Disqus - Latest Comments for Tricia

Re: Technorati Link Exchange

Tricia — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 22:51:10 -0000

Thanks for the link! I faved you too.

Re: Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins – Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

Tricia — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:34:57 -0000

I just created a blogroll for any bloggers who are part of the Do Follow movement.

Any bloggers interested in being added to the list who use a do follow plugin or who have manually removed the "no follow" tags from the comment section of their site are welcome to join.

All they have to do is be "Do follower's", and be willing to add the blogroll to their sidebar or a page on their site that can be found easily from their front page. Visiting other members is of course encouraged.

Andy I'd love it if you'd let your readers know about this new blogroll.

Thanks!

Re: Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins – Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

Tricia — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:34:57 -0000

Re: Get The Most From DoFollow | No Nofollow

Tricia — Thu, 03 May 2007 02:07:11 -0000

Andy I was visiting your site, read this and went off to visit BUMPzee. I hadn't been there for a while and I think you've just discovered that I added a couple more of my sites to the Do Follow community. I also wrote an article about Bumpzee on my site WebStyle. I think it's a fantastic social network with a lot of potential. Linkage being one huge bonus!

Also, on one of your Do Follow posts I mentioned that I'd started a Do Follow Blogroll. You didn't think that was the best idea, but in just two weeks the list has about 110 sites on it (I have more to add!) and many of the people on the list are visiting the sites and leaving useful valid comments. I love it. it's working very well. It's working the way I hoped it would.

Re: Get The Most From DoFollow | No Nofollow

Tricia — Thu, 03 May 2007 02:07:11 -0000

Re: Exclusive – Pay Per Post Direct Changes The Paid Review Landscape

Tricia — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:08:55 -0000

Excellent review Andy. They should pay you for it. :) They have at least given you some love on the Payperpost blog.

One correction - for regular PPP opportunities bloggers now have 6 hours to reserve and write up a post, not four as you stated above.

I haven't heard yet how long we'll have to write a PPP direct review. I do know that the advertiser has four days to approve the review and if they don't approve it in that time it will automatically be reviewed. If they find something that they'd like changed in the review once it's done they supposedly can use the exchange dialog box to talk with the blogger and hash out the details or changes needed. Once a post is officially approved the blogger will be paid immediately. No waiting two weeks or 30 days. Immediate payment!

Re: Exclusive – Pay Per Post Direct Changes The Paid Review Landscape

Tricia — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:08:55 -0000

Re: Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins – Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

Tricia — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:34:25 -0000

I've been using the regular do follow plugin but I think I'm going to switch right now to the Linky love plugin as I've been seeing more abuse of do follow blogs in the last few weeks.

Also, someone just created a Google search engine that lists all the do follow blogs that this "person" has found. He says he created is so people could find relevant niche blogs to post on but I don't like it.

Since I'm having major CPU resource overuse issues on my server (know of a good webhost??) I'll have to check out these plugins to make sure they don't use a lot of resources but I'm going to switch. I'm tired of my husband and I's 9 blogs being abused.

Re: Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins – Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

Tricia — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:34:25 -0000

Re: Lunar Pages – The Worst Mistake A Webhost Can Make…

Tricia — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:10:06 -0000

Hey Andy. First of all thank you for highlighting my hosting story.

I must begin by saying that if Lunarpages hadn't pulled what I've come to think of as a "fast one" by charging me for two years worth of VPS when I wanted a monthly account I might still be with them. They refunded, but did not apologize.

I will need a VPS or a Dedicated hosting account in the near future.

If others are looking to switch web hosts I wouldn't go with Lunarpages - not because of my story (they were fine up until I had troubles), but because they only provide phone support from 8 am until 8 pm Monday to Friday. If something goes wrong with your sites you want 24/7 support, preferably with a web host that offers 24/7 phone support.It makes a difference.

My problem is similar to Paul's, but different at the same time. Lunarpages wouldn't tell me what time my problems started on the days that they noticed a high CPU resource usage. I would also think that by looking at their logs that they could at least have told me what domain my problems occurred on if other hosting companies can pinpoint a time.

I have 10 domains. 15 Wordpress installations, 16 blogs, one very large HTML based website (it's been around since 1995 so it's busy), and one website that's run using the Joomla CMS.

When a web host tells you that your account has used too much CPU resources and can't tell you what caused the problem other than it was a script on one of your sites, and you have as many sites and two types of scripted website platforms (Joomla and Wordpress) to go through as I do it's pretty near impossible to pinpoint what is causing the problem.

Almost everything that I use on my sites was up to date, but I did go through my sites and spent time updating any plugins that had been updated, removed plugins that I thought might call the database too often (a post view counter plugin and post rating plugin were removed. If anything was causing a problem I suspect it could have been these plugins, but I removed them June 26th - hours after getting my first notice of CPU problems), and I basically only left the plugins or add ons that I thought were essential to the running of my sites.

Lunarpages kept coming back telling me that my sites were using too much CPU resources after I'd done all of the above. I even went through all my directories looking for any files that seemed too large or ones that I didn't recognize in case there were files that I hadn't put there. I didn't find anything out of order.

At this point I'm not sure that I had a problem with any of my plugins, modules or components. It might simply have been a traffic problem or spam attack.

I think it's also interesting to note that I heard from Lunarpages approximately four times in the first two weeks beginning June 26th. Each time they reported my CPU resource overuse. I then went a period of almost two weeks without hearing from them. By this time I'd deleted plugins and upgraded anything that had needed upgrading. I wrote to them asking if my problems were resolved since I hadn't been hearing from them and they wrote back to tell me that I still had CPU resource issues. Three days later they suspended my account.

Whether that means anything exactly I don't know, but if this issue was happening daily wouldn't they have been reporting the issue to me daily?

The day my account was suspended they shut me down at 11:35 am. I was not home at the time so I know I wasn't doing anything to my sites - deleting spam for example - when it occurred. The issue that finally shut me down must have been due to traffic or calls to the database. All they would tell me was that the resource usage when up so high that it almost crashed the non production server that my account was on.

In the month of July my sites in total got 1.2 million page views (that's with all my sites down for almost four days, and several time outs throughout the month of July). The majority of those page views were on the seven blogs that I have on my feverishthoughts.com domain (over 800,000 page views) with Tricia's Musings, As the Garden Grows and Odd planet being the most popular sites.

Since Lunarpages was unable or unwilling to tell me what times my CPU resources went up, or on which domain, it was very difficult to pinpoint what the trouble was.

If they'd been able to tell me that it was the feverishthoughts.com domain I would have first suspected high traffic as the cause. If they'd said it was on my Joomla run domain I would have suspected a faulty script.

I didn't go around yelling Lunarpages sucks. I appreciate that in the beginning they moved my account to another server - a slower non production server that slowed my sites and that was perhaps less able to handle my traffic - so that I'd have some time to figure out the source of my problem.

Their handling of my issues beginning on July 21st when my account was suspended and their subsequent moving of my account to VPS after I'd told them NO when they mentioned the $75 hour service charge and then going ahead, doing it anyway, creating a two year VPS account when I'd only originally agreed to a monthly account and then charging me $642 - well yeah ... that makes them suck. LOL That's just plain wrong.

Each time I wrote to support it took anywhere from 8 to 24 hours for a reply. The majority of my issue with them happened on the weekend when they do not offer phone support and I suspect have fewer staff working.

I felt like I was writing the same questions, requests and or instructions over and over again in my dealings with support. They weren't listening.

I don't think that I'm that hard to understand. Am I? ;) No means no, yes means yes, send me more info means send me more info. Right?

Anyway, as I said I do think that in the near future I will have to move to VPS or dedicated hosting because my traffic is increasing substantially each month. 6 of my domains are newish and I haven't done much to promote them, once they begin to get busy I'm sure I'll need to upgrade.

I am interested in hearing what companies others are dealing with, and like Andy I'd prefer to be able to use C-panel as that's what I'm used to although I can learn a new system if I need to.

I went with Hostgator and have been with them since July 23 or 24. Not long enough to fully assess their service. I will say that I do appreciate that they have a support ticket system, live chat and telephone support - all 24/7. I'm on shared hosting right now but they also offer what they call semi dedicated (which I think must be like VPS) and Dedicated servers so I can move up if I have a problem or if my sites get too busy.

Andy, do you mind if I ask how many page views you get on this site each day or month?

BTW for the last month or so - perhaps since Lunarpages moved me to the non production server some of my blogs that are in directories of feverishthoughts.com now contain the primary domain in the url if you click on the "home" button on those sites. ie you can go to Odd Planet by visiting http://feverishthoughts.com/oddplanet/ and the site looks fine. You can travel through the site by clicking on post titles or the previous posts link at the bottom of the page but click on the "oddplanet" symbol in the upper left corner and it takes you to feverishthoughts.thewebfiles.com and then you are stuck traveling through the site with the thwebfiles domain in the address. Oh yes, take the end / off the first Odd Planet address and you get the url with thewebfiles.com in it right from the beginning. Help??? (I'll make a post about this on my site so if anyone has suggestions I'd really appreciate it)

Any ideas what would cause this problem? Could it be something in my database configuration for those sites? Could it be a plugin that I'm using that's doing it? I've looked and looked and can't find the source of the problem and hostgator was no help when they checked my sites - they actually messed up my htaccess files, which do not have redirects in them that would cause this problem. I'm at a loss. BTW the problem continues at hostgator because they did a full c-panel backup of my account so whatever issues were in my lunarpages set up are now in my hostgator set up.

Re: Lunar Pages – The Worst Mistake A Webhost Can Make…

Tricia — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:10:06 -0000

Re: A Dofollow Plugin I Liken To A Subaru

Tricia — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:21:50 -0000

I only installed this new do follow plugin 24 or so hours ago but I think I've already seen a reduction in human generated comment spam. I've been a do follow blogger for over a year. I became one in order to reward my loyal regular visitors with a backlink to their site. Now with this new plugin I can control who gets a dofollow link a little better than I could with the more commonly used dofollow plugin.

I'm using it on all my blogs and I've set the minimum amount of comments that one must leave at different amounts on each blog depending upon how busy they are or how loyal readership they've developed.

Re: A Dofollow Plugin I Liken To A Subaru

Tricia — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:21:50 -0000

Re: Penalty Confirmed – But I Don't Sell PageRank

Tricia — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:36:06 -0000

Andy a few of my sites took a hit last week too ... and two took a hit about three months ago. As a result two of my PR5 sites are now PR4 and some that had PR4 and PR3 also dropped.

I've been reading a lot of posts about these drops and as I read yours a thought occurred to me. Many of use who do work for PPP are listed on Payperposts "Meet our Bloggers" pages. Either as highlighted blogs on the page or within the rotating header on that page. At least two of my blogs are listed on PPP prominently.

You've got to wonder if that's partly how Google decided who would lose rank.

I've barely done any marketplace ops in the last THREE months. I mostly do PPP direct, Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe posts now and only on a few of my many blogs.

Re: Penalty Confirmed – But I Don't Sell PageRank

Tricia — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:36:06 -0000

Re: Penalty Confirmed – But I Don't Sell PageRank

Tricia — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 04:54:14 -0000

Just wondering why my link was removed here. You know I'm not a spammer. What gives?

Re: Penalty Confirmed – But I Don't Sell PageRank

Tricia — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 04:54:14 -0000

Just wondering why my link was removed here. You know I'm not a spammer. What gives?

Re: Wordless Wednesday

Tricia — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:41:33 -0000

That's an interesting statue. Is it a cat and an ape? Does it represent something specific - like characters from a play?

Re: Welcome to InvestingAdventures.com!

Tricia — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 07:07:28 -0000

Strange. I'm looking at your old comments and they are all numbered with internal links rather than links to other peoples sites. Just checking by adding this comment ...

Re: Interesting

Tricia — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:01:05 -0000

I hadn't heard anything about this at all. Thanks for the story. I think they made some pretty good choices. Some of the ones up for voting were strange ... statues and structures? hmmm not sure they qualify as wonders no matter how well known they are.

Re: Yippee! I am in the Technorati Top 100

Tricia — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:26:28 -0000

Thanks for adding me to your favs. I added you as well. If you look at my link I also did a technorati favs link exchange post. Mine also has a favs link chain going on if anyone wants to copy that and add to it that'd be great. :)

Re: Manage Multiple Blogs Private Beta

Tricia — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:25:35 -0000

Wow! Between my husband and I (mostly me) we've got 16 blogs! It would be great to manage them all from one admin panel.

I have a question though. I keep going over my CPU resources and have cut down on the amount of resource heavy wp plugins that I use on our sites. I'll have to move to VPS soon but the longer I can get away without doing it the better. So ... before I install your plugin can you tell me if it makes a lot of calls to the database or if it would make more calls to the database than doing normal admin activities on each blog one at a time the way we've normally been using wp?

Re: If the cat meows

Tricia — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:05:05 -0000

So your cat actually uses a human toilet? You'll have to post a picture of that. It must be smart if you were able to train it to do that. Cat pee and stool STINK! Yuck!

Re: Tragedy Strikes with the First Official JohnCowTV Broadcast

Tricia — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:19:16 -0000

Oh man, that's terrible! I hope that who ever COWnapped the Cow is taking good care of her? (him?) So sad ... You'd never think something like this would happen in Canada of all places! ;)

I'm looking forward to the next episode, hope you catch the COWnapper.

Tricia in T.O.

Tricias last blog post..Seductive rose

Re: I’m back! My exile is over.

Tricia — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:44:49 -0000

Hey Paul I was just reading Andy Beards blog and saw that you had a similar problem to what I went through. Mine started on June 26th with Lunarpages and ended with them suspending my site on July 21st - at least they gave me time to try to find the problem but they were no more helpful that your host was.

They tried to force me to move to VPS - after slow support replies I finally relented and told them they could move my sites to vps on a monthly account as I knew my sites didn't require VPS just yet.

I only agreed so that I could get my sites back on line and keep working to resolve the problem that they'd been absolutely no help in identifying.

Unfortunately the support team decided to tried to lock me into a two year VPS account! They billed my credit card $642 bucks! This was also after they told me that there would be a $75 an hour charge to move my sites from the normal shared hosting C-panel account to VPS. When they told me of the $75 fee I said for them to stop everything they were doing and to send me more information, but that's when they went ahead and changed my account from shared to VPS and billed me $642.

The support team at Lunarpages told me that they couldn't tell me what time my site started acting up. Nor could they tell me which site. You'd think that they could at least tell you which domain had the problem??? I've got 10 domains on my account - 11 WP installations, 1 CMS run by Joomla and one very large HTML based site. It's kind of hard to pinpoint what might possibly be one poorly written add on when you have that many files and domains to go through. Grrrr!

I've sinced moved to HostGator and I've had no problems in this first week.

Oh all my sites were fairly up to date at the time that my problems started but I went through everything and made sure I had the latest updates on all my plugins, got rid of ones that weren't essential and went over everything to make sure that there wasn't any files on my account that I hadn't placed there.

If you really think Akismet was your problem - well deleting a large amount of spam that Akismet had caught, you might want to also add the Bad Behavior plugin to your site. It hides your site from most spam bots. Prior to beginning to use Bad Behavior in February I was getting as much as 400 to 500 spam comments (caught by akismet for the most part) on my four busiest blogs, and lesser amounts on my slower blogs. Since installing bad behavior I average perhaps 10 akismet spam per day on the busy blogs and sometimes only 1 on the slower blogs. Huge change and it's much easier to see real comments that have accidentally been captured by Akismet too!