Archives for 2007

AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart

December 17, 2007 by Tricia

If you have an online store or perhaps want to start one in order to sell your merchandise you should visit the AspDotNetStorefront e-commerce by design website.

Perhaps you’ve been using another service for your e-commerce store or have been struggling with freeware e-commerce software, but you’ve found that it doesn’t offer you flexibility or the ease of use that you had been hoping to find. If that’s the case you need to visit AspDotNetStorefront and download a free trial of their ecommerce software solution.

AspDotNetStorefront will not only make it easier for you to set up your ecommerce storefront, but it will also help you promote your site on search engines. The software provides integrated seamless support for search engine indexing. Every page of your storefront can be indexed on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. There is also full control over all meta tags, page descriptions, titles, and keywords. All of which will ensure that your site is indexed properly.

There are actually so many features it’s hard to know where to begin to describe them to you.

AspDotNetStorefront is designed to be flexible. The creators of this innovative E-commerce shopping cart software have ensured that you can make your store unique. You can design store front skins using Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

Merchants can access their storefront via a web based control panel.

How will your clients pay for your merchandise? That’s up to you! AspDotNetStorefront supports a number of payment systems such as Paypal, Linkpoint, Verisign, credit card, E-Check, Check by mail and Authorize.net. Shipping rates are also integrated into the software for services such as FedEx, USPS, DHL, and Canada Post.

There’s no limits on the size of the database or the number of products that you can sell from your e-commerce site. Nor is there a limit to the amount of departments or categories that you can create.

AspDotNetStorefront users can password protect topics, set minimum quantities, and have the ability to track affiliates through order records and customer.

I’ve barely touched on the number of features within this e-commerce software package. You really need to visit the site for yourself to read about all the features. It’s mind boggling! If I were setting up an e-commerce storefront I would seriously consider this product. Check it out.

Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin

December 6, 2007 by Tricia

Can you believe this?

Yesterday evening I was using my laptop and my email program, Eudora, was acting up. For some reason it freezes up when I visit websites that have flash on them. So I rebooted my computer in order to get my email to work properly again.

When I rebooted my IP address must have changed. I’m with Rogers.com and my IP address can sometimes change each time I log on to my computer or I might have the same IP for weeks or months on end. Usually this doesn’t cause any kind of problem for me.

So I’m working on my computer, checking my mail and I try to moderate some of the comments that have come in on the blogs that I maintain. I can’t do it.

I got an error message stating that my IP has been marked as spam and blacklisted. I was given a Key that I can use to solve the problem myself, but of course that only resulted in an error message. The other option I was given was to write to the moderator of the site. In other words write to myself?

I didn’t clue in right away as to what the problem was. I tried going into my WordPress admin section to see if I had added the particular IP address that I seemed to have been assigned by Rogers to the WP ADMIN Options Discussion section. Nope. It wasn’t there. I’d only blocked a few IP addresses on my home and garden blog and no others.

Naturally by this time I’d been trying to solve the problem for at least half an hour and I was starting to freak out a little bit as I had at least 7 sites that I could no longer moderate comments on! I also assumed that I wouldn’t be able to write a new post either.

I eventually logged into my web hosting account and opened up the file manager in C-Panel. I checked to see if any new files had been added that I hadn’t placed on the server. I also opened up PHP MyAdmin to check my sites databases to see if I could remove the blocked IP. I did find the blacklist and determined that it was from my Bad Behavior plugin. I tried to remove the blocked IP address from my MySQL database and then I rebooted my computer again.

Uh … now I couldn’t even log into any of the blogs that I maintain on my feverishthoughts.com domain. I didn’t bother to try any of my other domains as I assumed they would also be affected.

By this time I’d probably wasted an hour and a half and comments were piling up and I had posts I needed to write. I was getting frustrated.

The best solution I came up with was to go into my hosting account and change the name of the bad-behavior plugin folder in order to deactivate the plugin on the sites in question.

It worked. I could now log into my sites and moderate comments, create posts and so on.

However I no longer have the wonderful spam protection that I got from the Bad Behavior plugin.

I’ve been using Bad Behavior for about a year and it’s been wonderful. Just turn it on and it automatically blocks spam before it even gets into your comment moderation list. Prior to using Bad Behavior I was sometimes getting 400 to 500 comments spam messages each day on some of my busier sites!

There is a way to edit the whitelist file and I suppose I’ll have to do that sometime today as I’m still assigned the same IP address that caused all these problems yesterday evening.

The only other spam protection that I use on my blogs is the built in Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress. Up until now that combination has been sufficient. I may look into also using Spam Karma.

Have you ever had your own IP address blocked by your spam protection software?

UPDATE:

If you are using Bad Behavior it was updated today. Yesterday the creator of the Bad Behavior plugin moved servers and accidentally decommissioned an old blacklist that he thought wasn’t being used by Bad Behavior anymore. Unfortunately it was and many users of the Bad Behavior plugin found themselves locked out of their own sites as a result.

The plugin has now been updated to version 2.0.11 and it should resolve the problem. I’m about to update this plugin on all my sites now.

I’m thankful that the plugin creator was so quick to resolve the problem that he inadvertently created. I’d be lost without my Bad Behavior plugin protection. Yes, that’s just how good Bad Behavior really is – try it for yourself.

Avot mV allows you to watch videos on your mobile phone in near real time

December 1, 2007 by Tricia

If you have a mobile phone that has a mobile browser and supports video streaming you might be interested in visiting the Avotmv.com website.

Avot Media has developed a system whereby mobile phone users can watch video in near real time streaming.

If you’ve ever watched a video using your mobile phone I’m sure you’ve noticed that with some services you have a limited video selection and that the quality of the video display is quite poor. This is not the case with Avot mV. They’ve created an innovative mobile video solution that ensures that you’ll be able to enjoy video on your mobile device and that it will be of high quality.

Using Avot mV you’ll be able to watch virtually anything you want on your mobile phone.

If you go to the Avot Media
Corporate Site you’ll be able to watch demo’s of Avot mV. You’ll also be able to download a free copy of Avot mV from their Product site. You can download the program onto your PC or visit the site using your mobile browser and download Avot mV directly to your mobile device.

Once Avot mV has been installed on your mobile device you’ll be able to access any web-based video sharing sites, and you’ll also be able to use Avot mV’s content based search capabilities to find videos suited to your personal preferences.

The best thing about Avot mV is that once you’ve selected a video on the internet that you’d like to view on your mobile phone the Avot mV software can transfer the video to your device quickly. In fact Avot mV is much quicker than earlier mobile video solutions. Playback will occur in near real time which means that you should not experience video delays.

If you want to download a number of videos at once you can organize a play list so that you can watch your videos on the go. You’ll be able to create as many play lists as you like and watch what you want when you want to watch it.

You can learn more about Avot mV and all of it’s features at the Avot mV website or read more about the program and upcoming product news at the Avot Media Blog. You’ll be enjoying lots of videos on your mobile device soon I’m sure.

Widgetbucks creates new CPM ads to serve non-US and Canadian traffic

November 29, 2007 by Tricia

Widgetbucks has again updated their program policy in regard to sites with a good mix of international visitors. In an email sent out earlier today to all of their members they stated:

International CPM Ads

Here’s an upcoming feature. In early December, we will start serving CPM ads to the non-U.S./Canada traffic. This will give you revenue, per impression, for your site visitors who come from other countries. This is designed to help publishers who have a blend of traffic from a variety of countries.

Our system will do the geo-location for you, determining where the visitor is coming from. Then we’ll either show the regular pay-per-click widget (to visitors from the U.S. and Canada) or show an ad that pays per impression (to visitors from other countries). You’ll see a new column, called “CPM Revenue” in your earnings reports.

So it appears that they listened to the concerns or more likely complaints of those who have a good portion of their traffic from non US or Canadian visitors and implemented this new CPM ad system.

Now hopefully they’ll do something about their widget slowing the loading of a site. I had, had Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings, but I only had it up for a few days before I removed it. It didn’t severely slow my page loads but I found that it didn’t load until you reached the portion of the page that the widget was located on and if you were trying to scroll past that point you had to wait until it finished loading. I didn’t like that.

On that site I had the widget code in the middle of my sidebar. I have ads near the top of my sidebars that I can’t move due to my TOS agreement with those companies. I do believe that Widgetbucks probably does best when it’s near the top of a sidebar and loads when the page is first visited. At least it wouldn’t impede a visitors ability to scroll a page if it was near the top and already loaded.

I’ve decided to try Widgetbucks on this site and a few of my other sites again to see what happens.

Changes to Widgetbucks makes it harder for sites with international visitors to earn money

November 18, 2007 by Tricia

I’m very behind in posting on this site about all the wonderful things that I came across at Blogworld and P0stiecon. I’ve been very sick – actually even before I left for Vegas my Crohn’s flared up and it got worse while I was there. Bummer! I missed a lot, but what I did manage to take in was great. I’ve actually just written about a new application called Triggit on my other site WebStyle. You might be interested in signing up for Triggit as you can add Amazon and CJ links on the fly as well as Flicker and Youtube to your posts.

What I wanted to talk about today is Widgetbucks. I’ve just finally gotten around to signing up and from what I hear that’s a good thing because sometime over the next week they won’t be as open about letting just anyone sign up.

I decided to try Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings in the middle right sidebar. It’s very easy to sign up (right now) and create a widget to place on your site. All you need to do is select which category your site falls into, and pick whatever keywords you’d like to have Widgetbucks use to display products from Mpire on your site and tada … you have widget code to place in your blogs sidebar.

I didn’t realize this, but right now they have a signup bonus that puts $25 into your account when you register. Since the payout minimum is $50 this means that just by signing up for Widgetbucks you’re already closer to getting your first payment.

Unfortunately Widgetbucks is changing it’s algorithm and I believe as of this week they will only be counting clicks from US and Canadian visitors. For bloggers who’s majority of site visitors are Canadian or American this won’t make a huge difference in income, however those who have a high percentage of site visitors from other countries the clicks won’t count.

As a result I probably won’t add Widgetbucks to this site. I just looked at my recent stats and only 54% of my visitors are from the US and Canada. Actually all my blogs have quite an international audience. The stats for my main blog which I thought had mainly North American visitors shows that of my recent visitors only 68% are from the US and Canada. Now if Widgetbucks would include visitors from the UK I’d have closer to 80% of my visitors clicks count.

So the moral of this story is that Widgetbucks can certainly help you monetize your blog quickly and easily but those with mainly US and Canadian audiences will do best. Still, if you want that initial $25 sign up now!

Blogging convention here I come

November 5, 2007 by Tricia

So who’s going to Las Vegas later this week for Blogworld and or P0stiecon?

I plan to attend both events and hope to meet up with some of the bloggers that I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years. I also hope to get something out of the discussions that I plan to attend so that I can learn how to make my blogs more successful, but mainly I’m looking at this as a chance to travel to a city that I’ve never been to before and as a way to meet up with friends and network a little bit.

If you are attending either convention what’s your goal?

How to use an FTP program

October 23, 2007 by Tricia

I spend time on a variety of blogging and webmaster related forums and quite often, when someone switches from a free blogging platform such as blogger to hosting their own website they are confused by … well, a lot of things since everything is new to them, but FTP seems to one major source of confusion.

If you are new to using an FTP program in order to upload files to your server I would suggest that you use the free program FileZilla. While it’s true that some hosting programs have created a simplified version of FTP that is very easy to use directly from your hosting account (I believe) most do not provide this service and you must use external FTP programs to move large files.

You might be asking yourself “why would you need an FTP program in the first place?” Well, if you are a blogger you might want to find new themes or plugins to use on your blog. Most themes and plugins have a number of files packaged together in a folder. While it’s true that you could upload the zipped file into your WordPress -> Content -> themes or Plugin folder on your server using the c-panel File manage it is often much faster and easier to use an external FTP program.

As I said I would recommend download the easy to use FileZilla as your FTP progam.

Go to the site and click on “Download FileZilla Client – all programs” button.
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Network Solutions now offers VPS Hosting

October 23, 2007 by Tricia

As many of the regular readers of The Webfiles know I’ve had quite a bit of hosting troubles in the last few months. I’ve had to change hosts three times because my sites – 10 domains with 17 sites between them – have overused the CPU resources at which ever web hosting company I was using a the time.

As I tried to explain on one of my other blogs, even a huge surge of traffic such as one that might come from a very well stumbled or dugg post could push my current hosting account over it’s limit! This problem will become worse as my new domains start to gain traffic.

I’ve got to face it. I’m going to have to move my sites over to a hosting provider that can offer me VPS hosting. It’s a reality and it would be better if I make the move before I encounter problems with my current host.

One company that has just begun to offer VPS Hosting is Network Solutions.

As some of you might know a Virtual Private Server hosting account is the step between shared hosting which is what most people start out with when they decide to host a website on their own domain and a dedicated hosting account.

With a shared hosting account you share the servers resources with all the other account holders that use that service. Some web hosts oversell their accounts and an account holder like myself with websites that have fairly high traffic and that use databases and other software to run them can get into trouble quite easily by overusing the system resources allocated to them on that server.

With a VPS account the server is virtually partitioned so that each account holder has the ability to run their own operating system and applications (ie wordpress, databases, CMS, Forums and so on) and if something goes wrong they can reboot their portion of the server independently from the rest of the VPS account holders on the same system.

In other words as a VPS account user you’d have more control over your hosting account and the server that you are using.

Companies, like Network Solutions, that provide VPS hosting services often allocate more resources to their VPS accounts than they do for those with shared hosting. So there should be a higher percentage of CPU resources and RAM allocated to each account.

Network Solutions offers three VPS hosting packages – VPS Standard, VPS Advanced and VPS PRO. The basic features of each account are the amount of disk space offered – 10 GB to 50 GB, Monthly Data Transfer 500 GB up to 2000 GB, the maximum amount of domains that can be hosted in each VPS account ranges from 10 to 100, and each comes with the ability to create 50 to 200 POP E-Mail accounts.

The VPS Standard and Advanced hosting packages come with SWsoft light Pack software, and the VPS PRO package comes with SWsoft Deluxe. I believe that all of the packages include Virtuozzo and the Plesk Control Panels.

Their pricing for VPS hosting looks reasonable to me. The Standard package starts at $50 per month, where as their Advanced costs $75 per month and their PRO VPS hosting costs $100 per month.

There are a few things that I like about Network Solutions VPS Hosting service. The will assist you with the creation of your account and the creation of a domain. Certainly as a newbie to VPS I, for one, would need that service! They will also assist you with the installation of applications from their application vault as well as customizing the Plesk desktop and other server related service issues. They have a toll free number and they offer both online and live 24/7 support. Believe me, whatever type of hosting account you have, a company that offers both a toll free number as well as 24/7 support is something you’ll want to have when you run into issues with your hosting account!

I’m going to look further into Network Solutions VPS hosting because as I said I’m going to need to upgrade my hosting very soon. If you think you might need to switch to VPS hosting or that you might want to move your current VPS hosting account over to a new host do visit the Network Solutions site to see if their VPS hosting packages suit your needs.

Need some help with drop down menus

October 20, 2007 by Tricia

I’m getting set to change the theme on a number of my blogs. Yes I have several – that could be why I don’t write in this blog anywhere near as often as I should!

Anyway, I’ve been driving myself nuts trying to find the perfect themes to convert for my sites. I always customize my themes. I’ve also been looking at a lot of different plugins as well. I can certainly see how some people can get hooked on trying out plugins! There are so many handy ones, as well as ones that do cool things. I don’t think I need them all though.

I managed to convert one of my current sites over to widgets, but I’m using the KonteraControl plugin on that site to keep Kontera out of some of my posts. Trouble is – once I widgetized the site I have Kontera in posts that it shouldn’t be in!
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The New Amazon Widgets

September 25, 2007 by Tricia

Hey did you hear that Amazon has created new and easy to use widgets? I love them!

There are several types of Amazon widgets that you can configure for your site so that you can feature various products or product categories in your sidebar or on your pages. It literally takes one minute to set up a new widget for your site.

Amazon announced their new widgets on the 21st of September, but I’d discovered them and had started playing around with them the day before they were publicly released.

You can select colors, the layout and or theme to match your website.

Amazon affiliates will earn referral fees of up to 10% on these new widgets.

There are 6 new widgets – Slideshow, My Favorites, Quick Linker, Wish List, Product Cloud, and the Amazon Unbox Video Previewer.

Go explore the new widgets. They should be easy to find in the left sidebar of your affiliate dashboard.

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AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart

Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin

Avot mV allows you to watch videos on your mobile phone in near real time

Widgetbucks creates new CPM ads to serve non-US and Canadian traffic

Blogging convention here I come

How to use an FTP program

Network Solutions now offers VPS Hosting

The New Amazon Widgets

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