April 2008 Most Popular Articles
Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out to make sure you have not missed any.
- Let’s Follow Each Other on Twitter, Shall We?: After reading about it virtually on every single website on the web, a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Twitter a try. I must say that, contrary to what many people claim to, I did not get addicted to it.
- Embracing the Status of Part-Time Blogger: 5 Practical Tips: I’m sure you read a lot about pro blogging and what it takes to earn a full-time income from your blog. This is a common topic among active bloggers and there are plenty of great articles that cover various aspects of the subject. With the huge amount of focus that is given to becoming a pro blogger, I think that becoming a successful and profitable part-time blogger is often overlooked. Earning a reasonable amount of money on a part-time basis is actually more desirable than most people realize.
- May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved: What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits.
- Killer Domains: My First eBook is Available Now: If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. It feels like all the marketable domains are already gone. And the problem is that the success of your website starts with the domain name.
- 7 Reasons Why You Might Never Be Productive: Are you disappointed with the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to get things done in a productive manner? If so, then acting now is the way to go because you can rest assured that things will not exactly get better if you just stand there and wait for a miracle. As a blogger, being productive is definitely a must if you are serious about long-term success and living in denial is simply not an option.
- Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus): The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.
- The Best Sources of Content for WordPress Users: If you’re looking for technical documentation or support, the codex and forums are usually the first place to look. However, I would like to share some blogs and websites that provide a good amount of WP-related content that I think you will appreciate. Whether you are a theme designer/developer or a blogger who is looking to get more out of WordPress, visit some of these sites and see for yourself.
- Website Traffic Series Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs: On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.
- Make Sure Your WordPress is Not Hacked: Lately there there seems to be a hacking spree around old versions of WordPress. Most of the times the hacker will edit your theme files to insert spam links. One of my older and non-active blogs got that problem, and I had several friends complaining to me about it as well when chatting over IM.
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Make Sure Your WordPress is Not Hacked
Lately there there seems to be a hacking spree around old versions of WordPress. Most of the times the hacker will edit your theme files to insert spam links. One of my older and non-active blogs got that problem, and I had several friends complaining to me about it as well when chatting over IM.
I would therefore recommend that all of you run a quick check on your WordPress to make sure it has not being compromised.
How do I find if I have been hacked?
The easiest way to identify the spam links is to open your website on a browser and take a look at the source code. Pay particular attention to the header and footer of your HTML, and check if they are links there that were not supposed to be (usually they are related to pharmacy, drugs, credit cards and related).
If you use Firefox you can also click on “Tools,” then “Page Info,” and then “Links.” This window will show all the outgoing links from the current web page that you are visiting.
Finally, you should also examine all your theme files and your WordPress installation for any file or piece of code that looks suspicious.
How do I fix the problem?
Most of the blogs that get hacked are older versions of WordPress that still have several security bugs open, so the first line of defense that you have is to stay updated with the newer versions. If you have been procrastinating your update to WordPress 2.5 make sure to check the Automatic Upgrade plugin, it makes the process really a piece of cake.
Secondly, you should also secure your WP-Admin folder by allowing access only to certain IP addresses. You can do that by creating a .htaccess file (a simple text file named that way) and by dropping it inside your WP-Admin folder with the code found on the article 3 Must Apply Security Tips for WordPress.
Thirdly, you should also disable the navigation of directories on your whole website, so that people can not view what plugins you are using or other sensitive data. You can do this easily by adding the following line to the .htaccess file located on your root directory:
Options -Indexes
Finally, if for some reason you can’t upgrade your WordPress or secure the access to the WP-Admin folder only to certain IPs, you can still delete your theme-editor.php file from the WP-Admin folder. This solution is far from the optimal, but it should help in protecting your blog from people trying to add spam links to your theme files.
Ah, and don’t forget to change your passwords regularly as well!
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Public Service Announcement: Version Six Launched
It’s finally here! And not I’m not only talking about my redesign; but I have also updated my blog to now run WordPress 2.5! This has been a while coming - even though I only launched V5 a month or so ago, I was never happy with it and this design is thus an attempt to improve on all my previous work.
Suffice to say, I’ve never been as perfectionistic about a design before and I truly believe that you will appreciate the small details that I have included in the design. I’ve pretty much spent the whole day finishing this up and I now need a bit of a break (read: red wine, chocolate, movies and some time with my fiancee).
That means, I will only be writing a post-op about all of my thoughts on the redesign in the morning. Until then: sit back and admire the view! 
(Image by ~xnapflyice)
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One less thing to worry about…
As with the online apps that I use, my one criteria for anything that I pay for / use on a daily basis, is that needs to be one less thing that I worry about. If there’s one thing that I hate, it’s when I need to do someone else’s job for them (since they are ineffective), whilst still paying them to do it.
I did a lecture on the attention economy, blogging and & legal issues related to these, at a conference called Nomadic Marketing today and the topic of web hosting service providers came up. Through the discussion (and sharing of frustrations by the delegates of the course), I got thinking about the total lack of issues I have my web host - Fused Network. Since I’ve switched over to their servers last year (they sponsor my hosting), I’ve not had one problem that hasn’t been dealt with in a matter of a few hours (it is inevitable that problems will arise - the important thing is how quickly and efficiently problems are sorted out).
I know that not every web hosting experience (that you might tell me about) will have been as positive as mine has been with Fused Network - but why shouldn’t it have been? Why should you settle for second best when you’re paying for a service? In my opinion, everyone should have access to top-notch service when they’re paying a premium price…
Just to throw a further spanner in the works - Fused Network is actually willing to handle your migration from your current web server all by themselves if you’re willing to switch over to their service (they did this for me)…
Any thoughts?
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Killer Domains: My First eBook is Available Now
All right, I always wanted to feel like Steve Jobs unveiling some cool product, that is why I used such a title…
Anyway, my first ebook is getting launched today. It is titled “Killer Domains: Tools & Techniques to Find the Perfect Domain Name.”
If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. It feels like all the marketable domains are already gone. And the problem is that the success of your website starts with the domain name.
If you use a structured research process with efficient tools and techniques, however, I am sure that you will be able to find dozens of good domains that are still available, or to find registered domains for sale that will represent an excellent investment.
Here is the table of contents:
- Introduction
- The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names
- The Process of Researching Domain Names
- Keyword Research
- Prefixes and Suffixes
- Tools and Resources
- Registering and Managing Domain Names
The ebook has 55 pages, 30 of them for the content and 25 with the huge list of prefixes and suffixes (over 400). There is also a link included where you can download an Excel spreadsheet with the prefixes and suffixes to work with them more efficiently.
My experience with domain names
I started developing projects on the Internet more than two years ago, and on that time frame I needed to research and buy dozens of domain names. On the beginning I was not so sure about what I was doing, hence why some of my domains are not that good (DailyBlogTips.com, for instance, has 3 words and is quite long).
Over the time I learned some tricks and became familiar with the best tools around, so the quality of my domains improved as a consequence. Today I have a good portfolio of domains, probably worth over $20,000.
Some of the latest additions to that portfolio are TechCult.com, DailyBits.com and Freaked.com.
Money back guarantee
I am pretty sure that the ebook will be worth the $17 for the buyers. A good two-word domain name sells easily for $100, so even if you manage to find just one domain using the tools and techniques described you already recovered the money. If you end up finding a cool domain for your new website or blog, the ebook will probably be even more valuable to you.
That being said, if after reading and trying to use the described methods you arrive to the conclusion that this is not what you were looking for, just shoot me an email and I will refund your money.
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