Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

• You can’t close Pandora’s Box

  Date: 2011.09.08 | Category: Internet, Tech | Response: 0

  So I knew this day would come, I just always saw it be further out. This morning when I checked my inbox I had 1,608 Comments. And I had just went through and cleaned them all up last night. So now the question is what to do? I’ve already marked about 700 or so as spam, but I’m not going to be able to keep up with this volume. I’m also not willing to allow all comments through. This brings me to an impasse. I will be looking into some sort of viable spam plugin that only weeds out the most blatant of spam. I still want to be able to cater to manual posters, and allow them to get comments with backlinks in, however I can’t handle the hundreds of comments that go something like this.

  “Thanks for the awesome posting! It saved MUCH time ”

  Seriously if you are plugging that garbage into scrapebox, YOU are wasting everyone’s time. Get a new footprint. It makes me sick!

• Spam Experiment Results

  Date: 2011.05.10 | Category: Internet, Tech | Response: 13

  So a few weeks ago I started my Spam Experiment.  Basically I took a reverse approach to scrapebox custom footprints.  Simply including keywords such as “CommentLuv Enabled” drove my bot traffic through the roof.  I would say I’m averaging about 70-80 comments per day now.  I still mark the majority of them as spam, however it’s really populating the comments on my posts well.  I prefer comments that use a name as anchor text, but on occasion I’ll let some through with anchor text if the comments are unique.   Now I’ve marked over 1,000 comments as spam since this test began, but I’d say I’ve approved and responded to only about 25-30 good comments.

  Not only does this test provide a unique perspective into how others are utilizing scrapebox, but I’m also creating a place where an opportunistic young seoptimizer could harvest a lot of the hard work done by others through the perfectly ethical craft of link jacking.

  One thing I’ve noticed is I am getting tons of bot traffic that drops links for .pl domains.  That would be Poland’s country code.  I’d really like to know what on this site is being included in their custom footprint.  Or if perhaps eastnorriton.org has really good google.pl rankings?  (unlikely)

  I do know that despite having virtually no PR, my site can index anything almost instantly.  I’ve played around with this and I should have captured it as it happened.  But the post immediately before this one was for a local store in East Norriton.  Immediately after posting I opened a new tab and searched for “alfio’s caesar salad” and my post was ranked #3.  Sure this means very little except for how lighting fast this site gets indexed.  I’m going to run another test immediately after this post is published and see if this page will rank instantly for “seoptimizer east norriton”

  Enough about that though, quick indexing, while interesting and amusing doesn’t exactly wield all that much authority.  However as Marcus pointed out in his post, the real focus of this experiment is to get spammers to create unique content for me for free.  So far this has resulted in me having to disable comments on the Dollar Tree thread.  From my understanding there is some sort of line in the sand whereas too many comments becomes a negative.  I have no idea where this line is, but I don’t see any reason to push the envelope when there are so many other threads.

  I also find it very amusing that someone from the LA Times was optimizing the site in anticipation for the royal wedding.  Check out this post, and better yet check out how they screwed up the html.  Sure I could fix it for them, but then I’d have to do it for everyone.  Again this is on the Dollar Tree post.  It’s the 3rd to last comment.

  Is anyone else doing this sort of thing to attract comments?  If not is up to me to bestow a name to this tactic?  What exactly am I building here?  I’m not sure so for now I suppose I’m going to stick with calling it “reverse custom footprints”

• Close Call

  Date: 2011.04.06 | Category: East Norriton, Tech | Response: 0

  So I just spent the last hour fixing my site after a failed automatic upgrade to WordPress 3.1.1

  All I did was hit “Upgrade Automatically” when prompted to by WordPress when I logged into the Dashboard. When it was finished it simply ended up on a page displaying nothing but:

  “Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp() in /public_html/wp-blog-header.php on line 14″

  I nervously searched the internet for my error desperately hoping someone out there would have found the same problem! And I certainly did find plenty of people with the same problem! Most of them were on the wordpress support forums.

  But let me tell you my gripes with the WordPress Support forums. First of all the entire reason I use WordPress is because it’s so simple. So to me “WordPress Support” is something I thought I’d never need unless I was going above and beyond a normal blog. (which clearly if you look around, I am not).  And secondly it’s clear that the people answering the questions there absolutely know what they’re talking about.  So much so that it’s almost impossible for someone who knows nothing about coding to decipher anything.

  Here’s perfect example of this problem.  Keep in mind this is an old post.  But from searching twitter I see that this problem and others have reared their head today specifically because the Auto Update to 3.1.1 had some issues.

  http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-call-to-undefined-function-wp-in-wp-blog-headerphp?replies=5

  Now this is exactly the same error message I got.  However nowhere in this thread is there any sort of clear cut answer.  (I will tell you the answer later)

  But then check this post, also the exact same problem.

  http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-blog-headerphp-error

  The thread is already closed but what’s the answer!  Even if the final reply is correct, where would an ignorant noob like myself place such a line of code?  Since the topic is closed, I cannot even ask.

  Finally I found my solution here:

  http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fatal-error-call-to-undefined-function-wphtmlpublic_htmlwp-blog-headerphp

  Thank you zoonini!  As far as I can tell the only solution is to manually (re)upgrade to WordPress 3.1.1 – And it worked like a charm! 

  So you may ask, next time I get prompted to upgrade automatically do you think I’ll perform a backup?  Haha nah!  What fun is that!

  Check out the instructions for a Manual Update below:

  http://codex.wordpress.org/Updating_WordPress#Manual_Update

• Cool Tech

  Date: 2011.01.07 | Category: Music, Tech | Response: 0

  I never heard of this technology before, and I found it rather interesting. Particularly for music buffs of older generations who are still holding a bunch of vinyl. There are a few ways to learn how to convert Vinyl to Digital

• Great Stores in East Norriton

  Date: 2010.07.15 | Category: Consumables, Dining, East Norriton, Fashion, Grocery, Local Bullshit, Nostalgia, Recreational, Tech, Walmart | Response: 30

  I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here with all of you East Norriton die hards like myself.  I shuffle through East Norriton every day, but I will concede that West Norriton far and away has the better Wal Mart.  But now that’s out of the way, let’s focus on what makes East Norriton awesome!  My most visited store in East Norriton has got to be Smokings.  Great little tobacco store with all the fun stuff like lotteries and beverages.  And the people are so friendly.  Seriously when you get to know them, you feel like you’re receiving the kind of small town service you would have at a family owned general store in the 1800′s. 

  Around the corner but in the same shopping center is the best Game Stop in North America.  No question about gaming will go unanswered there and midnight releases are a blast, AND efficient for that matter.  They move so fast that even though you’re excited to get home and game,  you kind of feel like hanging out a little longer with all the other pumped up gamers.  These are both located in Northtowne Plaza.  This is the most happening of the 4 shopping centers located at the intersection of Route 202 and Germantown Pike.