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Hi
My name is Ian McKenzie. I am the bloke who has his picture in the left hand margin on each page of this site.
I thought I would say a few words about how this site came into being, and what I have planned for it.
If you are at all like me and passionate about any subject at all, you will try to find out all that you can about it.
As a former Health and Physical Education Teacher, and an Exercise Physiologist in Cardiac Rehabilitation programs, I have always had an interest in enjoyable Physical Activity. For example, I played basketball and veterans Rugby well into my forties. But now in my more senior years, I enjoy more gentle physical activities. And the number one for me these days is dance.
A couple of years ago I was regularly in the Gold Coast area and had a few favourite dance venues down there. Now, I am more frequently in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. But still visit the Gold Coast. I am in Ipswich and Logan city every week also.
The Internet is a great source of information, but one can waste many hours trying to find the information required. Sure, it is all there if you look hard enough, but not always as accessible as you would like.
Personally, I have over the last few years spent many hours finding, or trying to find dance classes, dance teachers or dance venues in certain areas at certain times.
I have found them, but thought how great it would be if there was a directory of them all at the one place.
Well, here it is.
I do hope you will find this site as useful as I think you will.
I am open to any ideas or suggestions. Let me know what you think. More importantly, be sure to tell all of your dancing friends about this site. The more it grows, the more useful it will be.
I have allowed for heaps of Disk Space and Bandwith on my Server’s computer for this site. So it can grow like topsy. It can have thousands of pages and thousands of daily hits and still have greater than 99.9% Uptime - guaranteed.
This template that I am using for this site, I actually developed and built for a ‘friend’ over the last Easter break. I had been attending their dance club reasonably regularly over the last year or so, and some months ago I noticed that their web site was out of date. I had to telephone to find out what the program was to be for the coming week. I was told that their Web Master was sick, or away or something..., I don’t remember actually why he wasn’t available, but I do remember that they were relying on this ‘external’ person to post their news for them.
Now, it so happens that I have a domain name registration and web hosting business. I also have this beaut program called “Quick Blog”. As you are probably aware, a Blog is a sort of on-line journal. If you have a “Quick Blog”, you can post information on your Quick Blog site from any computer anywhere that is connected to the internet.
So, I spent over six hours during Easter building a support web site for this dance club, with a “Quick Blog” as a sub-domain of the site. I had explained to the male half of this husband and wife dance club team, that with the Blog, he had complete control. He could allow comments to be made on his postings if he wished, or he could keep his blogs comment free. And, if he did allow comments, he could veto them before any were published.
An example of the free hosted web site and blog site I prepared is here: www.AADES.biz is the web site and http://ppablog.AADES.biz is the Blog site. The hosting cost is covered by the strip of content related Google ads at the top of each page of the web site and the blog site. As you can see, these ads are not intrusive at all. AADES is an acronmyn for the Australasian Association of Distance Education Schools. My company Professional Performance Australia is one of AADES business sponsors for their National conference in Brisbane later this year. I built this web site and blog site in support of the delegates and the conference.
I offer this free hosting and free Quick Blog site to anyone who purchases a domain name from Ian McKenzie’s Domains.
As you can see, it is great value.
But, back to this dance club. Here is the home page I built for them. Now the original page did not have my photograph or my advertisements in the left side panel, nor were there any advertisements at the bottom of the page, as there are now. But, beside the stylized dance figures in the header was their address and phone number and links to their official web site and blog site.
I am quite sure that any reasonable person reading the home page will agree that it could not be possibly construed as being anything but supportive of this couple and their dance club. The only changes to the content has been to delete any identifying details.
I had discussed this web site and blog site with the male half of this husband and wife dance club team, and advised him that I thought it could be a useful tool for their business, and that if he wanted to use it, it would be fine, but that if he didn’t want to use it that would be fine also, as I could easily take the site down.
You could imagine my surprise when the next communication I received was a telephone call from the female half of this dance club team, letting me know in no uncertain terms that I should mind my own business and leave their business to them.
Well, I immediately went into my control panel and changed the Domain Name Settings (DNS) for the site and it came tumbling down, never to be seen again.
I am not at all sure what is the lesson to be learned here. In good faith I had tried to do a favour for a couple I thought were friends. If the male half of the partnership with whom I had been talking had telephoned me and said something like, “thanks for the time you spent on this Ian, but it is not really what we want at the current time”. I would have probably been a bit disappointed, but would have taken down the site, and everything would have been OK.
Instead, I was at the receiving end of a vitriolic tirade of abuse from this man’s wife.
Well, I immediately started my writing therapy. I regularly publish articles on the internet. I generally make a point of averaging at least one each week. These articles help with the optimization of my web sites by providing back links. Well in the two days following this incident I wrote three each with an average of about 1,000 words, and all of which have been accepted by the publishers.
And, “yes thank you, I do feel much better now”.
Well, that one unwanted web site has grown into a suite of thirteen web sites regarding dancing. They are all available here.
It would seem that this couple I mentioned earlier have a fear of people talking about their business. I, on the other hand come from an education background and believe that open communication about any topic at all is healthy. I have even taught tertiary courses on communication.
I am investigating appropriate software which I can incorporate into twelve of those thirteen sites where people can discuss on the web any aspect of dance, dance teachers and dance venues that they wish.
By making information available on dance in your geographic area, you should be able to make better informed decisions.
I welcome any suggestions you may have that may make any of these sites more useful. Send me an email by clicking on the email link.
If you have read this and you know of any dance teachers, dance studios, dance clubs, dance bands or other dance venues that are not listed here, I would really appreciate your letting them know about this site and its companion sites, so they can get the information to me for me to list.
It is currently the last week in April, 2007. I have not had the chance to contact very many dance teachers etc., as yet, but with those I have, the response has been fantastic. thanks very much
Ian McKenzie
P.S.
There are currently close to one hundred million domain names for web sites that are currently registered with the International registering body ICANN. But, there are billions more that can be registered. Anyone anywhere, who would like to cover the cost of registering any available domain name and preparing a web site in support of any one of my sites, would be most welcome. It is important however that you give a link from the site you build back to one of my sites. The major search engines like Google use back links to sites as an important part of their algorithms for deciding rankings. “Google” was originally called “Backrub” by the two young men that developed it, because of the search engine’s unique ability to analyze back links going to a site.
Well, OK, I can dream. A satisfactory alternative would be to give a link from your existing web site back to this one, (or one of this site’s companion sites). I will certainly be happy to reciprocate with a back link to your site from the listing you place with me. It will be a WIN/WIN situation for both of us.
Ian McKenzie
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