I heard good things about Expression Engine (EE).

On paper EE looks fantastic, and is full of features.  New to blogging, I let the feature list seduce me and I bit hard.  I even plunked down for a Commercial license, because……….you never know.

Installation was straightforward, but I noticed something straight away.  The load times sucked.  Seven seconds to load a nearly empty home page?  I asked around and the common answer I got was: “your webhost is slow”.  I didn’t buy it, as I have other accounts with my webhost running scripts, and none slog down like this.

After several months of inactivity, I finally got back around to this blog…………..and the load times got even slower. So, in a decisive moment, I deleted Expression Engine and moved to Wordpress.

Besides being free of charge, Wordpress is one of the most widely used Blog Platforms around.  What does this mean?  Lots of templates to use, lots of plugins, and lots of community support.

Best of all?  Load time of about 1.6 seconds.  (Same exact webhost, by the way).

And my name is…………well………call me Mr. P. (I was going to use “X”, but it seems the internet marketing world is now littered with “X” types…….)

You see, this site/blog is a bit of an anomaly. I’m somewhat of a veteran in the World Wide Web world (veteran = Mosaic user, if you don’t know what “Mosaic” is, well Sonny, the first web browser).

I was there when the first entrepreneurs began marketing their wares on the Internet, most often to universal scorn from the “information is free” crowd, mostly trolling on Usenet (look it up, Sonny).

I was the first ever Internet Marketing Manager for a large multi-national corporation, back when corporate execs didn’t even know what a web browser was. As such, I had a budget of about $300,000 to “go play” and create a national web presence (they spend tens of millions now for this.)

So I’ve got some experience in the web marketing game. But I’m not here to impress you with my credentials.

I’m mainly here to vent. To spew my opinions. Hopefully to lower my blood pressure (my cardiologist tells me not to internalize all my stress and anger). And in so doing, perhaps help a few newbies or intermediate web marketers along the way.

Why the anonymity? Well, I’m not a dot-com millionaire, but I am very comfortable. Unlike some of the “dreamers” out there (a topic for another entry), I have a very good, high-paying job. And I’m not going to jeopardize that job by putting up a neon sign announcing my newest business project on the web.

I also have a couple of growing, prospering internet business that I’ve cultivated along the way, all on the side. Sites that will lead me to an early retirement from the real world. And I’m also not going to jeopardize these either.

Thus anonymity. “Like a warm cocoon”, ya know?

I’ve always admired Stanley Bing, the “anonymous” columnist for Fortune Magazine who satirized Corporate Business life. But after awhile, I realized Bing is so…….analog, ya know?

So I’d thought I’d do something similar, but focus mainly on the life of an Internet Small Business Owner. Providing some tips, some observations, some critiques, and perhaps just a bit of an off-kilter view of the web small business world.

So welcome.

And stay tuned.

- Mr. P