I have no idea why yet but I lost all the formatting on my blog. I guess it’s going to look funny until I fix it and I’m not feeling so smart at the moment so that could take awhile.
Update: Never mind. It’s fixed. And I didn’t do it. Weird. But good.
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2 comments June 2nd, 2008
Statcounter uses The Planet as their hosting partner, however, there was an explosion in one of The Planet’s data centers last night caused by an electrical short. 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers were (and still are being) affected, including Statcounter. There were no injuries.
This means that people using Statcounter (like me) will have limited access to their stats, and some stats will even be lost.
The staff at Statcounter are gracious enough to keep everyone updated through their forum. They also suggest that if you are on one of the affected partitions and you need to track your stats before the issue is resolved, that you can set up a new project in your Statcounter account and start tracking again.
I think the team at Statcounter are being great throughout this whole ordeal and I can only imagine how stressful it must be for them. It’s during times like this when you realize which businesses believe in operating with integrity, and which don’t.
I just hope that everyone understands that this was an accident and was not Statcounter’s fault. I know people like to get pissy without knowing all the facts, but even though I may have lost some of my traffic stats, I’m thankful that things weren’t any worse.
I’m glad nobody was injured in the explosion, and I look forward to compulsively checking my stats like the obsessive freak that I am. In the meantime, this is an important reminder for everyone to make sure they have their eggs in more than one basket.
And also, keep backups of all your stuff! Servers have been known to lose data. Especially when they blow up.
1 comment June 1st, 2008
I just tried to log in to Twitter and I saw this.
“Thanks for noticing”?
I couldn’t help NOT noticing! But thanks for making me smile.
And yes, I know that most of you have seen this page a million times (due to Twitter’s infamous reputation of being down all the time) but as you may well know, I’m extremely behind the times.
I wonder if Twitter’s demise is imminent.
2 comments May 30th, 2008
Are you using Google Calendar yet? (It’s free by the way.)
I tried it a year ago and quickly switched back to using my trusty paper organizer and post-it notes.
Then I read a post over at WAHM 2.0 by Kelly McCausey and figured I would give it another try since she was liking it so much.
I’m not sure how much Google Calendar has changed in the past year, but I’m sure loving it now!
I’m saving trees since I cut down my paper use by at least 75%. I’m also saving time because I’m not searching all over the place for things I’ve written down and then forgotten about. My kids aren’t ruining my lists and notes with their own crayon and marker masterpieces. And best of all, my crap is all in one place!
I’ve been trying for months to get more organized with my work, on my computer and my desk and I can honestly say that Google Calendar is the perfect solution. It’s really handy for those of us who work online because you can set a reminder to pop up each time an event is about to happen.
Here are some things I really love about it:
If you’re in need of a better way to organize yourself, Google Calendar could be a great option for you - especially if you’re a list-making freak like me. 
2 comments May 22nd, 2008
Since I upgraded my Wordpress blogs to version 2.5 I’ve been having problems uploading images. I’d select the file to upload but when it went through the “crunching” process it would give me an HTTP error. Frustrating as hell!
I did a search on the Wordpress forum and on Google and came up with no solutions that worked for me until I found a post that mentioned the “Flexible-upload” plugin.
I’m super lazy when it comes to blogging (as you can probably tell if you’ve been a regular reader) so I haven’t done much with using plugins or additional features, but I’m kicking myself for not using this one earlier. Not only does it fix the http error for me, but you can add multiple images which is extremely handy if you use images a lot in your posts.
I know a lot of other people are having image uploading issues - even with version 2.5.1 - but hopefully this plugin will fix it for them as well.
2 comments May 6th, 2008
Today I’ve been spending a lot of time optimizing one of my websites. I’ve made my pages smaller so they load quicker and made some keyword changes and ad tweaks.
I don’t do this too often (I’m a naughty webmaster) but every time I do I always notice positive changes in rankings, traffic, opt-in subscribers and income. Not bad for spending a couple hours on a few changes.
I use SiteReportCard a lot when I do this. It checks for any broken links, how fast your site loads, link popularity, rankings for keywords, etc. It’s free and super easy. Just plug in the URL of the page you’re checking and voila. Pretty simple but it can sure make a big difference.
Checking stats like how fast your site loads is very important. Many website owners don’t realize that their pages are loading too slow for people to stay on their site. Optimizing images and getting rid of unnecessary code can really speed up your loading times and help you keep more of that hard earned traffic.
I also like to check my keywords and their density. You can even compare them to other competing pages. This can not only help you optimize your content better for search engines, but also gives you ideas for even more keywords. I’ve written whole articles and added new pages after discovering keywords and phrases I hadn’t already thought of myself.
If you’re not already using a similar tool to check statistics like these, bookmark this page and visit it regularly.
2 comments May 5th, 2008
Have you ever started writing a post and then left it to finish at a later date? Maybe you had to do some more research, maybe you were waiting on some information from someone, maybe you were feeling uninspired and needed to wait until you could finish the post with a proper bang.
I always write my posts in Notepad, then copy and paste them into my Wordpress editor once they’re finished. When I don’t finish the post I’m working on because of any of the above reasons, I save it and store it in my “to do” folder on my desktop.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of random bits of posts all over my hard drive and I just realized today how extremely stupid that is.
Why haven’t I been saving them as DRAFTS in my Wordpress editor?? That way, I would have seen them every time I logged in to write a new post instead of forgetting about them while they were floating around on my computer.
If you’ve been doing this as well, it’s time to stop. I wouldn’t doubt if I was the only one who’s been silly enough to do this, but if I’m not then this post might help you.
7 comments April 29th, 2008
I subscribe to a few different magazines and there’s one thing that they do to their subscribers that pisses me off so I’m going to have another little rant if you don’t mind.
Once your subscription is about to expire, these magazines will mail you the standard renewal notice. In the letter they send, they always say the same thing in big red letters.
“RENEW NOW OR PAY MORE LATER”
Well guess what?!
The last time I received that letter, I didn’t renew now! Oh my goodness, I didn’t renew. What to do, what to do? I was going to burn in hell because I didn’t lock in at that special subscription price. Life as I knew it should have been over right?
Luckily for me, my life was spared when I received another letter a few weeks later. This one was especially interesting because it was essentially the same as the previous one, but with a lower price.
A Lower Price!
Those bastards lied to me. I’m not happy now.
I could have believed them with that initial letter and renewed my subscription and fork over 20 big ones. Instead, I called their bluff (cause I’m smart like that) and ended up paying only 12 bucks.
Now, while this was beneficial to me, I can say that I’m not too thrilled with this magazine’s ability to blatantly lie to their loyal customers.
I know this is a marketing tactic from the days of old but is it really ethical?
Whatever that answer is, it doesn’t really matter. The whole point here is that I may not be a loyal customer for long. I would bet there are others who feel the same way. (I hope anyway, or else I’ll feel like giant tool.)
I’m sure you can apply this type of tactic to many online endeavors as well. I’ve seen a lot of things similar to this in email marketing where people offer a program or product for a certain price, then lower it for future customers. (In some cases they’ll even give it away for free.)
What a great way to lose credibility and trust.
To make a long story short, just don’t do this. Be honest. Stick to your word. It’s worth it.
Add comment April 29th, 2008
I was reading Shoemoney’s Q & A post over at http://www.shoemoney.com and one of the answers really stood out for me.
The question was “How many times should a blogger update his blog with new blog posts in a week?”
Shoemoney’s brilliant answer: “as many as they feel like writing“.
At first this might seem like a lazy answer, but let’s think about it for a minute.
In forums like Digital Point, people are always asking how many times a day/week they should be posting. There are countless blog posts themselves about how many times a blogger should be updating their blog.
The thing is, there is no right or wrong answer. It’s different for everyone and every blog. It depends on the topic of the blog, the writing ability of the blogger, and the demand from the readers (among other various factors as well).
Therefor, I believe that Shoemoney’s answer is the best because it really should be “as much as you want”!
If I feel like writing ten posts this week, I’m gonna do it. If I feel like writing only one, I’ll do that too. I’m not going to burn myself out trying to write 5 posts a day. The only thing that will accomplish is crappy writing.
I’m the type of person who just can’t (or don’t want to) post that frequently. Other people might have the ability to write more. If you’re that type of person, then go for it!
You don’t need someone else’s “permission” to write as much as you want. There is no secret formula. In the end, you want to write quality posts. Emphasis on “quality”, not “quantity”.
If you can write 5 quality posts a week, you can make that your goal. If you can write 20 quality posts a week, make that your goal instead. Don’t write 5 quality posts and then 15 crappy posts just for the sake of posting.
What will posting crappy posts for the sake of posting get you? Hmm, let’s see:
If you post according to what someone else says is the magic number of posting, you’ll end up with those nasty side-effects (assuming that magic number is not your own personal magic number).
You don’t need to ask someone else how many times you should be updating your own blog. It’s completely up to you.
Add comment April 28th, 2008
A few days ago I sat down and agreed with myself to do the meticulous task of creating my own customized Adsense reports.
Any Google Adsense publisher can download reports right from their Adsense account, but I’m ridiculously anal about my numbers so I had to create my own reports. After a couple hours I had what I wanted.
I made seperate sheets in OpenOffice’s Calc for each month of each year that I’ve been an Adsense publisher. I then created another sheet that pulled the totals from each month to create a monthly/yearly overview.
I printed off this overview and have it sitting right in front of my monitor. I’ll update it weekly so my numbers stay current but the main purpose of doing this is to use these numbers as motivation to continue to keep those numbers growing.
I can also see which months performed better and figure out why. This helps me get rid of the ads that are sucking and tweak other ad units to do even better.
My intial goal will be to increase my Adsense income every month by 50 percent. I hope that isn’t an unrealistic goal but I’ll do my best to make sure I don’t eat my words after the first month.
At first I was simply aiming to do better than the previous month, but I realized this wasn’t a specific enough goal. If this goal of increasing my Adsense income by 50 percent isn’t challenging enough, I’ll change it to double every month.
Wish me luck and pray that I don’t embarrass myself!
And if it helps, try creating something like this for yourself to keep motivated. Not only is it a great way to keep your momentum going, but it’s exciting to see that all that hard work is paying off.
Add comment April 26th, 2008
