Another Web Service Implodes

Do you use ma.gnolia? If so, then you already know about the implosion which occurred with the services data on January 30th. According to a statement now on the front page of the magnolia website, the site experienced not only data corruption, but data loss as well.

For Ma.gnolia, this means that the service is offline and members’ bookmarks are unavailable, both through the website itself and the API. As I evaluate recovery options, I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.

Magnolia is providing updates on the situation through their Twitter account. Not long ago, a similar incident happened To JournalSpace.

These incidents are stark reminders that perhaps placing all of our data into the cloud is not such a great idea, especially when companies are not establishing appropriate backup procedures. Taking into consideration how cheap storage is these days, not having a proper backup of user data is completely unacceptable. This is also a good reminder that these services need to be providing easy ways for their users to take their data/content off of the sites for end user backup purposes.

Do you think that this is a new trend? Web 2.0 sites and services imploding?

Tips For Getting StumbleUpon Traffic

Not getting any StumbleUpon traffic? If not, you may want to head on over to Website Host Reviews where Ryan outlines a list of possible reasons as to why you’re not getting traffic along with a list of tips on how to avoid getting on the bad side of StumbleUpon.

Not enough “up” votes on your articles, possibly within a certain duration after submission.

Too many “down” votes on your articles. Maybe your topic is of little interest to SU users, or of poor quality. Or someone doesn’t like you. (Ah the joys of social media.)

Poor categorization. If you don’t have friends submitting your content/ articles, it’s hard to control which categories are being used to tag submissions.

Speaking of StumbleUpon, have you noticed that the amount of traffic you get from the service is highly dependent on the initial submitter? If anyone else has tips or tricks regarding StumbleUpon traffic, please share them in the comments.

A Request For Google’s Webmaster Tools – Fight spamlink hacking head-on

For at least the last six months, one of my blogs has been hacked and I didn’t know about it. For all I know, it is still hacked.

As Aaron Wall pointed out over at SEO Blog, there is a sophisticated new method of link cloaking that hackers are using where only GoogleBot sees the hacker’s spammy xanax links.

I had guessed that my site was hacked around last August because the site was de-indexed from Google. However, I went to Google’s webmaster tools at the time to look at “What Google Sees” and didn’t see any spammy keywords. Then, I checked all the files on my webserver and didn’t find any obvious changes. Then I scanned the database for common spam hacker tactics. Nothing. So as a last resort, I simply deleted all the WP files off the server and re-installed a fresh installation of WP.

In the past, this methodology has solved all my spamhacks. But not this time. And to this day I still don’t know if I’ve solved the problem. What I do know is that the site has actually been hacked because now when I go to Webmaster Tools “What Google Sees” and look at the cache of pages on my site, I see lots of spammy phrases.

So, 6 months later, I’ve gone ahead and rechecked everything. I’ve run the Exploit Scanner plugin and it doesn’t see a problem. I’ve looked through the theme files, including functions.php and still don’t see the issue.

What makes the problem especially tough to identify is the cloaking aspect. Because it’s impossible to test whether you’ve fixed the issue in real time. Instead, you are left waiting for the next time Google caches a page on your site.

So here’s the request for Google’s Webmaster Tools…

Let’s tackle spamlink hacking head on. Let’s make Webmaster Central’s Webmaster Tools really, really useful by meeting these specs:

• Provide immediate email notifications if spamlink hacking is detected on a site.
• Because of the cloaking issue, allow a webmaster to request an immediate site review (just like you do for initial site authentication)
• Provide webmasters a robust toolkit of actions that they can take to remove the specific spamlink hack that’s detected on their site.

The fact of the matter is that spamlink hacking has gotten too sophisticated for even the average webmaster to keep up with. With widely distributed CMS software like WordPress and sophisticated attack methods, web security is not as simple as it used to be. It’s time for Google to help us out. And this post is my plea for help

Perfcast Episode 22 – All About Advertising/Monetization

In episode 22, we gave a very broad overview of monetization/advertising as it pertains to blogging. Continuing with the series “All About Advertising/Monetization” David and I cover a lot of ground as it relates to monetizing the actual blog. I have to admit that after producing this episode, I’ve realized that the scope of this topic is huge!

Basic Overview Of Advertising
General Terms (PPC, CPM, REFERRAL, ETC)
Figuring Out Advertising Rates

When Should You Display Advertising
At Launch/After Launch
Should everyone see advertising or limit it to certain types of people

Monetization Methods
Affiliate Advertising
Pay Per Click
CPM
Display Advertising
Sponsorships (“this post was brought to you by”, “this contest was brought to you by”)
Popups and Interstitial

Advertising Based Tools/Services
Perfads
OIO Publisher
OpenX

What it comes down to
Lots of Quality Traffic (from either advertising or search engines)
Leveraging 1% (If you are ranking for a keyword and get 1% of the total searches, and 1% convert through advertising, what is your estimated income?)

LINKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW
101 Ways To Monetize Your Blog Without Irritating Your Users
The Pitfall Of Tagging Posts
SitePoint.com Has An Opening

LISTENER FEEDBACK – You can give us your feedback by shooting us an email at, perfcast@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog post.

LENGTH OF EPISODE – 1 Hour 7 Minutes

NEXT EPISODE – February 5th, 2009 at 7 P.M. EST

ITUNES – Click here to subscribe to the show via iTunes

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW: PerfcastEpisode22.mp3

LISTEN TO EPISODE 22 OF PERFCAST:

A Book All About Blogger

While WordPress.com is great, it’s not the answer for everyone. Thankfully, there are many different blog hosting sites to choose from such as Blogger. Speaking of Blogger, there is a new book available on Amazon.com called Google Blogger For Dummies written by Susan Gunelius.

The book weighs in at 384 pages and covers the following topics:

• How to choose a blog topic and personalize your blog

• What you should know about moderating comments

• How to maintain your blog with tools like Blog This! and Quick Edit

• Simple search engine optimization techniques

• Tips for tracking your blog traffic

• Where to find cool free templates

• How to make money from your blog

• Ten useful social networking sites

The book is scheduled to officially be published on February 3rd but you can already grab yourself a copy from Amazon for $16.49. So if you’re into Blogger and are the type of person that enjoys reading printed copy or likes to have a book nearby for quick referencing, certainly look into purchasing the book.

If you’re still not sure about the book, keep an eye on BloggingTips as Kevin Muldoon seems to have nabbed an early preview copy and will be publishing a review of it soon.

Gawker Media: No Time For Subtlety In A Troubled Economy

It can’t be a coincidence that in the last week Gawker Media properties have blatantly stolen the titles and ideas proposed in two articles that appeared on my web properties early this year. And surely it’s not a coincidence that both of those articles appeared on the front page of Digg.

You see, I can’t help but think that Gawker Media has clearly instructed it’s writers to go into the backlogs of successful front page Digg stories, and to start copying concepts.

To be honest, this is not a new thing. Everyone studies the backlogs of Digg to learn and adapt. However, what is new is the blatant copying of titles and concepts that Gawker seems to be using:

Compare:

http://www.ridelust.com/10-cars-that-are-guaranteed-to-get-you-laid-on-a-budget/
http://jalopnik.com/5139493/the-top-11-cars-of-2009-most-likely-to-get-you-laid

and

http://www.businesspundit.com/give-windows-7-away-for-free
http://gizmodo.com/5141443/why-microsoft-should-give-windows-7-away

Now, if it happened to me twice in one week, I can only infer that it’s the new Gawker strategy: no time for subtlety in a bad economy.

YouTube Video Alerts For Your Inbox

Many people are already aware of creating news alerts for keywords as they are indexed on Google. But what if you could extend the usefulness of those alerts to videos that are uploaded onto YouTube? That is what a new service called Video-Alerts enables you to do. Video-Alerts is a site that enables registered users to track up to 10 keywords on YouTube.com. These subscriptions are updated once a day and the results are then sent to your inbox.

After activating and then logging into your account, you’ll have to create your first alert. The alert creation process is pretty straightforward.

Text To Search: This is the text that you want the alert to search for.

Category: The category drop down list matches exactly with the one on YouTube.com.

Search Type: Video-Alerts offers two different search types. Keyword searches for video descriptions, user search will find all new videos uploaded by that username.

Frequency: Choose between Once per week, once per two days or once a day.

Max Videos: Choose between a maximum of 50 or 100 videos to be described in each alert. Any videos that go over this limit will be ignored.

Once you finish creating your new alert, you can either create a new one or just wait for that email that contains all of the videos that were found. One cool thing about Video-Alerts is that after the alert is created, you can go back and edit it to change certain parameters or delete the alert entirely.

Conclusion:

To this day, YouTube still doesn’t support the ability to subscribe to videos or a particular user by way of RSS. If you’re scratching your head wondering why, don’t worry as I am to. However, if you prefer to subscribe to specific YouTube videos by way of RSS via keywords such as Tags, type the following into your browsers address bar:

To subscribe by tag, simply key in this URL to your RSS reader: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/[insert tag here].rss e.g. http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/wordpress.rss will subsribe you to videos that contain WordPress as one of the tags. You can also apply more than one tag by using the plus sign as a separator. WordPress+2.7 would subscribe you to videos that contain both WordPress and 2.7 as tags.

Do You Keep an Idea Notebook?

One of the things I learned in my short stint in my high school paper (way back) was to keep a small notebook in my pocket for jotting down notes and ideas for writing. The fact that I was also dabbling in creative writing that time helped–I also found this useful in jotting down things that my imagination and daydreaming could come up with. My notebook(s) really proved useful in helping me remember those numerous things that keep going on in my head, whether newsy items to report on, or creative ideas I want to develop.

But I often lose my tickler notebooks. And even a small notebook plus a pen doesn’t always feel comfortable in one’s pockets. Lost notebooks meant lost ideas. And not bringing a notebook meant lost ideas anyway, as I couldn’t find a more convenient way to keep track of them.

And considering I come up with the most interesting of ideas while in the shower, I found it difficult to scribble notes with wet hands.

That ended my habit of keeping an idea notebook handy.

These days, though I’m using a better way to store ideas–at least for me. I note down ideas on my mobile phone.

My Mobile Phone

When I started this, phones were a bit archaic by today’s standards, and my ideas were kept as short notes saved as draft SMS messages. I gradually progressed to smartphones, and now I use my phones’ Notes application to store my ideas. What I like about this are the following:

• I can sync my notes between computer and phone,
• I usually carry my phone almost anywhere I go, anyway, so no need for a separate tool, and
• I’ve become quite adept at typing on my phone’s keypad, so I can easily key in idea notes even while on the move.

So whenever a blog-worthy idea pops into mind, or whenever I read, hear or see something worth reporting, I pull out my trusty phone, press the shortcut key assigned to my Notes app, and type away. I even keep my phone under my pillow when I sleep. It serves a dual purpose–as my alarm clock, and as my notepad, when I suddenly wake up in the dead of the night with a brilliant idea, or with a strange dream.

Other options?

I know some people would prefer paper and pen, since you could jot down more than text this way. Some others would prefer posting on a wiki or some online application. Some would prefer Post-It notes. But the important thing here is that you have a reliable and secure place to keep those ideas. The best methods would be those that are easily accessible, and easily backed-up in case bad things happen.

As secondary note-taking tools, I do use various other apps like Tada List and Evernote, for longer and more complicated notes, and Dropbox for sharing my notes (and other files) across different computers.

A lot of my blog posts here on Performancing and elsewhere are products of my brainstorming with myself through my idea notebook. Perhaps it’s the same case with others.

Do you keep an idea notebook? If so, in what medium? And how has it been helpful to you?

Too Newsy Theme

We are pleased to announce the January, 2009 Performancing Theme release: Too Newsy. The Too Newsy Performancing Theme for WordPress is a three-column WordPress theme that uses minimal images and earthy colors, contributing to a touch of elegance.

The theme features widget-ready sidebars, which can accommodate several different image dimensions (suitable for button and banner ads). The theme is the first Performancing Theme to support new WordPress 2.7 features out of the box:

• Threaded and paginated comments
• Post classes
• Image captions and gallery classes

Another highlight of Too Newsy is the use of the sidebar for snippets of the latest posts in a pre-defined category (which is by default the “features” category). This can be useful for bloggers who wish to highlight certain posts, such that they are not pushed down too soon by newer ones. The theme also supports gravatars out of the box.

Too Newsy is another collaboration with Splashpress Media designer Sophia Lucero, who previosuly brought us the Rubidious Theme, and various other Splashpress Media blog designs.

[Read more]

Ultimate SEO Toolbar For FireFox

Those of you looking for a great SEO centric toolbar to add on to your FireFox installation are in luck. Aaron Wall, the man behind SEOBook.com released a FireFox extension called SEO Toolbar. This extension is packed full of features.

After installation, you should notice an entire toolbar added to your FireFox browser which contains at a glance icons that tell you the domains PageRank, Number of Yahoo DomainLinks, Yahoo Links, DMOZ entries, Yahoo Directory Entries, Best of the web entries, Archive.org Site Age, Compete.com Ranking, SEMRush.com Traffic Value and more.

Asides from providing numerical information, the toolbar also contains a toolset which includes a Search Engine Rank Checker, SEO XRay tool which outlines SEO specific elements on a webpage, Rank Checker, Keyword suggestion, Keyword Highlighter, No Follow Link Highlighter, and a site compare tool.

In a video published on the SEO Toolbar homepage, Aaron states that the first release of this extension will be free but he is unsure if it will stay that way forever. So if I were you, I’d grab myself a copy of this extension as it’s light weight, customizable, and essentially, an entire SEO Suite that can be used within the browser.

Hat Tip To The AussieGeekPodcast