Is That Site Down

I found a VERY cool online tool– Is That Site Down. I love it! I have a handful of blogs on various web hosts, and sometimes my sites do not load. I am always wondering if it’s my computer, my connection, my software, or the web host site is down. So now I can check! It’s simple and easy to use. Just punch in the web adddress and click “Down?” You get your answer in a few seconds! I’m going to be visiting this site a lot.

What’s Up with Alexa??

What is going on with the Alexa rating? For, what, two weeks now, the buttons in my sidebar have stated “No Data.” Huh? The Alexa.com site seems to be up and running. Anyone know what’s up? This is a problem on all my blogs. It’s hard to tell if the actual rating system is working properly, since it takes so long for the number to alter. If anyone has any news, let me know.

In other ranking news, this blog still ranks as 0 with Google’s PageRank. It has NEVER had a rank above 0, and the blog is well over a year old. I don’t know why Google keeps hitting me with 0s across the board. They really stink.

A “No Follow” Plugin for Wordpress Blogs

“No follow” has become the new html tag– a code phrase that tells search engines (the Google search engine, at least) to ignore the link. This is supposedly meant to reduce the passage of PageRank juice and improve the Search Engine Optimization of your website and the Internet in general. I use it from time to time, when I don’t want my blog to be associated with another for some reason. But this html tag is relatively new. It’s being used more as a tweak.

Most blogs are set up to be “no follow” by default. Some blogs change this default setting with a plugin. You may see a blog’s comment area that says “I Follow” or “Comment Luv” or something like it. There’s a popular Wordpress plugin called No Follow Free that customizes your links on your blog (mainly your comments) and makes all your comments “follow.” Which means that you pass on PageRank (if you have it) or search engine authority to anyone who leaves their website link in your comments. It’s a nice plugn and I used it for a while, but stopped using it because 1) I got a lot of spam comments, and 2) it was buggy with the theme I’d chosen (this was a year ago). I know a lot of people use it and it works well.

There’s also a new plugin I recently read about. I just may use this one. It’s called NoFollow Links in Posts.

Nofollow Links in Posts plugin enables you to add the “nofollow” attribute into links in a post within a specified category.

This plugin is useful if you are doing sponsored posts. You can set the plugin to add rel=”nofollow” into links in posts older than “X” days.

Currently, the plugin only works with Wordpress 2.5+ (works up to Wordpress 2.7). There are no plans yet in making this plugin compatible with prior versions of Wordpress.

It looks very good, especially if you want to batch-customize archived posts. I have not tried it, but I know people who have with success. Another good plugin to keep in mind!

Another Template

I know! I know! I have another template installed! How many have I tried the past six months?! lol. I change templates more frequently than bedsheets on bed frames, ha!

I just haven’t found the PERFECT template, I guess. I am horribly fussy. But this new one, Brian Gardner’s Revolution Code Blue, is very nice. This theme was one of the original Revolution themes, and was selling for $80!!!! But Gardner graciously released some of his themes to open source, and I got it for free. I really like it– it’s fast and very clean and classy-looking. What do you think? Should I keep it? Who knows what tomorrow may bring! lol.

Introducing Paying Post

I’ve been investigating various avenues of earning money online. The most satisfying outlet that I have found is blogging for pay. I really like to write sponsored posts. I used to write and dramatize radio advertisements when I had a career in radio (twenty-five years agom now, whoa!). I just love making stories and reviews interesting. Blogging for pay isn’t going to make everyone a millionaire, but it can be lucrative. As for being a millionaire– well, it can happen. Ask John Chow, he’s a millionaire! He’s made his fortune through blogging. But he started way back in 1994!

Anyway, a great new marketplace for blogging and advertising is the new Paying Post. I like them. I recently joined. The marketplace format is very good and very, very organized– after you register, are accepted, and login, you sign in to see available opportunities (called “opps”). Everything is organized and color-coded so you know at a moment’s glance what you can take and what ones you cannot.
Paying Post is free to join, and it’s very easy to submit your blogs. Fill out the form and wait for an acceptance email (it came within a day for me). Why not check it out and see how you can get paid to blog? There’s no fee to join, so you don’t have anything to lose, and you have everything to gain. If you have a blog, this can be a great way of making a little cash on the side. Be sure to read the Terms of Service before signing up.

And on the flip side, this is a terrific venue for advertisers. Advertisers can easily sort through Paying Post’s segmentation options. There’s also an extremely easy to browse listing of bloggers in the Paying Post network, so you can hand-pick your bloggers and get a customized advertisement through them. Studies have shown that it makes sense to advertise on blogs. There is more response, more word-of-mouth, and more linkage boosting when you advertise on blogs.

Paying Post looks like a very up-and-coming blogger/advertiser marketplace. This is one to keep your eye on, and join!

Wordpress 2.7 Is Available

The latest version of Wordpress, the much-acclaimed and much-publicized version 2.7, is finally available to the general public. I’ve been a Wordpress user for over a year now, and I’ve suffered through six or seven upgrades to the software. I REALLY hope this is the last upgrade for a while. It has become quite a chore to do major upgrades on six blogs every other month.

With that said, Wordpress 2.7 is OK. It is a complete redesign of the Admin pages. It’s really how Wordpress should have been designed ages ago. So I like it, but it will take some getting used to. You can catch a sneak-peek here, with this video.

Since this release is a major, major upgrade, I have a few recommendations. Hopefully, you can avoid the major bumps and hurdles.

• BACKUP your data files!!!!!! Never, ever, EVER upgrade or do anything serious to your blog without backing up your data first. I backup two separate ways– I use the Wordpress admin way (Dashboard>>Manage>>Export) to download an XML file of all my posts, comments, etc. Know that this kind of backup will only backup your written data. It will not backup your theme nor your images nor your plugins. That’s why I have two separate backup systems. The second backup system I use saves all that data– through my web host’s cPanel Backup Wizard. Every host and cPanel is slightly different, so consult your web host for more details on how to do that.
• Before upgrading, ALWAYS manually disable your plugins. Plugins can cause problems. Plugins are almost always the cause of upgrades gone wrong. There are just so many different kinds of plugins each with their own coding– do yourself a favor and manually disable them before you tackle an upgrade. After you’ve upgraded, activate each plugin, one by one, to check and see if a plugin causes compatibility problems.
• Go to the Wordpress development blog and read about this new 2.7 version. It will save you a lot of headaches later. This version is a major change, and at first look, the new interface is very complex. Get to know the software a little before you take the leap. It will make your transfer much easier.

I tested upgrading to WP 2.7 on my test blog. I used a plugin called Wordpress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.2 plugin. Author’s page here: Wordpress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.2, and everything went very smoothly. The new Wordpress 2.7 has included its own automatic upgrade system, so according to the Wordpress Dudes, we no longer need to use separate plugins to upgrade our blogs. I have not used the new WP upgrade feature.

There was some discussion at the Wordpress Forums that upgrading using an upgrading plugin caused problems. It didn’t for me. Be sure to take a peek at the forums for a heads up on problematic issues and how to avoid/solve them.

Enjoy your new software!

How To Switch Web Hosts Without Downtime

I’ve switched web hosts twice in a year, and I have intentions on doing it agan in the near future. It’s not that I LIKE to switch hosts– I hate it– but I’ve become dissatisfied with certain aspects of my web hosts. And I feel it is in my interest to branch out a little; I don’t like having all my blogs on one host, because when one blog goes down, they all do. :-p

So I’m slowly gathering information on how to do this seamlessly. I thought I’d share some links to some excellent posts on how to do this. I’d write my own, but I don’t think it would be any better than what’s been written already.

How To Switch Hosting Providers Without Downtime This is a nice and concise list of what you’ll need to do.

How to Switch Web Hosting Companies without any Downtime This is an extremely detailed tutorial. It’s good for the blogger who wants to know everything about everything. Like me who, you know, is curious about the mysteries behind tape drives data versus digital data and everything in between, lol.

How to Change Web Hosts with NO Downtime This is written from a first-person account. It has tidbits of information that are helpful, that you may not find in a more technical tutorial.

Overall, the secret to providing a seamless transfer without any downtime is that you must retain your service at the old web host for a while after purchasing a new account at a new web host. The two services will overlap for a while (2-4 weeks is the recommended time).

A New Feed

Ugh, here I thought I had all the hard work over. See that little “Subscribe to Email” form in the upper right-hand side? I’ve been spending about 2 hours on that little thing, trying to get my feed subscription service plugged in. I could not figure out why it wasn’t going through! Grr! Then, the little light bulb went off! I think I still had the feeds for this blog from when it used to be on Blogger. Oh, sheesh. I never changed it! I didn’t delete the old feed, seeing that there are still some subscribers there. But I just want to let you know that I have a fresh new feed for my own domain. When you get around to it, please delete the old feed and subscribe to the new feed. You can subscribe to the new feed very easily– just click the RSS button in the upper right-hand side here, or enter your email and click “subscribe” to get emailed feeds from this blog. Sorry for the confusion. Once I see that my subscribers have all done this, I’ll just delete the old feed.

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