{"id":12413,"date":"2010-04-02T17:00:51","date_gmt":"2010-04-02T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=12413"},"modified":"2010-04-02T17:05:21","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T15:05:21","slug":"rebuilding-mamchenkov-net-step-3-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/02\/rebuilding-mamchenkov-net-step-3-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebuilding mamchenkov.net &#8211; Step 3 &#8211; Targets"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>Once I installed the monitoring of goals and gathered some initial data, it was time to start with the changes.\u00a0 One of the obvious problems from <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/31\/rebuilding-mamchenkov-net-%e2%80%93-step-2-%e2%80%93-monitoring\/\">the previous step<\/a> was that I actually didn&#8217;t have my targets on the site.\u00a0 The action points were missing &#8211; no easy way to read movie reviews and no easy way to know that I want people to hire me.\u00a0 So these were the first things to change.<\/p>\n<p>If you have a look at the site now, you&#8217;ll notice that the main menu is re-organized. Most notably it features <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/movie-reviews\/\">Movies<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/hire-me\/\">Hire me!<\/a> items.\u00a0 Movies will take you directly to the list of my movie reviews, which I also improved by filtering out generic movie-related posts.\u00a0 Hire me! link will lead you to a page which briefly describes what I can do and suggests where to find more information and how to get in contact with me.\u00a0 Neither one of these action points are in their final stage yet &#8211; more changes are coming.\u00a0 I just needed to start somewhere, so here they are. I have, of course, updated my goal tracking\u00a0 to use the reviews page and added the new &#8220;hire me&#8221; goal.<\/p>\n<p>While I was at it, I decided to fix a few other minor things that annoyed me.\u00a0 Here is what I have done so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tags clean-up.\u00a0 This is still work in progress, but I managed to get a large piece of this work out of the way.\u00a0 I had almost 2,000 tags in my database and many of those were too generic, tagging a single post.\u00a0 I renamed and re-organized quite a few of them and now I am left with approximately 1,500 tags.\u00a0 There are a couple of hundred more that will go away shortly.\u00a0 This re-organization will make tags more useful and will help visitors find related content easier.<\/li>\n<li>Added &#8216;About me&#8217; section on the front page.\u00a0 After the main menu reorganization I thought that I had too much of me in there.\u00a0 &#8220;Contact me&#8221;, &#8220;Hire me!&#8221;, &#8220;About me&#8221;.\u00a0 So I moved the &#8220;About me&#8221; into a section and made appear only on the front page.<\/li>\n<li>Fixed the RSS image.\u00a0 The default RSS image from Studiopress theme read &#8220;Grab our RSS feed&#8221;, but since I am publishing alone on this site, the &#8220;our&#8221; bit wasn&#8217;t making any sense.\u00a0 I just cropped the image to have the widely recognized RSS icon.<\/li>\n<li>Changed search results to feature excerpts instead of full posts.\u00a0 Full posts were on by default since the last time I edited the theme.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t use search too much, so I didn&#8217;t notice how annoying it was.\u00a0 I tried several ideas to make it better and the only one that actually remains now on the site is excerpts instead of full posts.<\/li>\n<li>Changed the tag line from &#8220;You just stepped in a pile of posts&#8221; to &#8220;Thoughts on movies, technology, and everything else&#8221;.\u00a0 I think this one is more focused and that it should help a bit for the search engine optimization.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also experimented quite a bit with split testing and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/accounts\/ServiceLogin?service=websiteoptimizer\">Google Website Optimizer<\/a>, but realized that it is too difficult to use for the changes that I am working on now and decided against it.\u00a0 Later on, when I will test smaller changes, it will come handy though.<\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>Once I installed the monitoring of goals and gathered some initial data, it was time to start with the changes.\u00a0 One of the obvious problems from the previous step was that I actually didn&#8217;t have my targets on the site.\u00a0 The action points were missing &#8211; no easy way to read movie reviews and no &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/02\/rebuilding-mamchenkov-net-step-3-targets\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Rebuilding mamchenkov.net &#8211; Step 3 &#8211; Targets<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,1335,62,1334],"tags":[1330],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-12413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-site-news","category-technology","category-web-work","tag-web-development"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10979,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/15\/on-movie-reviews-and-movies\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":0},"title":"On movie reviews and movies &#8230;","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"December 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"While reading dooce's reasons for why she stopped reading music reviews, I had a thought along the same lines, but for the movies. A music reviewer runs into a problem that plagues most writers: coming up with new ways to say the same thing. Why is that most of my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13671,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/23\/more-improvements-for-movie-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":1},"title":"More improvements for Movie Reviews","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"November 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just added even more improvements to Movie Reviews. \u00a0If an article is a movie review, the list of assigned categories is not shown anymore. \u00a0Instead of the boring 'All, Movies, 4 stars' only the rating is displayed, using an appropriate amount of stars. \u00a0Images are way more fun to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Movie-Reviews-tweaks-500x232.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":44435,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2019\/11\/24\/imdb-the-new-design\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":2},"title":"IMDb : The new design","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"November 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"IMDb is widely known for two things: the overwhelming size of its movie database, and the fact that it never changes the way it looks. Well, guess what, IMDb update its look and feel, and it's not a minor change. It's fast, it's functional, and it no longer looks like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMDB: 2007","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/imdb-2007.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/imdb-2007.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/imdb-2007.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12386,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2010\/03\/31\/rebuilding-mamchenkov-net-%e2%80%93-step-2-%e2%80%93-monitoring\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":3},"title":"Rebuilding mamchenkov.net \u2013 Step 2 \u2013 Monitoring","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"March 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The best practices of web design and development suggest that I need to set up some goals and monitoring before I make any changes to the web site.\u00a0 This way, I will be able to track how the changes affect the performance of the web site. The problem is that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/google_analytics_goals.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9835,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2006\/01\/15\/true-romance\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":4},"title":"True Romance","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"January 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Late television features many nice movies recently. I wonder why. And for how long they will keep it up. Today one of my favourite crime movies of all times was PIK2 - \"True Romance\". Directed by: Tony Scott Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Romance, Thriller Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;5 stars&quot;","block_context":{"text":"5 stars","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/movies\/movie-reviews\/5-stars\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/01\/true_romance.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8189,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2004\/11\/10\/movie-reviews-are-now-just-movies\/","url_meta":{"origin":12413,"position":5},"title":"Movie reviews are now just Movies","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"November 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"A quick update to the site - \"Movie reviews\" category was renamed to \"Movies\". I have, at times, something to say that is related to movies, but is not exactly a movie review. I will post these bits to \"Movies\" now, instead of \"General\" as I used to.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12413"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=12413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}