Reboot?

I created my dotcom a couple of years ago as a project to teach myself how to make a simple, yet effective website

However at the time, I was pretty unhappy at my job, so it was also a diversion to take my mind off things - I kept it up for a few months, but then I got made redundant at the end of March 2010

I haven't touched the site or my blog ever since...and here we are, a year and a half later, and my URL is up for renewal (or I could let it lapse)

So I have to come to a decision...do I keep the site up (even though I've lost interest in changing it any further), take it down, or change it???

I have another site – markcastrogarcia.co.uk – which is also about to lapse...this was my online cv/portfolio (or supposed to be) but I never finished it (I'm good at that!)

After I got made redundant, I went freelance and have been SOOOOO busy ever since, that I haven't had the time or the energy to play around with websites (barely had time to look at my portfolio, but have managed it once or twice)...after a year, I became a sole trader (trading as yewhew)...and my business bank account is in the name yewhew as well...

Maybe I should keep the yewhew.com for my professional site, and do what I never finished with my markcastrogarcia.co.uk site (far quicker for people to type yewhew.com as well!)

But I wonder if I will keep the yewhew.com site as it is, and make my personal bit a sub-site of it, or vice versa...

Either way, I don't think I'll keep blogging about it...I feel I've got the site out of my system, and beat the crisis of confidence I felt when I was an unhappy full-time employee

On the other hand, I may start blogging about my freelancing, as I am very into it (almost obsessive) as you kinda need to be, to keep the momentum going and motivate oneself

Diversification

I've now gotten around to creating a UK subpage, with equivalent .co.uk links instead (where appropriate)

I've also made the core .com page more relevant, so less UK-only sites feature on there

Another important thing I've incorporated is that now, the links open in a new window, so yewhew.com is still loaded in the background...

handy for people to keep coming back and using it

One last thing I thought of was to add a section to show our newest link, under "welcome" - I've been rather proactive tonight and gotten on with things, rather than just think and plan

A makeover at last!

At last, a better thought out look and feel, as well as a twitter feed (which in turn also posts onto facebook) - maybe the site can now hold it's head up with the sites it's advertising!

The template came courtesy of http://www.freecsstemplates.org/ and now makes use of css for the first time.

I think the next thing that would add a little polish is tidying up the rounded corners of some of the icons - I think some of them look a little jagged...maybe Google Adsense will start to give me a chance now?

I've also rewritten the strapline to read "an icon-based portal to all your favourite web-based homepages" - I think it makes more sense and is a more precise description than before.

Contact!

I wrote a review of my favourite real ale pubs in the area, which was posted on http://www.bohoboxmoor.com/boho_boxmoor/2010/03/the-best-real-ale-pubs-in-and-around-hemel-hempstead.html and a couple of people have since contacted me, asking to be linked to my site, or had nice feedback to give :)

Good exposure and unexpected! It was nice to be contacted through my official webmaster@yewhew.com address for a change, and not yahoo or facebook. As well as the requests, I keep thinking up more and more online-based sites to add! It's also nice that some people are actually starting to read my blog...even if I don't have any official "followers".

Phase 2 - progress

I managed to create all the new icons in one evening, have downloaded Cyberduck for Mac, and discovered a free, online html editor called http://www.online-html-editor.de/index_en.php

As I went to upload my new files, I discovered my FTP access wouldn't work - I put it down to my 3 months away from the site, but it turns out the hosts have implemented a lock, and you have to manually unlock it for an hour at a time!

I also decided to optimise the size of my icons, converting them to .png instead of jpegs - saving two-thirds of the filesize and therefore, increasing page load speeds :)

Phase 2

Well! It's been 3 months to the day since my last entry and lots has been going on!

First off, my laptop broke and had to go in for repairs in December. Then January was pretty hard work, with all the snow and extra hours commuting - not to mention longer hours than usual spent at work. February was spent catching up and recovering from January.

All the while, I didn't get a chance to touch the website, but it was constantly in my thoughts and now I've thought of a good 30+ sites to add - not to mention the fact that I want to add a UK subpage - pretty much the same as the normal homepage, but linking to .co.uk versions of the sites instead, and adding more UK-relevant sites as well.

Then I just want to tweak the site generally, and also add another subpage to do with checking ads - an idea I would like to expand upon and follow up, once the site is updated - trading under the yewhew name...more of that to come as it progresses...

Listings

As well as moving up to 4th on Google, yewhew.com is now listed on Yahoo and Bing, plus my blog is featured on bloghub and readablog (in turn, listed on yahoo). I got turned down for adsense again - I think the inclusion of a sitemap will make my website appear more "finished" to them. I also plan on adding a "make this your homepage" button...