Sunday, October 31, 2004
Hidden Gems
This week I discovered that there are some items in the Glassmasters inventory which I had thought to have been long sold out.
Amongst these are some exceptional reproductions of stained glass works by John La Farge as well as one by Edward Burne-Jones.
I have uploaded 5 of these magnificent works onto a special page which I have titled "Hidden Gems" and would urge anyone who is interested to make your purchase soon because in a couple of instances there are less than 20 in stock and these are unlikely to be manufactured again.
Reproductions of stained glass by John La Farge and Edward Burne-Jones
Amongst these are some exceptional reproductions of stained glass works by John La Farge as well as one by Edward Burne-Jones.
I have uploaded 5 of these magnificent works onto a special page which I have titled "Hidden Gems" and would urge anyone who is interested to make your purchase soon because in a couple of instances there are less than 20 in stock and these are unlikely to be manufactured again.
Reproductions of stained glass by John La Farge and Edward Burne-Jones
Saturday, October 30, 2004
What's going on? What on EARTH is this??
Well, it's a long and complicated story which (a) I don't wish to bore anyone with and (b) contains many technicalities which are well beyond my grasp, the explaining of which would get me out of my depth in no time.
Trying to simplify the explanation, there has grown up a whole technology around what is called "blogging" which is short for "web log".
Blogs have been in existence for years, decades even, and they are basically diaries or journals updated and published by individuals or groups and until the last couple of years were a kind of fringe activity.
What has happened more recently is that they have begun to have a greater influence on search engine results and this has resulted in them coming more into the mainstream.
My own interest stems from recent evidence that the contents of blogs can be reflected in Yahoo search results within a very short time-frame. I initially tried to set up the "New" page as a blog or RSS feed a couple of months ago but was unsuccessful due to problems with the interface between blogger.com and my web-host's server. This week, however, I decided to give it another try in an attempt to drive up traffic and hopefully sales of Glassmasters items and cards in the run-up to Christmas. To my incredible surprise this time it worked.
As far as I am aware blogs or RSS feeds have little or no influence on Google search results but that could change at any time and in any event Yahoo is a good source of commercial traffic.
My level of competence in getting the page "right" in terms of colours and text etc is sadly lacking and until that changes I'm afraid that visitors are stuck with the bright orange banner and text of varying colours.
The good news is that now that it is set up it really is a breeze to add updates and even images. I don't need to edit the page in my own system and upload it via FTP. All I have to do is log on to blogger.com, create a post, add links and upload in a couple of clicks.
Trying to simplify the explanation, there has grown up a whole technology around what is called "blogging" which is short for "web log".
Blogs have been in existence for years, decades even, and they are basically diaries or journals updated and published by individuals or groups and until the last couple of years were a kind of fringe activity.
What has happened more recently is that they have begun to have a greater influence on search engine results and this has resulted in them coming more into the mainstream.
My own interest stems from recent evidence that the contents of blogs can be reflected in Yahoo search results within a very short time-frame. I initially tried to set up the "New" page as a blog or RSS feed a couple of months ago but was unsuccessful due to problems with the interface between blogger.com and my web-host's server. This week, however, I decided to give it another try in an attempt to drive up traffic and hopefully sales of Glassmasters items and cards in the run-up to Christmas. To my incredible surprise this time it worked.
As far as I am aware blogs or RSS feeds have little or no influence on Google search results but that could change at any time and in any event Yahoo is a good source of commercial traffic.
My level of competence in getting the page "right" in terms of colours and text etc is sadly lacking and until that changes I'm afraid that visitors are stuck with the bright orange banner and text of varying colours.
The good news is that now that it is set up it really is a breeze to add updates and even images. I don't need to edit the page in my own system and upload it via FTP. All I have to do is log on to blogger.com, create a post, add links and upload in a couple of clicks.