From the guys who brought you Website Grader, Twitter Grader gives you a ranking of your Twitter username.
What value this is, I dunno, but it is very cool.
My Twitter rating is 96.6/100 and I am ranked 36th amongst Canadian users of Twitter.
So be sure to check it out, let me know what you think.
www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server
Interested in seeing what other sites are being hosted on the hosting account you are paying for? Or maybe you are interested in scoping out info on competing sites and getting an inside edge into their business and what may be coming down the pipe. Give this handy tool a try.
About
Background
All web sites are hosted on web servers, which are computers running specialized software that distribute web content as requested. Each web server typically has a single IP address, a unique numeric identifier assigned to no other computer on the entire Internet. Web sites are usually associated with domain names, textual strings like “google.com” that are easier for users to remember than numeric IP addresses. Since HTTP version 1.1, many domains can be hosted on a single IP address.
As of 2003, more than 87% of all active domains names were found to share their IP addresses (i.e. their web servers) with one or more additional domains. More than two thirds of these domains share their server with fifty or more additional domains. Simply put, most web sites are hosted on servers that host many other web sites.
While IP sharing is typically transparent to ordinary users, it may cause complications for both search engine optimization and web site filtering.
Concerning SEO (search engine optimization)
Almost all popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) increase a web site’s rank based on the number of links pointing towards the web site. In an attempt to falsely inflate a web site’s popularity, an individual may generate hundreds or even thousands of dummy web sites containing little to no content except for links pointing towards a specific domain name. One method that search engines use to detect this type of miscreant behavior is to see if these inter-linking web sites are hosted on the same IP address or IP address range. If the web sites are in the same IP address range, it is highly likely that they are operated by the same individual. Search engines devalue links from web sites pointing to other web sites hosted on the same IP address range.
Conversely, search engines value links from web sites hosted on different IP addresses. An effective search engine optimizer would go further than hosting inter-linking web sites on different IP addresses. They would host the web sites on completely different class C network addresses. They would make sure that all of their domains were registered with different registrars under different names. They would not use the same template on more than one web site. They would erase all traces that their sites are operated by the same individual. They would go through all of this trouble with one goal in mind - to game the search engines in order to bring in more organic traffic.
For most web sites, having a dedicated unique IP address will have little to no effect on search engine rankings. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, stated:
“If you are an average webmaster and just running a few sites, I wouldn’t worry about them being on the same IP address and I definitely wouldn’t worry about them being on the same server. That’s something that everybody does.”
Concerning web site filtering
With so many sites sharing IP addresses, IP-based filtering efforts are bound to produce “overblocking”, which is the accidental denial of access to web sites that abide by the stated filtering rules. Overblocking occurs when a single website containing some form of adult or explicit content is blocked by its IP address. If this happens, all other sites hosted on that IP address, regardless of their content, will be blocked as well. Unfortunately, research has indicated that it is not atypical for a single web server to host a mixture of sites that are sexually explicit and sites that are not.
Overblocking is a problem known to affect filtering in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and other countries that employ government-mandated country-wide web filtering policies. Additionally, research has indicated that IP address filtering is used by many commercial web filters installed in libraries and schools in the United States. Sometimes Internet services providers are legally required to implement IP address level filtering. For example, under 2002 law, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania ordered Internet service providers in Pennsylvania to disable access to sites found to offer child pornography. Most providers receiving such orders reportedly use router-level filtering to disable access to the affected IP addresses, even though those IP addresses host scores of additional web sites without child pornography.
Solution
To avoid any of the potential problems related with IP address sharing, it is best to acquire a unique IP address for your web site. Contact your web host and tell them you would like your own unique IP address. Be sure to let them know you would like a fresh IP address, not a recycled one. Web hosts will often reuse IP addresses that spammers have previously blacklisted. You may need to speak with several individuals until you can find a technician who can understand your request. Acquiring a unique IP address for your web site can cost anywhere from $25 to $100 for an initial setup fee, and $2 to $25 per month thereafter.
A Washington Post blogger reports that the CheckFree.com domain name was hijacked. CheckFree is an online bill pay solution which many banks use to provide customers with a convenient method of making payments online. Apparently, attackers took control of the domain name by obtaining Check Free’s credentials for their domain registrar account at Network Solutions. They were able to simply change the name servers for CheckFree.com (as well as any other Check Free domain), and all users would be redirected to attacker controlled web servers hosting malware and self-signed certificates.
On SlashDot, one person mentions that they were served a self-signed certificate when they clicked through to CheckFree from their bank. This attack could have been even nastier if the attackers had procured a legit CA signed certificate. Maybe the Network Solutions credentials also worked for CheckFree’s EquiFaxSecure/Geotrust account (check out the cert for https://mycheckfree.com). If they had a valid cert and weren’t hosting malware, who knows how long the hijacking could have lasted. All Check Free traffic could have been routed through the attacker servers in plain-text. Scary.
Article Courtesy of http://schmoil.blogspot.com/
This past weekend I decided it was time to join the “homebrew” PSP community. It was time to install custom firmware (CFW) onto my PSP, opening it up to a world of possibilities. It was easier than I thought, but it was still a very scary thing to do the first time around. I thought I had killed my PSP at one point but thankfully I got it running eventually.
This post may be way off base with the topics covered in my blog, but WTF, it’s my blog and I may need to look back at what I did should I mod another PSP. This is a great way to archive my steps.
What you need:
Downloads:
Phase One: Creating the PROPER Memory Stick
This is where your PSP will be getting the info it needs to be modded so be sure to follow these steps VERY carefully.
1)Turn on the psp and go into USB mode
2)Download Winrar (see downloads section) if you havent already
3)When your computer detects the PSP, go to “My Computer”
4)Right-click on your PSP’s drive and select “Format”
5)Format the memory stick
6)Next download the “Universal Unbricker” (we talked about this in the downloads section)
7)Place all the files inside of it onto your psp’s drive. These files should include:
-Three folders called “PSP”, “kd”, and “registry”
-Three eboots called “150.pbp”, “340.pbp”, and “371.pbp”
-One bin file called “msipl.bin”
Phase Two: Moving the Partitions
(NOTE: Keep your memory stick in through USB)
1)Download the Partition Mover (We talked about this earlier)
2)Extract the folder “msinst” to your hard drive (C:\)
3)Go to “My Computer” and find your PSP drive letter (Removable Disk “?”)
4)Go to “Start”
5)Go to “Run”
6)Type in “cmd” and press OK
7)Type this in: “cd C:\msinst”
8)Next, type in “msinst ? msipl.bin” (remember No quotes) (also, replace ? with your removable disk letter)(also, use a CAPITAL LETTER to represent your drive. example: C:\msinst>msinst J msipl.bin)
9)It will show some stuff and give you 2 options:
1)Y=Yes 2)N=No
Choose Yes.
10)You should receive a confirmation that the partitions were successfully moved.
Thats it! You’re done with your magic memory stick and partition moving!!!!!
That wasnt so hard now was it? Now, lets continue! Because here comes the dangerous/hard part. MAKE SURE YOU FULLY CHARGED YOUR BATTERY BEFORE YOU BEGIN!
*NOTE: I did not get a confirmation when I went through this process, I got an error message. After some research I found a program call MSPformat.exe. If you also experience problems with the above process, dowload MSPformat.exe and run from your command prompt the following C:\mspformat\mspformat.exe X (x being the letter drive your psp is in and then press enter. Then go trhough the other steps again as mentioned starting at Phase One step 3.
Phase Three: Hard Modding Your PSP Battery
1)Take your battery (THE ONE THAT CAME WITH THE PSP) and open it using the knife or exacto knife. Be careful because it’s a Lithium Ion battery and if you poke or cut the inner pack… Kaboom!
2)Look on the main board for the display “ICO4″ or “CO4″ (depending on your battery)
3)Now, take a needle or something like that and remove pin #5
here is a diagram: (NOTE: you can find pin #5 easily when the ICO4 or CO4 display is facing you!!!!)
__ (pin 4) __ (pin 8)
__ (pin 3) __ (pin 7)
__ (pin 2) __ (pin 6)
__ (pin 1) __ (pin 5)
THIS IS WHAT THE BATTERY SHOULD LOOK LIKE
As you can see there are the 8 pins BUT to make life easier, the way I did it was the way it’s done in the picture. I just scraped the chip with a pin until the circuit that LEADS to the pin you’re supposed to cut, is broken. Notice how and where the cut was made into the board. YOU’RE DONE HARD MODDING THE BATTERY
Seal the the battery up with Crazy Glue or scotch tape but if you use scotch tape, make note that putting the battery back into the back of PSP will now be a snug fit.
Note: Do the cutting nice and slow…back and forth. Careful not to rip any of the cords out of the battery pack (there are two leads at the top pf the battery pack), damage any other part of the chip, or damage the inner battery or you’re gonna have a ruined battery….possibly a ruined face…
Phase Four: Installing CFW
Once your battery and your memory stick are being used at the same time, you will now have what the PSP Modding Community calls, a “Pandora’s Battery”.
1)Make sure you put in your Magic Memory Stick
2)Put in your Pandora Battery
(If you see your WiFi LED and memory stick LED blink, you have it working! As though in most occasions your screen won’t light up but if it does, that’s always good too)
3)When your LED’s are done flashing, press “[]” (square) to dump your nand flash (just in case you brick. be warned, the file is anywhere from 32MB-64MB depending on your psp….don’t do ANYTHING, just let it load what it needs)
4)After that is done, you will be required reboot, so press X (cross) when your LED’s are done flashing (or when instructed to)
5)Re-put in your battery and the Pandora menu will load
6)Press X (cross) to install 3.71M33
7)After thats done, you will need to reboot again so press X (cross) (when instructed to or when the LED’s are done flashing)
8)Now, remove your battery
9)Plug in your charger
10)Turn on the psp
11)Put in your battery
12)Remove the charger
13)And you should now be running 3.71M33!!!!!
Content is absolutely KING when it comes to having a successful website. But you can go overboard. Too much content can result in poor website usability. That is not to say you cannot overcome some of the issues caused by too much content by grouping the content effectively, however even organizing all that content can only get you so far before you have completely lost your user.
So what do I mean by having too much content? Here is a fictional example company’s website based on a real example I have dealt with in my career.
Company Name: Joe Web’s Everything Store
Products/Services: Joe Webs Candy (Home Made Candy Sales), Joe Webs Fabrics (Upholstery and Sewing Supplies), Joe Webs Landscaping (Lawn and Garden), Joe Webs Comics (Comic Books Store).
Joe has a retail store which houses all of the above, a real mix of unrelated products and services. His prime money maker is the landscaping business, but does all of the other businesses to keep a steady stream of income coming in year round. He wants to finally take the plunge and get an online presence. He contacts a reputable company with a solid custom website design portfolio.
Despite the advice of the company he is working with, he is absolutely wanting to feature all of the businesses on the home page. Each business then goes into sub-page after sub-page featuring every possible photo and piece of literature that he has at his disposal.
In the end a website exist that looks like a cross between a coming soon/directory site and some sort of spam site. No direction whatsoever, if you were to stumble across the site you would have no idea what the site was for. And if you are like most users, you would not bother looking around to figure it out.
So where did Joe Web fail? He has heard that content is what people want. Content is what helps you rank highly on Google.
Well he forgot about K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. Any website, whether business or personal, should have a central theme or focus. Something that when a new user arrives allows them to clue in immediately as to what the website is about and what it is trying to portray.
What should Joe Web have done instead? His core business is the landscaping business, this is his money maker. The website should focus almost entirely on this and be the one focal point on the home page and the sub-pages. Within his about us section would be the ideal place to mention the other services and products he is also involved in if it is absolutely necessary to even talk about them. If they are crucial to also be on the web and to have more real-estate then a mention on the about us section, then they should have their own separate websites. Going with the a bloated/all-inclusive site just kills the entire site and renders all sections ineffective, you are wasting your money.
For the past 2 months I have been working within the Custom Web Design industry, getting my first tastes of dealing directly with end customers in getting their custom designed online presence. Wow, what a roller coaster ride! But that is a post for another day.
There are many elements to getting a website online. Basically though you can break things down into 3 stages. This is what you can expect when working with my company and likely many others out there.
1. Comp/Mock-up stage: This is where we play with various ideas taken form the customer input and our own and come up with a Photoshop-made mock-up. Depending on the complexity, turn-around time on this is anywhere between 1 and 2 days.
2. Content gathering and site build: This is where we move ahead on an approved comp and build the website. We also look to the client to feed us as much content as possible. The site build takes anywhere from 5-7 business days. Getting content takes anywhere from hours to months :).
3. Site publish and ongoing maintenance: The website is published live with no less than 75% of the content. The site is then only requiring random maintenance on a monthly basis, content changes mostly. Clients can contact us pretty frequently on a monthly basis, any changes that are requested will be applied within 1 to 3 business days depending on complexity and how much is already on our plate.
My target for all my clients from start to finish is 30 to 45 days for the entire build cycle. That is from our first call to the site being online.
A non ecommerce website will costs you $785.00 up front and then $99.00 per month. Ecommerce cost you $985.00 up front and then $195.00 monthly. The monthly fee on both packages takes care of your website, hosting, domain name, privacy protection, and up to 10 email accounts.
Service is all about providing a convenience to someone. A good service will make both the client and the seller happy. A service doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel. In most cases it just needs to fulfill a need that the client has.
I choose to pay someone to cut my lawn, not because I can’t do it myself, but because I rather spend that time with my still less than 1 year old son. I am happy, the guy who takes my money is happy.
A common question I get as a blogger is about setting up a Wordpress blog. Again and again I answer it. Well this week it dawned on me that maybe I could and should make a few dollars off of this. I know how to setup Wordpress, others don’t and don’t want to even bother learning how to. So its a win-win situation.
If you are interested in getting setup with your own blog without all the hassle, visit:
This past weekend I was out with some friends at a house party and we were rocking away on Rock Band 2, which by the way is amazing. As we were going through the songs I saw Spoonman by Soundgarden. I was all over that, but two of the guys were like WTF is Spoonman. One of them is even a big rock fan who listens to the likes of Tool.
Once I picked my jaw off the ground I convinced them to give it a try. I could not believe they had not ever heard the song. Am I really that old? LOL. Anyway we rocked it out. It was amazing.
So for all of you who have never enjoyed the greatness that is Spoonman, enjoy. Also check out some of the other great Soundgarden tunes.
Tucows (AMEX:TCX, TSX: TC) has just announced the launch of their YummyNames site, which lists domains from their portfolio of names for sale online. The company has before sold individual and groups of names directly and via various brokers and is now formalizing some of their offering under a new brand.
“YummyNames, the public face of our domain portfolio service group, provides an additional means by which to realize the value of our domain portfolio assets to drive continued growth for the Company,” said Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows.
There are “ten thousands of names” listed on the site; Tucows’ portfolio is estimated to contain more than 70,000 domain names. Sample names listed for sale are countryrock.com, divorced.com, lemons.com, listener.com, mygarden.com, thepub.com, tool.com and veggies.com. While the site stats that “These premium domains are priced starting at $500 USD”, it appears that none of the names has actually listed a fixed price at this point. Names are being offered for purchase or lease. The site lists previous clients such as: Bell Mobility, CanWest Global Communications, EMI Music, General Motors, Grand & Toy, Harlequin Enterprises, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Nestle and RBC Royal Bank.
The Tucows domain portfolio mostly consists of names that were not renewed by registrants, as well as domain names that were purchased as part of the Netidentity acquisition. S
[via Press Release]
(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com
Here is a new Wordpress plugin that DropTheMike.com is testing out. Enjoy!
SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images in your posts with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.
ALT attribute is important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match.
TITLE attribute play lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.
SEO Friendly Images options recognize two tags %title (post title) and %name (filename of the picture). By combining these two tags and additional words (photo, picture etc..) you can create relevant alt and title tags automatically for all images.
Here is a live example of the plugin (active on my blog). The image that has title and alt replaced with “%title” and “%name %title” respectively resulting in “SEO Friendly Image” for title and “example SEO Friendly Images” for alt.
So are you always toying with new things to try and boost your traffic with little if any results? I don’t even know why I ask you this question, because I already know the answer for 95% of you. Myself I have tried many, many tactics. Many were dumb ideas in hindsight and saw no return. A few though have in fact succeeded. Which falls right in line with some advice which appears to be universally shared amongst knowledgeable SEO professionals I have met over the years. If you stay persistent and toss up as many ideas as possible, your bound to hit one or two that work once and a while. Much like a baseball player who is considered good at what he does if he succeeds only 1/3 of the time.
Without much doubt, the most successful method of increasing traffic to my blog has been through the use of Social Media. I have been using a combination of Twitter.com, Facebook.com, and most recently EzineArticles.com.
*A word of caution, I strongly recommend you have a solid site content wise before you head down this path. Driving traffic to your site is useless unless you have compelling content to keep them there and keep them coming back.
1. Twitter.com - When I first started using twitter I simply followed people whom I already knew. This worked ok for a while. However I then got an idea on how I could leverage this as more of a tool to drive traffic. I did two things. First I used Twitterfeed.com to automatically post headlines of my latest blog posts to Twitter. Second I went out and scoped some famous “techie” twitter folk with lots of followers, I then started to add myself as a follower of as many of these followers as possible. The direct result is that I got many, many reciprocal follows. Best of all these are people who enjoy the type of material that I blog about.
Now on a daily basis my followers increase. Today I have 687 followers. I engage in conversation with them, I comment on their blogs if they have them, I also have setup link exchanges with some of them. all in all this is the biggest driver of traffic to my website.
2. Facebook.com - Within Facebook I have setup an RSS application that automatically shows my blog feed in my profile. That way anyone who visits my profile, can see my latest posts. This is limited to my immediate Facebook friends, about 334 in total.
In addition to this I have just setup a Facebook Fan Page where users can become a fan of DropTheMike and also can view the RSS feed there and meet other fans.
3. EzineArticles.com - This was recommended to me by a friend in the SEO business. I write and submit articles (minimum 250 words) which are posted to the site in an appropriate category. Site visitors can then read and re-distribute. The great thing is that you can embed links back to your site or blog.
Since doing these 3 items My traffic has been consistently going up and up. One benchmark I like to use is Alexa.com. Before starting these tree tactics I was around the 1 million traffic rank mark. As of today I am nearing 600,000.
Previous notable post on social media:
building-personal-brand-within-the-social-media-landscape/
online-marketing-budgeting-what-next/
entrecardcom/ (I am testing this again)
You don’t have to be real technical these days to get started on creating a pretty elaborate Web project. I say web project because I am trying to be as broad as possible. I am talking about creating a blog, a website, a community portal, a classified listings page, an ecommerce site, etc., etc. You don’t have to do a thing these days to install some of the more popular Open Source web scripts that exist. All you have to do is login to your Web Hosting Control Panel, find and launch Fantastico, and click on the scripts you want it to automatically install for you.
Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel such as cPanel. Fantastico’s web site claims that they are installed on ten thousand servers, with a million users worldwide, which would make it the leading product of its type.
No need for you to configure databases, just worry about setting the admin usernames and passwords. Easy stuff.
Now if your web hosting company does not provide you with Fantastico, shame on them. Most hosts these days make it a standard part of their offering. Netenberg.com, the company behind Fantastico, lists the following as official partners of theirs. Though there are many more providers who, though don’t have a direct partnership, do provide Fatastico.
For a complete listing of the web scripts Fantastico is currently offering click here.
DropTheMike.com is and always has been about my writing about and sharing some of my interest with a greater audience in order to meet like-minded people with similar interest. Now a lot of what I am passionate about is web and technology related. Another is music. Probably one of the first major industries to be impacted by the changing web.
So going forward I am going to mix in the occasional music related post. Music is the soundtrack of our lives. Music provides us inspiration. Music makes us smile.
The first official DTM Rocks segment will start with a little band that you may have heard about. Metallica just released a new album (Death Magnetic), the first one in years that sounds more like their roots. More like the Metallica I loved growing up.
The first video (courtesy of Youtube.com) released for the album is for the song “The Day That Never Comes”.
If you’ve been living under a rock or you just want to check out some of your old faves, here are my picks:
* The God That Failed I recently learned was written about the battle James Hetfield’s mom had with cancer. She died of cancer after refusing medical attention, solely relying on her belief in God to heal her. Hetfield felt that, had she not followed her Christian Science beliefs she could have survived.
In running a blog you need to continually benchmark yourself. Whether you use one or many methods of doing so is not important as long as you are consistent with the tools that you use. Myself, I use AWStats, Google Analytics, and Alexa.com. Oh and recently I also added to the mix WebsiteGrader.com although this is more of a consolidation of things like Google Rank and Alexa rank just to name a few.
As of this post, my rank on Alexa is: 693,06262
That places dropthemike.com in the top 2.17 % of all websites.
What other useful information does Alexa provide me?
How about where my users are from:
Being Canadian I am surprised that Canada is listed only as the third most popular source country for visiting my site. I can also see my traffic rank within specific countries. Apparently Dropthemike.com is big in Tanzania :)
When I first got into blogging, like many I stumbled across the blog of the famous John Chow. Famous for being a supposedly wealthy blogger as a result of his blog (s). At the time I did find some use in a number of his post. Some rubbed me the wrong way and left me thinking he must be bogus and just full of himself.
While I don’t question the fact that he has made blogging a main source of his income, I do question just how much he says he makes. But that is not the point of my post today. At the end of the day I do have some respect for the work he has done.
I visited his blog again for the first time in months and came across one of his latest post. This post reminded me of why I stayed away in the first place, he seems to push one “scam” after another. Sprinkled in between these scams he has some good post though, which is unfortunate, because I have and will continue to miss them due to hating to weed through the crap.
In his post he is essentially pushing a $400.00 “Traffic Secrets” course. Obviously he is getting some sort of bounty off this. The whole this looks like a sham.
I posted the following comment to the article.
“Looks like more BS to me. They will not get my hard earned cash. I don’t get how these types of programs actually have an legs or get any traction. The site looks like a scam, it looks like all the other scam sites.
Like with anything else, work hard, be patient and persistent, and you will eventually see results. It won’t be overnight like some will make you believe is possible. But in the long run it will be worth it and you will likely have a better understanding of both yourself and the running of your website.”
I checked today to see how much John Chow fanboy reactions I got. To my suprise I got none, in fact i saw other comments that more or less echoed what I said.
Read the entire post here: http://www.johnchow.com/the-next-level-with-traffic-secrets-20/
