WordPress’s spam filter automatically weeds out about 200 spam comments daily on this blog, but at least another 20 get through. I’ve resorted to using a blacklist to fight spam. What WordPress does is to mark comments as spam if it sees those blacklisted words, or words that contain those words. For example, you might list down ‘taste’ as a blacklisted word. Then any comment containing ‘taste’, ‘tasteful’ and ‘distasteful’ will be flagged as spam. You can download my list of spam words here. Simply paste those words into WordPress’s comment blacklist feature and you should see a drop in the number of spam comments getting through to your blog. This list is by no means exhaustive. It was shared with me by a friend, so feel free to add more words to the list and share with others..
If you’re a WordPress user, you no doubt have used the excellent Related Entries plugin before.
One thing about that plugin and its variants is that it only shows related posts from the same blog. While these posts may increase readership for the blogs, it would be much better if readers could read related posts and articles from other sites. That would expand the minds of readers by allowing them to gain insights from others who are writing about similar topics.
RelatedToThis is unique in a way that it is presented as a data feed, encoded in JSON format. I envision that developers will take the data feed and write plugins or widgets around it. It isn’t WordPress or platform-specific, since it’s just text.
It is also an invite-only service. The reason for this is to ensure the quality of sites joining RelatedToThis. If you’d like to join RelatedToThis, you can find a list of people with invitations to give out here.
I hope this service will fill a niche that benefits everyone..
Google has been lately penalizing many sites selling text link ads. That has resulted in some sites losing their page rank altogether.
As I’ve mentioned many times in previous posts, Google is against any kind of paid action that boosts a sites search ranking. And I support their actions. In fact I’m also strongly against paid reviews and paid posts.
WP Text Ads has stayed well clear of this practice. Right from the start, all text link ad include the ‘nofollow’ attribute by default. Even the outgoing links in the WP Text Ads Marketplace also include the ‘nofollow’ attribute. This helps all users of WP Text Ads to avoid any search engine ranking penalties.
I’ve always believed that proper SEO and good content is gold, and I hope bloggers continue to focus on that. Users who want to sell text link ads to promote organic traffic to other sites and avoid search engine penalties are welcomed to give WP Text Ads a try. Buyers of text link ads may also want to encourage these sites to use WP Text Ads too.
Best Book Combo is my newly launched site that helps book buyers find the cheapest combination of new and used books from 3 major bookstores - AbeBooks.com, Amazon.com and BetterWorld.com
It does this by taking into account the various shipping rates, even if each seller has his own shipping rate. This is important for non-USA locations where shipping rates can be very expensive, usually more so than the book itself.
As a frequent buyer of books, I no longer have to spend hours researching and comparing the books I want to buy. It also has a currency converter if your currency isn’t in US dollars.
So if you want to buy a couple of books and want to save save save on the total cost, go check out Best Book Combo!
The Amazon Unbox service is a video-on-demand service that allows you to buy and rent videos from a selection of more than 10,000 movie and TV titles. You can download them to your Tivo via the internet or to your computer.
The good folks at Amazon.com just released an Amazon Unbox widget so you can catch previews of some of their best titles.
It’s a flash-based widget. There’s only 1 problem with it - FireFox’s pop-up blocker will not allow a new window to open when I click on the links, so if you face the same problem, remember to hold the Alt key down as you click.
The MySQL server that WP Text Ads runs on (5.0.32-Debian_7etch1-log) has been shutting down by itself over the last few weeks. Up to today, I still don’t know why. The error log doesn’t say anything other than that MySQL shut down gracefully.
Downtime is really bad for WP Text Ads. So it is important that there’s a way to monitor the MySQL server and detect if it has shut down.
I found a wonderful script from Bash Shell Script Directory to do this. Made a few modifications to it and it has worked very well for me.
Here is the modified script. It restarts MySQL server if it is killed or not working for any reason. When the script detects MySQL is not running (by sending ping requests to MySQL), it tries to restart using /etc/init.d/mysql and sends an email to you indicating the status.
This script should be run as a cron job.
#!/bin/bash
#
# This script is licensed under GNU GPL version 2.0 or above
#
# mysql server hostname
MHOST="localhost"
#path to MySQL daemon start/stop script.
MSTART="/etc/init.d/mysql start"
# Email address to send notification
EMAILID="username@domain.com"
# path to mail program
MAILCMD="$(which mail)"
# path mysqladmin
MADMIN="$(which mysqladmin)"
MAILMESSAGE="/tmp/mysql.fail.$$"
# see if MySQL server is alive or not
$MADMIN --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping 2>/dev/null 1>/dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "" >$MAILMESSAGE
echo "Error: MySQL Server is not running/responding ping request">>$MAIL
MESSAGE
echo "Hostname: $(hostname)" >>$MAILMESSAGE
echo "Date & Time: $(date)" >>$MAILMESSAGE
# try to start mysql
$MSTART>/dev/null
# see if it is started or not
o=$(ps cax | grep -c ' mysqld$')
if [ $o -eq 1 ]; then
sMess="MySQL Server MySQL server successfully restarted"
else
sMess="MySQL server FAILED to restart"
fi
# Email status too
echo "Current Status: $sMess" >>$MAILMESSAGE
echo "" >>$MAILMESSAGE
echo "*** This email generated by $(basename $0) shell script ***" >>$MA
ILMESSAGE
echo "*** Please don't reply this email, this is just notification email
***" >>$MAILMESSAGE
# send email
$MAILCMD -s "MySQL server" $EMAILID < $MAILMESSAGE
else # MySQL is running and do nothing
:
fi
# remove file
rm -f $MAILMESSAGE
You need to save the above script as the ‘root’ user. Then edit your cron (as ‘root’) to run this script.
I make sure cron runs this script every 3 minutes (assuming I named this script check_mysql):
*/3 * * * * bash /root/check_mysql
I hope this tip helps anyone who’s facing the same unsolvable problem as me.
Did I get that right? I’ve watched this video about 5 times and I’m still unsure. It’s so funny!
The question posed to Ms South Carolina from the Miss Teen USA competition was, “One-fifth of Americans cannot find America on the map. Why do you think this is so?”
Watch the video for her (not quite) answer.
Later at the Today Show, she gave an excellent answer. But nobody would have remembered her if she had said that in the competition.
1) We read from left to right.
2) We’re so used to seeing right-sided sidebars that we’ve learnt to tune-off to them.
If this is really true, then the implications are great. For one, the CTR of your Adsense ads in the sidebar could go up, and people might actually start buying text link ads from you. If you display popular posts and comments on the sidebar, you will see an increase in readership too.
To test this theory, this blog now uses a left-sided sidebar. In response, a friend said, “It looks weird.” Then he added, “Well, at least I notice things in the sidebar that I didn’t before.”
What about you? Do notice the content in the sidebar now, where as you didn’t before?
This post from J. David Macor really embarrassed me. It’s a hilarious receipt from Raffles Hotel, Singapore. This 5-star hotel obviously made a typo error in one of the items, mistakenly labeling it as a ’slut’.
Is anyone from our Tourist Promotion Board reading this? Is this guffaw ‘Uniquely Singapore’ enough for you?
Ramil Alcibar at Earners Club was very kind to ask me to write a review for (shock! horror!) WP Text Ads.
That was a really tough proposition. What could I write that wouldn’t come across as biased? Is it even possible to be objective?
Following principles similar to those set in the ‘Support Paid Review Disclosure’ movement, it was decided that the review would not be a review. Instead, it’d be a brutal and honest critique of the things I’ve done well and badly with WP Text Ads.
I'm Alex Choo and I live in sunny Singapore. I'm also the developer of WP Text Ads, a WordPress plugin that lets bloggers sell ads directly to advertisers so that they pay 0% in commissions and earn 100% in profits.
Feel free to drop me a note anytime you wish. You should also subscribe to the low volume email announcement list for WP Text Ads below.
Like this post? Buy an ad and drive visitors to your site
and do nothing
:
fi
# remove file
rm -f $MAILMESSAGE
