A Question For All The Free Site Builders.

[Mike-mijen]

This is for all the free site builders. As I am getting better and faster at building free sites. I was wondering if any one has a tip on how to build them faster. Is there any steps you take to streamline the building process. I am able right now to get 3 a week built. I would like to build one a day along with my other marketing task each day. I know some of you might not want to share your tricks of the trade, yet I am hoping so.
Thanks Mike

[HowlingWulf]

Once you have enough templates, re-use them.

[Greenguy]

I would always build 3 or 4 at the same time using the same template. You change the text around, use different pics, etc. Submit one this month, one in November, one in December & one in January.

Eventually, you get to where you have a big backlog of free sites that you just submit & then work on other things.

[Mike-mijen]

Ah! That makes since. I see the key is differently to get the files organize for each month so not to screw up on the submits. Cool
Thanks Greenie. Thats why you the Big Greenie in the world. You know your stuff. Cool
Peace Mike

[MadCat]

I'm not entirely sure whether this one is frowned upon, but when you build a freesite and say, it has 8 recips on it, make a few copies of it, stick 8 new recips on each, and submit all of them to the appropriate places.

At least that's what I used to do, sort-of allows me finer control over where things get submitted, and my effort to build 1 site expanded to turn it into 3 sites more or less instantly. (i.e. don't go overboard on the copying)

[Mike-mijen]

That sounds good. I do not think there should be a problem with that. It sure would be better then trying to submit with 24 recips on the index page I would think.
Thanks Mike

[ecchi]

Learn Perl then write a few scripts to help you. For example I wrote a script that will go through a directory on my computer looking for one set of text, and replacing it with another. So you have a template with the line ----text ad here---- then you just tell the script what ad you want there, and in less than a second it has gone through all the html pages looking for that text and put your banner wherever you want it. The time cost to you is just the time it takes you to type the text ad once, you don't have to open every page you want the ad in and paste in manually.

[Mike-mijen]

Yeah I need to learn pearl. Thats true
Thanks

[Maya]

What I have been doing lately, is building to suit my current mood.
Which means that some days when I don't feel up to making up good texts and ads, I just concentrate on the graphic side of things, and start up many freesites, doing only layout and graphics, so when I do feel inventive, I have a lot of almost finished sites that only need some texts and finetuning, to be submit-ready.

Since I started doing it that way, I get a lot more done. Instead of spending a lot of time thinking about sales texts and making stuff I'm not really happy with, I just go on to the next freesite.

[MadCat]

Originally Posted by Mike-mijen

Yeah I need to learn pearl. Thats true
Thanks

I did 14 years ago, it helps. When I mentioned the 'making copies' bit, I've got a perl script (rather, a web application right now), that will let me upload the template, the content, asks me to type in the relevant bits of text, automatically puts banners and text links in the proper places, generates thumbnails off the content I uploaded, writes the whole bunch to disk in the proper spot, and makes 3 copies of every site.

Also automatically picks the recips to put on it based on what category I said it should be in, and so on.

Be careful though, writing good perl is hard And if you learn perl, or any other programming language, soon every problem you encounter will look like it needs more code to solve it, so the danger of spending 5 hours coding to fix a problem that would otherwise take 2 hours to take care of is very real

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by MadCat

Be careful though, writing good perl is hard

I disagree, Took me a few hours to learn the basics and write my first useful bit of code. I could not guess how long it took to learn more throughly because from then on I learnt more as I needed it. Although in the early days some of the jobs were hard to write, and I did occasionally suffer from the "spend five hours writing code that will save you two hours work" syndrome, that was simply because I was still learning. Once it is learnt (and learning it is not hard) writing good Perl is relatively easy.

[MadCat]

Originally Posted by ecchi

I disagree, Took me a few hours to learn the basics and write my first useful bit of code. I could not guess how long it took to learn more throughly because from then on I learnt more as I needed it. Although in the early days some of the jobs were hard to write, and I did occasionally suffer from the "spend five hours writing code that will save you two hours work" syndrome, that was simply because I was still learning. Once it is learnt (and learning it is not hard) writing good Perl is relatively easy.

There's a difference though between "good" as in syntactically correct, and "good" as in maintainable -- the latter bit is very difficult due to the way that Perl allows you to solve problems in a variety of ways, some are good, some aren't. Especially if you're dealing with code that needs to perform well and still remain maintainable.

Practical example being, suppose I have an array full of, say, usernames, and I want to de-dupe them. There's at least 2 ways to do it:

# usernames
my @usernames = ('a'..'z','a'..'z'); # a thru z, twice

# method 1
sub method_one {
  my %usernames = (map { $_ => 1 } @usernames);
  print sort keys %usernames;
}

# method 2
sub method_two {
  my %usernames = ();
  $usernames{$_}++ for(@usernames);
  print sort keys %usernames
}

Most people I show this one to will say that method #1 will be the most efficient, however if you run this through benchmark:

                    Rate             Method #1   Method #2
Method #1    16181/s        --                -41%
Method #2    27624/s        71%            --

The 2nd method is almost twice as fast, even though a lot of people will say map would be much more efficient.

Another fun one; say you have to http escape a string by turning the string into it's own hex interpretation, the one I see most (I've asked this question to applicants at job interviews) is this:

my $string = 'http://someurl/';
printf "%02X", $_ for(split //, $string);

Nothing wrong with that one, but...

my $string = 'http://someurl/';
printf '%02X' x length($string), map { ord $_  } (split //, $string);

Is faster:

one 53763/s   --      -16%
two 64103/s   19%   --

Anyhow, not trying to be a dick (probably am looking like one right now), just trying to illustrate the difference between knowing the language and knowing the language

Now, for fun, let's both solve this problem: Write a perl script that outputs the numbers from 1 to 100, 10 per line, zero-padded.

Example output:

001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 
011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 
.
.
.
.

I'll post my solution later on And sorry for the thread hijack

[Star Man]

Hi Mike-mijen.Heres a few tips that might make the free site building go a bit faster.I don't know what or how much you know so this might be coca-dodo basic stuff to you but maybe it will speed up a few newbs.

First off, figure out what categories your going to be building for,then build a template with for each one containing your recips.This way you'll never have to hunt down recips every time you build a new site.

When you grab content from your sponsor,don't spend all day looking for that 'perfect set' with the hot girl you like.Unless it's real lousy content,just download like 4 or 5 sets and start resizing/re cutting them.

Have your keywords and the name of your site chosen before building your site.

Make your site nice,attractive and to your liking but DON'T turn it into an all day art project! When I first started it took me forever to churn out a single free site due to my OCD. I would spend the whole afternoon reshaping and rearranging my site and never get anything done.I learned that it's best just to get your site out there on the lists even if your not totally satisfied with it.Besides,surfers aren't sitting at their PC with their pants around their ankles because they like my artwork.

When your building a site,just don't make one and call it a day.Build like 4 or 5 sites in a row or even more if you can.Try to set it up where your submitting a site you built a few weeks ago like said.

Finely,just like anything else,it comes down to repetition.At first your going to be a bit slow,trying to come up with good sales text,layout design ect. but once you build about 5 or 10 sites you'll start to find your own style and see what works and what doesn't.

[Mike-mijen]

Yeah I feel thats the biggest thing is being organized and not repeating the same steps over and over. Thanks man
peace Mike|acid

[papagmp]

My biggest problems is distractions - work at 3 in the morning, turn the phone off, lock the doors and and most important - don't build free sites using material you yourself would jerk off to. I spend way to much time jerking off........

[LeRoy]

Originally Posted by papagmp

My biggest problems is distractions - work at 3 in the morning, turn the phone off, lock the doors and and most important - don't build free sites using material you yourself would jerk off to. I spend way to much time jerking off........

Must be nice jerking off and fucking all the Colorado Amateurs every week

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by MadCat

There's a difference though between "good" as in syntactically correct, and "good" as in maintainable........

The idea is to write code that works for you, I was not suggesting he set up a script writing service, just write Perl to use on his own computer and scripts to use on his own site. I find that if I leave in enough comments I can see what I did the first time if I want to change something or add a bit on. If you are writing for your server, rather than just scripts to use on your own computer then obviously you have to know enough about security, and also be competent enough not to crash the server with bad code. But you appear to want to write code to impress. There is no need for that, no one is going to see the code (unless you share). Just learn Perl, write what you need, and try not to make it as complicated as you seem to want to make your code.

There is (nearly) always more than one way to do it. Pick the quickest, easiest way. No one will see your code but you, so there is no need to make it dance a jig and whistle the national anthem backwards while counting hits and filing them under referrers. Stick to that rule, and writing Perl IS easy!

[MadCat]

Pick the quickest, easiest way.

Trust me on one thing, after 14 years of coding perl, this is most often the way that will get you instant gratification but you will regret later on

Not saying you shouldn't do it, I do my fair share of quick and easy hacks, but at any time where you might have to go back to that code in the future, you need to think about whether doing it quick and easy is the right way, out of all those ways to do it

[HarryM]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Learn Perl then write a few scripts to help you.

Why would anyone start off with perl in this day and age? For simple web stuff wouldnt PHP or a full featured OO language like java or C++ be better? It's ok to waste your own time....

[dunc]

Originally Posted by Greenie

I would always build 3 or 4 at the same time using the same template.

This is a great tip - I started building free sites again a couple of weeks ago - but have been too busy this week - if I had built a 3-4 sites from each template - I would have been able to find the time to submit a couple this week and keep the snowball rolling

[maia]

A good text editor, such as "Textpad", could accomplish the same tasks the perl "followers" mentioned above w/o any coding necessary. You can open multiple files and do a find/replace on whatever piece of text you'd like to replace. Combine that with the other general tips given above and you'll definitely speed up your production.

If you really want to learn a scripting language I'd recommend php for the beginner, or even better, python. The learning curve for perl is not worth the time, in my opinion. Not to mention it's quite an ugly language.. (hides from the perl guys)

[HarryM]

Another good one to try is BK ReplacEm, also does regex

[Mike-mijen]

Wow. I can see theres is differently a science and art form to really get into this. Thanks for all the great comments
Peace Mike

[NY Jester]

Mike, I think the main key is templates. Once you have enough somewhere between 15 and 30) its a matter of plugging info in, banners, text, images, etc and that should cut down work time/build time considerably.

Also as far as recip tables go.. visit the Link lists you want to submit to and create the recip tables for each niche you submit to. Then its a matter of copy/paste when its time to use recips.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by MadCat

Trust me on one thing, after 14 years of coding perl, this is most often the way that will get you instant gratification but you will regret later on

Not saying you shouldn't do it, I do my fair share of quick and easy hacks, but at any time where you might have to go back to that code in the future, you need to think about whether doing it quick and easy is the right way, out of all those ways to do it

I think in 14 years you have totally misunderstand the point of Perl.