Last month, we previewed the changes in the web design at KTracy.com in September 2022. It took a few revisions, but we finally settled on adding a right-sidebar and using uniform, color-coded inline-blocks instead of a long list of links. Kevin Tracy was really happy with how this worked and asked us to do it again.

Here's what we're looking at in October 2022.

Kevin Tracy's Fitbit Data in the Sidebar

One of the things we've been working on is automating the process of downloading Kevin Tracy's Fitbit data to the FTP. While we eventually hope to automate this with a Raspberry Pi in 2023, we have a framework now that will allow us to update the FTP about 80% of the time. I spoke to Kevin Tracy about the limitations, and he's happy with that progress especially because the website code itself won't change.

The goal for now is to put variable data like this on the right sidebar. Eventually, data in the left sidebar will be expanded in unique pages and more variable data that is automatically updated will be included on both sidebars. However, that's work that will likely take place in 2023. Until then, we're progressing slowly by getting one or two features a month in the sidebars.

The question has been asked, "Who cares about how many steps Kevin Tracy gets a day?" Even Kevin Tracy isn't sure there's a good answer about that, however, he wants the motivation of publicly sharing this data to encourage him to get more daily steps. So with that said, please Contact Kevin and give him crap if he doesn't meet his step goal.

Latest Image

Another feature using similar code is the "latest image." Right now, it's just a static image that Kevin updates whenever he feels like it. That's not the end game. Eventually, we want to develop something like Instagram that will place an image and short message together through an app on Kevin's cell phone and tablet. We had something like this in place using IndieWeb enabled micropub plugin in WordPress through an Android app called Indigenous. One of our long term goals is to get Indigenous working with our static site, but until then, just getting automations is an acceptable goal.

To that end, we're temporarily going to use Instagram to post content to and download data from. Kevin has expressed some regret that we're not using Mastodon or some other open source thing. However, for the time being, we're going to continue continue with Instagram just because some of the coding is already done and we'll get things online faster.

This is a lower priority than the Fitbit data simply because the code is likely to change considerably once we figure out how to get Micropub back online in the static site.

Author, Date, and Post Type Format

At the top of this page, you'll notice my office, my name, that this is a document for immediate release, and the date of its release.

This is how we started press release and press conference transcript from 2001 through 2005. However, in 2022, the format feels stale and old. So, starting at some point in October, the format is going to change to remove this heading and place it somewhere else in the document. Kevin Tracy has expressed his love for a date and time format used on KTracy.com from 2008 through 2012 showing it as a tab off to the side of the post itself. We're not sure that will look right with the double sidebar, but we're going to play with some ideas and come up with something that works with the new responsive features of KTracy.com.

Redirecting KTracy.com to www.KTracy.com

We're really happy with the SEO progress we've made at KTracy.com. One recommendation we've received from a consultant is redirecting non-www traffic to www. Internally, the IT department at KTracy.com has been in three very distinct camps about this.

• Those who support non-www because it's simpler and will result in slightly smaller file sizes and faster website load times
• Those who support www because we have subdomains (like store.ktracy.com)
• Those who support using just one (doesn't matter which) because it's good for SEO
• Those who don't give a crap (this is where Kevin Tracy stands on it)

I'm using my authority as the Minister of Information Technology here at KTracy HQ to make a call that we're going to force www with the .htaccess file, similar to how we force https.

We're still unhappy with our Google search ranking and we need to do everything in our power to make this site more attractive to Google without adding Google Analytics and tracking cookies to the site.

Encouraging Sharing Links

We have a lot of stuff on the plate for October 2022, but we're starting to think the biggest problem for SEO now is the lack of incoming external links. Normally, a website would provide tools to share the page directly to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. Kevin has flatly refused to do this since this usually involves placing trackers on your site.

Instead, we're hoping to provide two options to help people share links:

Copy URL
Copy HTML Link

We're hoping this will make up a little bit for not having Social Media linking tools directly on the site.

In general, you can probably see we're working towards making KTracy.com more SEO friendly and trying to automate content creation as much as possible. This was our original intention when we relaunched KTracy.com as a static site in 2021. Everyone is really excited that Kevin Tracy's vision for a static KTracy.com is finally coming to fruition and October's update will be an important leap forward in that direction.