A stressful week, but I get my directory listed in DMOZ

Background: I’ve been working on a Devon directory, which promotes arts and environmental concerns alongside general clubs, blogs and business listings.
16 - 20 September 2007

16/9 Ordered more free business cards from , some free fridge magnets (same as the business cards), and Post-Its. The redesign of the postcards can wait till I’ve used up the first batch.

Added a link from my family homepage.

Posted a few posts around the Hedir forums and reviewed some websites for them.
Updated my Google Sitemap.

Pleased to see that someone has been looking at my e-cards from Iran!

17/9 I registered in Duport directory for business startups (listing never appeared), Add URL free (not sure), and an advertising directory (which has been a good one).

Left a couple of posts on the Plymouth network in Facebook - unrelated to the subject but if anyone looked me up, the link would be there. Noticed the Facebook marketplace - will check that out when I next have time.

Felt very strung out - hate the feeling of advertising to the people around me!

I left some business cards and postcards on display in the Exeter Arts Centre (as it’s an arts focused web directory) - I’d been nervous after some of the previous shops refusing to display them but it was no problem at all.

18/9 Started getting junk mail to my new domain address, although I’ve used a hotmail address for most of the add link things (once I remembered to). But mostly they have been quite relevant - thanks to one of them today I added a link to SearchNewz.com directory.

Gave my mother a few postcards and business cards for displaying in Budleigh, where she has a hair appointment (and thanks again mum!).

Posted to perForums forum again, saying how pleased I was with being able to use their component to create accessible alternative forms for the website.

I discover some photo files are even bigger than I had adjusted for the second time round. Changed the file upload limits again, and continued with the accessibility / usability improvements to various forms.

Emailed a link building company in Plymouth who had been asking me to refer customers to them, and asked them to include my directory among their link building resources. I checked my web statistics to see what I could tell them, and was impressed to find I’d had 392 unique visitors this week.

Added a message in my Facebook status line asking for testers to put Devon based listings in my site.

Oh no - Checked my web stats - DMOZ editors have just visited. Didn’t expect them for months - I only put the listing in a couple of days ago. Yikes.

This is what they looked at:

18th September 2007 16:13:05 editors.dmoz.org/editors/editunrev.cgi?site=2140108&cat=Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Devon/Guides_and_Directories&chainsaw=1
www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk/
18th September 2007 16:13:47 www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk/
www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk/devon-web-directory/arts-and-entertainment/
18th September 2007 16:14:17 editors.dmoz.org/editors/editunrev.cgi?site=2140108&cat=Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/England/Devon/Guides_and_Directories&chainsaw=1
www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk/

Not much then, 2 pages. I can’t think that’s a good sign. Oh dear. Also worrying that they seem to come from the same ISP as me. And what’s this ‘chainsaw’ in the URL??

Installed a statistics program to add a little widget to my site showing my visitors from different countries, as they make an impressively long list already - hopefully this should encourage people to join and get their stuff seen.

22:14 I’M IN DMOZ!!!! That makes me feel a WHOLE lot better! Thanks, Dmoz editor! Here’s my Stairway to Devon DMOZ listing.

19/9: Gave my mother a business card for the Music with Mummy teacher, who I know has several home businesses. (fingers crossed, thanks again Mum!)

A new member from my husband’s work signs up and enters a listing, just like that! Hopefully this means all my usability improvements are paying off.

Ordered 2 T-shirts from . The first one was free but with postage they still ended up costing nearly 10 pounds. One is for my husband to wear, as he often takes the kids out and about while I’m working at the weekends. The other is (hopefully) for my friend Dawn to wear, as she travels a lot around Devon, meeting conservation and wildlife groups. If not, I expect my dad would wear it, which would be good as he knows so many local people who are always stopping him to chat. They are quite nice T shirts - I’d wear one myself if I ever left the house!

Another piece of good luck today: I had a call to do a small B and B website for a new customer. Great news for me, and from the directory point of view, I got to add another listing, and make the most of all its features on behalf of my new customer.

20/9 Nightmare: discovered two fairly serious problems with the website just as I’m about to spend the whole day with my toddler son. I try to fit them in around each other.

The first issue is that the interactive maps aren’t working properly in Internet Explorer. I traced it to a Javascript conflict with the particular template I am using, but have not yet narrowed it down beyond that - presumably there must be some included files somewhere. However, I did find a way around it within a day by using the Joomla ‘wrapper’ feature. It’s not ideal, because search engines won’t index it, but it’s a big improvement.

The second problem relates to the registration and login component Community Builder. I discovered that when members registered in Firefox on one computer they were not able to login using Internet Explorer 6 on a different computer. I’ve been posting this on their notice boards.

Internet Explorer has not been popular with me today.

Went into town today and saw my postcard has gone up in the newsagent’s window. Felt terrible at the time, with the maps looking so rubbish, but now they’re fixed, hopefully it will be a good thing.

Somebody registered this evening and set up a new entry - good progress, hope it continues.

Publicised Dmoz listing on the website as it might persuade more people to sign up.

Comments:

Getting into DMOZ (the Open Directory) was a fantastic piece of luck. As well as being a sign of quality (so they say), a listing in Dmoz is taken more seriously than many other links by Google and other search engines, making Stairway to Devon’s pages more likely to be found in internet searches. Google also uses Dmoz data in it’s own directory, as do hundreds of smaller search engines.

When adding the site to other directories later, I found a link to this profile for my local DMoz editor:

Profile
My interests include the county of Devon, Dartmoor, horticulture and the crafts scene in the south-west of England. … I have no ties with any other directory organization or scheme that uses ODP data.

So I guess it might have helped that the focus of the site was in line with his interests.

During these few days, I combined many different promotional tactics to get my directory noticed, including submitting to directories, posting to forums and social networking sites, business card and postcard advertising, word of mouth, emailing link building requests, and planning for future advertising using T shirts.

As a naturally shy person, I’ve found a lot of this promotional activity very unnerving, but in each case, I’ve become much bolder after the first few attempts. So once I’ve got into the right frame of mind I quite enjoy going into shops and meeting people now. On the other hand, I’ve found it stressful to be advertising to people around me and have spent a lot more time avoiding them too, staying in more, using back streets, wearing dark glasses, etc (sounds funny I know!).

In between the frenetic promotional activity, the site continued to go through teething troubles with its first users, requiring continually vigilant monitoring and urgent technical fixes - also very stressful when I had little time and other things I needed to do.

View all blog posts about launching this local directory.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Directories, Launching a Local Directory, Uncategorized, Website Testing, Website promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.