DreamHost stats broken after installing WordPress

If you use DreamHost for your hosting then you may not be able to access your regular web stats after installing WordPress.  There is an easy fix available.

If you have access to the shell then add the following lines to your .htaccess file in the root of your domain (without shell access, you’d need to download the file, edit it and re-upload it via FTP).  These lines should be inserted before the lines added by WordPress:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(stats|failed_auth\.html).*$ [NC]
RewriteRule . - [L]
</IfModule>

So, the beginning of your .htaccess file should look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(stats|failed_auth\.html).*$ [NC]
RewriteRule . - [L]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
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More on Blog Traffic Growth

Another small update on the traffic growth of the three blogs I have been tracking, now that the November stats are in. You’ll see previous posts here and here.

The first blog, a current affairs blog.  May seem to be a little bit of an aberration in relation to the natural traffic growth pattern of this blog. I believe the blog was linked to from an inner page of the BBC’s site during that month and therefore received a spike in traffic that may explain the drop and ensuing resumption of approximately steady growth over the next months.

current-affairs-stats

The second of the three blogs we are following is a health related blog. Astonishingly, there seems to be a spike in the May traffic for this blog too, but I do not recall any corresponding stimulus for this jump. It could be a general increase in health related searching surrounding the swine flu pandemic.

health-blog-stats

finally, and perhaps most interestingly, is the expat/living abroad related blog. Its traffic pattern shows a slightly skewed curve centered around September – is this the peak travel month between the two principal countries mentioned on the blog?

expat-blog-stats

I hope this small series of posts offers some insight in to natural blog traffic growth rates. I’ll continue to post updates on this small project at approximately 2-3 month intervals.

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New sites and traffic growth

With May now neatly parcelled up and shelved away in the cupboard of history, I can add to my previous post about new sites and traffic growth.

First, the blogs.  I started three new blogs about 6 months ago.  I have performed only minimal promotional work on all of them, so the increases in traffic are largely organic.

Blog one is a current affairs and news blog.  In May, it received about 2300 unique visitors and the traffic growth since WordPress was installed is shown in the graph below:

News blog traffic

Blog two is a health related blog and it too has enjoyed substantial growth over the last few months. In May, it welcomed 850 unique viewers and the traffic growth is indicated in the graph below:

Health Blog

The third blog is about living overseas and likewise has continued to show good gains in traffic over the same period, show below.  In May, this blog received 1800 unique visitors. This blog has attracted a small community of regular readers and commenters. I replied to commenters on a largely quid pro quo basis. This reciprocal commenting comprises the extent of this blog’s promotional work, and has brought in additional traffic.

Expat Blog

Inarguably, the key to the blogs’ traffic growth has been a strict regimen of daily posting of original material.  Although most bloggers will see this as a given, I am interested to see how long such linear traffic growth can be sustained on the basis of content only. Early indications are that June’s traffic should uphold the linear trend with an increase of between 5% to 15% on these blogs.

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Linear traffic growth

When I bring up a new site, I now aim for month-on-month traffic growth over at least a six month period. Initially, I thought this might be an unrealistic aim, but I am finding that it is possible.

I started two forums 3 months ago and at this stage, they are seeing month-on-month traffic growth just through SE traffic.  I have yet to start promoting these forums in earnest.  This is very promising. One saw a 400% traffic growth from the first to second month, but traffic will probably only grow by 30% for the month of April. The other saw similar increases. Typically, there will be greater traffic increases over the first few months of a site’s life.

Likewise, I started 2 blogs 6 months ago.  The first saw monthly traffic increases for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th months respectively: 100%, 0%, 250%, 100%, 30%. During the third month, I made no posts to the blog which accounts for the inactivity during this month.  The second blog performed even better with 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th month traffic growth of: 0%, 30%, 200%, 50%, 20%.

Although the traffic growth is a little jumpy, it is nonetheless positive growth. In the past, I have noticed that traffic seems to plateau, or at least growth at an far lesser rate, after 6 to 9 months of growth. This has made me more determined to look for ways to seek sustained linear growth in the region of 20% month-on-month for these new sites and I will report back to the blog at intervals with progress on how this is going.

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Google PageRank Update

It looks as though the eagerly awaited (at least by some!) Google event has set the webmaster forums adance, namely the Google PageRank export. Yesterday, I noticed an apparent change in the exported PR of one of my blogs. As it is relatively new (coupled with the fact that I have yet to start promoting it in earnest), I did not expect to see any change. However, it jumped from ‘unknown’ to PR2 yesterday. Upon checking other of my better established sites, it did confirm that something major was occurring.

It appears Google have again settled in to a rhythm of exporting visible PR data on a near quarterly basis, so we should be in for the next in early July.

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WordPress article directories

WordPress seems to be put to all sorts of creative uses these days.  One of the most recent developments to which it seems to be intrinsically well suited is to use it as the engine for an article directory.

As an internet/bum marketer this is especially good news as links within blogs (at least at the moment) are regarded as good links by Google.

Here is a list of WordPress article directories that can be used for article marketing.  Please read the submission guidelines before submitting.

If you have others to add to this list, then feel free to add them in the comments section below.

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How to turn 100K email addresses in to $30K

I’m not one to condone any form of illegal activity, but recently I was browsing an internet forum where individuals were talking about the sale of large lists of active email addresses. Why, I wondered, would anyone want such a list? Perhaps to send out unsolicited advertising of a product? To send out other unsolicited scam-like messages? Most likely they are up to no good.

Then I remembered a story I‘d read as a student about making money from stock market predictions – perhaps this is what our friends on the forum were considering?

Suppose we start out with 96 000 active email addresses (it could be any other large number, but for the sake of illustration here, 96 000 is conveniently divisible by 2). We send out a message to half of them saying “Glaxo stock will rise this week, don‘t miss out!”, and to the other half, “Glaxo stock will fall this week”.

To half our prediction will be correct, and we discard the half who got the wrong prediction. The following week, we send out the same message to half of our remaining 48 000.

Again, to half of them we will make a correct prediction, and those to whom our second prediction was incorrect, we discard.

The next week we repeat this, sending out predictions to the remaining 24 000 in a 50:50 ratio and so on.

Repeat until we’ve sent out 5 sets of email and are left with the email addresses of 3 000 individuals who’ve received an astounding 5 correct predictions from us.

The following week, send the 50:50 split of predictions and inform them that in order to continue to receive these and other amazing predictions they must subscribe to your newsletter at an annual rate of $19.99.

As I mentioned above, I neither recommend nor condone this and I am sure there is a law against it (if there isn’t there should be!)

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DoFollow Forums and Blog Feeds

Forums that have the dofollow attribute set have always been a target for link builders.  This practice is often frowned upon by forum owners as far too many individuals who attempt promotion in this way go about it like a bull in a china shop.  They will sign up, load their signature with links then spray around a half dozen worthless posts (“I like it here, great forums!” or “Me is liking your postings very much” etc.) in the space of 5 minutes, never again to return to the forum to learn they have been banned before the ink dried on their posts and their efforts were a complete and utter waste of everyone’s time.  Many times these attempts will be scripted/automated which, for the forum admins, often makes them more obvious to spot and kill.

Often forum admins are on the lookout for sign link spammers and deal with them mercilessly.  However, they might not be so keenly aware of the blog feed feature that many forums offer.

Searching Google for the phrase:

[your_niche] "Recent blog:" inurl:showthread

and replace [your_niche] with the niche you are looking to promote within.  So if you are promoting a cellphone based blog you’d use:

cellphone "Recent blog:" inurl:showthread

and get a selection of vBulletin forums that allow RSS feeds in posts.

However, many of these forums might have the rel=”nofollow” attribute set.  If you are looking for link weight from your promotional efforts (as opposed to a trickle of traffic) then you will need to locate forums that are “dofollow”.

The DoFollow Forums Search Engine allows you to search within a data set of dofollow forums and significantly eases the hunt for dofollow links in the context of forums.  Simply enter your niche coupled with “Recent blog:” in the search field and you should get back a list of forums that are dofollow and allow you to pull in your most recent blog posts via RSS feeds.

As with all forum based promotion, refrain from practices that might get you labelled a spammer (and your account deleted.)  Participate in the forum before including your links.  Make a few original, valuable posts, even as many as 15 or 20 before including your links in either your signature or RSS feed.  It can make a lot of difference in the long run as to whether you pick up a broad selection of good inbound links from forums, or just waste your time as the forum admins catch up with you.

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WP-Hashcash Plugin

Although the powerful Akismet plug-in quells about 99% of the spam received on this blog, I have taken the step of experimenting with another plug-in, namely WP-Hashcash.  This plug-in operates in an extirely different way, employing client-side javascript to determine whether the page was opened in a browser.  This will block all spam bot submissions, but leave genuine comments untouched.

It is feasible to replace Akismet with WP-Hascash.  However, the way in which Hashcash works permits the two to work together.  With the initial checks performed by Hashcash;  if Hashcash suspects a bot sourced submission then place it in the Akismet queue for its perusal.

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Finding Comment Luv Blogs

Most blog owners understand the hazards of comment spam.  Much comment spam is automated and therefore allowing comments without moderation is not a feasible option.  The excellent Akismet plug-in for WordPress takes care of much automated spam.

Many blog owners may wish to offer their commenters a reward for ongoing participation and commenting.  One such method is to use the Comment Luv plug-in. This plug in allows blog owners to offer a free no-follow link to commenters by pulling in the latest post from the commenters RSS feed and appending a link to it to the comment.  Of course, moderation is still advised.

From a blog promoters perspective, it affords the opportunity to be specific about the type of blogs one comments on.  Obviously, commenting on Comment Luv enabled blogs will furnish more links with non-zero link juice.  So, how do we go about finding blogs that use the Comment Luv plug in?

Newer versions of the plug in prepend images to the “Enable CommentLuv” check box, making the hunt for CommentLuv enabled blogs a shade more involved.  There are many with the older version of the plug in installed in which case Google reveals these easily.   Simply enter the following string in to the Google search box:

“Enable CommentLuv which will try and get your last blog post, please be patient while it finds it for you” [your keyword]

replacing [your keyword] with a keyword (or phrase) relevant to your niche.  So if you are looking for blogs about English cricket you might enter the following in to Google:

“Enable CommentLuv which will try and get your last blog post, please be patient while it finds it for you” English cricket

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