I hadn’t mentioned it here, but I agree, at this point I think I would take a big SEO hit moving my search function to PS or DRR.

I have ruled out having my own computer – heck, in Seward we don’t even have reliable electricity!

I will take a look at theplanet.com. It seems dedicated hosting is not all equal, and I definitely need fully managed with good tech support.

Thanks again,

Ron

Tuan.

I think I have figured out how to block China – I think that is where a lot of my traffic may be coming from, I don’t know, we will see if the numbers drop.

Thanks,

Ron

So THAT’S where my traffic is going to lately!

I’m sure you can find some reasonable solution, better than a fancy car payment, anyway. I hope so. i can’t offer you much help there – I’m not really a technical guru, like so many folks seem to think I am.

Good luck with it all.

Cheers

Carl

You know I remember you writing about that issue awhile back – I was going to look up that post, thanks a lot for the reminder.

Hi Jim,

You know I am signed up with Google Webmaster Tools, but not Analytics – I need to do that pronto.

I have had the same concerns regarding the blocking of hot-linking, I will do some reading, good suggestion.

I would be more than happy to share all I can about my Lightbox setup. You can call me anytime that is convenient if you would like – our office phone rolls to our cell phone when we are on the road.

Thanks again,

Ron

Reference this link for more on how to do this*
http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

*I’ve not experimented with this fully to see what impact there is on search engine image searches. There is a work around to not exclude them.

Oh and if you haven’t employed Google Analytics yet you should. The small JavaScript code in your footer is all it takes and free metrics. Perhaps the Google Analytics reports would enable you to better dissect what is happening with your traffic.

One of the big ones was from a particular company in China. I don’t do any business with China, so didn’t think I was at too much risk for completely blocking that IP from my site. Between that, and blocking access to certain PHP files that bots didn’t need to hit – it reduced me down so I could stay on a shared plan.

You have a big number of unique visitors, so perhaps this isn’t the case – but I would look at the IP addresses anyway just to be sure.

It might be too much work for you to add the search function onto your site since you have several thousand pages of html, unless those bandwidth costs are really ridiculous.

That is another option I have considered – the problem is where we live in Alaska, we have slow, unreliable Internet connection, and it drives me crazy to have any down time. Not to mention, I don’t have a clue to what I’m doing, and the house sits empty for about half the year. But, for what I’m looking at paying, I suppose I could considering hiring someone part-time if I could find someone with the expertise in such a small town. I will have to give that some more thought.

Thanks for the suggestion! That is why I posted this here, I though I might get some good suggestions on solutions.

Thanks,

Ron

Hi Richard,

Yeah, I am getting much more traffic this year. Are you sure the total unique sites number is unique visitors, because it is even higher then the visitor numbers column on my stats – my unique sites number is over 412,000 for last month, that seems too high. I need to look into it a little further.

Your Photoshelter solution is a good one. I have some photos there and at DRR via Mira – DRR seems to sell a little better, but I think it is too soon to judge. I have considered using one of them for my search function like you and Gary do – I’m not wild about sending my customers to another url with other photographers. Of course, this added cost does change the way I look at things. $30 per month is a heck of a bargain really.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Ron

For the server costs, that is a main reason why I went w/ Photoshelter Archive. $30/month, and I’ve got about 3,000 high res jpegs on there and over 2,000 more lower rez images. there is no bandwidth limit on there.