Know You,Know Me!: 8/28/11

Sep 7, 2011

Two New Apps for WordPress.com

Two New Apps for WordPress.com 阅读原文»

Earlier this summer we launched a few tools to make it easier for developers to create new apps for WordPress.com. Starting today, you can integrate your WordPress.com blog with Feedfabrik and Empire Avenue.

Turn Your Blog Into a Book

Have you ever wanted to publish your own book, or a collection of your favorite blog posts?

Feedfabrik makes it easy to convert your WordPress.com blog into a book format, and even allows you to customize the cover design and book contents. You can order a hard copy of your book, or a digital PDF edition.

To try it out, head over to Feedfabrik, choose Bookfabrik, then select "I'm on WordPress.com." Receive a 10% discount on all September orders with the code "WORDPRESS-INTRO".

Grow Your Social Capital Online

Empire Avenue is a Social Stock Market, where your social networking activity and engagement earn you virtual currency and determine your virtual share price. It also helps you discover new people and brands, and allows you to invest virtual currency in their profiles by buying shares on the Social Stock Market.

Along the way you’ll have a bit of fun, make new connections, and learn about social networking and the value of your network!Empire Avenue is completely free and deals in virtual currency. Sign up today to get started.

These integrations are made possible because WordPress.com supports aprotocol calledOAuth2. OAuth2 allows developers to build applications that securely communicate with WordPress.com. We have also launched a developer portal to help developers to get more information about our platform.

If your service wants to build with us, don’t hesitate to contact us through thedeveloper portal.

New Site Stats Show You Who Comments Most 阅读原文»

Ever wanted to know who’s commenting the most on your blog and what posts they are commenting on? Now your Site Stats can tell you.

The new Comments panel in your Site Stats provides three tabs: Top Commenters, Most Commented, and a Summary of comments on your blog.

If your blog has fewer than 1000 total comments, your comment stats are based on all comments made since you started your blog. Comment stats for more active blogs reflect the most recent three months of comment activity.

For example, a blog with 500 total comments will have the most commented post be the one that has had the most comments across the entire life of the blog. For this blog (with 87K comments) the most commented post is chosen from the posts that were posted in the past three months.

The Stats Comments Panel is available now for all WordPress.com blogs. Jetpack users, please bear with us as we improve Jetpack to serve you the new comment stats in the future.

Check out the comment stats on your blog by going to your blog’s Dashboard > Site Stats or from your admin bar under Blogs > [YOUR SITE NAME] > Site Stats.

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Sep 6, 2011

New Theme: Comet

New Theme: Comet 阅读原文»

Comet―the latest theme addition to our growing collection―sports a lightweight, faded design with simple and classy typographic touches. Perfect for any type of blog, it works really well for showcasing your writing and photos.

Comet home page example.

Make it yours by choosing from seven color schemes and four different layout options.

Customize it even further with a header image, background, and custom menu. Comet also includes a full-width template for dropping the sidebar on pages. See more information on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Frostpress, Comet is available now in your dashboard under Appearance → Themes and, for self-hosted blogs at the WordPress.org theme directory.

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How to block traffic from autosurf sites using .htaccess

How to block traffic from autosurf sites using .htaccess 阅读原文»

If you are making some serious money from Google Adsense or other online ads publishing company, you need to read this post seriously. Failure to do so may caused your account Adsense from getting banned or being disabled.

How to block traffic from autosurf site using .htaccess

Image credit:Free Digital Photos

According to their blog, Adsense strictly prohibit any means of artificially generating ad impressions or clicks, including third-party services such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, auto-surf, and click-exchange programs.

Autosurfis the automated traffic exchange sites or better explained by Wikipedia as thetraffic exchangesthat automatically rotate advertisedwebsitesin one’sweb browser. Therefore, they are capable of bringing a large amount of traffic to the advertised websites. Members earn credits for each site that they view, which can then be spent to advertise members’ sites by adding them to the autosurf rotation. Sites may additionally be added by external advertisers who pay the autosurf operators.

Well, what if I am a good blogger and I am always posting a good unique articles and doing everything according to Google Webmaster preferences and whitehat SEO practitioner and in the end my rivals or my competitors submitted my website URL to the autosurf sites?

Not only that my website will get infused with unwanted bullshit traffic and possibly lead to server overloading, it will also cause to my Adsense account getting banned.

Here’s how you can block the traffic from this autosurf sites using .htaccess rules from entering your website

There are actually 2 types of .htaccess rules that can be used

.htaccess rules Type 1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} auto_surf_site\.com [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} auto_surf\.com [NC,OR] RewriteRule .* - [F]  # BEGIN WordPress  RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]  # END WordPress

.htaccess rules Type 2

SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.auto_surf_site.com/" BadReferrer SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.auto_surf.com/" BadReferrer order deny,allow deny from env=BadReferrer

They will then redirected to a error 403 Forbidden page like below

How to block traffic from autosurf sites using .htacess

There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of such as autosurf websites and it is impossible to block all of them. How can I block all of them and my .htaccess rules must be pretty damn long to list all of them?

You don’t really need to block all of them because not all of them is autosurfing to your website. All you need is just identify them out using Google Analytics or WordPress.com Statsplugins. Here’s how

Using Google Analytics

Login to your Google Analytics account
Go to Traffic Source > Referring Sites
Check on the list of domains whereby it is not familiar to you or having the keyword “auto“, “traffic“, “exchange” or similar on the domain name to and giving you a rather high referring traffic

Using WordPress.com Stats

Login to your WordPress Dashboard account
Go to Site Stats> Referrals
Check on the list of domains whereby it isnot familiarto you or having the keyword “auto“, “traffic“, “exchange” or similar on the domain name to and giving you a rather high referring traffic.

That’s it. Feel free to let me know if you find any new .htaccess rules or having any questions.

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Sep 2, 2011

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money 阅读原文»

Blogging can be a passion for everyone but not everyone can turn passion into a money tree. The word blogger is definitely not a stranger to us however, to be a genuine blogger or to be more precise, to get involve in the blogging scene professionally definitely requires true dedication with proper planning and targets.

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Thus, when some newbies that just got their hands in the blogging scene, the first thing that comes into their mind is how do I make my blog into a profitable blog and earn some bucks for myself. To turn your blog into something profitable, definitely it requires a lot of hard work and research to understand on how you blog and how you reach to your audience but the problem with a lot of newbies is that they do not understand the meaning of patience is virtue and they want to see immediate results.

When the results does not show, they will tend to come out with excuses as they feel that by updating their blogs, the result will still be the same. Some feel that by updating once a week is sufficient and others may feel that updating everyday will be sufficient. The key to be successful in blogging is not to hold back and be consistent and do it in a mannered way and be persistent as well.

Some of the famous excuses or “Quotes” from bloggers that tend to hold back :

1. I will write the post tomorrow

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

As a matter of fact, this excuse can be branched out to so many other such as today I am not in the mood, or lack of inspiration or I am tired so I shall do it tomorrow. Let’s face it, we all know that tomorrow never dies and this excuse is by far one of the most common excuse from bloggers that clearly shows you tend to take things for granted and leave it as unfinished business.

2. Cost too much money

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Does hosting or purchasing a domain name cost you too much money? If you are just in the beginning stage, I don’t see a reason why you should purchase the most high end hosting. A simple basic hosting that can cater your site and that can ensure your site is up at 99% all the time is fairly good. If you are in the beginning stage and you want to do like pros where you implement things like guest blogging or outsource someone to write your article simply defines your character that you are lazy. If you are newbie in the blogging scene, you should treat every aspect as your learning curve opportunity.

3. Not enough time

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Everyone have the same 24 hours a day. Ihave a full time job and I am blogging as part time or I just don’t have adequate time to maintain my blog. These are a few tips and advises for those who doesn’t have the time.

If you think you can’t, what about the really successful bloggers? (And some does it as part time too) Do they have extra hours in a day and you don’t? The most important thing to stop using this excuse would be thediscipline. Make yourself a schedule and be punctual to that deadline that you make.

4. Get active in social medias first

A lot of newbies think that they should spread their blog in social networking sites and hopefully it will go viral as social networking sites have unlimited potential of visitors. The problem is that some of these blogs from newbies don’t even have a proper article, how is it gonna be viral? Your post/article is like your MAIN COURSE and your other factors such as spreading it through social medias are just your side dish.

5. Blog earning is zero. I’d rather quit

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

This is by far the most common problem faced by new bloggers. They don’t know the real way to make money and they just throw as many Google Ads as they expect every visitor to click the ads. One thing that you have to bear in mind is that your blog isn’t a classified so even if you have 1000 Ads in the beginning, you will go nowhere. Earning from blog is relatively a slow process and requires time and your patience. Once you have the frequency of the amount of visitors, you will slowly see the result. Nobody can be rich in months.

6. Can’t compete with the pro-blogger

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

You may be very new in this blogging scene but do not hold back thinking that you are a small fish and you can’t compete with these big fishes. You have to remember that these big fishes were once a small fish just like you. Instead of being afraid and feel helpless, you may try to provide review and compliment their products or their post’s selling point and you might turn your competition into your affiliate.

7.Can’t stare in front of my computer all day

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

Being a blogger doesn’t mean you have to be in front of your computer all day. You can incorporate your hobbies or daily routine such as snapping great photographs and blog about it. With the rapid growth of technological gadgets, you can blog in your notepad such as iPad or even in your smartphone when there’s a real time event happenings.

8. Blogging is not my thing

Top 8 excuses that stop bloggers from making money

After so many attempts and it still doesn’t work out, you decide to quit. If you are a quitter, you’ll never be successful in whatever you do. Perhaps after reading some of the basic tips from this post, you might change your mind, but if you were to accept the fact the blogging is not your thing, all your efforts of making your blog something big will be like something that is being flushed away and down to the sewage system.

To give some newbies out there a glimpse of light to earn some money, you can check out the details and click here to join our WPWebHost Affiliate as your appetizer.

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Sep 1, 2011

Vote for WordPress Sessions at SXSW

Vote for WordPress Sessions at SXSW 阅读原文»

Each year, members of the web community from around the world submit session proposals to the South by Southwest Interactive conference, an event that played a role in the birth of WordPress. We head to Austin every year, do a BBQ or throw a party, but despite the fact that almost 15% of the web is powered by WordPress, there aren’t many sessions related to WordPress on the schedule. This year, more than 3200 proposals are competing for about 350 slots, and who has time to read through, vote, and comment on 3200 proposals? Out of those 3200+ proposals, only 8 relate to WordPress! I thought it would be handy to post a guide to the WordPressy proposals for SXSWi 2012, so that if you would like to check them out and vote on them it woud be fast and easy. Leaving a comment in addition to your thumbs up/down vote helps the staff and advisory board know which sessions are likely to have an interested audience, so make sure to leave comments on the sessions you think would be cool (remember, they also publish the podcasts afterward). Voting ends in about 24 hours, so if you want to weigh in, now’s the time. Thanks for helping spread the word!

WordPress-specific Sessions

This list is based on searching for “WordPress” in proposal titles, descriptions, and tags. Clicking the proposal title will take you to that page in the SXSW PanelPicker, where you can vote and comment. Names that are linked go to those people’s WordPress.org profiles.

Blog Wars: Movable Type vs. WordPress Revisited

Mark Jaquith�WordPress Lead Developer
Byrne Reese�Endevver
These days people tend to pit us against Drupal rather than Movable Type, but looking back at the early rivalry and learning from the positive and negative aspects of it would be cool as we position ourselves in competition with new platforms. I like seeing Mark present at conferences, he always prepares well and does a good job. Though I’m guessing these guys will be all friendly and collaborative, I might take a nostalgia hit and imagine them in a fistfight just to liven things up.

Designing WordPress

Jane Wells�WordPress User Experience Lead
Disclosure: This is me! Balancing the desire for truly open and participatory design processes against the often more efficient and consistent results of a more curated design method is something we’ve been working on for the past year or so in WordPress core. I’d use the design process for several recent core features (like the UI refresh and internal linking) to illustrate the issues we’ve faced and the results we’ve achieved.

Open Source Social Networking

John James Jacoby�BuddyPress Lead Developer
J-trip (as John James Jacoby is fondly known by many in the community) is the lead dev for BuddyPress and the new bbPress plugin. He’s proposing a panel discussion among reps from several open source social network platforms. It’s always cool hearing more about BuddyPress, but it would be even cooler to figure out how it fits in with and/or stacks up against other platforms.

Welcome to the Chaos � the Distributed Workplace

Nikolay Bachiyski�WordPress Core Developer, GlotPress Lead Developer
Lori McLeese�Automattic
This one isn’t about WordPress per se, though using WordPress as a communication tool is one of the topics and Automattic is obviously a WordPress-based business. The main reason I think people should vote for this session is because Nikolay, core committing developer for internationalization and lead developer of GlotPress, our translation tool, is an awesome speaker. He is hysterically funny when he presents. I would bet money this presentation will involve a bear.

Deploying WordPress: From Zero to Ninja

Grant Norwood�Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
When Mark Jaquith says a presentation on security and deployment is on his short list, I’m impressed. (He said it in the comments on the proposal.)

Beyond the Theme – Using WordPress as an API

David Tufts�kickpress.org
Obviously a hot topic in the community right now, seems like a no-brainer to choose.

Local Government Online: WordPress Beats Drupal

Jase Wilson�Luminopolis
There was a presentation at WordCamp San Francisco this month on moving a news site from Drupal to WordPress. More and more the question comes up of which tool is best for various situations and requirements. And obviously getting government to use more open source software would be a cost-saver in these tough economic times.

WordPress website built live in 45 minutes

Glenn Todd�Dvize Creative
Live walkthroughs are always fun, and help prove to the uninitiated how easy WordPress can be.

So: go vote on these session proposals and help spread the WordPress love. If you know of any WordPress-related proposals that didn’t come up in my search, let me know in a comment and I’ll update this post. Thanks, and maybe we’ll see you in Austin in March!

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