Gears Slowed Down My WordPress

I’m using WordPress 2.6 to power this blog, as well as several other blogs I run. Being the techie that I am, when WP 2.6 was released, I had to try out all the cool new features. That included the new Turbo feature utilizing Google Gears. Yay… new stuff to play with… and severely slow down my blog’s admin interface.

The Turbo feature uses Google Gears to download many backend parts of the WordPress administrative interface to your local computer. That way when you want to do something… say publish a new post… WordPress doesn’t have to download files from your web site. They’re all sitting nice and neat on your hard drive for quick and easy access.

Or that’s how it’s suposed to work.

In my case, when I would do something new like click to write a new post, or click the “Save” button, my browser would grind to a halt for upwards of 30 seconds. This happened for me on two different computers (my new laptop and my older workstation) under both FireFox 3 and Internet Explorer 7.

Since I’m no idiot, after 3 weeks I finally decided it was time to disable the “Turbo” feature so my administrative interface would be fast again.

Except for one problem… I can’t read. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to disable the “Turbo” feature, even though when you click on the “Turbo” link in the Dashboard, it tells you what to do. I even spent time searching Google for instructions on how to disable the darn thing, but was coming up empty. Of course I was! The instructions are right in the WP Dashboard! I was just in too much of a hurry to actually read them.

So just in case you can’t read either, and found this blog post by searching the web trying to figure it out too, I’ll let you in on the secret. In FireFox, you click on the Tools menu and choose “Google Gears Settings.” Then simply click the remove link next to your blog in the list. Pretty simple really.

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Useful Free Online SEO Tools

I was browsing some SEO forums when I came across a thread listing many useful free online SEO tools. Here are the ones I bookmarked and plan to use myself:

Dig PageRank Checker
This web site will scan many Google datacenters and check your site’s pagerank at each of them. It’s really easy to use and the results come back fast.

Backlinks Checker
This site is probably my favorite of the new tools. It will scan for your site’s backlinks, and then produce a report with each of the URLs, the number of other links on the same page, the anchor text used for the link, the page’s PR, and whether or not the link is set to ‘nofollow.’ Very useful information!

Lynx Viewer
This is an online version of the text-only web browser. It’s useful because search engine spiders can only read your web site in text mode. So you can use this tool to see how your site will look to the search engines.

Cubestat
This tool is more fun than practical… unless you’re selling your web site. It estimates the value of your web site based on factors that I didn’t take the time to understand. I have no clue if the data is worthwhile, but it’s fun to plug in your own sites, those of competitors, and any other big name web site to see it’s estimated value.

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So there you have my newly discovered list of free online SEO tools. If you know of any other free SEO sites that are useful, please share them with us by leaving a comment. Thanks!

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Required phpBay Update

Wade from phpBay sent out the following e-mail to customers:

If you are using phpBay Pro 3.x for Wordpress on ANY site, it is imperative that you update it immediately to version 3.0.8 that I released tonight.

The update stems from an omission in the licensing code where instead of validating the license once, it’s revalidating it every time phpBay Pro is called, from every site, from every user, that has it installed.  This is putting an extraordinary strain on my server.

This is now fixed in 3.0.8.  The server side verification file has been renamed and after 10 days, I will remove the old one, so it’s very important to update your site(s) as soon as possible.

If you didn’t get the e-mail for some reason and use phpBay, make sure to upgrade as soon as you can!

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I Got a New Laptop (Finally)

I decided to take the plunge and purchase a new laptop for my affiliate marketing business. Actually I’ve been thinking about this for months, but I didn’t know if it was something I could afford. Yesterday while out shopping, my wife (the money miser of the family) asked if it was time to get a laptop, and had no objections to getting one right then and there. So we bought one. Read more

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How to Think Like a Marketer…

Here’s a post I wrote in the Wealthy Affiliate forums. I thought it would be helpful to my blog readers…

How to Think Like a Marketer:

Here’s the key in my opinion…

Stop trying to find a niche or a product to promote. Instead go find a problem. Seriously, just think about a problem people have in life. It could be a very generalized problem most everyone has at some point (e.g. not enough money, trying to find a boyfriend/girlfriend, etc) or a specific problem affecting only a certain amount of people (e.g. owing the IRS back taxes, adults with ADHD, etc).

Whatever, just find a problem.

Then go research your problem. Pretend that you suffer from the problem, and that you desperately want to find a solution to it. You want a way out. You want to find relief from the pain and burden this problem is placing on you.

So you go out and start doing Google searches. Not keyword research! Just pretend you’re a real person with a real problem, and start finding a solution like a normal person would through normal search engine searches (very few people have problems and seek solutions from the Google Keyword Tool ).

Start taking notes about what you find. What are the main web sites that deal with the problem? Are there support groups? Are there forums? If yes, join the forums and start reading and eventually asking questions.

Also through this searching you will naturally discover if there are products being promoted to resolve the problem. What are those products? Do they have affiliate programs? How good are the sites doing in offering the products as viable solutions to the problem?

Only after you have picked a problem and done this type of research will you begin to know if it’s something that you’re interested in pursuing, and if it will be viable. You’ll also pick up on how hungry people who really suffer from the problem are for a solution (i.e. do they just like to whine or are they really seeking a solution). Finally since you didn’t start with keyword research, your notes should contain many different areas of the problem, questions people are asking, tips and suggestions people offer, etc. You take that list and do your keyword research based on it (not the other way around).

So to recap, you don’t find a product to sell, or even a niche itself. You find the problem first. And you don’t have to think like a marketer. Instead you think like you’re a person with the problem, and you go out and find a solution to it. Then you can sound authentic when you finally begin writing articles and putting up a blog or a web site, or starting a mailing list, or whatever. Maybe you don’t have the problem yourself, but you’ve immersed yourself in it long enough to truly feel for the people that do, and you’ll have an attitude of helping them find a solution so they can get out from the pain and burden. When you truly can relate to and understand the mindset of the people who have the problem, and actually care about them and want them to find relief, you won’t have to sell anything. You’ll come across as authentic by default and they’ll be much more likely to trust anything you recommend.

My 2 cents…

PS. If you can’t find a quality product that solves the problem, then maybe YOU can create one!

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Prevent Indexing When Building a New Site

Whenever you’re building a new site, you always run the risk of having Google (or other search engines) indexing your site before it’s completed. While it’s not a death sentence for your site if this happens, things go so much smoother if you can prevent indexing until your site is ready.

So how do you prevent Google and the other search engines from indexing your site until you’re ready?

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Is Your Domain’s E-mail Setup Properly?

If you’re an affiliate marketer or just have a web site, you probably have a Linux based web host that uses cPanel. You probably even host multiple domains from the same cPanel account. However when you setup those domains, did you setup your domain’s e-mail properly? Chances are you haven’t. Let me explain…

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40 Blog Setup Tips

Daniel Scocco wrote a great post titled Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips over at the DailyBlogTips site. While the post is nearly a year old (which can be an eternity when it comes to blogging), most of the tips are still valid and practical. If you’re setting up a new blog, or just want to improve your existing one, then it’s a worthwhile read.

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Memorial Day

Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the United States. It’s a day to honor our nation’s fallen soldiers… those brave men and women who died in service to their nation.

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Site Move Complete

I just wanted to post a quick note to let everyone know the site move has been completed. The domain name has been transferred from GoDaddy to NameCheap, and I’ve successfully moved web hosting providers.

I do need to apologize, because during the transfer to the new web host, I lost a couple of the comments that you left on some of the posts. Actually they’re not lost… if I log into the “Comments” section of the WP admin interface, I can see them, but they don’t show up under the posts. Very strange…

Aside from that hiccup, we’re back in business and I appreciate your patience along the way.

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