Getting My Act Together: News Update on InvestorBlogger
July 11, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Read these 7 comments
It’s been quite a while since I posted a news type post on this blog. So here goes…
Of Buzzes, Blogs, and Forms
David from eCommerce-Tools spotted an interesting new plugin and sent me news about it - It’s called a Form Builder and allows users to create a wide range of forms that then email content and display a unique message to the respondents. I can imagine a dozen different uses from that on InvestorBlogger - surveys, content submissions, a non-spammable contact form, etc… I might even use it to replace my current contact form.
In fact, David was the blogger who ‘borrowed’ my content and he helped me to see how sometimes people can easily fall into this trap of borrowing content without realizing. In fact, I wonder if I haven’t done it myself when I just started out … Anyway, he’s made good on his promises and actually his blog already has a lot of good content on it that he wrote himself, so I’m looking to see how it matures in six months or so. I’m also nominating him for a BlogBuzz as I have a few of those left as well. If you’d like one, too, just drop on over to my BlogBuzz page.
Spam, Plugins, and Banning IP addresses
In other news, I was getting really annoying and vulgar spam emails from some guys in Africa. The spam were being sent through an insecure contact form called PXSmail and they all came from just one or two IP addresses. Worse, the form though simple and effective allowed HTML to be added to the mix meaning that it was easy to spam me. The mails often had dozens, if not more, of links and keywords. And it hadn’t been obviously updated in nearly 3 years.
So then I tried blocking IP addresses for a while, and that was effective. I used one of Lester Chan’s plugins called WP-Ban. Unfortunately, that’s like treating flu with a gun. Effective, but permanent. Then I tried filtering the mails, but that was unsatisfactory as I would miss important mails. So then I switched to a plugin that excluded any HTML - problem solved. It’s called Contact Form II and it works simply and effectively. There is a simple toggle switch that can be used to exclude URIs in the message. Simply uncheck this. Voila! Problem solved.
Mailing List: Yes, I have one!
Having moved to BlueHost after being on Dreamhost for years made me realize that both companies provide quite different ways to achieve the same results. BlueHost uses CPanel and that took a while to get used to, but in fact many hosts use CPanel, so I’m glad that I’m now learning how to use it. I’ve moved my popular sites to three different hosts (2 on Bluehost, one on Hostmonster, and one on BlueFur), and each uses CPanel though their configurations aren’t exactly the same.
Yesterday I was exploring BlueHost’s scripts and I found Dadamail so I experimented by adding a mailing list to the site to see how difficult or easy it was to set up! I didn’t fill in many fields, just enough to get things working. To my surprise I already found I had one or two ‘brave’ guinea pigs sign up! Wow! I’d better sort things out and set it up properly…
Growing UP: Should I move to WordPress MU
InvestorBlogger is approaching two years on this domain and it is growing up. Traffic is double last year’s and still growing, so I’m now thinking of moving the whole blog to WordPress MU. Why? I already experimented with MU on Dreamhost for a while, and I found that it was quite stable and mature. It also enables me to create a lot of sub-blogs, each of which can be managed separately but which draws on just ONE install saving a lot of management time and effort. With over 1000 posts, I am finding that I would like to create new blogs that draw on the content and that are more closely tied to some of the themes I already explore. It would also help me to publicize IB much more, and be listed in more places that so far reject my blog as “off-topic” or as a non-PF blog. So I’m likely to install WordPress MU during some downtime. Since most of IB’s posts are in the ‘archives’ post, nothing will change for the current archives, and perhaps the front page. Eventually, though, I will create a lot more channels, with posts and traffic suited to each. Most of the machinations will be invisible to current readers for the time being.
New Channels: PF, Tech, Investing, Making Money Online, Business
These are the base channels that I will be starting off with, as I break up InvestorBlogger into component parts. This transformation won’t take place overnight, and all posts WILL be visible on the front page. I’m still not sure how I’m going to handle the feeds for each sub-blog, perhaps I’ll have one super-feed with blogfeeds as well. So subscribers will be able to choose which feed to subscribe, too. Obviously I won’t be able to produce daily content for each of these blogs, but I will likely keep up my current rate of one or two posts a day across the mini-empire! Wish me luck.
What’s in that download now?
May 26, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Read these 6 comments
A few months ago, I created a top 20 list of my favorite ‘money making blogs’. Recently I’ve sorted out the niggles and created a page to make it easier to find. This page will keep a record of my download and the current feeds that are in it . In edition 1.1 that is currently available for download you can find 20 feeds for downloading in the file. You can now download the file here…
This page was last updated on Mon, 26 May 2008.
List of Top 20 Feeds
I’m always looking at adding or supplementing this list with the best ‘money making blogs’ and to that end, I’ve added two new blogs that I have found to be quite focused, quality driven and interesting.
If you want to know what criteria I’m using, it’s really quite simple: quality writing, regular updates (at least once a week - that’s not an average), and a writer with an entrepreneurial spirit. So this is what I’m currently recommending as my own personal reading! Enjoy…
- AdesBlog.com (feed)
- AndyBeard.eu (feed)
- BluePrint for Financial Prosperity (feed)
- Caroline MiddleBrook (feed )
- Consumerism Commentary (feed )
- Dosh Dosh (feed )
- *Genius Types (feed )
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich (feed )
- InvestorBlogger (feed )
- John Cow (feed )
- John Chow (feed )
- Make Money Online with a 13-Year Old (feed )
- ProBlogger Blog Tips (feed )
- Super Affiliate Secrets (feed )
- The Simple Dollar (feed)
- Timothy Sykes - Stock Trader (feed )
- Tyler Cruz An Internet Entrepreneur (feed)
- Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills (feed )
- The Dividend Guy Blog (feed)
- KCLau (feed)
These are my picks for the current season, I’ll be updating this list as time, information, and good writing permit! Please feel free to drop me recommendations for inclusion, I’ll certainly take a look at them. Future lists will just include the updates, not the entire list!
Former Feeds
I’d like to thank the owners for these blogs for allowing me to include them in my original list.
Best Wishes to the bloggers, and I’ll be checking back every so often!
Splogging is STEALING… Stop STEALING our blogs…
May 18, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Comments Off
Gentle readers, please do not be alarmed! Reading this post in your RSS reader is quite okay! Many of you have your own blogs, and work hard at writing them. I spend a lot of time, and just occasionally I enjoy the fruits of my labor. But today, I noticed that one website was reposting my content in its entirety without any permission. I’m seriously pissed…
Splogging is STEALING - Photo***.com is STEALING my content!
Whatever the reason, I noticed two incoming links in my Wordpress this evening, and, out of curiosity, I checked them. This is what I found. You can check the link to the blog yourself.
Anyone recognise the top of the post… It’s one I just posted a few minutes ago! Hmm. So I checked through his archives, and was stunned to find that he has posted quite a few of my posts IN THEIR ENTIRETY…
It seems that the webmaster of Photo***.com/blog is SPLOGGING my blog, and not just my blog, but several others as well. He writes: “I Will try to keep you updated with the latest internet marketing and business news.” Not if I can help it.
Who can say SPLOG?
This guy is literally stealing my content, and reposting it on his blog WITHOUT any attribution, recognition or even polite request. Worse is, there’s no contact address, no way to politely request this guy to STOP or ask him to repost SUMMARIES only.
I know some bloggers are quite happy with this, as it brings extra traffic, extra interest, and extends your influence. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone gratuitously repost my content without a so much as ‘may I…?’.
What would you do?
I have three courses of action open to me this moment… I’m going to look at all of them.
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1. Slip the feed to summaries only: which would work but would be inconvenient for my readers. (My current choice of action, I’m afraid!).s
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2. Remove FeedBurner entirely. Although my subscriber isn’t great, I don’t think it would matter that much. I’d have to contact my subscribers to let them know, though.
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3. Rename my feed, and republish it.
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4. Accept, publish a ton of links in each header to my blog, and drive traffic to my blog (that would be delightfully evil!).
More Reading
Downtime: A Few Minutes
February 13, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Comments Off
Apologies for the short downtime. I had to upgrade my blog, but the wp-cache function just refused to work. So I had to manually install WordPress, copy the files myself to the new directory, and renew the wp-cache plugin. Seems it’s working now. I don’t exactly know how long the site was suffering the wp-cache problem.
If you notice something not working, do drop me a line and let me know the problems.
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Monday News on InvestorBlogger dot com
February 4, 2008 | Posted by InvestorBlogger | Comments Off
I’ve been away for a few days, and I’m slowly catching up on the past week’s posting. I hate to disappoint my readers so I’ve back dated a post for each day that I was away. After getting home, I wrote over 4,000 words to complete the task. So here are some of the features from last week.
Five Posts from Last Week.
- January 2008: Financial Results, Traffic and More… (0)
- A Man With A Plan: Ways to create additional income (2)
- What would you do if… (some bad news) (0)
- Monday News: A Carnival, Tidying Up, Chinese New Year and our 1st Martian Reader (0)
- NetWork Solutions: How YOU can gouge your customers in 10 steps or less - a case study (2)
In Other News,
…Voxant Scripts: No longer works on this blog
Sorry about the video posting earlier on Saturday, but it turns out that Voxant has changed their scripts such that I can no longer place their videos in my posts. I’m not sure why yet, but I was unaware that there’d been a change until I saw an invisible video yesterday. I was already tired from blogging, so rather than waste time, I simply deleted the post. I didn’t want to fight their scripts. Any suggestions?
…Get A FREE Review
I’ve been running a competition for a free blog review. Check this post for more details. It would be fun to see how many people can guess properly. Of course, now that the deadline has passed, I’d like to award the prize to … Drum Roll! It was Michael Turton who wrote: “I’d say you were on or about floor 25. Nice shot, shows the tree-lined avenue perfectly.” I’ll be featuring your blog sometime after Chinese New Year on InvestorBlogger dot com. Thanks, Michael. Michael works there in one of the Universities, so he knew the answer .
…Carnival of Making REAL Money
The 11th edition is now available on the other blog, now so go over and check it out. I’ve posted over 20 links to excellent articles.
…New Project: Adding Images To Your Blog
SponsoredReviews’ blog has a great post on adding pictures and images to your blog with excellent advice that covers software, printscreen, royalty free images, etc. It’s an excellent detailed post.
…Should M$ buy Yahoo?
And of course, the big news story of the week is Microsoft Buying Yahoo!. I’m not so sure that this will be good for Yahoo!s customers. I love what they have done with many of their services, but I’m afraid that M$ will just monetize the hell out of the services in ways similar to HotMail, and Listbot.
…First Investments
A friend today was asking about investing in currencies as a way to make additional interest, but he wanted to invest a lot of his money into South African Rand. Is that a wise move? What do you think?
Let’s hear your answers on these or any blog issues!
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