Archive for March, 2008
We have come a long way with technology. The internet technology has matured in leaps and bounds with all the new levels of coding, imaging and bandwidth. It’s amazing that these once dot com start ups are now internet giants.
A look back at some of the most popular internet companies.
AOL 1996 (I remember AOL back than and the launch of AIM)
Radio Shack 1996 (A company that was a leader in home electronics)
Google 1998 (If you noticed there’s not drastic change)
Sprint 1998 (They have come along way with there web site and company)
ESPN 1998 (The leader in sports has really advanced as a sports portal)
Yahoo 1996 (Notice the image quality or the lack of)
It’s amazing to see how these internet giants have transitioned into state of the art web portals. Thank god we have the bandwidth today that allows us to advance in web design, imaging, scripting, and streaming video.
Were you on the internet back in 1996?
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10 bananas is a new site where you can post, rate, and review other blogs.
The navigation is easy and registration is a snap. I came across this new site about 3 weeks ago and I have submitted at least 8 of my latest blogs. It feels like some of the other blog catalog sites that many of us use.
From the 10Bananas Author:
A Blog Catalogue to find top 10 Blog Posts which will make you Go Bananas ! - A place ‘By the Bloggers’ and ‘For the Bloggers’ - Submit Posts, Rate and Discuss.
Submit a Posting:
Click the submit a new post on the left bar and you will be taken to the submit page where you can Copy-Paste your latest blog and url. All you need to do is write a few lines about your latest blog submission. It’s important to add the proper tags for your blog.
Widgets & Buttons:
They also have buttons and widgets available. You can choose from a wide variety of buttons from the widgets page.
Live Center:
They also have a ’state-of-the-art live center which will tell you - who is doing what in the site and what activities are taken place such as commenting, posting, voting, etc. 10 Bananas utilizes this to monitor the site.
The Banana Bar:
A great way to submit quickly. You can use other neat features as well.
What are you waiting for? Start submitting your blogs today and review and rate other blogs at 10bananas.com!
Are you curious to know who is really reciprocating your stumbles? There’s a really neat program that can provide you that information. I know for sure that many never stumble your blog, but yet they say they did. Below is the Stumble Alerter program that provides details of who stumbled a particular blog you wrote.
1. When you write a new blog you must open SA and go to Edit “Add Another Site”.
2. Post that same address you want stumbled by whatever community you participate in.
3. Watch who’s stumbling and who is also providing a review.
The top pane indicates the uri or web address you added to be tracked by stumblers. The bottom pane indicates who stumbled your blog and submitted a review. The far right pane shows your top stumblers.
It’s kind of strange to only have 17 people who actually stumbled my blogs. Have you ever looked at some of the blog posts on the Entrecard forums? There’s a lot more people saying they stumbled, but never do. That’s why I wait to see who stumbles me before I stumble them.
To my top stumblers, you will receive credits as a gesture of my appreciation.
Download: AdamantSolutions
Is your WordPress theme loading slowly? If your web site is taking more than 5 seconds or even 10 seconds to load this could be an issue. Your visitors may just leave your site because of this. You can speed up your WordPress load time like it was on steroids!
Your header and footer templates perform PHP calls to your database in order to display your pages and content accordingly. This can have a lot of stress and load issues that can cause your page to load slow. You can reduce these PHP calls to your database by creating static URI’s.
Header Template:
Unnecessary PHP calls to your database that can be change to a static URI or removed.
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” <?php if (wp_version()==’21′) language_attributes(); ?>><head profile=”http://gmpg.org/xfn/11″>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”<?php bloginfo(’html_type’); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo(’charset’); ?>” />
<title><?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title(”,true); } else { bloginfo(’name’); echo(’ — ‘); bloginfo(’description’); } ?></title>
<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” /> <!– leave this for stats –>
<meta name=”description” content=”"/>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”"/>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(’rss2_url’); ?>” />
<link rel=”pingback” href=”<?php bloginfo(’pingback_url’); ?>” />
<link rel=”Shortcut Icon” href=”<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_directory’);?>/images/favicon-adstheme.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />
<?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>
There are 8 PHP calls in the Header template that can be changed to a static URI or removed. This will reduce load times significantly.
A clean and faster Header Template:
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<title>Your Title Here</title>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”<?php bloginfo(’html_type’); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo(’charset’); ?>” />
<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 2.3.3″ />
<!– leave this for stats –>
<meta name=”description” content=”Your description here” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Your keywords here” />
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/style.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Your Blog Name”> RSS Feed” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/?feed=rss2″ />
<link rel=”pingback” href=”<?php bloginfo(’pingback_url’); ?>” />
<link rel=”Shortcut Icon” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/images/favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />
</head>
By changing or removing these 8 PHP calls to your database you will improve your web site load time by up to 50%!
You can also download WP Super Cache. It’s a very fast caching module for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plug-in you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
Need help?
I provide consulting services for a fee of only $5 using PayPal to bosocony@yahoo.com. I will clean your header template, install WP Super Cache, Test your WordPress theme and provide a screen shot of your load time before and after. Don’t have PayPal? No problem, send 1000 EC’s to my account.
I normally write about tips on web traffic, advertising, seo, etc. This blog will be more of a rant and a little bit of a rave, but hopefully educational.
I recently wrote a blog on running Multiple Campaigns and received many comments, all positive. However, in my last 7 days I have reviewed many blog sites on Entrecard and many of them run contests to gain traffic. If you’re depending on one niche for all your traffic needs, you will fall short eventually. You need to be unique, add value for your visitors, and most importantly establish your own fan base from multiple channels.
Yes, a little rave. My traffic has gone up over 400% with only 29% of that traffic coming from Entrecard. The good thing is, I utilize other alternatives and they’re working well.
My traffic ranking according to Alexa is at 141,033 from 12 million back on January 23rd 2008. This is a significant improvement in only 6 weeks, but it was not easy.
There are quality blogs on Entrecard and I will name a few in a moment. I enjoy reading these blogs daily and at times will leave a comment. You can say I am a fan and I like the niche they have created.
I can give away 5000 credits for this and that, but for what? One or two days of steady traffic, no thank you. I am not going to a site for Entrecard credits if I have to drop, comment, and register for this or that to win 100 EC’s or a 1000 EC’s. I have to embrace and enjoy what you write, not what you’re giving away. The likelihood of me coming back to a site that only offers contests is slim to none.
I noticed that a few sites are encouraging members to add their link to get more Entrecard members to drop cards on them. There are now 3 new sites that are creating what I call a link wall. This is not bad, if everyone plays by the rules, but that’s not the case. I have dropped 300+ cards per day for 30 days straight and I receive about 60% drop backs. This is not bad, but could be better.
I am not close to being done! The worst form of traffic is temporary traffic. It really does no good as your overall traffic average for the month will not improve drastically. If you have 4 good traffic spikes out of 30 days you’re not making any gains. Those traffic spikes usually have a high bounce rate percentage. I call this drop and run.
Conclusion:
If you’re going to run a contest follow these two important suggestions.
1. Be creative, unique, and make it fun.
2. The life of the contest should be at least one week in duration. You may have visitors who like your niche, and may return again. This is called a fan.
Blogs that rule:
Joe Tech: Great content, informative and technology driven.
Soul-To-Soul: A sketch art master. I am the groupie of this blogger!
Turnip of Power: A great mixer of articles on internet marketing, computer games, etc.
Ben Barden: Ben provides web tips and so much more. I am a fan!
There are more and I will include them in our next “MBR” on April 2, 2008.
