Hey there everyone.

Today was a good day until around 12pm (noon) when my Wordpress installation had gone crazy (Or somebody comprimised the blog, I’m not sure which). It redirected every page to the “Wordpress Install” page and when you tried to “Re-Install” the blog, it created a page of errors so long, I didn’t have enough time to read them.

Then somebody registered a user in the MYSQL database (taking advantage of the glitch, trying to gain admin access through the “Create User And Email” during the Wordpress Install) which I removed and was very displeased about. The email was obviously fake, but it’s a good thing I checked the actual database for any tampering, or we may of just had another person giving you spam content.

So I had a great time contacting my tech support and fixing the problem. Thanks to Tina @ Bluefur.com for helping me with the issue.

I don’t know what the problem was, but it has gone away now (Hopefully )

As for now, I’m going to be vamping up my security and update Wordpress to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Do you have Wordpress 2.6?

Thanks for visiting my blog! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you will be able to get these daily blog tips for free!

More times than not, when I go “Blog-surfing“, I read an article or two that sparks my interest, and then I usually will subscribe…

Wait a minute.. WHERE DO I SUBSCRIBE? This blog in question has no button and makes the visitor look all over the blog for a simple button that would enable the visitors to do so.

This Technique to gain RSS Subscribers to your Rss Feed or Blog is actually really simple to understand and learn from. In order to convey it in a friendly, kind manner, I will put it in a list.

1. Get a cool RSS icon from ProBlogDesign’s list (or find your own).
2. Place it above the fold and link it to your RSS feed.
3. Watch more people subscribe as a result of it.

What are some strategies that you use to “Gain R.S.S Subscribers to your RSS Feed or Blog?”

As you many of you may know, Technorati has their own page where you can visit and “Ping” your blog for new content. Although this tool is terrific, it is time consuming to do it for only one service. There is a simple technique that I’m going to tell you how to use (Only if you are on Wordpress) to ping over 40 different services and get indexed much faster.

What exactly is a “Ping”?

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one. [Wikipedia]

In simple terms, it is just a way of your blog telling different R.S.S services and Content Posting Websites that you have a new article posted.

The Technique

1. Login to your Wordpress administration area.
2. Go to “Settings” in the Navigation bar at the top.
3. When your in the Settings tab, click “Writing” (Second one in the list after General)
4. Scroll to the very bottom and you will see a box with the title “Update Services” - If you haven’t done this before, there shouldn’t be anything in there.
5. Copy ALL of the URLs into that box and click “Save Changes”:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.blogg.de/
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.wpkeys.com/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.imblogs.net/ping/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

7. Your done! You may recognize some URLs in that list, and as you can see the R.S.S Aggregators are in there as well - You deliver content to your readers a lot faster now!

As soon as you read this post, My blog will have already pinged those services about this post being published.

I’ll admit it. I haven’t used videos on this blog enough, as they are SUCH a great way to get your point across. I could make up excuses why I haven’t, but I think I’ll stick with the one that goes “I can’t find a simple one to use”.

Of course we have the free screen recorders (Camstudio, AutoScreen to name a few), but they can sometimes produce low quality videos or make you spend valuable time to learn how to use the program efficiently. I have yet to find a good quality one that is free.

So, just as I start hunting for another one that meets my needs (Easy To Use, Lightweight, Great Quality), I stumbleupon ALLCapture. Interested by the amount of features that this product offers (Then again, what online software DOESN’T have a list of features) I downloaded the trial and gave it a shot.

The Testing

Well, I start off with the ability to capture text and mouse movements, something that is crucial to present a tutorial or review. It certainly passed the test with ease with no stuttering.

Next off, I capture a youtube video. This was done excellent preserving quality, but the frame-rates was a little less than what the video was showing. No biggie - I don’t pirate Youtube videos anyway.

So, overall I would recommend this product to produce awesome videos to teach your readers new things or create tutorials that would be much better learned inside a Youtube player than in text.

So I was checking my “Recent” incoming links in my Wordpress Admin area, and I saw that one was a trackback from a blog hosted on Wordpress.com. So, I clicked the link to see how they had linked to my article…

It turns out that a person had scraped the article that I wrote and the track-back was to a post that I had linked to in the article! Everyday is something new at Bradblogging.com.

I had two emotions as I read my own post on another website - Annoyance and Happiness:

Happiness because that meant that the article that I wrote was actually worth copying to another blogger’s blog, which means that people would consider your article “Good Enough” to scrape off your website.

Annoyance because now I have to ask them to put a link to the original article, or file a D.M.C.A. Takedown notice, which takes valuable time out of my day.

We’ll just have to see how this plays out I suppose.

Have you encountered content theft before on your blog? If so, how did you handle it?

So the whole “Blogging” concept is a great thing. You write articles and then hopefully, if the reader gains something from it, you most likely have a return visitor/subscriber.

But when’s the right time to start introducing advertising? A personal tip that I have learned is that it really doesn’t look good when you have around 3 subscibers in your Feedburner Feedcount with the average hits of 10 per day. Then comes the factor of how much you actually make off of the 10 people… Probably less than a pack of gum’s worth.

Quite honestly, I have tried not to show advertising on this blog because I really want to provide minimal distractions from the content that I so vigorously write :). So the point of the post is to make you question when the right time to start the P.P.C. machine/private sales on your blog. Will you wait for 1000hits/day? or will 100hits/day be “enough” for you.

Posting content to satisfy your readers is a lot different than posting a blog post. Let this diagram explain:

Not every post is going to shine on your blog, that is something that can only be learned with experience. However, by taking simple steps in order to make sure that the posts aren’t a blunder on our blogs, we can ultimately make it look better to anybody that decides to pay a visit.