What’s more fun than launching one website? How about launching five websites?

I mentioned before that I really enjoy writing about industry news, ideas that I have about web design and SEO and other online business concerns. The content of 14th Colony followed my passion. But I do still have a website design and SEO business to run.

With that comes the Sacramento Edition of 14th Colony. The Sacramento Edition is a bit stripped down and will focus on generating client work and giving back to my local community. It will also be more fun and personal for me.

I grew up in Sacramento and the culture here is really magnificent. The “high art” scene has been booming, real skyscrapers are emerging and there is a feeling of impending greatness. As the Capital of California we have a lot to live up to.

Plus, we have the Kings.

…even if they do suck most of the time!

While the Sacramento edition resides on a subdomain and looks similar it really is a separate site with it’s own features. There are small differences in the layout but I expect that to change over time as that site develops it’s own personality.

One of the features the Sacramento edition will have is a blogroll, so if you want to exchange links, hit me up.

PS. Yes, I said 5 websites and all over the course of 2 weeks. Take a moment to check out the new Fabrication Unlimited website where they Steel Your Ideas! The other two sites are confidential but I’m sure I’ll find a way to mention them here eventually…

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Get noticed on 14th Colony with your own advertisement. Site-wide ads on the right are going cheap starting at just $10 per month. There is a 3 month minimum (pre-paid) but members get a 4th month free.

I’m also open to custom ad programs like single page insertions or ads in other areas. If you are interested, shoot me an email.

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Were you expecting to land on Linker’s Union? Or maybe you were expecting the classic 14th Colony layout. Either way, things have been changing!

Linker’s Union has been absorbed into 14th Colony. All your favorite posts and people that were there are now here. You can get the whole story at Linker’s Union Rollup.

The much anticipated 14th Colony Redesign was officially launched October 14. It was not a smooth transition. If you are encountering missing pages or 404 errors, please contact us.

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After 8 years of website design and development I thought I had the hang of moving a website over. It seems I was wrong! The transition to the new layout has been a disaster with missing pages, an .htaccess file that won’t cooperate and the WordPress theme falling out for no apparent reason. This has been a frustrating process and way more time-consuming than expected.

I’d like to say “at least I learned that before you move a WordPress site over you need to…” but alas, no such lesson. I’ve moved other WP sites in the recent past without any of the problems I’m experiencing today.

I do have the original site backed up *just in case* but I really want to get this now layout working so please bear with me!

And as long as I’m writing I will give you one tip that I hope helps: when pages fall out, use a 302 redirect to repoint that URL to the home page. That way the link credit for that page stays with the site and when you get that page back up you can remove the 302 redirect. This also redirects any viewers that may have the URL bookmarked to the temporary page to reduce the confusion of a 404 Page Not Found Error.

A 302 redirect lets the search engines know the page has been moved temporarily and to please come back later to find it. The format is:

Redirect 302 /page-being-moved http://www.your-domain.com/

You just replace the info as appropriate and place this line in your .htaccess file.

As of now, every page should either have a 301 (permanent) or 302 (temporary) redirect. If you get a 404 please let me know.

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

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It took a lot longer than I hoped and not everything is flat but the new site design is finally up. If you encounter any strangeness, please let me know. I am scrambling to find broken links and some of the strangest data errors that have occurred with the WordPress transfer. I know I lost some comments (and some were moved!) so if that’s you just know I hold your input as valuable and encourage you to keep posting here!

Here are some changes (besides the obvious) you may want to look at:

Despite my best efforts, I have reactivated Google Adsense. Bidvertiser just wasn’t delivering the relevancy needed.

“Related posts” are at the end of each page. Thanks to Mark Ghosh of the Weblog Tools Collection.

Avatars for members appear next to your comments or if you write an article. Just another good reason to become a member. This comes from Dan of Cheese Master Dan.

Link love aka “dofollow” for anyone that posts 10 comments with the same user name and email (or membership login) brought by All Passion Marketing.

Inexpensive advertising is available.

Writers are wanted.

More to come…

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