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What's New

March 2008

Lots and lots of new photos, I'm having trouble keeping up with the indices. Really considering a major revamp to make this site easier to manage in the long run, and add some new features while I'm at it. (I know, I said the same thing a year ago.)

One of my photos was used as Photo of the Week in NHPR's "Something Wild" photo blog (March 21, 2008).

By the way, the online edition of Northern Woodlands doesn't include the photo I mentioned in December, but you can order back issues in print if you're really interested. Go to the winter 2007 page and click on the cover photo on the right side of the page.

December 2007

Recently fixed a whole bunch of broken links (to the top-level pages like "Contact Me", from the photo galleries). Sorry I didn't notice those sooner (y'all coulda' said something...).

I also changed the format of the Favorite Photos page. The top photo slot is now a random selection from among my recent favorites. The rest of the page contains the same photos as always, so links to those don't have to change.

Oh, and keep an eye out for the Winter 2007 issue of Northern Woodlands, which is now in print but not yet online: one of my photos is in there.

May 17, 2007

I recently removed all the Google ads from the site (please let me know if I missed one). On balance, the ads were more a hindrance than a benefit to me. With ads on the site, I can't link to it in most online fora without running afoul of the fora's anti-spam policies. The ads were only earning pennies a month. I liked the usage statistics that Adsense provided, but I can get the same info (more and better, actually) from my hosting service.

March 5, 2007

I just noticed that the Contact Me form wasn't working. The problem may be related to a change in the servers at my host (a couple of days ago), because I'm pretty sure I tested the page back when I switched hosts in the first place (months ago). Rather than investigate, I've replaced the Contact Me form fields with a listing of an email address that I check frequently. At least if that breaks, I'll know it right away.

Mention of the new host reminds me about the new domain name: If you link to this site, please update your links. Links to www.dsgt.com/dave/index.html are being redirected automatically, but that's about it. Direct links to anywhere within the site will 404 if they use the old domain name. Sorry about that, not much I can do about it.

I'm practically caught up on the Place Names Index of photos, just have to add the most recent trips. I expect I'll reorganize the chronological index sometime fairly soon, since it's growing to the point that it's getting harder to manage.

December 3, 2006

I've got a new host and a new domain name: davidalbeck.com. It was a lot of files to transfer and there were a few small glitches, but I think I fixed everything (including a few dead links that had been on the site for a while). If anything doesn't seem to be working right, please contact me.

Many, many thanks to my buddy Ray for letting me park all my stuff on his server for years and years.

October 18, 2006

Well, the "couple of weeks" have stretched into months, and I'm still not done adding map links to the Place Names Index. Plus I fall further behind whenever I travel to someplace new. But I'm making progress: I'm halfway through the Ps, so I'm practically done.

I've added a couple of recent photos to my favorite photos page.

Ad revenue so far is a few dollars - I mean about four bucks total since I started placing ads on the site. My Hiking pages get about 20% more page views and twice as many ad clicks, but my Writings pages earn nearly twice as much money. I suspect it's the article Reconsidering the Peter Principle that gets high-priced ads with words like "ROI" in them. On a related note, my article on the legal doctrine of Essential Facilities keeps attracting ads from religious groups (surely because of the word "doctrine"). I've blocked some of the more obnoxious ones. All in all, placing ads has been educational and sometimes entertaining, and so far I haven't heard any complaints, so I'll continue this experiment for a while.

June 4, 2006

More re-organizing of the photo album, particularly the Subject Matter Index, which is now broken out into several pages to make it easier to expand in future. The old photo main page is now called the "chronological index"; the new photos home page now gives much more prominence to links to the Favorite photos page, the Subject Matter Index, and the Place Names Index.

I am slowly adding map links to the place Names Index, it may take me a couple of weeks to finish.

I also put ads on a couple of pages in the Hiking section. No revenue from the ads so far, but I am learning which pages get the most visits.

April 29, 2006

Started experimenting with putting ads on a couple of pages. Might be interesting to see who advertises here.

Also, I recently reorganized the photo pages a bit - moved some of my less-interesting albums to a separate page, and have started beefing up the Photo Subject Matter Index to make it more useful.

January 29, 2006

Added the capability to purchase prints of my photos online. Just click through to the full-size photo and click on the ugly shopping cart symbol button labeled "Order Prints".

Also added a subject index. If you're looking for photos to fit a theme, this is the place to find them quickly.