Archive for March, 2008

How to redirect traffic that comes from certain URL to another

by Ades on March 30, 2008 in Blogging Tips with 10 Comments

Not always you will be in this situation, where you don’t want people to visit your site (that come from certain site). Because usually everybody wants traffic to their site, the more the better.

But last week I was in an awkward situation where I didn’t want traffic that came from certain domain name. Regular readers of my blog already know this, I had sold one of my sites to someone (don’t want to mention his particulars out of respect). I had forgot to remove my personal information from the website.

Basically the site contained an introductory text that said “this is my project, purpose of the project, my name and my other sites”. Unfortunately, the new owner didn’t want to remove the info, and tried to push adware to the people who wanted to download free icons.

Obviously, I was furious, and sent numerous emails to him. At the end, he removed my particulars. But during this one week time, much damage was done (especially to my reputation). I had received emails telling me that I had cheated them, instead of giving them free icons I pushed them adware… basically, dissatisfied users! And they thought I am doing all these. That was the worst part. So I had to do something.

So, one of the solutions before the new owner removed my personal info was to redirect the traffic that was coming from this website to a particular page. A page that contained all the info and explained the user that the site was sold and no longer belonged to me. I also explained that it was unfortunate that the new owner took this direction for the new site. Lastly, I provided a direct download link to the free icons.

So how this is done? This redirection is done through .htaccess.

Redirecting users that come from certain URL to another

Here is the main code that should be put in your .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} referrerURL\.com/
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.redirectedURL.com [R=301,L]

Now let’s do some explanation.

This code RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} referrerURL\.com/ detects the traffics that come from different websites. If the traffic comes from referrer dot com then the second command is true:

Second command says RewriteRule ^$ http://www.redirectedURL.com [R=301,L]

, i.e if the previous command is true then redirect the traffic to http://www.redirectedURL.com. Please note that you can be specific about this, you can even point it to specific page eg: http://www.redirectedURL.com/specific_page.html etc.

Conclusion

I hope you won’t be in this situation, but if you do then remember that there is a solution for it. At least temporary one.

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Adobe Photoshop goes online

by Ades on March 28, 2008 in Adobe with 14 Comments

A year ago Adobe announced that it will be taking its popular photo editing software Adobe Photoshop online. Now it is a reality. Adobe Photoshop Express is an online version of Adobe Photoshop (screenshot below). It’s still in Beta. It runs on flash technology and requires your browser to have Flash Player 9.

To use this service, you need to register an account on the site. It’s a free service for now, I am not sure if they will be charging in the future.

While it’s said that it’s the online version of Photoshop, it does not have that many features. So it’s more like a basic online photo editing tool. But I am sure Adobe will be introducing a lot more features in the future.

via hongkiat.com

UserInterfaceIcons.com is sold!

by Ades on March 28, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Personal with 21 Comments

I have sold (or as entrepreneurs say “let go”) one of my projects UserInterfaceIcons.com. It was a four month old site that was launched November last year. It was listed on SitePoint and within 10 minutes of listing was bought through BIN (Buy It Now) feature for $5,900.

Initially I had invested about $550 for the development of the icons and hosting + domain name. So it’s about 10 fold return, which I think is quite good.

Be Careful To Whom You Sell Your Sites

Now the regret part. I had explicitly asked what the new owner will do with the site, what his plans were, and how he would be using the site. Because I didn’t want the site to go to someone who would abuse it and use it for illegal things. His response was, he would be using it for the same reason (providing free icons) and develop it further.

He didn’t use it for illegal things, but he is now pushing Adware (Zango Toolbar) product when the user wants to download the icons. Clearly this is what I didn’t want the site to be used for! But deal is deal and the site has been sold. I can’t really do anything about it now.

I have told him to remove my personal info from the site asap. Because I do not want to be associated with pushing adware products. If you have time, please send him a message to stop using my name on the site. (Thanks in advance).

I am sure he would want to have my name there as long as possible, because it will be more believable to the users. As a result he would push more downloads and make more money. But I won’t allow that, if he fails to remove it, I will be taking legal action against him.

Lesson: Make a proper background check of the buyer before you sell your sites! I had checked, but obviously I didn’t check enough.

Gmail Productivity

by Ades on March 27, 2008 in Gmail with 8 Comments

I have been using Gmail with “shortcuts on” mode for some time, and I should say it’s great. It saved me a lot of time. It’s especially useful when I use my notebook, because I don’t have to use the touchpad for navigation. Touchpad can be a really pain sometimes.

One of the challenges when you start using Gmail with shortcuts is to remember which keys does what. It’s quite a hassle to check the shortcuts page for info. And I think it’s one of the reasons why people feel lazy to enable shortcuts, because they do not want to keep going back and forth learning shortcuts.

But luckily Gmail has a better solution for it, that some of you might not know. After you have enabled shortcuts, pressing Shift + ? will bring up a semi-transparent layered window with all the shortcuts their functions. Below is the screenshot of this window while Gmail is in Compose mode. This works anywhere in Gmail, as long as you are logged in.

So are you ready to be more productive while working with your Gmail? Ready to go shortcuts?

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Online Business Risks 101

by Ades on March 26, 2008 in Articles, Guest Posts with 9 Comments

Author info: This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, the author of The Online Business Handbook.

So you want to be successful as an online entrepreneur, but how committed to reaching your goals are you? A lot of people brag about their goals and the confidence they have in themselves, yet are not willing to take any kind of risks. Is that attitude going to get them anywhere?

Of course not, and the reasons are more than obvious. Take any successful person, analyze his or her life story and you will notice that each and every one of them have been in a position where taking risks was in order and guess what, that’s exactly what they did.

Competition is fierce nowadays and you can never get on top if you play it too safe. If you are serious about maximizing results then taking risks is definitely a must. I’m not referring to foolish risks and I’m clearly not expecting you to put everything on the line when the chances of things working out in your favor are slim to none. Taking calculated risks is the name of the game.

In the end, it’s all about risk vs. reward. Let’s take an example and assume that you have a $10k advertising budget and are running a PayPerClick campaign where, for every $100 you invest, you receive $120 in sales. Assuming that a close online contact who has promoted a similar product tells you about an advertising opportunity (an ad spot on a website which costs $1000 per month) thanks to which he has experienced better conversions ($200 worth of sales for every $100 invested), what would you do?

Conservative entrepreneurs would most likely stay away, since they have no past experience as far as advertising on that website is concerned, even if the person who has shared the information is trustworthy. A wise one, however, would analyze the risk vs. reward ratio, and here’s how things stand:

With his current PayPerClick campaign, he is earning $20 worth of profits for every $100 invested, while he could be earning 5 times more in terms of profits if the advertising opportunity mentioned by the close online contact works out (being a wise entrepreneur also means that you accept the fact that things might not work out as planned). The $1k represents 10% of his advertising budget, and, based on his information, he could be earning 5 times more in terms of profits. Definitely a risk vs. reward ratio worth taking advantage of because he wouldn’t be putting his entire budget at risk, while the conversions the online contact has experienced are definitely tempting.

A foolish risk, for example, would have been investing over 50% of his budget based on some information he has read online, from a source which can’t really be trusted. But in this case, the risk vs. reward ratio was good enough in order to justify a calculated risk on his or her part.

As an online entrepreneur, you will be confronted with all sorts of similar scenarios and, while foolishly putting everything on the line is out of the questions, taking calculated risks is a must if you are serious about maximizing results.

Best wishes,
Alan Johnson

Repair the Notebook or get a warranty?

by Ades on March 26, 2008 in Personal with 14 Comments

My notebook is 1.8 years old, which means its warranty had long expired. It’s a Dell Inspiron Notebook. I should say it worked quite well for me. But since it’s getting old, things like keyboard buttons and battery life started to deteriorate. One keyboard button (D) came out, after my 2 year old son plucked it out. I had fixed it DIY style myself, but it has lost its soft touch since ;)

Another thing is the battery life. It barely lasts 45 minutes now. Also every time I start my notebook, it suggests me to get a new battery from Dell Center (smart huh?).

Lastly, my DVD drive is not opening and closing properly. It gets stuck half way when you are opening it.

The question arises, should I extend my Dell warranty so that I can get these things fixed (and maybe other things in the future as well) or should i just hire other laptop repair services to get them fixed? Dell warranty varies depending on your notebook model and age. I am guessing it will be about $100 a year. What do you suggest?

Yahoo Site Explorer, Crawl Rate Plugin, and SEOMeter’s tool

by Ades on March 25, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Search Engines, SEO & Promotion with 16 Comments

Do you use YahooSiteExplorer? If you don’t, you might be missing a lot. Because since I started using it (submitted my blog), Yahoo’s search bot started crawling more pages of my blog at a more frequent rate. As you can see to the right, Yahoo bot (green) crawls a lot more pages than Google and MSN bots.

This crawl rate graph was generated by this plugin.

What is Yahoo Site Explorer?

It is a tool that lets you access the information Yahoo has about a site’s online presence. You can see which sites and subpages are indexed by Yahoo Search, track sites that link into webpage, and view the most popular pages of your site (or any site for that matter).

With Yahoo Site Explorer, now everybody can submit their sites to Yahoo Search Engine for inclusion for free. Remember, before you had to pay to Yahoo if you wanted to include your site faster?

If you submit your site to Site Explorer and authenticate it, you will be able to tell Yahoo which pages to ignore and drop from the search index. This tool also allows you to enter your RSS url, it will automatically track the changes of your blog. (screenshot of Site Explorer below).

How to calculate Crawl Rate

SEOMeter.com has a great tool to calculate your site’s crawl rate. If your blog or site is already popular, SEOMeter might already have some stats for your site. But if it doesn’t, then you will have to add your site first. It took me about 2 weeks to get AdesBlog tracked by SEOMeter.

I am a father of two now

by Ades on March 25, 2008 in Personal with 23 Comments

If you follow me on twitter, you might already know that yesterday my wife gave birth to a baby boy. He was born afternoon around 2.00pm. He weighs 3.47kg and I think looks like his daddy ;) Both my wife and son are in good health and condition (if not little exhausted). I myself feel little tired too. I was present in the delivery room at the time of the delivery. I haven’t been able to get a good 7 hour sleep for the past 2-3 days. But, Alhamdulillah everything is behind now and most importantly my wife delivered safely. And I am grateful to God for that.

Now you know why this blog was not updated for the past few days… :)

Free $80.00 Amazon Gift Certificate

by Ades on March 21, 2008 in Contests with 50 Comments

NOTE: This contest has ended

I think it’s about time I organize some contest. How about $80.00 Free Amazon Gift Card? I am sure all of you like to read and would be glad to have extra 80 bucks to buy some of your favorite books in your Amazon wishlist.

I believe most of the books in Amazon are prices below $80.00, so it should be more than enough to buy a book. First, I wanted to give $50.00 only, then I thought it will be too small, since many books are priced 50+ and 60+.

Contest Rules

The rule is simple (as usual). There is only one rule, and that is to subscribe to my RSS.

But this time, I want to make minor change to the contest rules. To make it fair to all the contestants, I want to see a proof of your subscription. This would eliminate the chance of the gift going to someone who didn’t subscribe but merely claimed that he subscribed and provided his contact details. You can say it’s a captcha for bogus subscribers. Is that okay?

How to enter this contest?

Subscribe to my RSS
Send email to with:
- screenshot of your subscription (as attachment)
- your full name
- and your email where I should send the Amazon Gift Certificate
Include this text “adesamazongift” somewhere in the email. This will allow me to search in gmail for emails that might go into spam folder. It’s better you copy and paste the text, so that you won’t get it wrong while typing.
You are done! Just pray that you will be the winner ;)

If you do not want to send email, you can just comment under this post, providing your full name, email, and link to your RSS Reader screenshot. (You can upload the images to imageshack.us if you want).

Contest Duration

First Draw on 31st March 2008 – Winner: Martin Mathers
Second Draw on 12th April 2008 – Winner: Kelly Guy
Third Draw on 25th May 2008 – Winner: will be announced

Frequently Asked Questions

I am already subscribed to your RSS, do I have to send you my details again?

This is because, last winner of the 1000 Free Entrecard Credit Contest didn’t claim the prize. Probably he subscribed to my earlier contests (free domain name + hosting), and since I automatically inserted those who were already in my previous contests, there were some inconsistencies. Because of the automatic inclusion, some of the people who have already unsubscribed were also included in the contest. So, this is to prevent from such things happening again in the current contest.

Will I be included in the contest if I just say I subscribed, but didn’t send you screenshot?
No. You won’t be included in the contest if your application is not complete. If you just email me or comment under this post, saying “i subscribed, pick me, pick me!”, you won’t be included in the contest.

Therefore, please follow the rules and make sure that you do not miss any of the required steps above.

Can I enter more than once?
There is no point entering more than once.

How you will choose the winner?
Winner will be chosen randomly out of all the participants. Everybody will have an equal chance.

Note: The code on the gift certificate above is not real, so no need to try it ;)

Are you a productive blogger?

by Ades on March 20, 2008 in Articles, Guest Posts with 14 Comments

This guest post was written by Alan Johnson, who suggests 123 Ways to Increase Your Productivity and Manage Time Like the Pros over at TheRatingBlog.com

As a webmaster, making the most out of your time is a must and blogging makes no exception. There is definitely more to running a blog than just publishing content on a regular basis, there will be a lot of things you need to be on top of so that asking yourself the “am I a productive blogger” question every once in a while will prove to be a decision you will not regret.

Is blogging really that demanding in terms of time? Of course not, being a blogger can be as easy as it gets: you can set up a free blog in a matter of minutes and there you have it. But if you want to be a successful blogger, if you want other people, aside from family members and friends to visit your blog, that’s when it gets tricky. You can write brilliant blog posts and it will do you no good if other people don’t know about your resource.

You need to place your blog on the map, you need to let other people know that you’re out there, you need to give it 110% if you are serious about your long-term success as a blogger, and this will require time on your part.

How to promote your blog? The possibilities are endless and the only limit is your own imagination. From PayPerClick and SEO to commenting on other blogs, being a guest blogger or buying ads on similar resource, the sky is the limit as far as blog promotion methods are concerned.

Optimizing your website, planning your PPC/advertising campaigns, commenting on other blogs, being a guest blogger and, most importantly, publishing quality content on a regular basis, it can be overwhelming if you do not manage your time accordingly.

The day only has 24 hours and making the most out of them is the name of the game. And if you add your other projects and your family (the most important responsibility of all) to the equation, it’s quite obvious that handling everything is next to impossible without being productive.

Is being productive all about getting more things done? Of course not, never make that mistake, being productive is all about getting the right things done, it’s all about having the right priorities. Without a clear set of priorities and solid goals, the only thing time management will end up doing for you will be helping you go down the wrong path at a faster pace.

You should always make sure that you are working towards reaching the right goals to begin with. Do you like being a blogger, do you enjoy what you’re doing? Where do you see yourself as a blogger a few years from now? What are your short and long-term goals? Of course, getting more things done is also important, but you shouldn’t even look into this before answering the previously-mentioned questions.

Alright then, have you set the right goals for yourself as a person? What about as a blogger? If that is the case, then yes, it’s time to look into getting more things done as well.

How many hours are you spending online and not doing anything productive? How many of the websites you are following could you do without? What would happen if you were to waste less time online? How could you put that time to better use as a blogger? How often do you post? Do you write your articles in advance? These are just a few of the questions which need to be answered in order to determine how productive you currently are and in order to start working towards improving things.

What about you, what is your status at this point? Are you a productive blogger?

Best wishes,
Alan Johnson

Chance to test WordPress 2.5

by Ades on March 20, 2008 in WordPress with 7 Comments

Now you can download the latest beta-release of WordPress 2.5. I guess v2.5 has passed the beta test successfully, and now they are trying to test it on a wider audience. Now anybody can download it and test it. And if you find any bugs you can report it to the mailing list. So don’t forget to join the mailing list if you test this version.

From what I see (screenshots here) it’s one of the most user friendly releases of all time. Among the team of interface designers are Jeffrey Zeldman, one of the well known CSS gurus of our time.

Plugins for WP v2.5

Of course many plugins are not compatible with version 2.5. But, there are some which are already compatible. My favorite Admin Drop Down Menu is one of them (see below).

New version of Admin Drop Down Menu solves one problem, it creates sub-menus in a vertical manner, instead of the horizontal that it creates now. Problem arises when there is too many sub-menus in a horizontal menu, when this happens it creates two layers of horizontal menu and when you mouse over them it becomes difficult to select the desired sub-menu. But this issue will be gone with the new version.

So will you be testing the new WP 2.5 on your blog? As for me, I don’t think I will test it on AdesBlog. Maybe I will test it out locally.

Guide: Transferring your blog to another host

by Ades on March 18, 2008 in Articles, Blogging Tips with 23 Comments

About two weeks ago I moved my blog to a new hosting provider, from goDaddy. The whole process was a smooth one, except for the small issue that was caused by one particular plugin.

I thought I would document this process, so that some of you who are changing your hosting (or thinking of changing in the future) can refer to it.

Checklist

First things first, you need to have these things done before you start your transfer.

All your backups
Get the latest version of WordPress
Make sure that your blog theme is compatible with the latest version of WP
Get your DNS info of your new hosting. You will use it to point your domain name to the new hosting.

What to backup?

Your Database: it can be done by this plugin or phpMyAdmin, which is usually provided by your webhosting.
Your blog files: Make sure that you backup all your blog files. Especially;
- /images folder: without it your blog won’t have any images, so don’t forget to backup this folder. Especially if you are uploading images to somewhere outside your blog theme folder. (outside /wp-content/themes/)
- Your blog settings: Permalink structure, Writing, Reading, Discussion Options etc.
- Plugins and their settings: backing up your plugins is not enough. Don’t forget to backup their settings too. This can be done by opening plugins’ settings page and choosing from your browser “Save Page As”. This way, the page will retain its settings in the fields, and you can easily cut and paste them to the new blog.

Transfer Process

By now, you should have everything you need for the transfer to take place. The actual process should be over by 30 minutes or so. (But be prepared for any unforeseen issues, especially if you are using many plugins. Also your DNS might take longer than usual to propogate).

As for the database file, you need to have the latest backup file. This way, you won’t lose the last comments that your readers made. Your objective is to have “zero” loss of info. So, before you start the transfer, backup your database for the last time, and use that file.

Upload all your files: Start uploading all your blog files to the new server. Including your theme, plugins and ‘images’ folder.
Create an index.html page and upload it to the root folder: The page extension should be .html. You already have index.php, which is a WordPress file. index.html will act as the temporary index page while you are installing and transferring your hosting. Write something explanatory in your index.html page. Something like “Upgrade in progress, we will be back in 30 minutes“.
Change your domain name’s DNS to the new IP address: This is done from your domain name management account. eg: goDady, NetworkSolutions..etc
Wait for your DNS to propagate: This could take from 20 minutes to few hours. Once you see your index.html when you type your domain name, you should start the installation process. The reason why we wait for DNS to propagate is because we want your URL to be in the blog settings. Otherwise your temporary URL would be inserted into your mySQL and you have to change it manually from your DBMS (DB Management System).
Install the blog: it should take you few minutes to install wordpress on your new hosting.
Update your blog’s database with your database backup file: This is the file that you backed up with the WP Plugin or phpMyAdmin. This will insert all your posts, comments, some of your plugins’ data to the new hosting. Warning: Avoid inserting all contents of the backup file. Because in it, there are settings that are specific to your previous hosting. Obviously, using it on other hosts will cause your blog to function properly.
Therefore it’s better to insert the data one at a time. I inserted posts first, followed by comments, and some plugin data. I also found that some plugins like Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam Image Plugin generated too much duplicate data in the database. The amount of data this particular plugin generated was too huge. It kept inserting the same captcha word (eg. adesblog) over and over again into the database. So, next time you should be careful using plugins with known issues.
Enable the theme and plugins: You should test your plugins locally beforehand. But if you haven’t, then try activating them one at a time. This way, if there is any error, you know which plugin is causing error.

That’s it. This is the whole process that I have taken. It worked very well for me and I was done with the transfer under 30 minutes.

But DNS propagation was going forth and back for about 24 hours. Since I had two blogs running simultaneously on two locations, users who saw different versions still saw a functioning blog. So that is another thing to consider. Do not delete your old blog right away. Give it some time, until your DNS reflects the new hosting fully.

Note: This might not be the best way to tranfer a blog to a new hosting. Therefore, it should not be taken as the only guide that you use for your transfer. Make sure you check other resources too. It just worked for me and I am sharing it with a goodwill, that hopefully it will benefit someone. Please let me know if there is a better way to do some or all of the steps that I have taken. (Ades)