That is very neat!  I really like that they show some of the process of building the puppet.  Notice how much structure there is to the eye mechanism while the skull or head is simply foam?  I think often with mechanics in a puppeteer builder forget when they are designing that you need that stability to "anchor" to in order to create the movement.

I never pay for this.  There are companies that say they can get you listed on the first page of results.  You should not use them.  Some can actually damage the reputation of your site.  Now Google does have a pay per click service that gets you listed and that is ok if you want to go that way.  I don't simply because this is not a commercial site.  

Puppets and Stuff often comes up high on the listing for a few reasons.  One when I first started the site Rose over at the Puppetry Home Page placed links to my site in several prominent areas of her site. This did two things. One since here site rating was already high it gave me a head start with search engines.  Second it got me noticed by the puppet community which  then got me listed on other puppet sites.  The more links you can get to your site from other puppetry related sites the better.

The content here is constantly changing since it is a forum.  Pretty much any time of the day I visit the site I can see that there are spiders crawling the site.  No not the ones that spin webs... well actually sort of.  Spiders are what search engines use to get the content of the web. They are programs that go out and grab what is out there. They really like text so don't just make your site pretty pictures.  Granted google has the image search but what you are looking for is a listing on the text pages. Also even with images the only way that google knows what the image is about is either by it's file name or by text content that is on the page it is on. My point here is that content is very important.  You have to stay on top of it and if it is not a forum like here then you need to be updating it at the very least a couple times a week.

Try to make your site unique.  I assume it is going to be about puppets so that is a start but don't forget that there are quite a few puppet sites out there now and the toy companies have caught on to the fact that they can sell their toys as puppets.  This kind of comes back to the content thing.  If there is a specific area of puppetry you focus on make sure to highlight it.  Details really help in your text to narrow down and define your site from all the others out there.

Also don't forget that many of the sites you may see in the first couple pages have been around for years. It can take time to climb the ladder.  

P.S.  I just remembered that Na was writing an article on here site about this. I don't think she has it up yet but maybe. http://www.puppetsinmelbourne.com.au/

I always just place one end of the bracket against the wall then grab by wood and lay it on top to see if the end sticking out extends past the width of the wood.  Right now the ones I have on my wall the shorter length of the bracket is against the wall.

Not to hard but you really need to work at it.  Daryl's success is in part because he presented a regular "show" every week at the same time and made sure to add it to the schedule.  Also his workshops where well thought out.  He made sure to include his viewers, which meant watching the chat screen to answer questions and welcome folks when they entered the room.  Actually if you watch some of his recorded shows you'll see what I mean.

I never really do that much with it.  From time to time I get on-line and just work on something.  I almost always get viewers.  It really helps to schedule when you are going to be on.

So is it just me, or are all the embedded Youtube video's not working?  I thought it may be the P&S site code but I see it happening on other sites.  If you get an error you can still click on the YouTube window and it'll take you to the orginal.

Cool video!  Was it for a school project? 

That was great!

Oh.... I am so sorry to hear this. I do hope you mend quickly.  Although I have heard that it you have to stay off of your feet for that to work.

Well facebook and twitter two excellent choices. Both Billie's and Na's suggestions are very good also depending on the direction you want to move with this.  The important thing is if you are going to connect up with these other sites, is to stay active on them.

Cool!  I like this concept of a profile puppet.  What made you think to do that?