If you want to get anywhere online, organization is important. And it’s easier than you might think. Some people use applications on their home computer and keep their organizational tools offline. That’s fine, if that works for you. But I like being able to work from more than one computer, so that means I need everything online. Which in turn means everything needs to be kept away from prying eyes.
Believe me, if I can pull this off, so can you. This is my solution to a convenient and secure online portal that’ll contain every link and bit of information I need.
First, choose a CMS (content management) program. There are several in Fantastico, and most will do what you want. If you’re not comfortable installing a php program yourself, just use one from the Fantastico install, and keep things simple – almost any of them will do well enough for now. Try a few out, see which ones suit you. The features I look for are a links portal, a forum, and a newsfeed (for reading other people’s feeds). My personal choice is Dragonfly CMS, and I also recommend e107. Both of these require you to install them, but they’re easy.
Be sure to install to a subfolder, not your main directory. This is so you can password protect that directory later.
Another resource for finding the perfect CMS is OpenSourceCMS, a site where you can demo a bunch of these programs – very cool site.
Most CMS programs come with plug-ins or modules – little add-ons that allow you to do more things. For example, Dragonfly doesn’t ship with a links portal, but installing one is incredibly simple, and then it has every feature I want.
Once you’ve got your CMS ready to go, it’s time to organize it so you can have the information you need at your fingertips.
The next step is, well, using your portal. Here’s what I suggest:
Keep your forum from prying eyes.
The simplest way to do this? Go into Cpanel and choose “Password Protect Directories”. The next screen lists all your folders. Pick the one you installed your CMS in. Now, go down near the bottom of the page, where there are blocks for you to fill in “Username:” and “Password:”. Make up a username and password, and plonk them in there. Now click “Add/Modify authorized user”. It’ll take you to a confirmation page – on that, you just need to click “Go back” down at the bottom. Now, tick the box at the top left of the page beside the words “Directory requires a password to access via the web (you must check this to activate password protection).” Now hit “save” in the middle of the page. That’s it. Now, when you or anyone else tries to access a file from that directory, they’ll have to input your username and password first.
The point of this? Everyone you link to will see your site in their backlinks, and they may come visiting (though I have a solution to help with that). It’s unlikely they’ll have any bad intentions, but you’re going to be keeping records on your online ventures in here, so you don’t really want them seeing what you’re up to. This is the simplest way to keep them out.
Now for setting up the content of your portal.
Set up your Newsfeeds:
Go into your newsfeed section. You may have one set up already, or you may need to create a “block”. In either case, what you’re looking for is the part of your CMS that will allow you to run “RSS Feeds” or “syndicated feeds” from other people’s blogs or forums. Now, go find some feeds you like, and set them up in your portal. You may also have an option to set up various categories for them. I have mine running right on the front page, so I can scan the headlines every time I go, to see if there’s anything I want to read.
Next, input your links.
This is an ongoing process, of course. I input links to my cpanels, my stats pages, online tools I use regularly, forums I visit, etc. Here’s the one trick I want to share, though. If you would prefer not to even show up in anyone’s backlinks, there’s a simple way to avoid it: go to Anonym.to and follow their instructions about putting that javascript script into your header (or anywhere that will make it appear on every page.
This causes every link to be prepended with “anonym.to/?” – and that’s what will show up in anyone’s backlinks. When you click the links, it’ll take you to a gateway for a few seconds, then onto the site you’re visiting.
You don’t have to use this feature if you don’t want to. My purpose in using it is so that when I visit my own sites, my site won’t show up in their backlinks. Why does that matter? Well, if all my sites share a common backlink, someone profiling my links could connect my sites and get ideas that I worked hard to come up with. And hey, it’s not like it’s a ton of work.
Next up, the final step: your forum
Finally, your forum.
This is where it all comes together. Go into the forum in your CMS, and set up sections and threads for keeping notes, logs, ideas, to do lists, etc. Obviously, you should organize this in whatever way works best for your mind and your style, but here’s what I do, if you need a suggestion to get started. In this example, “categories” are the main sections in your forum, “forums” are the subsections within the categories, and “threads” are the sections with actual content inside the forums. Make sense?
My structure is something like this:
SITES (category)
• Site 1 (forum)
– Stats (thread)
– To Do List
– Progress Log
• Site 2
– Stats
– To Do List
– Progress Log
• Site 3
– Stats
– To Do List
– Progress Log
(Add in other threads as you find out what you need)
MARKETING
• SEO
– Articles
– Tools
– Notes
• AdWords
– Articles
– Tools
– Notes
• General Marketing
– Articles
– Tools
– Notes
WEB DESIGN/SITE MAINTENANCE
• Tech Stuff
• .htaccess hacks
• CMS notes
You get the idea. Over time, the notes you make in this thing will prove invaluable. I post things like how many pages the SE’s have indexed in my sites every so often. I post about things I’ve changed, tried, decided against doing. Later, when I review this stuff, and see when I did what, and what happened after that, I sometimes see patterns that help me avoid making mistakes twice, or that give me great new ideas.
Good luck!
Related posts:
- Using Todoist as a mini-portal
- How to use Gmail as a portal for a group
- Creating personas that say yes
- Creating a static front page on a blog
