SquidUtils: The Story So far
Once upon a time, probably during April of 2007, I started making a few tools for Squidoo Lensmasters. I don’t know the exact date, but I figure that “2 years ago” is close enough.
The very first tool was the Lensmaster RSS Feed. I remember requesting this on the forum, but a month later I had given up waiting and built my own solution instead. Shortly afterwards, I shared this with other Lensmasters so that they too could get a feed of all their lenses – perfect for syndicating on a blog or directory.
Since then, the RSS Feed has been improved and made more widely available, and is now served directly from Squidoo HQ. Find out how you can make use of yours by reading How to Use Your Lensmaster Feed.
That was just the beginning…
About that same time, I had signed up with Amazon as an Associate. While you don’t need to be an Associate to make money with Squidoo, I was enjoying the flexility of having product links embeded within my text. This was fine until Squidoo removed support for IFrames in July (and with good reason too).
Suddenly I wasn’t able to use Amazon’s code on my lenses, so I had to come up with something that was compatible. This saw the birth of the Amazon Link tool, and later the Amazon RSS Feeds – both of these provided a way for Associates to feature products directly on a lens. Learn more about Being an Amazon Associate on Squidoo.
All of this time, I had been serving these tools from my personal website, which wasn’t easy to find. So, on the 1st of August 2007, I registered the domain SquidUtils.com, and transfered all of the tools across to a new web site. This was probably when the Advanced Dashboard was introduced too.
Fast forward to April of 2008, and I finally gave in to the idea of a blog and wrote my first post (ever). This would be where I would write about the tools on the site, as well as other lens building tips. A few months later I was forced to migrate to a dedicated server to keep up with all the demand, and to provide a more reliable service.
Since then, SquidUtils has seen the addition of a lens directory, some new tools, as well as a browser toolbar, to make life even easier for Lensmasters. Along the way there have been some collaborative projects such as Squidaholic and the Health Check Tool.
Anyway, there is the brief history of SquidUtils. Thanks to everyone who has supported the site, and provided me with the inspiration to keep it alive. Hopefully, with any luck and a fair dollop of free time, I’ll be making some more tools to add to the list.
I’ve already got a couple things up my sleeve.
Stay tuned…
Related posts:
- Welcome to the SquidUtils Blog
- New Tools for Squidoo Lensmasters
- Being an Amazon Associate on Squidoo
- How to Use Your Lensmaster Feed
- Statistics for Your Amazon Links
FluffaNutta
Follow everything you do
Thanx
Thanks for all of your great work!
I can’t imagine working on Squidoo without the Advanced Dashboard!
I honestly cannot imagine Squidoo without SquidUtils! I depend on your site for sooooooooooo much help and information and great tools! Thank you!
Thank you for providing all these awesome tools for Squidu
I use a lot of them heavily.
Thank you. You’re a huge part of Squidoo — could not imagine it without you.
Fluff, I think you already know how much I personally appreciate the tools you provide on SquidUtils. I dont know how many times I have visited you, since I joined Squidoo last July – but then of course YOU could probably tell me
– and I do hope that you hear from everyone who makes use of the great tools you provide, from time to time.
I am still trying to get to grips with sorting out Amazon links for us UK Lensmasters who have visitors who want to buy from the UK site and when I am ready to tackle that then I know where to come.
So Happy 2 Year Anniversary Fluff and thank you.
AJ
I’ll echo what AJ said about the facility you’ve provided to allow UK lensmasters to include Amazon UK links on their lenses
Some of my lenses are UK specific (no-one elsewhere in the world would want or find much of a use for what I try to sell!) and thanks to you, I can now tap into this market via Squidoo.
Thank you so much for that and for SquidUtils as a whole…I couldn’t function without it now
My dear fluffanutta,
Your work is of GREAT VALUE to all of us lensmasters who are less internetly educated than yourself. Thank you so much for your advice, hard work, and the wonderful tools that you provide for all of us to use. As a matter of fact, I just linked to your lens on deep linking in my own newest lens.
I will be posting about this in Squidlog today. You are the best! (Or however they say that in England)
You are amazing and I so appreciate you. You deserve the very best of everything. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks so much for everything you do. I love the toolbar and have an rss feed on nearly all of my 200+ lenses. Now I’m busy adding the new rating widget. Just when I think I’m caught up you add something new and exciting.
Awesome, I just found out about this one, tried it and immediately got notified of 4 easy things to get my lens ranked better.
Thanks for providing this! I blogged it.
You are a credit to the Squidoo community, Fluff. Your tools have improved our lenses and the ability to follow our stats has been greatly improved by your projects. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
~ Crystal
Thanks for all you do for us. I appreciate it!
Great little history
Looking forward to using the squid utils as I’m finding it harder to keep on top of lenses now that I’ve built quite a few
I, too, want to thank you for all you do. As someone who is not very knowledgeable about these things, I can truthfully say that you make it as easy to understand as is possible. As soon as I earn a little money (IF I earn a little money) I will be contributing to the cause! That’s a promise.
Hey Fluff. I think the RSS Feed is great! Thanks. I use it a lot to shoecase my other lenses.
I have a suggestion, is it possible for the RSS to create a random results selection? Thanks.