WordPress 2.7 "Coltrane"

Dec 11, 2008 27 Comments »

As it always happens when I am trying to update my WordPress installation I almost lost a blog while upgrading to WordPress 2.7. I’m generally one of the last people to upgrade my WordPress installations, it’s just that today when I was going through the various twitter notifications I noticed some body mentioning WordPress 2.7 so I thought, well, this time I shouldn’t get so late.

It is always advised that you take full backup of your existing blog before upgrading to a newer version; anything can go wrong and you can lose years of hard work. But I haven’t taken my backups for more than 3-4 months.

The biggest surprise in WordPress 2.7 was the total overhaul of the dashboard interface. It really looks neat with crisp buttons and a spiffy layout. Here is the image of the dashboard of Writing Cave:

It seems there are still many people who use the default editor of WordPress to publish blog posts. I haven’t used it for years. Even when there was no desktop editor available I used to prepare all my posts in my favorite word processor and then simply copy/paste the content into the editor. If you notice in the image I have encircled the part that lets you quickly post without ever having to leave the dashboard area. They have arranged all the important links at left. Another significant change that I have noticed is that they have brought back the comments to the dashboard as people had been missing this information on the dashboard.

There is a turbo link at the top bar and I wonder what it does. When I clicked on it, it asked me to do something, I did that, it processed a few hundred files on my computer and then I lost track.

I’m still to use all the features present in the latest WordPress 2.7 version. In fact, as usual, I will end up using a very few functions because I rarely log into the admit area; I publish all my blog posts using windows live writer.

Here are some WordPress 2.7 upgrade tips from Lorelle.

Another great overview of WordPress 2.7.

Top 20 WordPress 2.7 features from Mashup.

Blog Action Day – Breaking The Vicious Cycle of Poverty

Oct 15, 2008 16 Comments »

Whenever the thoughts of poverty come to my mind I’m hit by the images of emaciated, weak, and small bodies incapable of taking on the challenges of life. There are two fundamental things that keep people poor aside from lack of money and resources:

• Lack of food
• Lack of education

Proper nutrition keeps our minds and bodies healthy and these two physical aspects are required in order to live a meaningful and purposeful life. The same goes for education. Education is not just needed to gain employment it is also needed to understand life and the world around us. So if we want to break the vicious cycle of poverty we first have to break the vicious circle of lack of food and lack of education and this requires proactive measures from people who have the resources. I hope campaigns like BLOG ACTION DAY can motivate people and make them take proactive measures in their respective communities.

I think the governments, along with providing employment opportunities and maintaining a sense of equal justice, should also provide food to the poor because I am pretty sure once people start feeling healthy they can work harder and with greater focus. When most of the time they feel hungry and weak how can we expect them to feel motivated. What we eat certainly affects the way we think. If we get just one measly meal everyday than our outlook remains proportionate to that meal and the world doesn’t go beyond that meal.

In India there are many food-for-work schemes but rarely the right people get the right food. Even in schools for the poor the government provides free meals to the children and in fact these meals are one of the greatest attractions that draw them towards the school. More than money and employment people first of all need food and food should not depend on employment. Food should be available to every citizen of the world by default whether he or she works or not. It may sound unfair to many people but just think how much food is wasted in developed and developing countries where economically well-off people can easily afford good food. More than half the population of the world can perhaps be fed by the amount of food that is thrown away. So you can very well make out what’s more unfair.

Besides, if communities are helped to become self-sufficient in producing and consuming nutritious food locally then this problem can be solved forever. Since the poor are uneducated and unaware of their own environment most of the time they don’t know how to eat healthy food that can be easily produced or acquired without spending money.

Similarly access to quality education should be easily available to everybody. Now I am not talking about making every kind of education freely available but at least fundamental education – education that teaches you how to read, how to analyze the world around you, give a head start to your children during their primary school days and carry out day today mathematics. This can be achieved by individual effort and by state-level efforts. Whereas state-level efforts, half-heartedly, are always functioning it is the individual effort that can eventually make a difference.

Lack of nutrition and education are the root causes that keep the vicious circle of poverty rolling and unless these two issues are not tackled we will not be able to alleviate poverty.

An interesting chat session with HostGator Support

Oct 03, 2008 17 Comments »

I recently shifted a few of my websites from DreamHost to HostGator and was having some email issues with the new host. Here’s a chat session I just had with one of their support persons.

Gary A.: Welcome to HostGator, My name is Gary. What can I assist you with today?
Amrit: hello Gary.

Amrit: it’s an email related question

Amrit: my contact form, that used to work at dreamhost, is not working now from hostgator and it has a peculiar problem

Amrit: http://amrithallan.com/contact.php

Amrit: it goes to every email accept for amrit AT amrithallan DOT com

Amrit: would you know why?

Amrit: i’m using google as my email server (changed the MX records), but i don’t think that makes a difference

Amrit: are you there?

Gary A.: Well, if it sends elsewhere, but not to the email that you have hosted at google.

Gary A.: Then It would be a gmail issue.

Amrit: yes, but it goes to other gmail accounts

Amrit: and when i forward the message from other emails, then it goes to amrit AT amrithallanDOTcom

Amrit: i mean, emails are coming from other email accounts, but not from the contact form, but the contact form is working with every other email

Amrit: i hope i’m not confusing you

Gary A.: I understand, but that’s not our server that’s having the problem them, it’s googles, considering that it sends fine elsewhere. That email acocunt might need to whitelist the one that’ it’s being sent from

Amrit: but this problem started only when i switched to your server

Amrit: from dreamhost it was working fine

Amrit: i transferred the files as it is

Amrit: dreamhost is another hosting provider

Amrit: since the only thing that has changed is the server, there must be some issue in this fact

Gary A.: If that were the case though, why would it only be that one email address that’s not hosted with us not receive the email?

Amrit: i know

Amrit: i’m puzzled too. could it be that an email cannot be sent from the same domain? something like that?

Amrit: i mean, i’m trying to send an email from http://amrithallan.com/contact.php to amrit AT amrithallan DOT com. could that be the issue?

Amrit: same domain?

Amrit: as i said, the problem was not there with the previous host

Gary A.: Well, as I said, it’s working at other emails, since mail isn’t hosted on our server and the scripti is sending, it’s not the server not sending the message

Gary A.: IT’s the mail server not accepting.

Amrit: can this thing be resolved somehow? is it your IP address that the google server doesn’t like?

Gary A.: Why would it send to other mail accounts at google then? It’s sending the mail, it’s that email address that it’s sending to that has the problem.

Amrit: yes, but the point is, the problem only began when i switched to your host, so THAT must be factoring somewhere

Amrit: found this: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/
FreeBSD/questions/2008-06/msg01728.html

Amrit: sorry, it got posted twice

Amrit: got it!

Amrit: the solution is in your control panel where you change the MX records

Amrit: i think you should check that out in case another customer has the same problem

Amrit: this box should be left unchecked: "Always accept mail locally even if the primary mx does not point to this server."

Amrit: I was checking it

Amrit: see…the problem was not with the google mail

Gary A.: Then why did you tell me it sends to other emails accounts configured to the same MX records?

Amrit: i didn’t. i said it was going to other gmail accounts…please check above what i said.

Gary A.: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Amrit: no, thanks

Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

How not to depend much on search engines

Sep 19, 2008 14 Comments »

95% of my writing business depends on search engine traffic. This is a dangerous situation. What if something happens – some change in the ranking algorithms, something that is not liked at my website – and my listings vanish from the search engine result pages? Does this mean I should pack my bags? Although I can start all over again and try to get back into the search engine results but this is a very shaky situation and I am sure many of you too are faced with the same dilemma. What is the best way to deal with such a situation?

Let us except that the search engines are very powerful promotional tools and they should never be excluded from your Internet marketing effort, but they should never be the sole suppliers of your traffic. With millions of websites scattered all over the Internet it is not too ambitious to try to get some traffic from these websites directly. I will again emphasize that you can get the best traffic from search engines because when people come from search engines they are already looking for a specific search term and this may not happen if they are coming directly from a website. But then the advantage of getting traffic from a website is that a person clicks on your link fully knowing where he or she is heading to. So how can you generate traffic outside of the search engines? Here are a few thoughts; you are welcome to add yours.

Publish a blog

Regularly publishing a blog is the best way of driving high-quality traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines. Although blogs get tons of traffic from search engines due to the way they are published, a lot of traffic also comes from other websites and blogs and this is an advantage not enjoyed by conventional websites. People are constantly linking to blog posts, commenting about them, commenting on them and recommending them to their readers and friends. There are even many social bookmarking websites just to promote blog content among various readers and blog publishers. In few instances some bloggers have been blocked by the search engines (that is, their links didn’t show up on the search result pages) for violating various rules but the blockage didn’t affect them much although they did notice it and wrote about it. The mere act of writing about the blockage got them hundreds of thousands of hits from other blogs and websites. They couldn’t have generated such massive traffic merely from search engines. Once your blog has crossed the popularity threshold you don’t have to worry much about search engine traffic.

Have quality content on your website or blog

Interesting content draws crowds to your blog or website. People not only read the content they also like to link to it whenever possible, and if they are really impressed they put a permanent link to your blog on their blog or website. Quality content also enhances your credibility and people begin to trust you for your opinion. You get tons of repeat traffic. Great content also encourages your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds and this also helps you increase and maintain your readership – this readership doesn’t have to depend on search engines to find your blog and consume your content and consequently, generate business for you.

Be active on social media websites, online forums and blogs

We live in a conversation economy; lots of business is generated by encouraging conversation between buyers and sellers. But this is just one small aspect of social media marketing. What you are actually doing is establishing long-lasting relationships with different individuals. You don’t necessarily have to do it for a selfish reason because being social means giving more than taking. Be useful to people and people will be useful to you. Be an interesting person, be a resourceful person and people won’t take you as a business bug. Try to interact with people through Twitter, FaceBook, Plurk, Digg, Pownce, etc. Often it is not possible to track conversations on all social media websites so just focus on a couple or even a single website but do it thoroughly and establish yourself there as an authority. Network with as many people as possible.

Similarly, constructively interact on various online forums because you can get lots of quality traffic from these forums. Don’t spam and don’t leave meaningless comments just to leave your links because this doesn’t work; people don’t click your link if they don’t like what you have written. You should also leave comments on other blogs to let people know about the existence of your blog or website. But make sure that you add value to the ongoing discussion and this means read the content present on the blog or website carefully, think about it, and only then add your opinion.

Distribute your content to blogs and websites

There are many blogs that would eagerly accept your guest posts provided you have written something really worth reading and captivating. When these bloggers publish your blog post, what is known as guest blog post, they often put a small profile of yours under the post or over it with the link connecting to your blog or website.

Similarly you can submit succinct, useful articles to various websites and article submission websites. These article submission websites draw lots of traffic from search engines; this way you can get indirect traffic from search engines in case your own website or blog vanishes from there.

Include your link in your e-mail signature

This might not look like much but you never know where your e-mail may end up and who might click on the link you have included in your signature. And anyway having a link is a lot better than not having it. This can be really effective if you send out lots of e-mails on a regular basis.

Publish a newsletter

In terms of the Internet this is one of the oldest surviving modes of communicating with your visitors. When they visit your website encourage investors to subscribe to your newsletter so that they can receive regular updates from you. Although this can be same as subscribing to your RSS feeds but your newsletter is a bit different – people don’t need an RSS reader first of all to read your updates, and second, it will be difficult for you to publish everything on your blog; sometimes you need to communicate only through e-mail. Publishing a newsletter is one of the greatest ways of getting tons of highly targeted traffic to your website without having to depend on search engines.

Do share on this blog if you are aware of more methods of generating targeted traffic to your website or blog without search engines.

10 ways to get regular content for your website or blog

Sep 12, 2008 25 Comments »

To be successful on the Internet you constantly need to communicate with written words. Written words – the content on your website or blog – constantly convey your thoughts to your visitors. They attract new visitors and keep the old visitors hooked to your writing. But this also involves writing regularly. The more regular you are, the greater is the level of interaction and communication. Agreed, networking and interacting on other blogs and online forums do play a vital part, eventually it is your content that wins you the day.

Unless you have ideas of encyclopedic dimensions it is very difficult to come up with new ideas and new matter on a daily basis. You can do this without external help if this is the only thing you do: thinking about and generating content for your blog or website. But if you have only got, say between half-an-hour to one hour, to think about what to write, collect your thoughts and plan them and then write them down, it becomes an uphill task and often gets assigned to the back burner. Here are a few things that can help you get regular content for your website or blog:

1. Hire a content writer or a team of writers: You can hire writing services according to your budget but this is the best option if you have no time to research and write content for your blog or website. The person that you hire most probably has experience researching online and coming up with fresh and relevant content. This doesn’t mean that you assign the entire responsibility of creating content for your blog a website to your content writer, you will need to constantly keep a vigil and make sure that the content tallies with the fundamental philosophy of your blog or website.
2. Subscribe to RSS feeds: There can be an information overload when you are subscribed to too many RSS feeds but your RSS feeds subscriptions can prove to be the best resource to get fresh writing ideas. You just need to stick to the most important blogs and content websites while tracking your RSS feeds. Don’t rush while subscribing because this will eventually lead you to around 1000+ subscriptions and the mere number will dissuade you from even opening your RSS reader. Subscribe to RSS feeds judiciously and follow them closely in order to get fresh updates.
3. Use blog search: Many search engines, including the good old Google let you conduct searches on various blogs. You can use your favorite search term to check what all people are writing on it and then come up with your own content accordingly.
4. Read about your topic: Reading gives you lots of writing ideas as it fills your mind with your thoughts and wisdom. Whether you agree with what you are reading or not you have something to say, either pro or against. Reading also expands your knowledge-base and the more you know the more comfortable you get writing on your topic. Read books relevant to your field, read blogs and websites that talk about your topic, and interact on online forums. Of course you will need to keep a tab on your time in case you don’t have much time to spare.
5. Visit content aggregation websites: Content aggregation websites such as popurl.com, alltop.com, digg.com, etc. publish lots of highly relevant and contextual links with great regularity. Make it a point to visit these content and aggregation websites routinely. It is better if you can go to them at least once a day but you can decide your schedule according to your work schedule.
6. Interact as much as you can: Regular interaction exposes you to newer opinions and varying ideas. Interact with people who are already doing great things in your field. For instance if you want to write about blogging then you should try to regularly interact with people who are successful bloggers. You can use social media networking websites like Twitter and FaceBook to keep track of the ongoing conversations. For these social media networking websites there are many online tools that help you track conversations according to topics and keywords. Actively participate in these forums. But be sure of what you are communicating.
7. Use your existing content for new ideas: Many of your existing blog posts and articles may carry further topics and subtopics. Sometimes an entire article can be created out of one subheading. For instance, if you wrote a blog post on the benefits of regular blogging you might have written about using blogging as a great blogging tool and you might have written just one paragraph on the topic. Why not write a complete blog post or an article on that?
8. Invite your visitors to give you ideas: Lots of bloggers ask their visitors what they would like to read on the blog. I think this is a great way of getting new writing ideas because after all the most difficult part of writing regularly is getting writing ideas. Once you have a topic it is much easier to come up with the content. You can ask your visitors to give ideas regarding what they would like to read on your blog or website through the comments section.
9. Maintain an ideas file: Ideas are like the sparkling fireflies; they happen randomly and unless you have reached Nirvana, you can hardly control them. It is always better to devise a mechanism to preserve them whenever they grace you. You should maintain an ideas file and keep storing ideas whenever they occur so that you can refer to it whenever you need to get some new writing ideas.
10. Be passionate about your topic: Your mind brims with new and exciting ideas when you are passionate about the theme of your blog or website. Your passion helps you focus and work harder towards collecting your thoughts and expressing them; people can feel the passion in your words and expressions. But can you be passionate about something you are not comfortable with? This dilemma is often faced by professional writers because they have to write on myriad topics with unwavering interest. How do they keep the flame of passion burning all the time? They derive their passion from the fact that they have to write well no matter on what they are writing. In a similar manner you can seek passion in your topic too.

Aside from these activities you can also syndicate content from various organizations that provide regular content to blogs, online magazines, online newspapers and websites.

When you regularly update your website or blog it shows that you are serious about talking to your visitors. It doesn’t always have to be prim and proper and you can be especially yourself on your blog provided you are not discussing your pyjama parties and doggy excursions all the time on your Internet marketing blog; the content should always be relevant to your theme and must always have a target audience.