A discussion of earning with the Best Affiliate Programs, SEO,
Wordpress Blogging and General Motivational Ideas for Internet Publishers and Affiliate Marketers.
Wordpress has issued an urgent security release of WordPress 2.3.3 in response to a bug that impacts blogs that have registration enabled. From the Wordpress site…
WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.
Also, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited right now. If you are using this plugin, please remove it until an update is available from its author.
Since we are talking security, remember to use strong passwords and change them regularly. While you’re updating WP and your plugins, consider refreshing your passwords.
Make sure to update your Wordpress install if you haven’t already done so.
The nice folks over at DailyBlogTips recently sponsored a group writing contest for bloggers and the theme was “Blogging Goals for 2008″ (link here). Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy with family over the holidays and didn’t notice this contest until it was already too late to submit but after reading through the comments I found several of the entrants articles to be very inspiring and interesting.
Well, the winners were announced on December 26th and here’s the winning entries.
I personally found Robert Hruzek’s post at Middle Zone Musings the most compelling of all because quite honestly, I agree with his philosophy about setting blogging goals and knowing my propensity for never realizing goals I set for myself, I feel, why bother ?
Wordpress is the most popular blogging software for domain based blogs. While Blogger and Blogspot still encompass the vast majority of blogs on the internet, both of the afformentioned free services are too cluttered with spammy blogs and blogs that have no direction or meaning. In fact, if you’d read my previous post about blocking Blogspot and Blogger url’s in your Wordpress installs comment blacklist you can rest assured that one of the most important facets of maintaining a truly professionaly blog is to spend the few dollars per month to have a domain hosted blog on the Wordpress platform.
POne of the greatest things about Wordpress is the availability of numerous Wordpress Plugins and hacks developed by third party programmers which makes Wordpress as essential to the intrinsic development of the internet as much as the Linux operating system has contributed to this wonderful world known as the internet. The best part about Wordpress is the widedspread availability of plugins to entend the basic softwares functionality and the fact that they’re all free and open source which means anybody with a basic level of PHP programming skills can alter, edit, modify and enhance not only the basic Wordpress software, but the plugins as well. Truly extensible software is a staple of the professional “open source” development community ever since the publication of legendary Eric S Raymond work, The Cathedral and the Bazzar.
Enough said on “open source” and the strength of Wordpress blogging platform, so without further ado, on to the title of this post…
Wordpress Plugins and Where to Find Them
#1 - The Wordpress Plugin Directory (http://dev.wp-plugins.org/) - This is the official Wordpress Plugin Repository and the goal is to provide a rich environment for developers to create and share their work on WordPress-related plugin development.
#2 - Alex King’s Wordpress Plugins (http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress) - Some of the finest Wordpress Plugins you’ll ever find on the internet. I’ve been using several of Alex’s plugins since my first forray into Wordpress blogging.
Many novice bloggers tend to scour the internet and other blogs looking for blog directories and placing the directories chicklet (the small banner images you see cluttering up many blogs) on somewhere on their sites. If you know anything about SEO and marketing your blog, you’ll know that placing a blog directories link on your site sends that directory “link juice” or an “authority vote” from your blog. What most bloggers are unaware of is that if you place that innocent looking little image on your sidebar or on your blogs footer, you could be sending that directory hundreds of valuable backlinks. If you’re getting nothing in return, why bother doing something such as tossing your valuable linking power away to somebody who doesn’t care if your blog exists? The point is that if you’re going to even bother signing up for a blog directory and place their link on your site, you deserve something in return. If you think you’re going to get traffic from a blog directory, guess again. The only people frequesting blog directories, for the most part, are other bloggers looking for the signup link to add their site. that being said, it is highly unlikely that you will ever receive any traffic from these blog directories except maybe a few hits if they have a “newest sites” list and the owners and operators of the directory themselves visit your site to see what you’ve added to their directory.
Over the last 6 months, I’ve been experimenting with over 30 of the most popular blog directories and rating services, and I’ve complied a list of blog directories that you should definitely avoid. It’s your decision in the end to put a blog directories link or chicklet on your blog and clutter it up, but in my opinion, the sites listed below are not worth your time, effort and valuable linking power. I’ve listed the sites and the reasons why they are on this blacklist.
Useless Blog Directories
blogadr.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses Popup link, cluttered with Adsense
blogburst.com - Absolutely usless spammy service
blogdigger.com - Plain junk, search engine doesn’t even work.
blogflux.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
bloggernity.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
blogrankers.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
blogroll.net - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
blogskinny.com - Never, ever submit here, they will spam you to death
blogtoplist.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
fuelmyblog.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
topblogarea.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
topblogging.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
top-blogs.com - No traffic, no juice, Uses jump link to link out
These Blog directories all flow “link juice” and are organized and not cluttered with junk ads in the viewing area. Don’t waste your time submitting to the blogs listed above and certainly don’t pass your valuable linking power to them. The blog directories below are your best bet for promoting your blog and for passing linking power (because they pass it back).
Wordpress is the most popular blogging software for domain based blogs. While Blogger and Blogspot still encompass the vast majority of blogs on the internet, both of the afformentioned free services are too cluttered with spammy blogs and blogs that have no direction or meaning. In fact, if you’d read my previous post about blocking Blogspot and Blogger url’s in your 
