While browsing some of my favorite sites looking for quirks in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) that I needed to be aware of for Web design, I came across one of the most helpful design tools I've seen in a long time. Caleb Gilbert recommended at Drupal.org a site called Browsershots. His recommendation was prompted on the need for non-IE7 users such as Mac users to actually see what their sites would look like in IE7. This is a design tool not only useful for those designing themes for Drupal, but about any other content management system or Web page you may get your hands on.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that Alexa, a Web search and site statistics company, had wrongly merged CMS Report with a couple other unrelated sites under uly.net. At the time my traffic rank stood at 218,200. Luckily, Alexa has a procedure that lets you contact them so they can separate your site from the other sites.

In that story, I also mentioned that:

"There is no such thing as an ‘IT project.’ There are only business projects with an IT component."

- June Drewry, CIO of Chubb Corp as quoted in "20 Tips to Get Promoted in the Tech Industry", InfoWorld, October 16, 2006

The folks at Serendipity have released version 1.0.2 to address cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities "on the admin backend which could happen if registered authors can be tricked into following a specially crafted URL." The 1.1 Beta 5 also contains this fix along with the following new changes since Beta 1:

PunBB 1.2.14 has been released. According to the original announcement at PunBB.org the new point version it not only fixes some bugs, but also provides some minor enhancements:

Google Buys CMSReport.com. That's at least what I would have liked this week's headlines to read. Instead, everyone in the business world is still scratching their head and wondering what to make of the Google and YouTube deal. Are we about to enter real growth and value in tech or are we about to face a Dot-Net Bubble 2.0? I don't have all the answers, but it looks like everyone is watching. BusinessWeek has this to say in their article, Smart Move or Silly Money 2.0?

WHO'S NEXT? Now, the question is whether YouTube's valuation will extend to up-and-coming buyout contenders. So far, it looks like only a few sites have demonstrated growth and engagement with users that might command similar prices. Exhibit A: Facebook, whose value as determined by its venture investors has jumped from $100 million in its first round in September, 2005, to $500 million in a second round last April. And that's just the start. Sources say bidders such as Yahoo are willing to pay up to $1 billion today.

So was Google's buy of YouTube smart or silly? Just as the BusinessWeek article discusses in their own article, the answer to that question is anybody's guess. I think if Google bought YouTube only for its young fickle audience and the level of synergy currently present at the site...it was a silly move. However, Google may have also bought YouTube before anybody else could which is likely a very smart move.

A few months ago I came across Alexa Web Search for the very first time. Alexa not only offers the usual search engine features, but also additional site statistics dealing with traffic ranking. Naturally, I entered my own site into the rankings to see what I could find. Considering my site has been around for only six months I was impressed that I had a traffic rank under 300,000.

Considering that there are nearly 50 million sites presently on the Internet, a site ranking under half a million is pretty good in my book. I had heard that sites using the Drupal content management system ranked well with the various search engines so I was pleased I chose Drupal for my site. All and all, those first few moments visiting Alexa were spent patting myself on the back for a job well done.

Then to my surprise I noticed that although I had typed in cmsreport.com, Alexa displayed uly.net. Uly.net was a domain I had never heard of before visiting Alexa.com. Worse, it appears that uly.net may have been benefiting from the traffic my site receives.

Traffic Rank for uly.net: 218,200

Where do people go on uly.net?

• cmsreport.com - 98%

Now some of you might be asking yourself, why do I really care how my site is ranked? I'd like to say, it really doesn't matter to me either since I do run this site for "fun". But, I have an ego. I do get a sense of pride for finally having a site where people actually show up and visit. Put it this way, when you host sites that rank above 2 million you feel somewhat rewarded to finally have a site with only six digits in its rank. More importantly, there is benefit to understanding how traffic rankings from sites such as Alexa, Google, and Technorati are being utilized.

"A huge part of the problem is that newspaper companies are still being run, mostly, by people from the print side -- and who, though they may attempt to understand interactive media and the needs and media habits of young people, aren't effective at moving their organizations in a radically different, and necessary, direction."

- Steve Outing, "Why Aren't Newspapers Breaking Out of the Box", Editor & Publisher, September 25, 2006