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I had to change web hosts!

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Well you probably noticed that my sites went down for a few days if you’ve become a regular visitor of The Web Files or any of my other sites.


I ended up changing web hosts after my former web host attempted to change my shared hosting account over to a TWO year Virtual Private Hosting account and charged me $642 in the process. A move and charge that I hadn’t authorized.

I’d been apparently having CPU resource issues on my former host – Lunarpages, and I worked for close to a month to resolve any CPU resource overuse issues by going over everything in my directories with a fine toothed comb, updating all of the programs that I use to run my various sites and any addons or plugins that I used with those sites and still they kept telling me that I had CPU resource over use issues.

They suspended my account on Saturday stating that my account had almost caused a server to crash so I reluctantly agreed to change my account over to VPS for one month. One single month. It took me almost 24 hours to communicate that desire to support since they are very slow to answer support email and do not have telephone support over the weekend.

Once they apparently understood that I was willing to switch over to VPS for one month they told me that it would cost $75 per hour to transfer my account, but if I wanted I could do it myself once the VPS account was set up. At that point I said No way to the $75 charge and in fact said no to the whole deal until they sent me more info about VPS, Plesk and how I might move my account on my own.

Instead of sending me information they went ahead and set up the VPS account and instead of creating a monthly account they charged me for two years of VPS service.

Right … for CPU resource issues that may or may not exist.

I say may or may not exist because after the stunt they pulled charging me for a two year VPS account I’m not all that certain that I ever had CPU resource issues.

So I spent early Monday morning creating a new hosting account at HostGator and worked on moving my domains and sites.

So far things are going well with HostGator and they’ve yet to mention a thing about CPU resource over use. Still – I think I’m going to continue going over my sites and try to lighten their load on the servers. Some of my sites are getting more and more popular so if my traffic is increasing so will my resource usage too.




CPU resource overuse problems continue! Any ideas?

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Well I’m still trying to figure out my web hosting CPU resource over usage problems. I’ve got a lot of great suggestions from people on forums and via comments on my sites.

One person asked if I’m using WP-Cache on my wordpress blogs and the answer is yes. I’ve been using it since last Friday and I’ve still been getting messages from my web host saying that my cpu resource usage is too high.

This is depressing!

If I ever figure out what caused the problem I’ll be sure to write about it on my sites so that others might be able to get themselves out of this mess a little quicker than I’ve managed.

Well, I’m not out of the mess yet.

I’ve finished updating everything I can think of including a joomla installation that runs one of my other sites. I think the Joomla CMS might be one of the causes of the problem. I guess I’ll find out later today when I hear from my web host. I hope that the resources are back to normal.

I wrote out more details of how I’m using the servers on my other tech blog WebStyle if you’d care to read that post. Perhaps those of you that have been through this before or know a little something about this kind of problem could read that post and offer a few suggestions? I’d really appreciate it if you would.

Also, just in case I do end up having to move to a Virtual Private Server … how difficult is that to work with? I’m pretty good about figuring out stuff but I’d like to know if I’m going to end up with a VPS headache before I make my decision to move off shared hosting.

Overuse of CPU on my web host – Help!

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I got a note yesterday evening from my webhost stating that my sites were using too much of their resources. Most of our sites are fairly well visited but I don’t believe they are so well visited that they would begin causing CPU problems on my web host just yet.


So, I’ve been going over all our sites for the last few hours turning off any plugins that aren’t vital and ones that I think might use CPU. For example I had viewcounter and postrater activated on two of our sites and since they store info in the database I thought that they might be using the hosts CPU so it was worth turning them off.

I’ve also downloaded a copy of WP-Cache that I’m going to be installing in a few minutes. This caches a page when it’s first viewed and then presents the cached copy the next time it’s viewed and doesn’t create a new cache copy of the page until data on the page changes or I think until a certain amount of time has passed. If this works properly it should cut down on the amount of resources that my sites are using.

I’m also going to update my Google Sitemaps plugin as the latest Beta version has been optimized to use fewer CPU resources.

I’m crossing my fingers that this works.

In the meantime my host has moved my sites to a different server on their network. I’m not sure the move went well because once I got to this blog I noticed that when I tried to click on the titles of the posts I got an error message. I hope they didn’t mess up my database!

That’s one reason why I’m writing a post now. I’m hoping the new post will update my database and fix whatever’s going on with the rest of the posts. I sure hope it does, and I also hope that this posts when I publish it!

If anyone has been put on notice by their webhost that their site is overusing CPU resources how did you resolve the problem? Any suggestions?

Create a second WP blog in a directory or Subdomain

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Want to create another blog on the same domain? Here’s how:

It’s actually very easy to create a new blog as a directory, or as a sub-domain.

My advice to you would be to actually create your new blog as a sub domain if you think there’s any chance that you might use it for pa1d blogging services, or that you might want to monetize it in some other way.

Some affiliate sites only accept new sites that are on their own domain which means blog.mydomain.com and mydomain.com are acceptable, but mydomain.com/blog is not. So, prior to setting up a new blog on a domain that already has a website or blog on it – think about how you will use the site in the future.

So it’s up to you, but if I was doing it all over again I’d create sub-domains. I have a number of blogs on my Feverishthoughts.com domain. I’ve actually purchased new domains that I plan to move the current /blog blogs over to once the new domains have aged and gained some page rank.

So I’ll tell you how to make a blog as a directory, as in mydomain.com/blog first:

Let’s assume that your webhost has c-panel and that you’ll be using C-panel to work with your domain and installations.

So … assuming you have C-panel

1. Log into your web host and get to your C-panel

2. In C-panel you’ll see an icon for Fantatico

3. Click on Fantastico and on the right hand side you’ll see a list of different types of programs that you can automatically install onto your domain.

4. Look for blogs and select WordPress

5. If you have a current installation that you installed through Fantastico that will be listed on the right hand side, just above that you’ll see a link that says new Installation and it will look something like this:

New Installation (2.1.3)
Disk space required: 3.73 MB
Disk space available: 248167.5 MB

6. Click on the new installation link and you’ll be taken to the first of three WP installation pages

7. If you have more than one domain on your account you might see a drop down list – if you have this select which domain you’d like to install a new WordPress blog on. (** if you’ve made a sub-domain for your new blog it will be in this list **)

8. Install in directory

– Leave empty to install in the root directory of the domain (access example: http://domain/).

– Enter only the directory name to install in a directory (for http://domain/name/ enter name only). This directory SHOULD NOT exist, it will be automatically created!

9. Once you’ve selected the domain or sub-domain that you want to install your new blog on you’ll see an empty box beside the words Install Directory – if you want your blog to be in the root of the domain (like your current blog- but you can’t do that with this new one because you have a blog there already!) you’d leave it blank.

Start thinking about the search engines and how the spiders will see your site NOW. Don’t name your new blog’s directory – blog or blog2. Please think of a name for the directory that describes what your site is about. For example for my directory blogs I’ve named the directories Garden for my gardening blog, Celebrity for my celeb blog and so on. Now the search engines know immediately what the posts on the blog will be able because the main keyword for the site will be in every single url.

10. Follow the rest of the directions adding an email address, admin name and password to complete the installation. within minutes you’ll be finished.

Earlier I was suggesting that it might be better to put your new blog on a sub-domain instead of a /directory.

For this you would go into C-panel – assuming that you have C-panel and click on the icon that says Subdomain.

Once you get into the subdomain area you’ll see

_________________ your domain or drop down list of domains ADD

Fill in the blank box with the name of you want to use for your subdomain.

Then select your domain. If you only have one domain you’ll only see mydomain.com in the next box

After that all you have to do is click on the word ADD and you’ll create a subdomain that might be called:

myblog.mydomain.com

Once you’ve created your subdomain go back to the main C-panel page, click on Fantastico and follow the directions that I gave you above but in step 8 you would select your subdomain from the drop-down list and leave the directory name box blank if you want to install into the root directory of your new subdomain so that your blog will work simply as myblog.mydomain.com

Once you get started with this I’m sure you’ll find that it’s all very easy. Especially now that you have some instructions to use.

Google Gears allows internet users to take web based aps offline

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I’m looking forward to Google Gears. It’s a new product that will be coming out shortly that’s been developed by Google that will allow internet users to take there normally web only applications offline.

This will be wonderful for those who are still using dial up connections to connect to the internet and perhaps their blogging platform.

Personally, I’ve been quite frustrated at times when I’ve been trying to work on one of my blogs and my server has gone down or my internet connection (cable) is out or acting up. It’s very hard to write posts or write draft articles on WordPress when you can’t connect to your WP dashboard!

Hopefully Google Gears will work with WP and other blogging platforms too.

Htaccess to add www to all pages of a site

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I’ve been trying to work on my htaccess file for one of my other domains feverishthoughts.com for a few weeks. What I’d like is for the main website on feverishthoughts to have www in the url but ever new htaccess code that I’ve tried seems to fail and worse often ends up messing up how my site works.

I’m so frustrated I could start throwing folding chairs, and other things around!

I mentioned my problem in a forum and wrote a post about it on my main blog and some people have been very nice and offered up codes to try but nothing is working.

If anyone reading this post has an htaccess code for me to try that will put www in all the urls for my main blog even if they came to the site using a link without the www I’d appreciate it.

I wonder if part of the problem is that this domain thewebfiles.com is the main domain on my server?

What not to do to your Blog design

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There are some things that I just dislike coming across when I visit a blog or website. Does your site have or do any of these things?

  1. Autoplay video
  2. Autoplay music
  3. flashy buttons
  4. too many buttons (put them in a roll up menu if you must have them)
  5. advertisements that take up the whole header area making me scroll to see the actual header and posts below.
  6. Too many advertisements – don’t do the max google adsense – you actually make less money from them if you do too many!!! Plus it turns off your visitors.
  7. Pages with so many plug ins, large file size images, buttons etc that make the page really slow to load- or worse cause it to freeze when loading.
  8. Text that is hard to read – white on black doesn’t work if you are trying to read a long post – light gray text works better … same for florescent coloured text on black or white backgrounds, or neon backgrounds with black or white text.
  9. no paragraphs -makes posts very hard to read
  10. Set your posts so that only 5 or 10 display on the main page!!!! Not everything you’ve ever written on your blog for the last two years!

Tips!

Use roll up menus in your sidebars if you have lots of buttons or blogrolls etc. It really makes the page look so much tidier.

Test your blog design in Firefox, Internet explorer, Opera and Netscape – all easy to download and have on your computer. Make sure your site loads correctly and works well in all the browsers listed above,

Also look at your site on different computers. Text and background colour might look great on your monitor but really really bad on 5 other computer monitors that you test it on.

As I said in the last point- visitors only need to see your last 5 or 10 posts when they load your page. If you have more than that showing your page will load very slowly.

Same with categories and archives. Do your visitors need to see your archives dating back to 2001? That’s a long list taking up valuable blog sidebar real estate. Use a roll up menu or modify the code in your page so that only 5 or 10 archives and or categories are viewed. You could also create a page just for your archives and link to it from the main page of your site.

Every once in a while ask your readers their opinion on your page. Ask for constructive criticism. If the majority of your readers state they don’t like something or that your page loads slowly – do something about it.

One way to lessen the spam on your blog

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I’ve always had Akismet activated on our WordPress blogs, and we do get a fair amount of comments. However, in February I also added Bad Behavior to our sites because the amount of spam Akismet was catching was getting out of hand. I was easily getting 400 spam comments on some sites!

That’s a lot of spam to go through to find a real comment or two!

I still find that anyone who leaves a link or two in their comment often ends up having their comment go to the spam folder. I hate that, you’d think that if I approved their comments once or twice in the past both WordPress and Akismet would learn and not put the post in the spam folder. I even increased the amount of links allowed in a comment on one of my sites because I run several blogrolls out of that site and it still puts the comments with one or two links in it in spam.

As I was saying, in February, I downloaded Bad Behavior, and it actually hides the site from some bad bots so the amount of Spam hitting our sites dropped dramatically.

Yes we still get spam, but it’s down to at most 10 spam per day on the busiest sites, and often only one or none on some days. It’s great … 400 spam a day down to 1 to 10? I love it!

So if you are sick of dealing with spam download the Bad Behavior plugin, install it in your WordPress plugin folder and then activate the plugin. That’s all you have to do. It works along side Akismet without any problems.

Want more comments – make it easier!

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There was a discussion going on, on one of the forums that I visit regularly about sites that only allow registered visitors/members to comment. I’m certain that at least 90% of the people that responded to the thread stated that if they encountered a site where they had to register just to leave a comment they closed the site and didn’t bother leaving a comment.


Oh, sometimes they’ll still visit the site and read the posts. It’s not that the posts aren’t good reads, it’s just that they don’t want to jump through hoops just to leave a simple comment.

I mean, with all the social networking going on, and different lists to join – just how many sites are you registered with already? Do we really need to sign up at even more sites and have to remember login info for all the different blogs we visit just so that we can leave a comment?

I have registered an account with the major free blogging sites like Blogspot, Xanga, WordPress.com, live Journal and Typepad, but I really didn’t want to get a membership to any of them. After all, I don’t have any of my blogs on those sites – why do I need a membership just to leave a comment?

The same goes for private blogs on their own domains. I’ve encountered several lately where you must register to leave a comment. At least with the larger blogging sites if you register you can leave comments at all the blogs within that service. With private blogs you have to register for each one separately.

If I really like a blog or a particular post I sometimes will sign up and leave a comment but I don’t like having to do so, and most people will not do this. It’s no wonder that the sites that only allow registered commenters have so few comments on their sites.

Here’s an example of a site I encountered the other day – One of the sites that registered for the do follow blogroll the other day didn’t have any comments that I could find, just a few trackbacks. People had to register to comment so when I spoke with the site owner I mentioned the registration for comments and he clued in and said “ah maybe that’s why no one leaves me comments”.

Perhaps you have a blog that requires registration and you’ve been wondering why you don’t get many if any comments? Well – it’s probably not that your blog is boring, it’s just that people don’t like jumping through hoops. Make it easier for them – open up your comments to all.

By all means put all your comments on moderation if you’d like – I don’t mind that at all, but don’t make it too hard to leave a comment or you’ll get far fewer than your site deserves.

If and when sites that have been registered members only do open up their comments I strongly advise that you either moderate your comments or get some kind of spam control for your comments – otherwise you’ll be dealing with a lot of spammers and that’s not pleasant either.

Bought some new domains

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I went on a domain buying spree! No I’m not about to create a bunch of new blogs. I purchased new domains so that I could move some of my existing blogs over to their own domains.

You see, my main blog related domain is feverishthoughts.com. I had originally started the blog that is currently located on that domain on another domain that I own. It was on a sub-directory. Last June I decided that I enjoyed blogging quite a bit and I wanted to start a few more blogs but I really didn’t want them to be on my original domain. The original domain that I was using was one that I’d set up for my reptile care website. A bunch of blogs about different topics on an exotic pet domain just didn’t seem right, so that’s how I began my mini network of blogs on Feverishthoughts.

Now all those new blogs that I started last summer have grown in popularity and since I use some of them to make money and I thought that it might be better to give each of them their own domain.

Unfortunately, for a little while at least, I’m going to have twice the amount of blogging to do. You see, I don’t want to just up and move my current blogs to their new homes. The new domains don’t have any page rank yet, or any links going to them. I haven’t even begun to promote the new sites yet either, let alone installed WordPress on each of them.

What I think I’ll do is spend the next three or so months blogging regularly on the new domains. I’ll make sure that whatever posts I make on the new domain are in keeping with the topic and style of posts that are on the blogs that will be moved over to these new sites. Blogging on each of the new domains as much as twice a week for three or so months, and promoting the sites as I build them should help them gain some page rank. Once they’ve attained some page rank I’ll make the move. Or at least I think I’ll be moving them.

The blogs that I plan to move to their own domains have decent ranks now. They range from PR3 to PR4 and have good Technorati and Alexa ranks as well. They also have rss subscribers. Gee this is getting more and more difficult the more I think about it. Within the next few weeks Google will begin it’s dance and there will be a page rank update. If my current blogs go up in rank it’s going to be really hard for me to move them to their new homes and lose that rank.

I really expect my gardening site, which is currently a PR4, to move up to a PR5 and if I’m lucky it won’t take long for it to become a PR6. It’s a popular niche blog so I think I’m being realistic in that hope and well, expectation.

The new domains don’t have anything on them yet but that will change in the next few days:

As the Garden Grows – homeandgardendiva.com
Celebrity Scoop – celebrityscoop.org
WebStyle – getwebstyle.com

My husbands sites
Guitar Licks – guitarlicksandtips.com
Odd Planet – trulyoddplanet.com

and, ok I lied, there’s one brand new site:
Shopping Maniac – shoppingmaniac.net

What do you think of those domain names? As you can see I had already named the sites in a way that describes what they are about to some degree, and luckily I managed to get domains that are very similar to the original name of the site. Well, As the Garden grows will become Home and Garden Diva, but that’s descriptive too.

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