Entries Tagged 'General' ↓
July 1st, 2009 — General
It’s time for June’s most groovy posts. Yay! Everybody sing and dance.
I took the list of posts I published in June and these are the 5 most popular:
- Creative Ideas for a New Blog Header
Some ideas that will hopefully inspire you should you happen to be designing a new header for your blog. Changing your header once in awhile is a great way to freshen up the look of your blog.
- Clickbank Tip – Turning On Instant Notification
Being emailed each time you make a sale in Clickbank is a nice feature instead of having to log in to your account each time you want to check.
- Ergonomically correct monitor height
Working at home, for most of us, means spending long hours sitting at the computer. This can wreak havoc on your body so it’s important to set your desk area up to be as ergonomically correct as you can, including your monitor.
- Can You Write? Make Money In 5 Days!
A ridiculously simple idea to write and profit from a short report. Create multiple reports and start earning a nice passive income.
- Dig my new background?
I added a background to my blog to spice it up a bit. I’m pretty pleased with the results. You can see the before shot and scoff at how boring it was.
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This isn’t really fair to the poor June posts that were published closer to the end of the month since they didn’t have as much time to generate traffic before I checked the stats – but oh well. Suck it up end-of-june posts. Maybe next month you should think about formulating in my head earlier rather than later.
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June 14th, 2009 — General
My neck and back have been extremely sore lately and after a day off from working and giving my brain a chance to function properly again, I realized it’s because my computer monitor is not at the right height.
Working from home usually means some pretty long hours in front of the computer so if your desk isn’t set up to be as ergonomically correct as possible, your neck and back might pay the price like mine are at the moment.
I’ve talked about making your desk ergonomically correct before, but since my only problem is my monitor height, this post will list some of the ways to correct it without using some scrap pieces of wood (or even a saucepan like an ex boyfriend did) to adjust the height.
Your monitor should be at a height where you don’t have to tilt you head up or down to look at it. When looking at the screen, your eyes should be level with the top half of the monitor.
You should never have to lean forward to see your monitor. My monitor used to sit so far back on my desk that I was leaning forward the entire time I sat at the computer. I didn’t realize it until my daughter took a picture of me while I was working. It looked awful. I looked like Igor’s girlfriend. Moving the monitor closer to the front of my desk fixed that up in a jiffy.
If you can’t move your monitor closer, change the resolution of your screen to something smaller so it’s easier to see and read.
You could also adjust the height of your chair so you’re viewing your monitor at the right height, but you may have to adjust the height of your keyboard and mouse to stay all ergonomic-like. Your feet should be able to sit flat on the floor. If not, raising your chair might not be the solution.
I sniffed around on Amazon for some ergonomic monitor stands and found a few that I’d like to try but in the end, the Ergotron LX Desk Mount Arm won me over.
Not only can you adjust the height, but you can turn that puppy any which way you want. This is especially nice if you watch movies or TV on your computer. Plus it just looks cool.
Setting up your desk so it’s at the maximum comfy level will make sure you’re working more efficiently. Interrupting that masterpiece blog post you’re writing by rubbing your neck and back every 2 minutes isn’t all that productive.
June 13th, 2009 — General
I’ve been focusing a lot more lately on selling Clickbank products because it seems to be the best return on investment (ROI) in my experience. However, it’s slightly annoying that Clickbank doesn’t notify you when you make sales.
If you do a bit of digging around though, you’ll find that you CAN set up a notification system – but only if you want to get your hands a tad dirty.
It took me a few tries to get it right, and I had to splice a bit of code together from a few different websites to come up with what seemed to be the right stuff – so I’m just going to post it for you here along with a step-by-step guide to turning on Clickbank notifications.
(Note: You’ll need access to your server to do this, otherwise you would have to contact your web host to upload the file for you.)
1. Log in to your Clickbank account. That’s kind of a “duh” one, but you never know.
2. Click the “Account Settings” tab and go to “My Site“.
3. At the bottom of the My Site page is an “Advanced Tools” bar with an empty field beside “Secret Key” and “Instant Notification URL“. Click “Edit“.
4. You’ll need to request access to Instant Notification, so click that URL.
5. Read over the terms and agree to them. Submit the form.
6. Enter a Secret Key in the Secret Key field. The secret key can be up to 16 letters or digits and must be ALL CAPS.
7. Copy this code into a plain text file, (I use Notepad) and save it to your desktop as a php file. For example, I saved mine as cb.php so it was easy to remember. Make sure to change your email address in the code to your own before saving it as well as the secret key you came up with in the previous step.
<?php
function cbValid() {
$key='YOUR_SECRET_KEY_HERE';
$ccustname = $_REQUEST['ccustname'];
$ccustemail = $_REQUEST['ccustemail'];
$ccustcc = $_REQUEST['ccustcc'];
$ccuststate = $_REQUEST['ccuststate'];
$ctransreceipt = $_REQUEST['ctransreceipt'];
$cproditem = $_REQUEST['cproditem'];
$ctransaction = $_REQUEST['ctransaction'];
$ctransaffiliate = $_REQUEST['ctransaffiliate'];
$ctranspublisher = $_REQUEST['ctranspublisher'];
$cprodtype = $_REQUEST['cprodtype'];
$cprodtitle = $_REQUEST['cprodtitle'];
$ctranspaymentmethod =
$_REQUEST['ctranspaymentmethod'];
$ctransamount = $_REQUEST['ctransamount'];
$caffitid = $_REQUEST['caffitid'];
$cvendthru = $_REQUEST['cvendthru'];
$cbpop = $_REQUEST['cverify'];
$xxpop =
sha1("$ccustname|$ccustemail|$ccustcc|$ccuststate|$ctransreceipt
|$cproditem|$ctransaction|"
."$ctransaffiliate|$ctranspublisher|$cprodtype|$cprodtitle|$ctranspaymentmethod
|$ctransamount|$caffitid|$cvendthru|$key");
$xxpop=strtoupper(substr($xxpop,0,8));
if ($cbpop==$xxpop) return 1;
else return 0;
}
if (cbValid())
mail("YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE", "ClickBank - " .
$_REQUEST['ctransaction'],"Product: " . $_REQUEST['cprodtitle'] . "\nPublisher: " . $_REQUEST['ctranspublisher'] . "\nAffiliate: " . $_REQUEST['ctransaffiliate'] . "\nTransaction: " . $_REQUEST['ctransaction'] . "\nAmount: " . $_REQUEST['ctransamount']);
?>
Or you can download the file here. Make sure to change the file extension from .txt to .php before uploading it.
8. Put that file on your server using an FTP program. I chose to upload the file right to my root directly so the URL ends up being:
http://www.mydomain.com/cb.php
(Hopefully you already have one and know how to use it. If not, leave a comment and I’ll help you out.)
9. Back in the Clickbank site, enter that URL (http://www.mydomain.com/cb.php) – after replacing “mydomain” with your own of course – into the Instant Notification URL 1: field. I left the second field blank.
10. Before saving changes, click on “Test” to make sure everything is hunky dory. You should receive a test email to the email address you put in the php file.
11. A window should pop up to notify you that the test was a success. Hooray! Now you can save changes.
Now you’ll receive an email each time you make a Clickbank sale. Sweet, hey?
Time Sensitive Note: I’ve got another Clickbank tip coming up in Monday’s MamasOnTheWeb Newsletter (June 15th, 2009) – one that I just implemented and increased my sales – so make sure you sign up! It’s the form to the right –>> 
June 10th, 2009 — General
Here are two things I’ve realized in the past week that may be relevant to you.
1. You can’t use Skype and WampServer at the same time.
I like to use WampServer when customizing WordPress themes. It allows me to create a “server” on my computer so I can make changes without anybody seeing. I also like to use Skype to connect with clients.
Sometimes I need to use Skype at the same time I’m running WampServer. Unfortunately, WampServer won’t connect if Skype is open. Bummer.
2. Google Gears makes Firefox crash when uploading images in WordPress
For a week straight, my browser would crash every time I tried to upload an image in my blog. Since I do this multiple times a day for multiple blogs, you can imagine how freaking frustrated I was getting! After doing a Google search, I found out that the Google Gears add-on for Firefox was the culprit. After disabling it, everything worked fine.
So if you’re having either of these issues, you know how to fix them now!
May 29th, 2009 — General
I have to admit that I’m not the most consistent blogger, so I’ve come up with an idea. At the end of each month, I’m going to list that month’s most popular posts. This will accomplish two things.
For those of you who didn’t get a chance to catch up on all the previous posts, it’s a great way for you to keep from missing out on the best ones. (But I mean, really – who wouldn’t want to read every single post on my blog?)
It’s also another way to keep me motivated to continue publishing regular content. It would be slightly embarrassing if I had a whopping 3 posts to list at the end of the month.
So without further blabbing, I give you:
May’s Most Groovy Mamas Posts
Image upload http error in WordPress – Fixed – The image upload http error that you get with certain WordPress blogs can be extremely aggravating, but I did manage to find a plugin that fixed it.
Yahoo Answers is full of morons – My little rant about how Yahoo Answers is a “haven of morons”.
5 Ways to Smarten Up a Boring WordPress Theme – Making your WordPress theme unique doesn’t require ninja coding skills.
Free WordPress Theme perfect for WAHM blogs – I found this really cute WordPress theme awhile ago that would be great for a work at home blog.
Thwirl versus TweetDeck – My thoughts on which is better; Thwirl or TweetDeck.
Change Firefox 3’s Awesome Bar back to Oldbar – The “Awesome Bar” in Firefox truly is awful. Here’s how to get back the Oldbar.
