It’s time for another update on the changes and improvements I’ve made to my blog over the past few months. Since I tend to only publish these Blog Update posts once every 6-months or so, this update is pretty long, so please bare with me.

In these "Blog Update" posts I list any notable improvements, modifications, or milestones related to my blog such as new plugins installed, design changes, or new features. However, I try to only list things here that I haven’t already announced or touched on in other posts.

You may wonder why I make these Blog Update posts, where I mention very small or seemingly unimportant improvements and modifications. Well, while they may not seem too notable by themselves, over time these small things can (and do) make a big impact. The key is to keep looking over your blog or site with a very critical eye and to constantly try improving it.

By simply making small improvements here and there, my blog has evolved by leaps and bounds since its genesis six years ago. So, maybe you’ll pick up an idea or two by reading my blog updates. Feel free to search for my past Blog Update posts to get even more ideas on how you can improve your blog.

Custom Changes & Modifications

Modified CSS for H4 Tag

I modified the CSS for the H4 HTML tag on my blog. Previously, it was just displaying the equivalent of a <b> style, so it basically changed from:

This

to…

This

I basically never used the H4 tag before because of this, but now I use it quite often. I love the underline under it too, because it really helps me separate and organize content better.

Aside from posts, I use my new H4 style on my About Me and Recommended Resources pages as well, which has really helped how those pages are displayed.

It’s funny how much difference a simple CSS improvement can make.

Updated About Me Page

Perhaps the most important content on a blog for a new reader, apart from the latest blog post, is the About page.

There was nothing wrong with my About Me page before, but it was simply quite out of date, having not been updated since around August 2008… which was 3 years ago!

So, I did a nice revamp of my About Me page, and it is now up-to-date and also presented better visually.

I really like how it came out

Completely Revamped Recommend Resources Page

Similar to my About Me page, my Recommended Resources page was badly out of date. In fact, it hadn’t been updated in 3.5 years!

It was so out-of-date, in fact, that I decided to completely rewrite the entire page from the ground up.

The actual recommended resources themselves have changed, and there are many more now as well. In addition, the layout of the page is 10x better than it was. Previously, there were automated links from the Ninja Affiliate Plugin left and right, and the content was all squished together.

I recommend checking it out if you haven’t within the past week as it’s basically completely different from what it was, and there are also some really good resources there that may be just what you have been looking for.

MySQL Database Clean-up

About a month ago, I was trying to find out the root of a problem I was experiencing, and so looked into my blog’s MySQL database to see if there was anything there that would give me a clue.

This didn’t end up fixing the problem I was experiencing at the time, but I did find some strange things in there.

First, I removed a rogue wp_wpsoc_su table, which was consuming a whopping 573.0 MiB of space with 7,531,642 records! After a lot of Googling, I couldn’t find out what this was from, but it sure didn’t appear to be a standard WordPress table, so I deleted it. From the contents of the data, it appeared to be the leftover data of a bad plugin I had tried in the past before quickly uninstalling it.

Later, I optimized the wp_comments and wp_commentmeta tables as they had overhead in phpMyAdmin.

Lastly, I removed the wp_tla_data, wp_tla_rss_map, wp_linkcloak_keywords, and wp_linkcloak_keywords_aliases tables. Leftover tables from the Text Link Ads and WordPress Link Cloak plugins I had used in the past.

WordPress & Plugin Upgrades

As always, WordPress and the various plugins I use are constantly coming out with new versions, and I try to keep up with them the best I can.

Upgraded WordPress from v3.0.1 to v3.2.1

I upgraded WordPress from v3.0.5 to v3.1.1 and then later again to v3.1.2 which fixed an exploit that allowed contributors to publish posts.

Later, I upgraded again to v3.1.3 which had a number of security fixes and overall extra securing. Lastly, I upgraded to v3.2.1 which was a larger release, although mostly pointless for me since it was all administrator improvements, and I use Windows Live Writer to draft, edit, and publish my posts.

Uninstalled Exploit Scanner

This is one of those plugins that has caused me a lot of grief, and so I finally had to remove it.

Some time ago, I upgraded my WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin from v0.97.6 to v1.0.1 and then later again to v1.0.2, which basically just made it compliable with WordPress 3.1.

When this plugin first came out, it worked, and was pretty handy to have as well. But then at one point, it just stopped working for me… and many other people as well. Unfortunately, none of the recent updates have fixed its problems, and so I told myself if it wasn’t fixed by the next update, that I was just remove it.

The next update came out, and it still didn’t fix it, and so I did uninstall it. It just simply didn’t function at all anymore, and the creator of it didn’t care about fixing it for those people where it didn’t work.

Upgraded Email Users plugin from v3.2.0 to v3.4.1

I upgraded my Email Users plugin from v3.2.0 to v3.4.0, and then again, maybe 6 weeks later, to v3.4.1.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what the new version did as the release information isn’t up to date.

Replaced SRG Clean Archives plugin with Clean Archives Reloaded

For what has probably been close to 2 years, I have had a very annoying problem in emptying my filtered Spam comments in my WordPress Admin Panel.

Even though I empty this every 1-2 days, whenever I had more than a few Spam comments, it would take forever for the page to finish processing… I’m talking about 1-2 minutes. And when there were more spam comments to clear out, such as 60+, PHP would time out and I’d have to repeat the process numerous times until all the comments were gone.

This is actually why I was looking in my MySQL database (mentioned earlier in this post) – I thought perhaps it was a database issue.

But fortunately, I was talking to Jean ##### (I forgot, he doesn’t like me to publish his last name) and mentioned my problem, and he said he used to have the exact same issue and solved it.

He told me that it was due to the SRG Clean Archives plugin, which I used for my Archives page. The plugin was insanely out of date and for some reason it created a conflict when emptying spam comments.

I deactivated the plugin to check if it fixed the problem on my blog, and low and behold it did! Thanks Jean! That problem had been bothering me for a long time.

I then had to find a replacement for it, and I didn’t like what Jean chose as a replacement. I actually really liked SRG Clean Archives… it’s just too bad it caused a conflict with emptying spam.

I looked around a lot for a good replacement but couldn’t really find anything I liked, so I started looking around on other blogs to see what they were using. I ended up asking Paul Piotrowski what he was using on his archives page, and found out it was a plugin called Clean Archives Reloaded.

It’s funny.. it didn’t appear to be by the same author as SRG Clean Archives, but it had a similar name and functioned very similarly…

Anyway, Clean Archives Reloaded is an awesome archives plugin… even better than SRG Clean Archives. It had the collapsible function which is what I was looking for, and also has a few customizable options such as being able to show the total post count. It also doesn’t have a backlink to the author’s plugin website at the bottom of the page like SRG Clean Archives did.

I definitely recommend it.

Upgraded Kimili Flash Embed from v2.1.5 to v2.2

I upgraded my Kimili Flash Embed plugin from v2.1.5 to v2.2.

This is a pretty useful plugin which allows you to embed Flash inside your posts. This is great if you want to add Camtasia videos or Flash games to your posts, for example. 

Late last year, I started noticing that more and more bloggers in the make money online niche were using lightbox pop-ups to encourage their visitors to sign up to their mailing list.

Since I was only averaging between 1-2 new signups a month to my own blog’s mailing list, I thought that I would try this method myself.

I did a bit of research to see what the most popular and reputable software that people were using for this, and discovered that it was Popup Domination.

The claims and testimonials on the sales page seemed too good to be true and rather extraordinary, but then again I had been seeing it used on a lot of big blogs (actually, almost all the big blogs), so I decided it would be worth trying.

And so, on January 1st, 2011, I installed it on my blog to test it out.

The Results

The reason I waited so long to post this review was because I wanted to see the long-term effects of Popup Domination. I didn’t want to post a rave review about it after a month, only to see things dwindle shortly after. And so, I have a full 5 months of data to show you.

I’ll get straight to the results. The best, and simplest way, is to show you the monthly new signup stats from my AWeber account on my blog’s list:

From the chart and stats, it’s obvious when I added Popup Domination to my blog. The red arrows are really unnecessary

As you can see, the moment I added it to my blog, my signups skyrocketed. I went from averaging 1.5 new signups a month to 17, which works out to an increase of 1,033%!

I should also mention that this is without giving away anything for free. I basically just invite users to subscribe to my free newsletter to stay updated with my posts and other news and offers. Unlike almost every other blogger who uses this, I’m not offering a free e-Book or access to anything special.

Just as impressive is the fact that these numbers have stayed consistent ever since adding Popup Domination to my blog. I didn’t see 1 or 2 good months and then a decline – it has been completely steady.

Even though my actual numbers are very small and not very impressive, the fact still remains that I dramatically increased my new signup rate by installing this software.

And from everyone that I’ve spoken to who uses this, they absolutely love it and have seen results similar to mine.

Features

I won’t bog you guys down with all the details of the features of the software like I normally do, but I still wanted to briefly describe some of them.

First, it’s extremely fast and simple to both set up and customize, for both the WordPress and standalone versions (I installed the standalone version on my RobotWarz site).

Below is what I customized mine to look like, which did not take long to do at all since there are a surprising number of nice premade templates to choose from:

Secondly, you have great control over how often the lightbox appears and on what pages it appears.

For example, I have mine set up to only display once every 7 days for visitors, but I could change that to once a day, or once a month if I wanted to. I could even change it to display after the visitor has made X amount of views on my website.

Here’s a quick rundown of its features:

• WordPress Plugin & Stand Alone Version
• 8 Beautiful themes with 15 Colour Options
• Works with ALL mailing list providers
• Works with all caching software
• Select specific pages for it to appear
• Exit Pop-up functionality
• Ability to pop up after a certain number of impressions

The Price

I can’t remember for sure, but I could almost swear that when I got mine, the price was $77.

But I just checked the price, and it appears to be $47 right now. Even at $150 though, it’s still well worth the price if you want to dramatically increase your mailing list subscriber rate. The software just works, plain and simple. At least, it did for me.

It also comes with a 60-day money back guarantee, so you really have nothing to lose, but a lot to gain.

If you do get it, be sure to leave a comment here with your own review after letting it run for a little while.

I receive a lot of question via e-mail from various readers of my blog and people who read about me from various interviews and articles on other blogs and websites. On average, I must receive around 40 such e-mails a month.

Always wanting to help out as best I can, I always take the time to respond to these e-mails and answer their questions. But the e-mails keep coming in relentlessly, and often there are some interesting or unique questions, so I thought that instead of spending my time writing a reply that only one person will read, why not post all of these questions and answers on my blog so that everybody can read them?

And thus, a new post series was born. The “Ask Tyler” post series. While I’ll probably include some questions and answers from the general e-mails I receive, my intention is to answer questions specifically made for this post series.

I’ll probably answer the questions I receive once a month. Here’s your chance to ask me a question!

How to Ask Me a Question

To send me a question for this series, which will be published in one of my future posts of this series, simply use my contact form or e-mail me directly at tyler@tylercruz.com. Please put “Ask Tyler” in the subject or near the top of the e-mail/message so that I can organize them better.

Do not ask your questions in comments (unless they are in direct question to my answers or in other posts, are closely related to what I wrote about) as I will not answer them. E-mail them to me instead.

Question Guidelines

When sending me questions, please try to comply and understand the following guidelines:

• I may not answer your question due to having already answered it a million times before (Ex. “Why did you start blogging?” so be sure to ask me a good question.
• Please don’t send me a huge list of questions. Try to keep your list down to 3 per month (post series) so that others have a chance.
• I may or may not answer extremely personal questions, depending on the question
• Be aware that my answers will be posted on this blog, so if you want to ask me how much I think your domain is worth, for example, I’ll be posting my answer here… even if I only think it’s worth $10

That being said, feel free to ask me pretty much anything.

Thanks guys – this will be interesting. I wonder how many questions I’ll receive.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw that I was mentioned in Twitter, alongside a link. Upon visiting the URL, I discovered to see… well… myself!

My immediate and initial reaction was that of confusion. Then, after I understood what I was looking at, I was surprised at how realistic and accurate the illustration of me was.

The illustrated version of my logo, which I did not commission (or even know about in any capacity), is the work of Stéphane Kerwer, an online marketer who runs Dukeo.com.

In addition to the illustrated version of my mascot, it is accompanied by a summary of my online experiences in a post titled Who is Tyler Cruz? Most of it appears to be regurgitated from my About Page, which reinforces the notion that I really need to update that soon as it’s already getting quite dated again (it’s nearly 3 years out of date).

I am not the only one on Dukeo.com. In fact, I was the #11th person to be featured on the site and illustrated. The first 10 can be he seen below. From the bottom up they are:

ShoeMoney, John Chow, dk, Darren Rowse, Shawn Collins, Zac Johnson, Jonathan Volk, Frank Kern, Joel Comm, and Ryan Eagle:

And more recently, Missy Ward and Ian Fernando have been added as #12 and #13. The “Dukeo List” is starting to become a “who’s who” list of online marketers and entrepreneurs. If you’ve made it on the list, you know you’ve made it.

Okay, well maybe not to that degree, but it’s sure a good company of people to be associated with.

After doing a bit of digging, I discovered that it was not actually Stéphane himself who did the illustrations. Rather, he commissioned an artist for them. Coupled with the strong watermark, this only increases the likelihood that this is all being done for link bait, which is obviously working since I’m doing this very post.

Even if Stéphane denies it, I have no problem with this link bait. Any positive link bait is fine in my book. Plus, it’s a good example of how you can help ignite your blog by thinking a bit out of the box. I don’t know how much he is paying his illustrator, but I bet it’s less than the $275 it would cost for a paid review on my blog.

The only thing I’m not too crazy about is the watermark over the illustration of ME which is completely based on my standing avatar which is my intellectual property, and the fact that I had to ask permission before being able to post it. I’m not 100% sure about the legalities of this, but I would think that others cannot directly profit off of another’s branding.

But it’s not a big deal, and that’s the only small negative thing I have with this particular method of link baiting marketing.

So, who will be next on the list? Will it be you?

My original intention with my “Blog Update” series was to publish them once every 6-8 weeks or so, and it actually started that way. But seeing as my last one was 6 months ago, and the one before that was 13 months ago (from today), I have now come to terms with the fact that they are more likely to be published about twice a year.

Since I haven’t published a Blog Update post in half a year, this post is pretty long, so bare with me.

In these "Blog Update" posts I list any notable improvements, modifications, or milestones related to my blog such as new plugins installed, design changes, or new features. However, I try to only list things here that I haven’t already announced or touched on in other posts.

You may wonder why I make these Blog Update posts, where I mention very small or seemingly unimportant improvements and modifications. Well, while they may not seem too notable by themselves, over time these small things can (and do) make a big impact. The key is to keep looking over your blog or site with a very critical eye and to constantly try improving it.

By simply making small improvements here and there, my blog has evolved by leaps and bounds since its genesis five years ago. So, maybe you’ll pick up an idea or two by reading my blog updates. Feel free to search for my past Blog Update posts to get even more ideas on how you can improve your blog. 

New RSS Record

Way back on October 26th, I set a new RSS record of 2,552.

As I write this, however, it is currently only 2336. It dropped a bit around November-December when I started to really slow down on my post frequency (only 3 posts were made in all of November!).

Now that I have a goal to post more frequently (see below), I hope my numbers to rise again in the not too distant future.

Increased Post Frequency

One of my 2011 work goals I set at the beginning of the year was to publish 140 blog posts by the end of the year. Last year, in 2010, I published only 82 posts, so 140 is quite the increase.

In fact, 140 posts in a year works out to an average of 11.6 posts a month – roughly 1 every 3 days.

I started out well, publishing 10 posts in January and 12 in February, but as you may have noticed, I have been slacking in March so far. Counting this post, that makes 26 posts done this year, meaning that I have 114 more to go with approximately 285 days left.

That means in order to complete my goal, I’ll still need to post a new post every 2.5 days on average.

If you take a look at my archives page, you’ll see that I really am making an posting more often these days.

Custom Changes & Modifications

Added SEO Category

Since I started posting on SEO with my case studies and recommendations of various programs and services, I thought it would be prudent to add a new category for SEO for those interested in reading only SEO-related blog posts.

Added HostGator Button to Bottom

Switching to HostGator was the best business decision I made in 2009, and so I added a small  “Powered by HostGator” button to the very bottom of my blog. I can’t tell you how much easier my life is due to switching to them.

Added Popup Domination – Highly Recommended!

I will be doing a dedicated post on this later, but I added Popup Domination, which is that lightbox popup that appears on my blog once every 2 weeks to encourage signing up to my newsletter.

You can find out more information and/or purchase it by clicking on the link above. I can tell you now that I have certainly seen the same (if not better) results as the testimonials given on their sales page.

Installed MobilePress – Highly Recommended!

I installed MobilePress, which is a plugin that creates a mobile-friendly version of your blog.

It’s free, only took me 1 minute to install, and allows you to customize your mobile theme as well. You can even set it up to integrate Aduity with it to monetize your mobile version.

I love it. Go ahead and check out my blog on your phone. It’s very fast and is better than just an RSS feed.

I was originally going to use Mobify after reading about it on JohnChow.com, but didn’t really care for it. Part of the reason was because you had to create a separate domain (Ex. mobile.tylercruz.com) for it. With MobilePress, when people visit TylerCruz.com on their phone, it will automatically show the mobile-friendly version.

And for those with larger smartphone screens who want to view my blog as they would on a computer, there is a link at the bottom to do just that

Increased Newsletter Blog Broadcast Frequency

Paul Piotrowski suggested to me in a response to a comment I left on one of his blog posts that I should increase the frequency of when my automated blog broadcasts go out. Previously, it was set to sent out an e-mail out once every 10 new posts, but Paul pointed out how that was really too infrequent. I agreed, and changed it to sent out every 5 new posts now.

WordPress & Plugin Upgrades

As always, WordPress and the various plugins I use are constantly coming out with new versions, and I try to keep up with them the best I can.

Upgraded WordPress from 3.0.1 to 3.0.5

I got tired of updating WordPress all the time since new versions are constantly coming out, so I waited a for several new minor versions to come out before upgrading from v3.0.1 to v3.0.5.

They are rarely very important changes anyway… usually just obscure security fixes.

Upgraded WP-Polls from v2.5 to v2.61

I upgraded my WP-Polls plugin from v2.5 to v2.6, and then again from v2.6 to v2.6.1, which fixed an XSS vulnerability. This is a great plugin which I should utilize more often.

Upgraded Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator from v3.2.4 to v4.0 BETA 3

I upgraded my Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator plugin from v3.2.4 to v4.0 BETA 3. This was a necessary upgrade that fortunately fixed all the issues I was having before.

Some time back, I noticed that my sitemap (for the search engines) wasn’t being automatically updated, and I would have to manually run it in order for it to work.

Upgrading to v4.0 BETA 3 finally fixed this for me.

Upgraded Email Users plugin from v3.1.8 to v3.2.0

I upgraded my Email Users plugin from v3.1.8 to v3.2.0. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what the new version did as the release information isn’t up to date.

Upgraded WordPress Exploit Scanner from v0.97.2 to v0.97.6

I upgraded my WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin from v0.97.2 to v0.97.6.

The new version only had very minor changes.

Upgraded Akismet from v2.4.0 to v2.5.3

I upgraded Akismet from v2.4.0 to v2.5.3, skipping a good number of versions inbetween.

I shouldn’t have let myself get so behind on upgrading Akismet, as it is one of my most important plugins. My blog gets a ton of spam and I have to weed out spammers manually everyday, even with Akismet, so I should really be keeping an eye to make sure it is up-to-date more often.

I upgraded this automatically since it ports with WordPress.

Advertising Changes

Increased Paid Reviews from $250 to $275

I increased the price of my paid reviews and paid plugs from $250 to $275. Right before increasing the price, I was actually backlogged with 5 paid reviews, so that is usually my queue that the price needs increasing.

Also, I hadn’t raised the price in a year-and-a-half and I tend to keep paid reviews up as the latest post for longer these days so they have more value.

We’re getting close to Halloween which means that it’s time for me to switch my logo mascot over to my Halloween costume.

I have several different versions of my logo for various seasons. For example, I have a Halloween version, a Christmas version. I also have a poker version (from when I was an active poker player), and a standing up version. I may even get a Thanksgiving one soon.

Having specially custom themed logos for each season is really cool, but it also means that I have to remember to replace the logo at the start and end of each season. This is not really difficult to do, but it does takes time and is a bit of an annoyance. Also, I can sometimes forget to change the logo for a while, and having a Christmas logo up in February can be a bit embarrassing.

In a continued effort to save time and automated repeated processes anywhere I can, I came up with the simple yet great idea to have my custom logos change automatically depending on the season.

By doing this, I not only eliminate the hassle of having to edit my CSS at the beginning and end of each season, but I also get to specify the exact date range that my logos will appear, thus eliminating any irrelevant seasonal images.

In fact, due to the way my blog’s design is coded, my logo is actually split into 3 separate images. This means that I have 3 separate split-images for each themed logo, and each would have to be changed whenever I updated my logo.

It’s not a huge deal, but it did make updating my logo all that more cumbersome.

Fortunately, I was able to completely automate this process and now my logo changes completely automatically depending on the season. From October 15th to November 1st it will show my Halloween logo, from December 5th to December 31st it will show my Christmas logo, and the rest of the year it will show my default logo.

How to Automatically Change Your Logo by Season

This post would be rather annoying if I didn’t share how I did it, so here’s what I did:

For the main PHP code, I used and modified various PHP examples from a variety of different sources I found on Google.

In the end, this is what I came up with:

<?php
// ——————— Automatic Logo Season Changer ———————-
date_default_timezone_set(‘America/Vancouver’); // Your local or base time zone.

$today = strtotime(date(‘Y-m-d’)); // Don’t change. This will grab the date automatically.

// Halloween Range
$halloween_start = strtotime(date(‘Y’) . ‘-10-15′);
$halloween_end = strtotime(date(‘Y’) . ‘-11-01′);

// Christmas Range
$christmas_start = strtotime(date(‘Y’) . ‘-12-5′);
$christmas_end = strtotime((date(‘Y’)+1) . ‘-12-31′);

if($today >= $halloween_start && $today <= $halloween_end) $season=’halloween’;
elseif($today >= $christmas_start && $today <= $christmas_end) $season=’xmas’;
else $season=’default’;
// ——————— Automatic Logo Season Changer ———————-
?>

(Note that if you copy and paste this that you will need to replace the apostrophes as they get converted to a different format when I post them on my blog. If you don’t do this you’ll get many errors.)

You will need to modify that a bit to fit your personal needs, but that is the main code that you need. Place this at the top of your header.php script in WordPress.

To change your logo, you will want to use something like the following:

<img src="logo_<?php echo $season; ?>.jpg">

Being sure to name your logos “logo_default.jpg”, “logo_halloween.jpg”, and “logo_xmas.jpg”.

That should work for most people. However for me, I had to do a bit more editing since my logo image filenames were not specified in HTML but rather as fixed values in the CSS (as an external file). Since I can’t run PHP code in CSS files, I had to create separate CSS ID’s and PHP variable insertions.

So in my custom WordPress theme’s style.css file I originally had:

h1 a span {
    display: block;
    width: 430px;
    height: 81px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    cursor: hand;
    background: url(‘images/tyler_00.gif’) no-repeat left top;
}

Since I have 3 logo variables in PHP, I had to create 3 separate ID’s in the CSS, so I changed the above to:

h1 a span#default {
    display: block;
    width: 430px;
    height: 81px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    cursor: hand;
    background: url(‘images/tyler_00.gif’) no-repeat left top;
}
h1 a span#halloween {
    display: block;
    width: 430px;
    height: 81px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    cursor: hand;
    background: url(‘images/tyler_00_halloween.gif’) no-repeat left top;
}
h1 a span#xmas {
    display: block;
    width: 430px;
    height: 81px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    cursor: pointer;
    cursor: hand;
    background: url(‘images/tyler_00_xmas.gif’) no-repeat left top;
}

Then in my header.php file I changed (in the appropriate area, under the H1 and A parents):

<span></span>

to

<span id="<?php echo $season; ?>"></span>

As I mentioned before, since my blog’s logo is actually split up into 3 separate images, I had to repeat this process 2 more times, editing both the style.css and header.php again, in order to make the other 2 parts of the logo change depending on the season as well.

And that’s it! Depending on how many logo variations you have and how your blog’s HTML and CSS is coded, it should only take you around 15-minutes to implement the automation of changing your logo depending on the season.

It’s nothing major, but anything I can do to save time and hassle for myself is victory in my book.

The Talent Behind the Mascot

Since I know I’ll get dozens of e-mails and comments asking who designed my logo, I’ll just mention it here.

Ever since I had my mascot commissioned 3 years ago I’ve constantly had people ask me who designed it, even though it clearly says who in my Recommended Resources page and I have numerous posts like this one stating who did it.

Sergio Ordoñez Suanez from SOSFactory.com (hence the SOS…) is the talent behind my mascot, and has done a total of 3 variations for me now as well. Without hyperbole, I can confidently say that Sergio is a world-class calibre artist in his field of mascot design.

I don’t throw around such praise easily, so that’s really saying a lot. When it comes to custom cartoon/mascot work, Sergio is really one of the best in the world. I was actually at Toys R Us a while ago, looking to pick up a board game, when I came across HedBanz, the popular board game, and remembered that Sergio was the one who designed their box!

He charges $600 per logo or mascot and while that may sound expensive, it’s really not. In fact, it’s quite cheap considering the quality you get.

Insanity. I seriously can’t believe that it’s already been another 7 months since I last published a Blog Updates post. I knew that I hadn’t posted one in a while, but thought it was closer to around 2-3 months, not over half a year!

As a result, this update will be even longer than usual.

In these "Blog Update" posts I list any notable improvements, modifications, or milestones related to my blog such as new plugins installed, design changes, or new features. However, I try to only list things here that I haven’t already announced or touched on in other posts.

You may wonder why I make these Blog Update posts, where I mention very small or seemingly unimportant improvements and modifications. Well, while they may not seem too notable by themselves, over time these small things can (and do) make a big impact. The key is to keep looking over your blog or site with a very critical eye and to constantly try improving it.

By simply making small improvements here and there, my blog has evolved by leaps and bounds since its genesis five years ago. So, maybe you’ll pick up an idea or two by reading my blog updates. Feel free to search for my past Blog Update posts to get even more ideas on how you can improve your blog. 

New RSS Record

I forget exactly when this occurred, but I set a new RSS record of 2,545. My previous RSS record on February 10th 2010 was 2,456, so it has only grown by 89 over the past 7 months. That works out to an average of only about 1 new RSS subscriber every 2 days!

But, it is a new record so I like to acknowledge it anyway.

I should mention that this record does not include the glitch that occurred in June, which temporarily boosted my RSS by 1,000 for a few weeks.

Custom Changes

Deleted 1,500 Members

Looking through my Users page in the WordPress administration area, I realized that there were a lot of users with randomly generated looking usernames. The majority of these names all seemed to have 1 thing in common: they were registered with either @mail.ru or @*.ru e-mail addresses.

Since it is very rare to find any legitimate user with a *.ru e-mail address, I started deleting all of these accounts. There were 1,500 such “users” though, and deleting these page by page within WordPress was far too time consuming, so I ended up going into phpMyAdmin to run a manual MySQL query.

In case anyone else is interested in doing the same thing, the query I used was:

delete FROM `wp_users`
WHERE `user_email` LIKE ‘%.ru%’
LIMIT 0 , 30

That will delete all registered users within WordPress who registered with an e-mail address ending in the Russian .ru domain extension.

Added Custom Comments Button

I had a couple people complain about how my comment button was too small and difficult to see, so I went ahead and made a larger custom one. Below you can see the before and after shots (the checkbox features are now gone since I removed the plugin that added those, as you’ll read later on):

It looks even better now since it is now located directly underneath the comment box (again, those checkboxes are gone).

Just a small improvement, but small things like this really do help to reinforce your brand.

WordPress & Plugin Upgrades

As always, WordPress and the various plugins I use are constantly coming out with new versions, and I try to keep up with them the best I can.

Upgraded WordPress from v2.9.1 to v3.0.1

I upgraded WordPress from v2.9.1, to v2.9.2, then again to v3.0.1, skipping a couple updates.

I actually just upgraded to v3.0.1 right before making this post to make this blog update more relevant (as well as to protect myself from any exploits in prior versions from anyone reading that I hadn’t upgraded to the latest version yet ) even though it was released on June 17th, 2010.

I still do all the WordPress updates manually (as opposed to the automatic upgrading) as I trust that method better and also have to modify a few other files by hand each time as well due to certain special tweaks and modifications.

Upgraded Show Top Commentors plugin from v1.05 to v1.06 – Highly Recommended

One of my blog readers e-mailed me a while ago telling me that people were hijacking his spot on my Top Commentors widget on the left side of my blog. I checked this out and it was indeed a very simple exploit anyone could do (and was doing).

Basically, all anyone had to do was simply post using the same anchor text (username) of anyone in the Top Commentors list and then enter in their own URL. The Top Commentors list would then show the URL of that person as long as it was the most recent comment made with that anchor text (user name).

It turns out that I hadn’t updated this plugin for 2 years (since it didn’t show me as being outdated in WordPress) and that there was 1 newer version of the plugin that I hadn’t installed yet. So I upgraded from v1.05 to v1.06 and crossed my fingers, since that version came out ages ago meaning that the plugin is most likely not supported anymore.

Fortunately, v1.06 did fix the exploit, and the plugin is working perfectly. Malicious users, or 2 users who just happen to have the same name or anchor text, will no longer usurp another user’s spot on the Top Commentors list anymore.

So if you have plugin with any version earlier than v1.06, I highly recommend upgrading!

You can download the plugin for free here. Alternatively, you might want to try this similar plugin I just found, which seems to have more features and a proper administration area.

Upgraded Kimili Flash Embed plugin from v2.1.1 to v2.1.5

I upgraded the Kimili Flash Embed plugin from v2.1.1 to v2.1.2, then again to v2.1.3, and then finally again to v2.1.5 as I saw a new version was available as I wrote this.

v2.1.2 actually created a bug which caused AJAX to stop working in the administration area (no quick reply, buttons not functions correctly, etc.), so it was vital to upgrade again to v2.1.3.

This is a pretty useful plugin which allows you to embed Flash inside your posts. This is great if you need to add Camtasia videos or Flash games to your posts, for example.

You can download the plugin for free here.

Upgraded Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator plugin from v3.1.9 to v3.2.4

This is one of those plugins that constantly gets new updates and can be a pain to stay up-to-date with.

I upgraded this from v3.1.9 to v3.2.2, then again to v3.2.3, and then finally once more to v3.2.4 as of a couple minutes ago. I told you, this plugin constantly comes out with new versions!

It’s also important to occasionally check up on such plugins like these, because while writing this post I noticed that my sitemaps file (http://www.tylercruz.com/sitemap.xml) wasn’t automatically updating – the last update was on May 31st, 2010!

I just spent the past 50 minutes looking into this issue and it appears that a lot of people are having the same problem as me. Basically, manually updating the sitemaps file works, but it is not automatically updating like it once did. In the administration area for the plugin, it shows the message:

Your sitemap is being refreshed at the moment. Depending on your blog size this might take some time!

But never goes away. It’s not a timeout or memory issue because manually updating the sitemap is pretty much instantaneous.

If you encountered this same problem and know how to fix it, please let me know. I guess the good news is that this plugin does get updated often, so hopefully a future version will fix this issue!

You can download this free plugin here.

Upgraded Akismet Plugin from v2.3.0 to v2.4.0

I upgraded the famous Akismet plugin from v2.3.0 to v2.4.0 as of a couple minutes ago.

Even though it’s one of the few plugins that comes pre-packaged with WordPress, it’s still one of my favourites since it really helps to combat comment spam. This is the only plugin that I upgrade using the automatic upgrade feature since it does ship with WordPress.

You can download this free plugin here.

Upgraded WordPress Exploit Scanner from v0.93 to v0.97.2

I upgraded the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin from v0.92 to 0.95 and then again to v0.97.2.

Upgrading to v0.95 fixed the problems for me I was having before such as the timeout issues, however it wasn’t much better as it appeared to always scan files even if I deselected the files checkbox, and there was no confirmation that it scanned the database. It also always seemed to scan in increments of 50 even if I changed that number.

v0.97.2 fixed all bugs and errors and now uses AJAX refreshing which is a big plus, although it has also been simplified quite a bit, with many of the options in previous versions removed. It would be nice to see some of them come back in future versions again, as the plugin is too “sensitive” right now, yielding too many “false positives”.

You can download this free plugin here.

Installed and Uninstalled StandoutComments plugin

Ugh. This one is hard to talk about as it brings back a lot of bad memories.

Basically, John Chow partnered with a couple of other guys to develop a multi-purpose plugin called StandoutComments. It did a lot of things such as let users quickly and easily subscribe to your newsletter, your RSS, receive e-mail notifications of new comments, etc.

It wasn’t lacking in features, but the problem was that it was extremely buggy! The reason why it’s frustrating for me to write about this is because I spent a LOT of time helping the developers beta test the plugin, testing close to probably 2 dozen different versions and patches, giving helpful, clearly written, reports on what was broken as well as recommended improvements.

The developers did implement nearly all of my suggestions and tried to fix the bugs, but after months of countless back and forth e-mails, the programmer resigned from the project and I was still left without a working plugin. The whole time I had this installed on my blog, and people were starting to complain because it was so buggy; the biggest complaint being that people were unable to unsubscribe to the receive comments by e-mail feature.

I even had troubles with the plugin creating enormous “flat files” and a huge error_log on my server that was 1.5GB from crazy errors! I also went to the trouble to record a 45-minute screencast on the plugin to help promote it, but never posted it since the bugs were never fixed.

It’s not really their fault, as they did try to fix the bugs I was getting and we did improve the plugin by a lot…. but I guess that’s why it is so frustrating to me – because we spent so much time and effort on trying to fix all the plugin’s bugs and were getting quite close to a finished great plugin, only to have the entire thing stopped.

I won’t bother mentioning all of the version changes I went through (even though I have them documented) as they are far too numerous (not to mention pointless) to post here.

Finally, I uninstalled the plugin since it was no longer being developed and was only creating bugs and issues.

For those wanting to try the plugin despite all my troubles with it, you can buy it from the StandoutComments website. Perhaps a budding entrepreneur might want to make an offer on the plugin and get all the lingering bugs fixed… you could probably get it for a decent price.

Uninstalled Subscribe To Comments plugin

After I installed the StandoutComments plugin from above, I uninstalled this plugin as it was redundant since the aforementioned one already had this feature.

Now that I uninstalled StandoutComments though, I should probably reconsider installing this again. Although… not having it does give an excuse for people to simply check back on my posts more often

You can download this free plugin here.

Advertising Changes

Added 468×60 Footer Commenter Banner

One of the features that the StandoutComments plugin which I mentioned earlier, was the ability to place a banner at the bottom of the comments area.

Since I’m always up for more ways to monetize my blog without overdoing it, this seemed like a great idea and so I went ahead and added a new advertising slot on my advertising page.

Even though I have since uninstalled the plugin, I decided to keep this advertising slot option anyway, since it can be added with a simple manual edit of the footer.php file.

So far, nobody has purchased this slot from me, but at $70/month it’s really not a bad price, considering that it’s a 468×60 banner that will be located right above the comment form on posts, meaning that it’s the last thing you see when you finishing reading all the comments, and the first thing you see when you’re writing your own comment.

Guest Bloggers Needed

I’m always looking for more guest bloggers to occasionally submit posts on my blog. Why do I want guest posters? It’s simple really: there are times when I’m too busy to write a new post and could really use a guest post to fill in the gap. Since I try to post every day, having a few guest posts on file for when I need them is very useful.

I’m looking for good writers who can write about affiliate marketing, making money online, blogging, marketing, or web development and the articles/posts must be written specifically and exclusively for TylerCruz.com.

In return, you’ll have your name attached to each post which can be linked to your own website. This is not so much for backlinks as it is to gain a bit of exposure and traffic. I’m also fine with you writing a small blurb (1-2 sentences) plugging your own blog within the actual post, either at the very beginning or end.

In addition to having over 2,500 targeted RSS subscribers reading your posts and a free permanent link which will help your SEO, you’ll also get the benefit of receiving a lot of feedback from readers with the knowledge that you’re writing to a large targeted audience. And, of course, you’ll be helping me out as well

The way it currently works is once a guest blogger submits a draft, and when I don’t have time to write a blog post, I then publish the draft into a post on the site.

If you’re interested, please contact me with a sample post or two. Please understand that I’m looking for fairly long, well-written posts that I think my readers will enjoy.

If I think your writing style and post-length is suitable for my blog, I’ll upgrade your account to Contributor status within WordPress, so that you can submit a post whenever you’re willing.

Okay, I better apologize right off the bat as the title is misleading since I’m not exactly sure how I gained over 1,000 RSS subscribers overnight. I certainly did not do any special “secret ninja marketing tactics“ to make it happen – I just woke up to see a 3,537 when I was expecting to see something more along the lines of 2,537.

I was actually quite happy 2 days ago as I set a new RSS record then as well, beating my previous record by a little over 200! Then the next day I gained an additional 1,000 on top of that? What’s going on here?

My first reaction was to think: Feedburner bug. After all, Feedburner’s stats are constantly shifting and often report incorrect numbers. However, all the reporting bugs in the past have always (for me at least) been underreporting, usually incorrectly dropping my count total by around 1,000 for a day or two before fixing itself and returning to my normal numbers.

What’s different about this time is that if this is indeed a bug, then it marks the first time (again, for me at least) that Feedburner has ever incorrectly over-reported. This makes me unsure as to if this is a bug or could actually be my new RSS count.

As you can see in the graph below, I’ve had a number of incorrectly reported low peaks in the past, but never a false spike (the little one you see around the middle of the graph is legit):

Here you can see my traffic graph over the past couple weeks. Feedburner seems to have been a bit buggy lately, incorrectly reporting my RSS count on several occasions:

Okay – so what’s going on here?

The nice thing about Feedburner is that you can usually identify the root of any incorrect reporting issues due to their subscriber breakdown reports.

If you take a look at my breakdown on June 13th, which is the most recent date available in which my stats were “normal”, you’ll see that my top source of RSS traffic is from Google Feedfetcher:

However, if you take a look at the stats from June 16th, we see that Netvibes jumps out of nowhere to lead the pack with 1,410 subscribers:

Aha! So this is the culprit (hero?). Looking back at older stats, I can see that I always had some traffic from Netvibes, but it usually hovered closer to the 100 mark, not 1,400.

I have no idea why my Netvibes numbers skyrocketed over the past couple days… I mean I had never even heard of Netvibes before.

I checked them out (they’re actually kind of neat; I found myself tagged in some photos I didn’t know existed) and Googled to see if anybody else was having this issue, but the only thing I could find was some big news 2 years ago about an exploit with Feedburner and Netvibes that allowed you to basically increase your Feedburner to any number you wanted.

Fortunately, this major bug was fixed right after it was revealed on TechCrunch, so none of you can accuse me of using that dirty trick

So in the end, I have no idea why my Netvibes numbers are shooting up. This could very easily be a bug, and so I’ll have to wait over the next few days to see what my Feedburner numbers do. I’m cautiously optimistic, though, because if this is indeed ‘legit’ then it’s pretty cool as I have been on a snail-paced RSS growth rate over the past couple of years.

I’m curious as to what your Netvibes numbers are (in comparison to your total count), and if you’ve seen this same “inflation” over the past couple days, so please share your comments with me!