To The Moon And Back

I bought a new domain just recently and wanted to try using blogspot as my host. One, it’s free and two, there are so many cool blogger templates out there that I’d like to try. You’ve all probably tried using a custom domain successfully but I wasn’t fortunate. I tried to follow all the steps from the Blogger.com help page but my changes are not taking effect. So I asked a friend who’s currently hosting her blog at blogspot and she sent me the following:

 The steps are for domains registered at GoDaddy but I’m sure it’s almost the same with other registrars.

1. Log in to your blogger account and go to Settings > Publishing

2. Set the publishing to your blogspot address

3. Log in to your GoDaddy account and access the domain that you want to update

4. Select ‘Enable Forwarding’
- Select 302 Moved Temporarily
- Forward to http://name.blogspot.com

5. Select ‘Enable Masking’ and click OK

6. Open a new browser and type your new domain http://name.com. It should now redirect to your blogspot address (http://name.blogspot.com). It might take a while before the domain gets redirected to blogspot so be patient

7. When the domain redirection is working, go back to GoDaddy account and access Namerservers

8. Check Hosting Name Servers then click OK.
Your namerservers should now say:
Name Server 1: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
name Server 2: NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

9. Now, click ‘Total DNS Control and MX Records’

10. Under the CNAME section, click ‘Edit’ for the www entry

11. Under points to host name, change @ to ghs.google.com

12. Login to your blogger account then go back to Settings > Publishing

13. Change publishing to custom domain and type in your new domain:
http://www.name.com

14. Save Settings

15. Check redirect name.com to www.name.com

16. Save Settings

Now this may all seem redundant and the original instructions might have worked with you. However, I know a couple of friends who experienced the same problem using their custom domains so I don’t think there’s any harm following the steps above.

Whenever I stumble upon a blog that’s so cool whether because of the graphics or articles, I make sure to make a post about them here.

For today, I will tell you about Mark Flavin’s internet marketing blog. If you want to know all there is to know about viral marketing, traffic generation, email marketing, blog advertising and basically anything related to online marketing, I recommend you bookmark this site. With the right keywords, you can easily double or even triple your site’s daily traffic. Once your visitors are done checking out your blog, how do you make them come back? One thing that I learned from Mark Flavin’s article, “7 Ways To Get Repeat Traffic To Your Blog or Website”, is to make it possible for customers to sign up for future discounts, newsletters, weekly tips, anything that you think would interest your visitors so you will have a reason to contact them. The other tips are a given, use rss, social bookmarking plugin, constant communication via comments, etc. but the ‘opt-in’ tactic is a surefire way to give them a reason to visit again.

And for those of you who want to know how to make money on your blog, you will definitely appreciate the article “How To Start A Blog That Makes Money”. There’s also an article on how you can use Twitter to drive targeted traffic to your site. I’ve been using Twitter for sometime now and I admit it’s very useful for article marketing. Some people just can’t resist clicking on a link especially if it might benefit them.

I’ve only spent 30 minutes on Flavin’s site and I’ve already learned so many tips and tricks on maximizing my sites/blogs. And even if his articles suck (which they don’t), I’d give him credit for using a photo from the movie, “The Anchormen” on his newsletter signup box.

A client wanted to move his WordPress blog to a new directory. It was currently located at the root directory and now wants to move it to a new folder called blog. I was ready to charge him two hours worth of design knowing I’d have to reinstall wordpress, back up database, import and export posts. However, after searching online just to make sure that I’m not missing any steps, I learned that I can do this in about 30 minutes.

1. Backup all the wordpress core files, images folder, .htaccess, database, themes. You can download your existing WP files using any FTP software like FTPZilla or WS FTP. You can get freewares from Downloads.com.

For backing up the database, if you’re using Cpanel, just click on MySQL® Databases and scroll down until you see the phpMyAdmin link. Select the database that you used for your wordpress blog by clicking on it. Click Export from the top menus, select all tables, scroll down and check on Save as file checkbox. Hit the Go button to download a backup copy of your wordpress database. You need to do this just in case something goes wrong with the installation.

2. Now, before you do anything. Login to your current blog’s admin panel. Go to Options > General and update the following fields: WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL). If you’re moving to a new directory called blog, just change it from http://domain.com to http://domain.com/blog. Save the changes and proceed with the steps below.

3. Using FTP, create the new directory where you want to move your blog.

4. Upload all the core files including .htaccess to the new directory (/blog).

5. Go back to your phpMyAdmin and update the table wp_options by clicking on it. On the siteurl option_name, you should update the value to http://domain.com/blog

6. You might have to change all the paths to the images per post or if you want a shortcut version, do this. Remember the images folder that I told you to back up before? You just need to upload the whole folder to the directory /blog and it should work fine.

Just when I think I’ve had enough of spam emails, they start invading my blog comments. If you’re new to spam comments, you’d think that they are real. Who wouldn’t want to read about these?

Wow, what a great post! I’ll definitely come back for more

I’ve added your site to google reader. Keep posting!

That’s a very interesting post. It helped me a lot.

But if you click on the links of these supposed to be bloggers, you’ll most likely see gambling and porn sites. So what you do is reject these comments or move them to spam. But they only get better in making you click their links. They now send you these:

You wasted my time on this post. You should be ashamed.

No freaking way. I’m absolutely disagreeing. Next time when you post something think about reaction of readers

Please stop saying stupid things! After reading your posts I want to laugh! You are trying to act and talk like an experienced person, but it does not work in your case. You can’t imagine how funny you look. I didn’t want to say anything bad but words just came out of my mouth! You must be crazy!

Now, who wouldn’t be shocked to see that on your comments? The first time I got those, I thought I was doing something wrong. They sounded like they are attacking me so I forgot for a moment that they could be spam. I immediately clicked on their link and surprise, surprise, a gaming site. I should’ve known. But that was before.

If you’re anything like me, then the following plugins will help you.

Akismet - this comes as a default Wordpress plugin. It usually catches all spam comments but don’t expect miracles. Spam bots are getting wiser each day that you’d still receive a couple from time to time.

Akismet uses a unique algorithm combined with a community-created database to “learn” which comments are comment spam and which are legitimate.

What you can do is make sure not to delete the spam comments that were not caught by Akismet. When you mark them as spam, the information will be sent to Akismet community so it will be blocked in the future.

Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam - prevent spam comments by displaying random words as an image. Before a user can submit their comment, they need to type in the exact characters that they see on the image. It also has a generated audio for visually impaired users.

Math Comment Spam Protection - A great plugin to test the visitor if it’s a human being or a spam robot. You don’t have to like Math to like this plugin. The questions are fairly easy that I’m use everyone can answer them.

Spam Karma 2.3 - designed to stop all forms of automated blog spam effortlessly. Well, that’s what the main website says. I haven’t tried this personally.

Simple Trackback Validation Plugin - I used to think that trackbacks are good for my blog until they start to get really messy, having trackbacks from illegal sites, etc.

Checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to.

This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.

Retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.

From the wordpress.org website:

The latest stable release of WordPress (Version 2.5) is available in two formats from the links to your right.

Three Step Upgrade
These are the short instructions, if you want more check out the extended upgrade instructions. If you experience problems with the Three Step Upgrade, you may want to review the more detailed upgrade instructions.

It looked promising, easy and exciting. Plus my main blog desperately needed an upgrade after using WordPress 2.0 for more than a year. After a quick review of what I need to do, I immediately backed up my files, database and started doing the WordPress 2.5 upgrade.

The more detailed upgrade instructions were great. It was very easy to follow even for a non-techie person. I was even able to load WordPress 2.5 on my local and played around with it for a while. The new interface design is really nice and I noticed that tons of new features have been added. However, things started messing up when I tried to comment, add or edit post, and change themes. Most of the errors have to do with database. I decided to sleep then hoping things will look better in the morning (it usually do). When I woke up, not only I can’t comment but it won’t even allow me access wp-admin anymore. I searched and searched the net for solutions but eventually just decided to downgrade to 2.3.3. I didn’t see any instructions on downgrading so I just closed my eyes; overwrite the 2.5 files with 2.3.3 files while hoping that it will work. It’s still a huge improvement from 2.0 so it will probably do. It did work after a few minor tweaking here and there.

The thing is there are still no sidebar widgets under Presentation when I know it’s already included in the latest versions of WP. I had to make do with copying and pasting codes on the sidebar.php just to make things work. I might take a look into this further but I’m so beat that I’d rather take a break reading about database, Wordpress, PHP codes for a while.

As mentioned in my How To Be a Better Blogger post, you should promote constant interaction with your readers.

I’m doing exactly the opposite.

Just too busy at work and maintaining other blogs. So another word of advice, don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Hopefully I can resume blogging after the lenten season.

This is how outdated I am.

I used to see updates on the sidebar of my friends’ blogs and always wondered how they do that. Of course, it’s nothing that a few clicks can solve but I was very busy (as always) that I didn’t have enough time to spare a few clicks. After two months, I’m happy to announce that I am now a Twitter. I just finished the registration and will be installing the widget on all my blogs. This way, my friends and not so friends will see what I’m up to even if I’m not blogging.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

Try it out. It’s cool, it’s fun. It’s the best way to blog if you have a busy day but still want to keep your friends updated. I, for one, will take advantage of this tool.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about John Chow and read his blog. If you are interested in earning money online but haven’t visited his blog, then you will be surprised at how much you will learn just by reading two or three of his posts. He’s earning about $30,000 a month from his blog and posts regularly about money making websites, which puts him on top of my mentor list. He even has a free Make Money Online ebook that you can download (I have but haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet).

This morning, I saw an article in his blog - 10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid. One of the tips caught my attention immediately.

Blogging Mistake #2 - Blogging Only For Money
If you’re blogging only for money, then you’re in for a shock. Yes, you can make good money with a blog, but despite what that National Post story on me said, it takes a lot more than “no effort.” 99% of blogs on the Web cannot make more than $100 a month. John Chow dot Com makes money because I don’t blog for money. If the only reason you’re blogging is to get rich, you will fail.

And he’s so right. The love for blogging / writing should always come first. Content is and always will be king. With regular updates and quality posts, you get lots of readers, tons of backlinks and high traffic. When you have all that, making money should just come naturally.

Yes, this is my own version of how to be a better blogger. These are just my opinion but I highly suggest you read them if you want to make your visitors stay longer or if you plan to do advertisements through blog. If you feel that only one or two people will read your blog, then do as you please.

Shall we start?

Content and Readers
1. Find a topic that you’re very comfortable with. Almost all my blogs are filled with parenting and working from home stories. I find it easy to write about parenting because I enjoy reading about it as well. And it sorts of mold together with my work from home stories. This blog on the other hand will focus on everything that you can learn in the Internet.

2. Once you have found your main topic, make sure to exchange links with blogs similar as yours. That way, you can guarantee that your readers will be interested on what you have to say. I don’t see how a 17-year-old who’s into skateboarding can relate to my mommy articles.

3. Install plugins that will promote constant interaction such as comment email responder, >commentLuv, and >subscribe to comments. Keep the comments coming in by responding to them all the time. I always feel special whenever I receive replies from blog owners.

4. Update your blogs regularly. Your visitors will surely come back everyday if they know that they will read something new.

5. Make your RSS links visible so that people can easily subscribe to your feeds. I use FeedBurner for my feeds and it’s very easy to install.

6. Add a brief but very clear description of yourself. People loves to snoop around so knowing how your favorite technology blog owner loves to watch old sappy movies will make them seem more human.

On visuals:
1. If you are using wordpress, take advantage of the thousands of themes available in the Internet. It can give your blog a professional and clean look. I assure you, your readers will appreciate it. Go to the official website for Wordpress Themes.

2. Related to #1, don’t install every single javascript or cutesy plugin that you will find. The mouse cursor effect with the trailing stars or fairy dust might look magical but it certainly giving my browser a headache especially in IE when it’s susceptible to javascript problems.

3. Refrain from using small fonts. Some of us can’t read that well and there are those who are just too lazy to go to File > View > Text Size > Largest so they will just leave your blog instead of exerting an effort to read your oh-so-tiny fonts

4. Always use a white or light background. If you feel that black will suit your blog’s theme more, then use white as the font color and don’t forget to apply tip #3

5. Add links to websites and add pictures (not too big) to make your posts more real and interesting

There’s more but I will have to save those for another day when I’m not being harassed by a client to finish his website design.

To my visitors (as if there are many), I’m in the process of organizing my links before I put them up. So if you have blogs that you want to add here, just leave a comment and I will add that to my list.

By the way, if you have about a hundred blogs on your blogroll, which I’m sure some of you have, you might be interested in the following Wordpress plugins.

Blogroll Page Plugin

WordPress Randomized Blogroll Plugin

I read this just today. To keep your blog from losing its PR, you need to avoid using a sitewide blogroll. One way to do this is move all your outgoing links to a separate page. You don’t have to manually type all your links, just install the blogroll page plugin and you can accomplish that in minutes.

Cool huh? I’m learning new stuff everyday so make sure to check back! I will definitely apply all these tricks to all my blogs.