When I moved my blog to sydoracle.com, I intentionally put it under a "blog" subdomain rather than at www.sydoracle.com. The idea was that I'd eventually get around to building a conventional website. By that I mean that I am in awe of Tim Hall's oracle-base.com (content, structure, etc) and have delusions of grandeur about making something similar.
Apparently this subdomain split isn't great for search engine optimization as it treats them as different sites. I guess search engines don't want to draw assumptions for mastercheesemakerbook.wordpress.com from jonathanlewis.wordpress.com. So don't do this.
For over a year, it was pretty much Lorem Ipsum, with tumbleweeds rolling about, and the sounds of far-off Whipporwills in the hills.
Partly inspired by playing with the /seo and /seourl search tags in blekko, I spent some time thinking about Search Engine Optimization, and decided to get my www subdomain in some sort of order. It is all built using the standard Google Sites (which you can think of as a very simple, and free, Content Management System).
Most of it is pretty standard web site stuff. Bio, a couple of pages of links, some articles (mostly to see if I could write something with the aim of search results, rather than just as a brain dump) and copies of a few presentations I've made.
Then I tried to stretch things to some of the other Google gems.
Upcoming Events leverages Google Calendar, and currently shows up the Sydney Oracle Meetups calendar. I may merge in other calendars later.
The 'Contact Me' part is a form that feeds off to a Google Docs spreadsheet and notifies my GMail account.
The 'Book Me' part is a Google Apps gadget for "You Can Book Me", because I wanted to link in something from the Google Apps Marketplace.
Then there is OuterJoin.sydoracle.com which runs off Google Moderator. It's sort of a Q&A, crowd vote thingy. I'm not particularly keen on its fit for use. Apparently stuff there doesn't come up in search, you've got no control over formatting (which is a pain for anything code related) and the layout is pretty fixed. But if you've got any questions, feel free to sling them in.
I've also been trying out writing some Google Apps Engine code in Java. It's cool. I'm not sure whether it is the tutorial or the fact that I haven't had to try to install web servers, app servers and frameworks, but I've found it easier to focus on the coding process there than my previous attacks on the subject. Now if someone could write a decent Forum / FAQ / Q&A system in that.....
I fully intend to add some of my standard code packages to the site at some point. I've never been completely happy with large chunks of code in my blog, and this would be a tidier solution.
I'm open to other suggestions.
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