Pull up the People Blog http://blog.pullupthepeople.com Save money, Help others Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:42:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 en More layout changes. http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/16/more-layout-changes/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/16/more-layout-changes/#comments Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:42:59 +0000 admin http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/16/more-layout-changes/ I’ve updated the homepage again in the hopes of making the site more appealing on first glance. The site mission is now integrated into the side bar and both recent and popular deals are shown at the same time. There’s also a new navigation bar at the top of the page.

I’ve been bouncing back and forth between frontend and backend development and I think that’s going to be the process for a while. Add features quickly to get them out, then get them integrated into the site design.

]]> http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/16/more-layout-changes/feed/ Sitemaps and tools. http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/12/sitemaps-and-tools/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/12/sitemaps-and-tools/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:39:40 +0000 admin http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/12/sitemaps-and-tools/ I recently went about adding a sitemap to PullUpThePeople. In submitting the sitemap to Google and Yahoo I discovered they have some useful tools that give some insight into how they view the site. For example, with Google’s webmaster tools you can view the last time your site was indexed, what bad urls were found, and how many pages were added to Google’s index. Yahoo’s site explorer is a bit more limited allowing you to submit a site map and see what pages are indexed by Yahoo. I just recently submitted this site’s sitemap, but I’ve yet to see any change in the indexing of the site. I’ll post an update as soon as there’s progress. In the meantime I’m adding codes as fast as I can find them :)

]]> http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/12/sitemaps-and-tools/feed/ Some site refactoring. http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/02/some-site-refactoring/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/02/some-site-refactoring/#comments Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:49:48 +0000 gerlando http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/02/some-site-refactoring/ The site got a bit of an overhaul today. I moved the search box into what was previously the sites mission statement. Now the search is always available as you browse for deals. The site statement was given a prominent spot on the homepage previously occupied by search.

Also new to the homepage is a list of categories and a truncated list of stores. On each store page there is now a list of related categories for that store.

The intent of all these changes was to make the site easier to navigate and to make our site’s mission clear to every new visitor.

]]> http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/02/02/some-site-refactoring/feed/ A little bit of SEO optimization. http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/31/a-little-bit-of-seo-optimization/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/31/a-little-bit-of-seo-optimization/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:44:59 +0000 gerlando http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/31/a-little-bit-of-seo-optimization/ I’ve updated the links to stores to pass through the store name instead of it’s id. Previously the url would look something like ‘/stores/1′. Now it looks like ‘/stores/amazon’. Implementation was extremely easy although wasted a bit of time not realizing I needed to use find_by_name instead of plain find.

]]> http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/31/a-little-bit-of-seo-optimization/feed/ New rss feature and lots of new stores! http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/28/new-rss-feature-and-lots-of-new-stores/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/28/new-rss-feature-and-lots-of-new-stores/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:14:19 +0000 gerlando http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/28/new-rss-feature-and-lots-of-new-stores/ I’ve added an rss feed to the site so it’s easier to track newly added coupons. This feature was surprisingly easy to implement thanks to helpful posts such as this one. I’ve run the feed through feedburner so I can track the number of subs and it allows for an email delivery option as well (found on every page above the footer). If it proves popular I’ll add feeds to segment the coupons in other ways.

As for signing up stores for our cause, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the number of stores coming on board. I’m guessing the ones that turn us down are concerned with their affiliate stats looking since this is a very new site. No matter though, the site will still host coupons and deals regardless of revenue (since it’s good for you, the end user) and I’ll keep hounding stores to support our cause by becoming affiliates.

]]> http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/28/new-rss-feature-and-lots-of-new-stores/feed/ We’re finally live! … for the second time :) http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/27/were-finally-live-for-the-second-time/ http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/27/were-finally-live-for-the-second-time/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:14:07 +0000 gerlando http://blog.pullupthepeople.com/2008/01/27/were-finally-live-for-the-second-time/ Pull up the People officially launches this weekend and although it’s a pretty simple site at the moment, I’m proud that I’ve been able to actually get it looking the way it does. I had launched the site in a different iteration about a month ago, built in Wordpress. While this got it up and running, I felt it came off a bit cheesy.

The current version of the site was quite a learning experience. It’s built with Ruby on Rails, something I’ve been wanting to tinker with for a while (since it was originally introduced actually) but I never got around to it. I’ve actually heard that a lot from other developers I know. Sure Rails gets you up and running quickly, but it has it’s own set of conventions and syntax that takes some ramp up time. Often times it’s just easier to throw something together in Java, PHP, or whatever your more comfortable with, especially with the lack of current documentation since 2.0 was released. But after all is said and done, I’m really liking rails. I don’t think I could have gotten this site together as quickly as I did (a few weeks in my spare time) with any other language.

With the technical details out of the way. I my hope for this site is for it to be a channel to route money to social causes that benefit those less fortunate. As such, all revenues from affiliate links will be donated. In order for this to be effective it requires traffic, and lots of it. Step one is done (although there will be new features and refinements introduced along the way), now the REAL hard work begins,… getting the word out.

No matter how you ended up at this post, thanks your your interest and support.

-Gerlando.

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