Disabling Comments on Pages with WordPress

Tim 12 Comments

So I’ve been struggling with tons of comment spam on my blog, and it’s always to old pages I want around but haven’t updated in forever. I get so many that I figured out just now I’ve been losing real comments within the spam and purging with them.

What I finally figured out is that you have to goto the pages list and click “Quick Edit” to find the option to disable comments on a page. For whatever reason the big editor for pages doesn’t have the option like it does for Posts.

Just a quick tip for you WordPress users out there. I’m sure many of you, like me, have been frustrated by this and just thought it wasn’t possible. I already tell WordPress to disable comments on posts that are 14 days or older, which reduces spam ALOT, but it doesn’t affect pages. This should help me get way less spam and find your comments easier.

Trying out CloudFlare

Tim 7 Comments

I’ve been trying out a service called CloudFlare on my blog and ClickTrackProfit. The goal of CF is to add a layer of security to your website.

It blocks bots, spammers, and viruses from even getting to your server. So it’s like a firewall. But at the same time it caches your static content like images and javascripts. So it’s like a CDN.

To my surprise it’s worked very good and was incredibly easy to setup. All you do is transfer your DNS to them, and they take care of the rest. It’s like magic. It’s been working so great and easy that I thought it wasn’t doing anything!

But it is, and it’s reduced the load by about 50%. A small fraction is the bots being blocked, but the majority is the system caching content making it faster and reducing our bandwidth bill. Cool!

Without going into details, I haven’t tried it with any of our traffic exchanges. We have a unique situation where at the present time CloudFlare wouldn’t work with our setup, but I am working on it so we can. The benefits so far have been worth it!

Simple, Free, WordPress Plugin

Tim 10 Comments

I’ve shown you the calendar I use to mark off days I write on my blog. Well interestingly enough I’ve found a problem with that method.

My problem is I have a laptop upstairs, and my desktop in my office. Usually when I’m in the writing mood I’m upstairs with a cup of coffee and the laptop. But my calendar is downstairs. Ouch.

So my solution was to build into WordPress a plugin that shows the calendar whenever I write a post. That way even if I’m on a vacation I can easily see when my next open slot is.

I’m calling it wpFutureCal simply because it’s a calendar that shows future posts. It’s drop dead simple, but effective. So go download it if you have a self hosted WordPress blog!

Know your Target Market

Tim 13 Comments

This weekend a program was soft launched and a few people joined. There were some problems, and interestingly enough I heard someone emailed out about it to their list trashing the site. Pretty funny IMO because only a handful of people have even heard of it, and less actually joined.

Anyways, this person was quick to attack it without having an account. And from what I’ve heard the main complaint of this person is the price point of our lifetime upgrade. Well here’s some food for thought..

Know your Target Market

You really need to start here. This will change how you do a lot of your pricing and even setup of the site. Without knowing what your target market is, you won’t have a guide on where to go. It’s easy to listen to voices in the crowd yelling their opinions, but when you know your target you’ll stand firm on your decisions. Most of the voices have no clue what you are up to ;-)

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

In this case we are talking about a lifetime upgrade. Now if you know me, I don’t like lifetime upgrades! But for this specific site we thought about it, and decided a lifetime upgrade would be a good option for some. The problem is the trend for owners to sell lifetime upgrades way too low. They do them for a cash grab. That’s not what I’m about. I’m about being committed for the long haul. And when you are in for the long haul selling yourself short is an easy way to fail down the road due to insufficient funds.

Be Willing to Test It Out

Here’s a big one. So many people are uptight about doing the right thing, they tend to do nothing. I’m a huge fan of trying things out. So it doesn’t work the way you planned? So what, you can change it. Wow. Isn’t that amazing? You aren’t locked in for eternity on your decisions. Amazing. So take that understanding and use it to your advantage. Take risks! Some of them will have HUGE rewards. We had no idea if Sweeva would take off like it did. WELL worth it ;-)

Be Willing to Change

Once you try something, you need to be willing to change. If you know your target, try something, and it doesn’t work change it. Otherwise you’ll just continue doing the same thing over and over.

Conclusion

I’m sure many are wondering what this launch is about. Well if you go surf Sweeva I’m sure you’ll see it in rotation. We’re giving the members the first go around on getting referrals. No JVs here. So far it’s been working pretty good, and 19% have upgraded. Of course it’d probably be higher if I didn’t goof and upload the wrong files to wrong sites, there’s a reason I goto bed early..

Found the Select All Friends on Facebook Solution

Tim 15 Comments

Looking for a fun game to Invite all your Friends on Facebook to? Check out Sitizens! See if you can become King of Facebook.com!

Previously I wrote a post and a video about how to select all your friends on facebook. It stopped working when they changed some code. Well after much tinkering, I found the solution and updated the post. The key is to open the select your friends page in a new tab.

They now have it in an iframe, whereas before it wasn’t. Simple but didn’t have the time to figure it out. Just remember, only invite your friends to things they’ll actually support. And if you use the above trick please tweet, like on facebook, and blog about it cuz it’s helping lots of people ;-)

Oh and stay subscribed if you want to find out how to do it later if they change it lol

Autoresponder Services vs Autoresponder Scripts

Tim 8 Comments

We talk about building lists all the time. In Traffic Exchange Live we had a viewer who was going the in house route for sending out emails. There are pros and cons to doing it yourself or doing it with a service.

Auto-Responder Scripts

The biggest reason to use a script and run it yourself is complete control. I do this with StartXchange. I have certain features that I want to be able to do, that wouldn’t work if it was hosted elsewhere. I also don’t have to worry about variables that are out of my control when a third party is involved.

The problem is this comes at a cost. There are SPF records, DomainKeys, Sender ID, Reverse DNS, Abuse Feedback Loops, Unsubscribe lists, and bounce processing.. Just to name a few. There are also whitelists to be added to, dedicated ips, certifications, etc. It costs time and money, and it’s really easy to make a mistake that messes up your deliverability.

If you do it right and are on top of your game, you can get great results. I really love the results with StartXchange’s email deliverability. But if you do it wrong, you end up wasting all that time and money when you could be building a list. On top of that you aren’t likely to get good results unless your list is large and you are mailing fairly frequently.

Auto-Responder Services

With a service there are many of the same problems, but they are no longer your problem. If you go with a reputable service it’s all done for you. You essentially save your time and efforts for the other things in your business.

Of course there are some down sides. You are limited to what the system lets you do. That’s why in some instances you’ll have to go your own route. And you are affiliated with the neighborhood of the service you use. If they have a bad reputation, or weak security, it could affect you negatively.

So what should you do?

In the end for most of you going with a 3rd party is going to be the best choice. I personally do in house email for StartXchange for the specific reasons above. I then use Aweber for my blog because it has a blog broadcast feature.

And then everything else I use Traffic Wave for because it’s downright simple (and you don’t have to pay more when your subscribers go up). I even have a video tutorial showing how easy it is.

If you are like the guy who was talking to us, determined to do it yourself, it is possible. Just know that it’ll take work and research to do properly. Which some people are OK with. (hey I did it lol)