would just do the podcast by myself or with a friend, but as Paris gets older I thought I might begin doing them with her. Not like interviews with her, but talking with her about politics, news and other fun stuff like that. Patent pending. Nobody take my idea.

Cynthia and I have been watching a lot of house and learning to grow together. We have been working really hard at getting our life together, and are getting closer and closer to going through the temple. Our bishop has now said that if we keep on the path we are on, we should be able to bless Paris (and me getting the Melchizedek priesthood) Then we get sealed in July!

This should pretty much get you back up-to-date. I will write more later. And hopefully more frequent. This should make my posts less sporadic.

x.sky

Nov
03

Week of horror.

This is a crazy week we have a couple of really large jobs that we are doing and are worth a lot of money at work. These jobs could lead to more jobs this large which would put me that much closer to more money. So that is good.

I am worries because it is my birthday and I don’t want to spend money on me. It’s nicethough to have a wife who doesn’t care and just wants to make it nice for me. I love it.

Paris is starting to sit up and already I know that my hands are going to be full the little terror we’ll call her!

Okay that’s it for now.

Oct
31

Halloween

It has been a while since I have been on here to say anything. Well to say the least things have been crazy. Lots of stress and lots of work and school. We both really need a break for sure and do not see one in sight. The good news is Halloween is tomorrow. We will be spending most of the day at the library studying but we are going to be making a pit stop at the inlaws and to my parents house to show off Paris costume. She is going to be a giraffe! And she loonks so cute in it! Mom is going to be lil red riding hood. And I am going to be one of those guys from the 20s.

Well that’s it for now. Time to go spend some amazing time with my amazing perfect beautiful wife!!!!!!!!¡¡¡!!¡!!!¡ ps she’s hot! :)

Apr
27

Sad day at home.

Today was especially crazy. Started out fairly normal, woke up really late, went to church. Midway through a meeting I noticed cynthia’s finger was especially wider than normal above where her wedding rings were. I told her that we needed to take them off right away when we got home. Well we tried that, and on trying to get them off we bruised her finger up a bit, made her swell even more and was completely unable to take them off altogether.

I started to do frantic online research about peoples experiences with this situation. It was either we hurt her trying to get it off or we cut it off. I found several resources that said they have to cut the ring a lot of times to resize it anyways, so really if we did cut it off it could be repaired.

I called the nearest fire house and asked if they would do it for us, and they were more than willing to at no charge. It took about 10 minutes for them to cut it and ply them apart, but after it was all done, they got it off.

Now we are going to Shane Co where hopefully this is covered under warranty (or we’ll just have to pay for the repair) tomorrow. Get it fixed and re-plated. Put them back in a box, and wait for baby to come!!! Ill post pictures of her hand and the ring later tonight or tomorrow.

Okay, thats it for now! Bai!

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