Webmaster Tips — Page 4

Have you considered using PLR content to supplement your site content?

September 17, 2008 by Tricia

OK, I’ve seen all the GURU’s talking about it for months now so i decided to finally go and check out what all the fuss was about. I joined a membership site called PLRpro a little over a month ago. I haven’t actually used any of the articles I’ve received on any of my sites yet, but I will be soon. The quality of the articles are very good.

Just like you I was a little skeptical at first, but I have to say I was SERIOUSLY impressed. The quality of there PLR content was great, but what I was really amazed with was the amount of free resources that were in there. I thought I was just signing up for content but with all the resources in there it’s been like my own personal coaching from the experts.

In fact, if you want to see what I’m talking about have a look at http://www.ninetydaychallenge.net It’s a fool proof system, it tells you exactly what to do, where to do it and on what day to do it on from start to finish and guarantees you’ll make money.

Anyway, here’s a basic overview of what your PLRPro membership contains:

440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche)
Full keyword research in each niche
Affiliate lists for each niche
Header Graphics for each niche
5 Website Templates each month
Articles done in 8 languages
50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled

I’ve also found that they’ve added new resources in the month I’ve been with them and there are some fantastic additions to the service planned for October. I can’t wait!

PLUS here’s a few of the things they normally keep secret:

You’ll have access to their Automized Site Builder
Specialized WordPress Installer
Automatic WordPress Uploader
181 Page VRE Handbook (I’ve slowly been going through this and it’s very helpful)
SEO Training (includes 6 part Video Program)
PPC Training
Plus more….

They really do put together the full package… you’re not just paying for content, with all the extra’s this is probably the only membership you’ll ever need.

As far as the PLR Content game is concerned, they truly offer the best package out there bar none.

If you don’t believe me, check out what others have to say at PLRpro.

Strange wordpress problem

April 8, 2008 by Tricia

On Sunday as I was looking some of my blogs that share the same domain I noticed that the “A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now.” message had disappeared. I didn’t think much of it, but a while later when I happened to scroll to the bottom of the page I noticed that it said my WP version was 2.5.

That was strange. You see, the blog I was working with had just been updated to version 2.3.3 using files stored on my computer. The same files that I’d used to update a few blogs on my other domains over the last couple of weeks.

I went and looked at each of the other blogs that I’d updated from 2.1 or 2.2 to version 2.3 and those that were on their own domain still said they were using WP version 2.3.3, but all of the blogs that are located on my Feverishthoughts.com domain – even the ones that are still using much older versions of WP say that they are using WordPress version 2.5 now.

I checked the files for each of the now 2.5 blogs using FTP and by looking at them using my hosting c-panel and there were no extra files that shouldn’t be there. I even checked my web hosts Fantastico version of WP and they are still only using the 2.3.3 upgrade so there’s no way that they did some kind of automatic WP upgrade on my behalf.

The fact of the matter is that the blogs that now say they are using WP version 2.5 are still really using whatever version of WP that they had been prior to my discovery. Nothings changed in the admin panel – you know the new look that 2.5 is supposed to have? Everything about the way the admin area of my blogs are set up are still the same.

So why do some of my blogs say they are using WP version 2.5? Is it some kind of WP glitch? If it is, why don’t my blogs that are on their own domain now also falsely say they are using 2.5?

Has anyone else noticed this strange problem?

BTW I do plan on upgrading all my sites to WP 2.5 shortly, but I’d like to wait a few weeks to be sure that most of the glitches are out of the latest version. I also want to make sure that the plugins that I’m using have upgrades that work with 2.5 as well.

So for now I’ll stick with 2.3 which the majority of my sites are now using and those that aren’t will be upgraded within a few days. Just upgrading to 2.3 has been a pain because I had to widgetize some sites and change from really old themes with function calls that didn’t work with 2.3 to newer themes. For some blogs upgrading has been a total overhaul!

Make sure your next WP upgrade goes well with Preflight plugin

April 1, 2008 by Tricia

Earlier today as I was surfing the net and reading some of the blogs I favor I came across an article about a new plugin that will help you prepare your WordPress installation for an upgrade to version 2.3.3 and coming soon WP 2.5.

The WordPress plugin is called the WordPress Upgrade Preflight Plugin. The current version, 1.1, is meant for those who are about to upgrade their WP installation to 2.3.

The Preflight Check plugin will attempt to check your other plugins and themes for any problems that might cause errors when upgrading. It apparently also works in 2.3 and may help identify the cause of any current errors as well.

As I stated in March I was slowly going through my sites and upgrading them from WordPress versions 2.1 and 2.2 to 2.3. I have a lot of blogs and to be perfectly honest with you I still have four left to upgrade!

I’m using some highly customized older themes on a few of my blogs and as I’ve upgraded I’ve found code that I had to alter to work with WP 2.3. I also had to update a number of plugins. This was time consuming work. I’m sure the Preflight Check plugin will make finishing my upgrades to my final four WP blogs a lot easier. Of course I’ve already updated the plugins.

The plugin author is currently working on a version for WP 2.5 so if you’re planning on upgrading to 2.5 soon be sure to check the Preflight Check page for updates.

Oh and don’t forget to backup your WordPress database and files before you do any upgrades! I use the WordPress Database Plugin which allows you to not only backup your files to the server, but to have your backup emailed to you as well. You can also schedule regular backups too.

Finally updated WordPress

March 4, 2008 by Tricia

I have a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs. I’ve been delaying updating them because I knew it would take forever.

I’ve slowly been updating my installations over the past week. For my newer domains it wasn’t such a problem because I could use Fantastico to update them … and since their newish they weren’t all that out of date.

However all my older blogs, including this one, moved servers twice last year and I lost the ability to automatically update with Fantastico when I moved the sites to new servers. If I’d done fresh installations using Fantastico to install WP on the domains and directories first and then transferred my former databases into the new installations I could have avoided this problem, but that’s not the way things worked out.

Oh well … I don’t mind manual updating the blogs. It just takes time.

I’ve had a problem with my blogs for a little while. My problems started back when the Bad Behavior plugin had a problem a couple of months ago. Remember something with the blacklists went wrong and it blocked people out of their WP installations until they either turned off their plugin or updated it? Well I did the update and I updated my Google Sitemaps plugin at the same time and ever since then I had an error message whenever I published an article (on 7 different blogs!) and I don’t think my do follow plugin was working correctly either.

Well now, along with updating this blog to WP 2.3.3 I’ve also updated Bad Behavior (it’s latest version is 2.0.13 if your keeping track) and Google Sitemaps ( Version 3.0.3). At first I thought I still had a problem, but I refreshed the permalinks and tada – it’s all working well again.

I wasn’t that far behind in updating WordPress. I think this blog was 2.2 … so it hasn’t been that long since I updated. However, WP has done a lot of updates in recent months and between the problems I was having with the plugins and being behind in upgrading WP I knew it was time to upgrade. I won’t fall so far behind again!

So far I’ve updated 6 new domains plus this domain. Now I’ve got 7 blogs on Feverishthoughts.com and one on yet another domain to manually upgrade. It will probably be a few days before I’m completely done … sigh.

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.

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!

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.

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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Have you considered using PLR content to supplement your site content?

Strange wordpress problem

Make sure your next WP upgrade goes well with Preflight plugin

Finally updated WordPress

AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart

Locked out my own sites by Bad Behavior plugin

How to use an FTP program

Network Solutions now offers VPS Hosting

The New Amazon Widgets

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