Well, looks like it’s time for an update from yours truly on the CE blog. Lots of news, updates, software projects, business opportunities, and more…a virtual plethora of digital goodness.

Yet another school year has passed here at Central Wyoming College, and we’ve added yet another college graduate to our family, as my son Kenny earned his music degree. As an extra treat, he arranged and sang a duet right before commencement began on the stage of the Robert A. Peck Arts Center here in Riverton. What was really cool was that the entire commencement exercise was broadcast via Wyoming Public Television for the entire town to see on the college’s education access channel.

I’ve got a DVD of the events, and will create a Youtube video of Kenny’s performance for his blog at www.automaticboymusic.com. Kenny’s graduation brings the total number of degrees earned by our family in the last three years here at CWC to SEVEN college degrees. I am very humbled by my entire family working so hard for full and complete educations, and pursuing further college goals in the coming months.

I’ll be starting classes via the University of Wyoming this fall, and will continue working towards my bachelor’s degree over the next couple of years, while working on my home business project. I’ll keep you updated on any news associated with UWyo from this end.

In other family news, we’re going to taking care of our grandchildren for the summer (and possibly longer) so our time for summer fun and travel plans have been put on the back burner for a while.

The SurvivalRing website is undergoing a MASSIVE redesign over the next three months, with EVERY webpage, every documentn, and every download being upgraded to state of the art web design and content management systems. Once all editing is done, changes are tested by a host of SurvivalRing supporters, and hundreds of downloads are added and cataloged into a database tracking system, we’ll flip the switch and let you run with it. Wanna peek at the new design? Check it out at www.survivalring.org/sr to get just a taste of what is coming.

While we’re doing the long awaited update, I’ll also be finishing off some entire new sites that will be part of the *new* SurvivalRing. These new tools include a Product Reviews website for prep and survival gear, a complete EVERYTHING FALLOUT SHELTER site with all the documents I have put all in ONE place for ease of use (and using the www.myfalloutshelter.com domain), and some over yet to be released projects still in the planning stages.

Once nearly all projects are up to speed, the new homepage for SurvivalRing will be a portal into all areas of the entire SurvivalRing network, that loads fast, gives a short bio of each site section, and let’s you just jump right into the area you are most interested in, without having to jump through any hoops.

As SurvivalRing moves forward, and the major updates are done, we’ll be creating a series of podcasts, videos, and new ebooks (and possibly even hardcopy versions) on all areas of preparedness.

Our Podcasts, to be called SurvivalRing Radio, will start broadcasting in July, and will include news, alerts, threat analysis, prepping tips, interviews, reviews, and a whole lot more. I’ll be producing weekly 30 minute shows at first, but the long term goal, after things are all said and done (all major projects for the site are finished), is to have a daily one hour show, which if things work out, may go on broadcast radio through any of a number of web/on air broadcast organizations.

Our Video Projects, to be called SurvivalRingTV, will start appearing after the first of the year, and will feature hands on tips, outdoors adventure, survival how-to’s, preparedness tools and uses, and eventually a complete series on fallout shelter building, designs, systems, and use.

As all these creative outlets are being worked on, I’ll be building up the business side of SurvivalRing as well, to support upgrades to dedicated hosting of the entire SurvivalRing network, HD video cameras and tools, audio mixing systems and needs for live radio broadcasts from my home studio, and a variety of other tools to create unlimited potential for online education for all website visitors. The business at SurvivalRing consists of CD ROM publications, online digital media content, membership sections, our new forums system, advertising opportunties, home business creation packages for anyone needing extra income.

Finally, to round everything out, our long overdue SurvivalRing Newsletter will begin production again in June. Expect weekly updates, free download links, news, tools, and commentary on the world of survival and preparedness, from someone who’s spent a lifetime living it. Yep…me.

More to come later. Stay tuned. This is The Summer of SurvivalRing.

Rich

After being offline for a few months, I have finally been able to replace our dead forum board, with a brand new state of the art forum system called the Invision Power Board.

We HAD been using IkonBoard 3.1.1, which suffered massive unfixable security issues, and upon trying to update many different ways to the latest version of 3.1.5, it promptly committed suicide. Hundreds of spams a day were being injected, and the Ikonforum team in the years since I had originally installed the software no longer existed or cared for full path upgrades. This was very disconcerting, and painful to loose so many useful posts.

I was able to save the data in a database, but attempts to salvage them coherently into the new software haven’t been fully successfull…yet.

But… the NEW board is COMPLETELY operational. I’ve already got two new moderators, and more to come.

Jump on over to the SRCC (SurvivalRing Community Center) and register a username and start posting away.

The more the merrier…

Rich
Founder - SurvivalRing

SurvivalRing has been on the web since 1997. It started out as a single web page to support the SurvivalRing Survival and Preparedness webring, hosted way back then on Webring.org (now a poorly run Dot.Com company). Within a couple of months, the webring had 12 members webrings. By the late fall of 1999 (pre Y2K), SurvivalRing had 750 members and amazing traffic.

Starting in early 1998, SurvivalRing become it’s own website, with hosting, downloads, features, and a budding online community was born.

Today, SurvivalRing has been beefed up on infrastructure and backend support, and now has the room, and power, to offer AMAZING future growth.

Here’s the details…

Current online storage capacity….
25 gigabytes (or 25,0000 megabytes)
(originally? 10 megabytes)

Current bandwith limits…
None - Now with Freedom bandwith
(originally? 500 megabytes a month)

Current UNIQUE domain capability…
8 unique, full blown domain baseds websites
(originally? 1…and multiple subdomains)

added…
SSL certificate and security features
unlimited email addresses
unlimited subdomains
much, much more…

Now, what can I do with all that space?

=> Put dozens of CDs worth of new content on the web.

=> Put ISO CD image files on the web for folks to instantly download, if they prefer that do receiving a regular CD in the mail, for both of my CD publications to date

=> Put HUNDREDS of new files online that I’ve been holding off on to keep the site running smoothly without hitting bandwidth or space limitations. The new documents will contain tens of thousands of new pages, never before on the web.

=> Add video productions as I make them, and keep all variations of video files (mpeg, mov, rm, avi, etc) online for visitor choices of download

=> upcoming podcast production…ALL shows will remain online instead of being rotated offline.

Who knows what else I’ll add? But, the good news is, I literally have power and space to put incredible amounts of data, info, and knowledge online, all in one place.

Now, I’ve gone through as many parts of the website since the move was completed today, and think I’ve fixed all the database errors that popped up. If, however, you find any part of the website now working, please email me and let me know so I can fix it asap.

Now, go and enjoy the rest of the website. And, thanks for dropping in…

Rich
Founder-SurvivalRing.org

I’ve done quite a few new website projects for the SurvivalRing web project over the past couple of months. As a college student with two applied science degrees, and goals of helping others in every way possible, I’m using my web, media, programming, production, and business skills to create resources to help everyone become more self sufficient and self reliant. This includes giving you the tools to generate you own income, regardless of your limits.

With that in mind, I’m creating a series of profit producing websites that will cover all the operations costs of the SurvivalRing website (now in it’s TENTH year!), provide an income that allows me to take care of my family’s needs, and let me continue to expand the boundaries of SurvivalRing’s reach and capabilities.

First and favorite at this point is my new SurvivalGear store, where you can pick up a multitude of survival tools, survival kits, survival food, and much more. Need to stock up on some potassium iodide? We have it… How about some Israeli Gas masks AND extra filters for everyone in your family? We’ve got that too. Maybe you might want a prepackaged Bug Out Bag…for the next tornado or hurricane that heads you way? We have them here, here and here…

There are literally thousands of survival and preparedness items in the
SurvivalGear store, including entertainment items such as classic survival related movies (The Stand, Red Dawn, The Road Warrior, Braveheart, and more), tools including multitools, rescue tool kits, emergency safety hammers, generators, and other neccessary items.

How about communications equipment? You’ll need a shortwave radio, handheld family walkie talkies, a CB radio for the car AND truck, emergency alert weather radio for the home, office, and vehicle, and for the really bad days…you’ll want hand crank powered radios to get news when there is no electricity or batteries in your home. You might even grab a police scanner to get a heads up on local events as they happen.

For around the home, you’ll want to consider MAJOR power needs such as a whole house generator, escape ladders, security systems, and food storage .

There is SO much more in the SurvivalRing SurvivalGear store. Drop on by and see how vast our selection is, and the quality of the products. Brand names you can trust, and fulfillment by none other the Amazon.com. All proceeds from our store sales go DIRECTLY back to this website to continue the work we’ve been doing for almost ten years.

If you find there is an area lacking in the store, or you need a specific item…tell me. I’ll add it to the store system so that others may find it much easier. You’ll find food for long term storage, tools for every emergency situation, electronic gear for every kind of communications, books on every aspect of survival and preparedness, entertainment resources that will make you think, give you ideas, build your skills, and more (think videos, movies, software, games, and the like), and a lot more. Drop on by and check out the tens of thousands of items you can find there in a moments notice.

Next, is my SurvivalRing Download Store, with dozens of digital ebooks, software, manuals, and my most popular civil defense survival documents. Visit and see the large collection of tools I have there, including quite a few packages that will give YOU the ability to create your own home based, income producing business. I have thousands more books, packages, templates, turnkey websites, and more to be added over the coming months. ALL of them will have resell rights, meaning YOU can buy them and turn around and sell them yourself on your OWN website. The Download Store is automated (think about that…making money in your sleep), and once you make a purchase, you create a simple and quick user account, go to Paypal to make the payment, and after payment return back to the store for INSTANT DOWNLOAD 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Interesting in learning how to do this? I can show you how…

My CD Rom publications also have their own website now, at SurvivalRing Media Store. Currently the store only has these CDs as the only products, but the store uses the same programming as the Download store. The only difference is that the Media Store sells TANGIBLE products, and will include many items besides CDs, including my upcoming video productions, my rare book collection extras, and new and used items you might find handy and interesting. If you don’t have Paypal or a credit card, you can send money orders or checks as your payment, as the website can produce an invoice to include with your payment.

Much more in the works, including an entirely new section for my web based business. I’m going to be creating a VIRTUAL HOME INCOME system that anyone can use to supplement their income, or create a brand new career. Features of this system will include packages business software, downloadable products, affiliate sale, joint ventures, and tons of freebies. Watch this space for the latest info.

That’s it for now. Have a great weekend!

Rich

I’m finishing up an Associates of Applied Science degree in Web Design in a few weeks, and I’m working on my “big project” for this semester…conversion of SurvivalRing.org to a database driven website, from static html pages. It’s going to be a biggie, but I’m at the point of total understanding of how and what to do.

Very happy to be at this point, too. This is the reason I came back to college as a non-traditional student…to learn the skills to enhance a project that has taken over my life, and make it the cutting edge resource that I know it can be.

At the same time I’ve been working on this degree, and the A.A.S in Electronic Media that I earned last year, I’ve also been playing with a lot of other web technology.

Using Dreamweaver and Flash, I’ve done some pretty cool things, and I’m very comfortable with what these tools can do. I’ve come to enjoy a handful of tools that make web development much faster and easier. For example, I have a full blown web server running on my laptop right now, using Wampserver. This package is free, includes mysql, php, apache, and phpmyadmin. Perl, Zend Optimizer, and Webalizer are also available as downloads for this wonderful tool. I’m using this system to work on many projects right now, before taking them to my online hosting account. Development time has been greatly increased.

I’ve also been hearing a lot about Ruby on Rails, and found a similar package for creating an environment on the laptop for learning Ruby. It’s called Instant Rails, and creates a running server environment for Ruby. I haven’t done anything with Ruby yet, but it looks like an immensely likable package. Once I’ve played with it a bit, I’ll share some fun stuff I do with it.

I’m sure I’ve stated it before, but I’ll say it again. I’m not getting these degrees and skills to just be hireable by other companies. I’m putting enormous amounts of time into creating cutting edge web tools, infrastructure, and state of the art programming, to enable much easier, greatly enhanced, and much faster serving of the same science and fact based survival and preparedness information I’ve been doing for almost ten years now.

Sure, I’ll love a good paying, benefit enhanced, and long term job to make my life easier, supporting my wife and I, in some comfort and ease (compared to the path we’ve had for the past 20 years of hard work due to no college degrees).

The Entreprenuerial bug has bitten, and I’ve got a business plan, along with marketing and publicity plans, to make my little SurvivalRing website THE survival and preparedness site for the ages…or at least enough to help folks worldwide, while making a real living from it. Time will tell…but I know enough now that I can make it happen.

Time to head back to the editing screen to do some more code hacking…Enjoy the sites!

Hi folks,

The Madness was mine… at my website host.
The last couple of days, SurvivalRing.org and most of the other domains associated with the website crashed because of issues at our webhost, which happens to be Hostrocket.

A day of tracking down domain settings, many trouble tickets, and several long distance phone calls, resulted with a very tough ticket being sent at high priority to the Hostrocket techs. This last 0ne got their attention. I threatened to find a new host if this wasn’t resolved.

At 3am this morning (thank God for 24 hour tech support), a tech named Joe dug deep into the settings of my website config system, and found the problem.

It seems my entire website was moved to another server without my knowledge, using an automated hosting tool. Problem came about because the script didn’t finish the job, and corrupted many settings…leaving SurvivalRing a smoking hole in the ground.

He found the problem, corrected the major issues, and brought the site back up so that the domain pointers could find my site again on a server shared with 250 other websites.

I still had a problem with missing subdomains (which contain my other websites, such as theblastshelter.com, sundancerdigipros.com, cosmicechoes.org, yaaaonline.com, and many others), and dead programs including my blogs, forums, and other tools. He recovered over 30 subdomains in the next hour, and everything seems to be working now.

I was seriously considering finding a new host that last half of yesterday, and had looked at Hostgator and 1and1, both of which seem to have good references and some really good packages with lots of storage space and bandwidth…my major concerns for immediate upgrade.

After the last response on this issue from Hostrocket, they took responsibility for the site issues, and upgraded my account to 5 gigs of space and unlimited bandwidth, at a savings to me of 30% off what I was going to pay, and which beat the prices at the two hosts above.

For the time being, which means the next year, I’ll hang with Hostrocket, and see what comes out of it. I can always upgrade later, and may still create a mirror backup site of SurvivalRing…for the next time things go awry.

Rich

Today, as expected, the newest version of Wordpress, version 2.0, was released. I was download number 1180….out of thousands more to come.

I’ll be working on upgrading this install of WP (v 1.5.2), t0 v.2.0, later this week.

Congrats to the team…what I’ve already seen is EXTREMELY impressive.

Rich