LarsonsWorld -- just another persons /dev/null

When I recently set up Peter's Cycling Blog, I set it up as a subdomain of LarsonsWorld with it's own Drupal install. For a few days I was totally thrown for a loop by one simple difference in the installs.

With LarsonsWorld, on a Drupal story, page or block, I found I could always use 'image-folder/image.jpg' without having to use the complete URL and the image showed everywhere. When I set up Peter's Cycling Blog I found this didn't work. Yes, it worked on the PCB homepage, but once you started going into the website hierarchy, the image didn't show. Thus, with PCB, I started using complete image URLs.

Since LW uses Drupal 6.22 and PCB uses 6.28, I figured this was the reason. Or, it was a subdomain. Or, I was doing something wrong. Or, something.

Nope.

I originally installed Drupal on LW in late 2010. At that time, the PHP used by my host, Hostgator, couldn't use the 'Clean URLs' option in Drupal. So, '?q=node/' was used by default. When I installed Drupal into the subdomain this past month, the PHP had been updated and 'Clean URLs' could be used and '/node/' was set as the default.

This creates a very interesting change in how everything is referenced. Once you start using 'Clean URLs' your website has a real hierarchy and is no longer based on the '?q=node' database, or whatever it is. Once I unselected 'Clear URLs' on PCB, all my images started showing on all pages.

Maybe I'm old school. LarsonsWorld is 11 years old now and I've had a website of some kind since 2000. In the early days, it was faster to reference images in folders rather than using the full URL. Looking back at my hand coded pages, there where many that had image sources like '../../../folder/image' so the pages would load faster. I'm use to it.

Or maybe, I rather enjoy not having to type the whole URL or figuring out how many folders down the hierarchy an image is.

I'm going with a combination of both.

I have Peter's Cycling Blog up and running. I will be using this for anything and everything cycling from now on. Not much content as of yet, but I will be adding more all the time.

LarsonsWorld is getting ignored these days as I spend time building out Pedro's Cycling Blog. Once I am caught up with PCB, I'll get back to posting here.

Found a few Tux icons on CrystalXP that I liked. Thus, I have added a Linux Inside and Ubuntu tux for my Linux and Ubuntu links on the bottom left.
I also changed my computer login to Jedi Tux.

Yep, I be cool -- well, at least in my world!

P.S. I was trying to find a Tux bicycle theme one for a possible replacement of 'Broken Bike Boy' but it was to no avail.

A view of the past from my original site to the final look prior to the switch to Drupal.

It's amazing to think I have had an on-line presence since 2000. Oginally it was pcsworldof.com and then in September of 2002 I registered larsonsworld.com. That original domain name, I really didn't have ownership of. I had used a cheap hosting service who registered the name in their name. This was a good thing, because it really is a terrible domain name that didn't make sense to anyone but me.

Anyway, check out the design change through time and if you are really bored, chech out LarsonWorld on the Wayback Machine. There are a slew of captures from 2003 through 2012.

Looks like the tracking site sitemeter has bit the dust. The tracking image is gone from the bottom of my pages and the web site has just a static base page that is fed from sitesense.com. Strange that there was no word of this change. I even received an email report two days ago from them.

The bummer part is I had used it for tracking this web site since 2006 and their records showed 608,000 + hits. Now those records are gone.

This is from that report on the 1st of April:
LarsonsWorld - just another persons waste of time
(s24larsonsworld)

-- Site Summary ---
Visits

Total ...................... 608,476
Average per Day ................. 97
Average Visit Length .......... 2:35
This Week ...................... 678

Page Views

Total .................... 1,221,369
Average per Day ................ 168
Average per Visit .............. 1.7
This Week .................... 1,174

~~ Update: 16:00 ~~

Well, I guess not. The image is back and so is the site. After years of no issues, this is the second time in 11 months the site has had issues. I've been thinking of going to the pay premium account, but this makes me nervous of doing that.

~~ Update: 06 April 08:57 ~~
Hmmm. Sitemeter is back to it's odd behaviour again. Strange. I really don't know what to think.

Noticed a strange thing today with my Sitemeter numbers. There is a difference of 2,396 between the visits shown on this websites tracker at the bottom of the page and the visits shown on Sitemeters summary page for this website.

599,744 is shown on the Sitemeter summary page.

VS

602,140 being shown on the tracker at the bottom of LarsonsWorld.

Check it out. Note the number on the tracker below, click it and it takes you to my summary page on their website. The numbers are off.

Strange.

Holy spam-a-lot Batman. It got to the point where I was getting upwards of 250+ spam comments a day!

Talk about out of control. Fuckin' A.

So, I delved into the internet to do some research on Drupal comments and spam. After reading up on a few diiferent options I decided to try Mollom.

Wow, what a difference a day - and a anti spam module - makes. No spam comments today. Yippee Ki-Yay!

I am using the module for comments, user sign up and the site wide contact page. It is working great and I strongly recomment it.

FYI -- larsonsworld.com is 10 years old this month.

Here is to another 10 years!

Haven't been here for a bit. It wasn't planned, it just happened. It has caused me to think about why I have this website. I now have a bit of a plan. Let's see if I follow through with it.

In the mean time, a tragic event happened here in Colorado the other night. If you wish to help, please assist one of the following:

Aurora Mental Health Center -- The Aurora Mental Health Center is offering crisis counseling to anyone in need
United Way of Denver -- United Way Denver is working to reunite families with lost loved ones who they believe may have been victims of the Aurora theater shooting.
The Denver Center For Crime Victims -- The local nonprofit is providing bilingual/bicultural counselors to victims and families affected by the tragedy. The organization provides resources such as financial aid, provisions, support groups and more during times of trauma.