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Be Careful What You Say!

December 19, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

As you can probably tell by now (probably by noting the name of the featured article category) this is a blog for hi-tech blogging solutions; aka: nuts and bolts. Sometimes though I come up on something cool that I want to share with my readers that I find it the “blog’o'sphere” (did I spell that right?). So this weeks post is centered on comments we all make during the coarse of our week on other peoples websites.

I have always taken the stance that what I say on someone else’s website or blog will stay with that site so that whoever reads it can place it in context.

While I was rummaging about this weekend doing the Google thing, I found a curious entry on the index of one of my blogs. It’s a site called backtype.com

I can’t tell you how many times that I have visted a website and after careful inspection, I have no idea what in the world the site is about. This site has a very clear definition; and I quote: “BackType is a real-time, conversational search engine. (Say What?) Conversational search is a new way of searching the web to surface what reputable people are saying about topics and webpages that interest you. We index and connect online conversations from across the web in real-time, so you can see what people are saying about topics that interest you.” (italics mine)

I seen some great ways to back-link ……… but this takes the cake. When I arrived at the site, I could read everything I had ever said online, at anyones website ……… oh man ……… all on one page no less and apparently in “real time”.

Man ………….. why didn’t I think of that ? Check it out, and remember to be careful what you say out there in cyberspace. Big Brother is Blogging.

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Become A Master At MySQL Overnight!

December 12, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

I might miss the mark here, and I am probably over-reaching, but somehow I feel like if I can just cut to the chase, I can get on with my life. Such is my feeling with MySQL when it comes to upgrading my blogs in some shape, way, or form.

MySQL is an integral part of any blog and when it comes time (which is usually every other week or …

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Content Management Systems

December 5, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

When I am asked to build a website for someone, I need to make the end-user aware that once I’m finished, I will be turning it over to their webmaster of choice. More often than not I get an answer like ……… well ………. there will be three or four that will be working with the site on weekends, …

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Blog Test Beds

November 28, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

While preparing to head down the road for another day at the office, I always check in on traffic reports (to my websites, that is) and look in on the serps. When looking around Google, I keep coming up on “Bloggers Market Group.com”. This is one on my sites! However, I only use this site as a “test bed”. I actually have two test beds, the other is; “Bloggers Market.net”

I manage 11 blogs so ……… needless to say I stay pretty busy. The last thing I need is to make a change to one of my sites with a time-line in mine and then have something fail along the way. Whether it be a rouge plug-in, rouge code, or just plain carelessness on my part; a break in the rhythm is a total “Buzz Kill”.

I like to push the edge of the envelope when it comes to blogging and the CMS. When attempting to challenge the limits of physics for a blog it really is a good idea to have a test bed so that if your site should suddenly go back in time, you want have to wonder what to do next while your readers are wondering what is going on with your site. If you break, you can just walk away and worry about it later. Man …….. what a luxury.

Of the two test bed sites that I use, I have one that I completely blow-up every time I experiment with it just to see what the CMS will stand. The other is for long term testing to see, if say ……. an ad is received well by others that I ask to review it, or a particular hard code remains stable, or I just wish to see how a new theme will look. When I expect it to break, it doesn’t; when I am absolutely sure it will work, it doesn’t.

One thing is certain, I have never regretted the use of test bed blog websites. Just remember to restrict Google from crawling your online experiments by setting your “Privicy settings in your Dashboard or setting your “Robots.txt” file (I actually use both). If you fail to do so, you just may find that your “Frankenstein” Online has been indexed for all the world to see.

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VPS For The Blogger

November 21, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

It would appear that Hostgator.com has finally brought it’s VPS Hosting Services online at last. It seems that VPS is all the rage these days. In talking with different tech-support personal, it seems that the greatest benefit for the bloggers comes with smoother operation, faster response and loading especially with WordPress MU.

If you …

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The WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

November 14, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

While coming up with extreme content every week is a brain squeeze, I sometimes take the easy way out and start looking for content to scrape ………. err use via the tech-sites for WordPress on the Internet. I thought I would check into the WordPress Codex which is a bloggers worst friend ………. Man, are we talking hard to get along with or what?

Of all the resources on the web for blogging I find that WordPress is by far the best platform (preaching to the choir, I know!) and that the Codex is by far the worst support forum out there. I have never been able to pull myself out of the ditch at anytime with anything offered on the Codex. However, I have found benefit in the links at the Codex and thought I would pass along one of those links in this weeks post. It’s the WordPress e-Commerce Plug-in which just released it’s latest version ( 3.7.5 ) this week.

The e-Commerce Plug-in is a platform with a focus on ease of use and adhering to web standards which I guess is an SEO angle. While I have had little experience with this plug-in, I am going to give it a try on one of my blogs and will report back here in the near future. If this plug-in enhances your revenue, than I guess that is about as extreme as you can get!

How about that new WordPress Update (2.8.6)? Mainly a security update dealing with sanitizing uploaded file names that are sometimes exploited in certain Apache configurations and an XSS vulnerability in “Press This” ………. Man, I don’t even want to go there!

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Robots.txt Files

November 7, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

Killer Problem Number …….. well why worry at this point, this one damn near killed me and my blog! While delving into the abyss that is “Hi-Tech Blogging” it is sometimes easy to overlook the seemingly obvious, along with the simple things which can become “Hi-Tech” problems rather quickly.

I have been looking into a problem that has plagued two of my most popular blogs for the past three months. Ever since I did an extensive re-build I have noticed a steady decline in traffic. No matter what I have attempted, I continued to lose traffic.

Someone asked me the other day to supply them with “the world according to Google stats” for one of the sites that I have for sale on this blog, and I responded that I just did not have that info as I find it unnecessary on a blog that is brand new …….. I mean ……… what’s the point? Plus I’m busier than a three legged cat in a sandbox, the last thing I need to do at this time is climb into Google’s sandbox and play.

I found myself with some spare time the other day and I thought that I would at least take a look at Google’s “Webmaster Tools” and discovered much to my dismay that the “Google Bot” was being blocked on two of my sites as per my “Robots.txt” file settings. Do What ???????? I have never had any type of “Robots.txt” file in any of my blogs.

I did a did a double check and ran a server side check on any and all “Robots.txt” files and the search came back negative. I did a general search engine check and found that my site was indexed and indexed as recently as a week ago. Ok ……… I just don’t get it!

After another two hours of searching, I came to the nasty understanding that the “Robots.txt” file that was causing all the trouble was a virtual file found at the bottom of the options table in my database for the WordPress Software; what was being indexed were the directory files of the site not my posts’ created by the WordPress Software. You just can’t think this stuff up! Wow ……… that was expensive!!!!!!

To avoid becoming road kill on the “Information Super Highway“, I present you with this Plug-in solution.

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WordPress Images

October 31, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

I’m afraid Brad Callen would not approve!

When working with images in WordPress,  I have always found it easier to hard code the images to the site via the server rather than use the Media Library. I just personally find the file management server side easier to work with than WordPress’s Media Library.

One of the things I like best …

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Learning To Live With Internet Explorer

October 24, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

With the release of Windows 7, it appears by all reasonable accounts that Microsoft has navigated the treacherous waters of a failed operations system in Vista and is well on it’s way to recovery. However, this did not preclude me from jumping ship! I wasn’t about to be towed under by …

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Missing Hidden Files

October 17, 2009 By Jeffrey Leave a Comment

Last week I wrote on the problems with one of my .htaccess files. This week I thought I would mention another killer problem that anyone can wind up with when dealing with this type of file.

The .htaccess file as you well know by convention are hidden files on Unix-like operating systems. In several web servers (most commonly Apache), .htaccess …

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