Sep
29
WordPress White Screen of Death
Filed Under WordPress SEO | 4 Comments
We have all heard of the Windows “blue screen of death”, but when it comes to webmasters and marketers the most feared problem is the WordPress White Screen of Death. This happens usually after you upgrade a plugin or make a change within the WordPress design manager and all of a sudden your screen goes white! Another symptom is if FireFox asks you to either open the php file or save it to disk rather than just let you work on the damn file!
Why Does WordPress Have White Screens Or Ask You To Open Or Save a PHP File
This isn’t a WordPress problem, but really a MySQL - PHP function or rather failure. When a PHP page is loading or trying to load and either an error occurs or a script can’t load, it just dies rather than blowing out bad code. Within the backend of WordPress this causes the WordPress White Screen of Death.
Even though your website will still be displaying content to visitors, you have no access to the backend which is about as bad as it gets next to your site being down. Most of my themes rely on a plugin called Limit Posts and if that isn’t activated, my sites look down right wrong and incomplete. So what do you do when this happens?
Well the first thing is to ascertain where the problem is. If you just installed a plugin and all of a sudden your system is no longer working then it is pretty easy to figure out that the problem is the plugin you just installed! When you are upgrading either your entire WordPress system or a single plugin, the game plan is the same. Always activate our plugins ONE AT A TIME. If you are using the automatic plugin updater, deactivate the plugin prior to updating it.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. Again:
- Deactivate the plugin that you are upgrading first - if you use the WordPress auto-upgrader, deactivate the plugin before updating.
- Activate plugins one at a time - after you activate a plugin after a WordPress upgrade, go to settings or mange and hit a couple of links to make sure that your system hasn’t crashed. The problem is if you log out and log back in after a plugin upgrade, you might get the WordPress white screen of death and not be able to see your backend. If that happens, you will have to remove the plugin from your plugin directory. Another reason to activate your plugins one at a time is so you know which plugin is causing the problem. You can delete it from your plugin directory then you can log back in and see your backend.
I know I am repeating myself here, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow those rules. I manage over 17 systems for myself and my clients and have a lot of experience with screwing up, so trust me when I tell you these things, I have messed up every aspect of WordPress at one time or another! Fortunately I am able to learn from my mistakes and pass that on to all of you.
WordPress Problems That Involve Widgets Or Theme Editor Design Changes
Other than plugins, the next most common issues involve failures with WordPress after you change a file within the Theme Editor, or you have added or changed a widget within the sidebar. If you change something and the screen goes white or you try to access a file and it offers to save it to disk or open it with your default program, you have a php issue.
The question is which PHP function has failed? There are a few methods to check errors and most of them are technical. If you are on a shared hosting like GoDaddy you have to look in the log with c-panel or on other hosting solutions that use plesk you have to view the apache logs. If you have access to the server at a root level they are by default in the /var/logs/. If you set up sites within your home folder, then they might be anywhere. The best thing is to contact tech support at your hosting company and ask where the apache logs are for your site.
When you get the latest log after an error it will look like a bunch of code like this:
PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function
force_mod… in /home/mstankard/web/getfoundnow_com/wp-settings.php on
line 160 referer: http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/comment.php?action=approve; etc.
Yours will look a lot different since I had to change a couple of things for security, but this shows the problem was in a comment approval that went bad. I was able to remove the recent comments plugin and everything worked fine. The trick is to identify where the issue is and act upon it.
Another problem I had was with a video display plugin which I was able to troubleshoot with FireFox by viewing source of the error page:
I loaded up the following URL after logging in to my blog’s management console:
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php
There was a section in the page where the player was supposed to be loaded, but it was not appearing. I turned on the error console feature in Firefox to view the Javascript errors and found the following:
SWFObject is not defined
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=flv-embed.php
I used the “View Source” function in Firefox to view the source of the plugin management page and found the link to the swfobject.js file. It was pointing to the following URL:
http://www.getfoundnow.com/internetmarketing/wp-content/plugins/flv-embed/swfobject.js
This showed it was looking for code in a different place than before since I removed a plugin that white-screened me, but was able to recreate the directory and copy the file in and it worked.
I am going to continue to update this post
If you are having WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems go there and read that post.
If you like killer WordPress themes you could go to that link as well!
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Sep
28
WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Login Problems
Filed Under WordPress SEO | 12 Comments
If you are planning to upgrade your WordPress system to 2.6, there are a few things that you need to prepare. There is a weird thing that happens after you upgrade: you can’t log in or reset your password. I had a freaking heart attack after upgrading and all of a sudden I couldn’t log back in!
Fortunately, there was already support info on WordPress’ blog. You have to clear out your cookies to log back in. So, what can you do to prepare for the install without getting freaked out or dealing with problems installing multiple systems as I have to do?
First of all, it’s easier to use Firefox to do all this since it has an easy way to clear your cookies, just hit control, shift and delete at the same time and a box will pop up. Make sure the “cookies” box and “authenticated sessions” box is checked and hit “Clear Private Data. You can also reach this in FireFox by going to tools > Clear Private Data.
So the process to upgrade is basically the same as always except that after you do the upgrade, and are asked to log back in, clear your cookies, THEN try to log in. On 3 installs I had to have the password reset, but I didn’t have to on 2 others so I can’t explain the difference. The key is to be prepared for any bad things that could happen.
WordPress 2.6 Upgrade Checklist To Fix Login Failure Problems
Just know that if you are getting ready to upgrade to WordPress 2.6 have the following stuff ready:
- Backup your database! - this is more important than ever since there are a lot of reported bugs with version 2.6.
- Make sure you have your user information - Have the logins, emails and passwords for all administrator accounts. I don’t use the admin account to post articles so all my blogs have at least 2 administrator accounts. You might want to upgrade an account to administrator while doing the upgrade.
- Make sure your WordPress system is sending emails - you will be screwed if your WordPress system can’t send you the password if you need to reset it. Test that your system is sending emails and that you know and have access to the administrator accounts.
- Upgrade WordPress - go ahead and deactivate your plugins and run the upgrade script.
- Clear your cookies! you can use the Ctrl - Shift - Delete keys on your keyboard to launch the cookie clearer in Firefox, or go to Tools - Clear Private Data in Firefox or go to Tools - Delete Browsing History if you must use Internet Explorer.
- Log into your WordPress system as an administrator - once your cookies are cleared you can try to log in as an admin ad start activating your plugins.
- Activate Plugins One At A Time! - do not activate your plugins in bulk mode! If there is a problem with a plugin you will screw your entire system up if you don’t activate your plugins one at a time. If you have a problem with a plugin, but can’t access your plugin page anymore after the run-once screen pops up, you will have use a FTP client to delete the plugin or add a 1 to the extension. Make sure that if you use the automatic upgrade feature for plugins that the plugin that you are upgrading is deactivated before automatically upgrading it.
That should get you through the process of upgrading to WordPress 2.6 and deal with the login problem. Tomorrow I am going to post a tutorial on how to troubleshoot “WordPress White Screen of Death” problems. Remember to back up everything!
If you want to check out the best WordPress thems visit Revolution Themes, they are what I use for all my clients sites.
Sep
25
Everyone is talking about the new buzzword of the year “The Google Everflux”. What is it? Google used to roll out updates to their index slowly, over a week or so, which would cause many webmasters heartburn. This phenomenon was coined “The Google Dance” by the SEO pundits out there. The index was in flux, updating the SERP’s seemingly at random.
That is now replaced by what seams to be DAILY UPDATES! Google’s index is changing constantly now, causing many of us to need daily reporting on search engine placement. It’s almost as if Google got some steroids from BALCO and injected Googlebot with them.
How To Take Advantage Of Google Everflux
With Googlebot speeding around the Internet and indexing faster than ever, what is a webmaster to do? The answer is in Web 2.0 applications that provide your site with fresh and unique content on a daily basis. Of course having the systems in place are only the first step. You have to write all that content, and that can be quite a challenge to site owners that don’t have writing skills.
If you don’t have a blog attached to your website… GET ONE NOW.
If you have a small website, say under 25 pages, that is static, convert it to a WordPress system. If you don’t know how to do this yourself, give Get Found Now a call at 813-907-7688.
Sep
25
Blog Plagiarism and Scraping of Content
Filed Under Basic Blogging | 1 Comment
According to Dictionary.com, plagiarism is “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines THEFT as: the act of stealing; specifically: the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
“Scraping” refers to copying off another site that’s not personally owned by the party doing the scraping. Not referencing information sources and claiming that information as your own is plagiarism and content scraping. Spammer and ad-only blogs are chalked with scraped content stolen from other sites.
Plagiarism in the blogosphere is an extremely frustrating problem that is rabid on the web. In truth, anyone can steal your content and publish it on their site. After scrubbing it here and there, it now becomes “theirs.” It is extremely disheartening to see your hard work, laborious topic research and precious time cheaply ripped off.
This is precisely why I love Copyscape so much. It’s an indispensable blogging tool that uncovers plagiarism of your content. It’s also a free service. You simply type in the URL of your original page of content and Copyscape will pull up and expose any content that matches yours. It could be a sentence, a phrase, a snip-it or even an entire page of your content.
Copyscape also has a service called Copysentry that searches the web for any copiers of your content and then emails you if any is detected. As a deterrent, you can also display plagiarism warning banners from Copyscape on your site.
If you discover that your original content is now sitting on someone else’s website, time is of the essence. See the Guide to Responding To Plagiarism for the best actions to take to get your content removed as quickly as possible.
Plagiarism/scraping is a dirty problem that most professional bloggers are unfortunately, very aware of. Plagiarism Today is a blog entirely dedicated to the subject of plagiarism, packed with insightful articles and informative tips.
Sep
24
Map Communications
Filed Under Live Updates | Leave a Comment
Whether your business is large or small, MAP Communications, a nationwide answering service and call center since 1991, can provide you with custom solutions for your company’s particular needs. If you are fed up with your current outmoded answering service or simply want to enhance your business presence by adding a professional answering service to the mix, you owe it to yourself to check out the answering services that Map Communications offers.
Most companies depend on the phone for business so it’s paramount that they provide their clients/customers with professional customer service and prompt communication response time. People want to know that you value their business. This translates into having their calls answered by a live person rather than a machine.
In today’s highly competitive market, a weak phone presence is not something you want to take a chance on. Having a professional answering service conveys to your callers that you appreciate their business and have hired professionals to ensure their call will get directed to the appropriate party and in a timely manner.
With Map Communications custom solutions, your business will be set up with the exact combination of services you need, such as message tracking, call forwarding, dispatched text messages to cellular phones, 800 numbers, call screening, voice mail services and immediate attention to each and every caller. Basically, Map Communications can provide you with any customized answering service solution based on your company’s specific requirements.
Map Communications also offers these cutting edge features:
- Custom Account & Software Design
- Proprietary Software & In-house IT Dept
- Interface with your Company Website
- Dynamic Online Account Access
- Online Messaging via the Web or Email
- Advanced On-Call Roster Services
Map Communications will even let you try out their custom answering service solutions for a 7 day free trial, so that you see for yourself why they are the premier service used by major companies nationwide.
Give them a call today and speak to a live person ready to take your call!
Sep
22
Think Big Sites
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment
As an Internet marketer, I’m always looking to see how other Internet marketing professionals offering search engine optimization services go about getting more website traffic to their clients’ sites. All Internet driven businesses want more qualified traffic generation and their are specific ways in which SEO experts are able to achieve it.
Think Big Sites is a progressive web marketing company that specializes in website design as well as web traffic generation. In today’s highly competitive Internet marketplace, businesses must think about SEO as well as have a professional looking website. You need a diversified and well thought out marketing strategy to power your website or you might as well not have a website at all. Because without a competitive and comprehensive marketing plan behind your site, you’ll be nowhere in the search engines.
Think Big Sites is comprised of highly skilled professionals, including top website designers, SEO specialists, PHP database programmers, Internet business consultants, website hosting technicians and more.
They are considered by many as the premier search engine optimization company as well as offering the following services:
- Top website design
- Logo design
- Web Hosting
- Comprehensive marketing plans
- Blog marketing techniques
- Content generation
- Pay-per-click campaigns
- Linking strategies
- E-commerce
- Qualified traffic & Lead generation
- Photography
- And More!
Think BIG Sites‘ uniquely diversified marketing strategies will increase your search engine rankings faster and for less money out of your pocket than 98% of their competitors.
So, if you want to get found on the Internet - thinkbigsites.com!
Sep
16
WetPaint
Filed Under RSS Syndication, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a Comment
We are always on the lookout for cutting edge companies that get people excited about the Internet as well as those offering innovative ways to drive qualified traffic to sites. WetPaint is a free wiki website that features everything you need to start your own or contribute to a pre-existing social website, including videos, photos, text, polls and more.
With WetPaint, many people can contribute to your website, providing it with fresh ongoing content that grows quickly. And anyone who’s got a website knows that fresh content is the key to staying alive in the search engines.
Because any person can edit and contribute to your site, WetPaint has built in safe guards, such as permission levels that allow people to edit and view only certain selected pages by you. And any changes made to your site are recorded for accountability purposes.
WetPaint utilizes the best features of blogs, wikis, social networks and forums so you can be the master at creating, collecting, and organizing an interesting mix of content on your own social website.
Here’s the impressive list of features that WetPaint offers:
- 1-2-3 Simple Site Creation
- Public or Private Sites
- Custom Domain Mapping
- Personal Profiles
- Pre-Populated Templates for Specific Topics and Groups
- Click-and-Type Page Editing
- Easy Photo/Video Integration
- Photo Galleries
- Page Level Discussion Threads
- Customizable Page Templates
- Spell Check
- Tables
- Cross-browser Consistency
- Compare Page Versions
- Attachments
- Menu of Popular Widgets
- Private Onsite Messaging
- “Invite Others” Feature
- Address Book Upload
- Autocomplete Link Destinations
- Automatic Link Suggestions
- Clickable Keyword Tags
- Dynamic Page Organization
- Clickable “Top Contributor” Photos
- Site Search
WetPaint, a totally free website, provides everything you need to create, build and grow a smart, hip and happening online community around whatever floats your boat.
Sep
10
Google Page Rank Updates Toolbar
Filed Under Google Updates, Search Engine Optimization | Leave a Comment
Last month Google updated Page Rank on sites throughout the Internet. On Matt Cutt’s blog he stated that Google is updating the Toolbar Page Rank. The question is how does the update reflect search engine rankings and is the update valid with all types of Page Rank, or is it just as related to the Google Toolbar?
There are a few tools that webmasters can use to track their Page Rank other than the Google Toolbar. I personally prefer the FireFox extension: SEO For FireFox Extension by SEO Book. Not only does it have important info like PR and Google cache date, but also everything from compete.com rankings to Yahoo backlinks. There are also services out there that will tell you what your Page Rank is and even allow you to put an icon on your site showing off your page rank. The problem with them is that they also get their information from the same source which is the toolbar.
Even if you set up an API or a PHP script that pulls info from Google’s servers it is still calling the results from the toolbar so we have no way of knowing if the Page Rank was only updated for the toolbar or has Google updated the Page Rank where it really matters - in their index? Is this something that you really need to care about? To answer these questions we first need to look at Page Rank, what it is and how it works.
Page Rank Explained
Page Rank is a Google proprietary and patented algorythm that is based upon a pages inbound link count. It not only counts links, but gives those links credit based upon the Page Rank of the linking page, how many other links are on the page and the overall authority of the domain. Now I am sure I am going to get a bunch of negative comments from experts that will say, the domain doesn’t factor in Page Rank. Well anybody that thinks that is an idiot. The domain, length of time at the existing IP, amount of time the domain has been purchased and other factors absolutely factor into Page Rank on both sides of the equation. Both the destination page and the link originating page factor into the overall rank of the page. How this relates to a pages rankings in the index is another matter altogether.
Page Rank itself is used as a guideline by many webmasters as link value for link exchanges, popularity of a page in the search engines and importance of certain keywords to the overall domain. By using the backlinks feature of the Page Rank in the Google Toolbar you can see the links coming into a page of any site. This is a huge value when doing a competitive analysis.
Page Rank Updates On Internal Pages or Posts
The updates on internal pages as opposed to the overall domain are a lot more frequent these days. I did notice that several of my newer systems did get Page Rank, but none of my existing sites (older than 3 moths) had updates on the domain, just on internal pages. All WordPress systems have Page Rank on articles up to July which is pretty damn good. I think I prefer them updating internal pages often more than the domain since all my WordPress systems have a continuous flow of content.
As long as you keep the content flowing, you will get higher Page Rank eventually. I have noted that there are plenty of sites out there that have placement, but no Page Rank. I also noted that there were quite a few sites that lost Page Rank. In fact about half of all the sites bidding on Pay Per Post no longer have Page Rank. My research is limited to technology blogs, but they were pretty much across the board stripped of their Page Rank!
Page Rank Updates At The Domain Level
Did domains get updated as well as internal pages? They used to, but I am seeing more internal updates than domain level updates. There are some sites within my network that are less than 2 months old that have scored Page Rank. In fact if you look at SEO By You, you will be surprised to see that this site which is just an empty WordPress site has a 2 PR! Yep not one lick of content except for the Hello World crap that comes with the system. What does that tell us?
Page Rank Does Not Matter!
Sep
4
RankNoodle.com
Filed Under Search Engine Updates | Leave a Comment
Just about everyone who is computer literate has heard of the 3 major search engines - Yahoo, Google and MSN. Now there is a new search engine called RankNoodle.com that has joined the ranks of the other big daddies on the block and is becoming increasingly popular.
One of the main reasons for RankNoodle.com’s rise to the top is due to it’s time saving, easy on the eyes and organized interface. This search engine displays all web results for your search phase on one page, saving you from having to search different pages for images, news, related articles, web pages, and other related media.
RankNoodle.com is the New User Friendly Search Engine!
RankNoodle.com is a user friendly search engine that provides easily available search results, which is exactly what users want out of a search tool. It holds its own as a reliable online search tool, providing users with accurate and to the point information.
When testing the site, I did a search for online dating and was very pleased with the results. I did another search on cell phones for my daughter and was not diappointed.
As a professional writer and Internet blogger, I am constantly researching topics all day long. Therefore, I need a quick and reliable search tool to speed up my research time.
RankNoodle.com is a great search engine and I recommend it to other professionals who spend a lot of their time in search and research mode.
Once you check out RankNoodle.com for yourself and see how efficient, convenient and time saving it is, you will want to set it as your browser homepage.
Sep
4
Relativity Syndication CO-OP
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization | 3 Comments
As Internet marketing experts ourselves, we’re always on the look out for other Internet marketing companies that utilize innovative and cutting edge strategies to successfully drive qualified traffic to business websites.
Relativity Syndication Co-op is one of those companies. They have a smart and progressive model of producing high quality content along with a diligent syndication routine. They understand well that in these tenuous and uncertain economic times, businesses must employ new and sustainable marketing strategies that are competitive on a global scale, which means utilizing the power that only professional Internet marketing can offer.
Relativity Syndication Co-op Works For You!
Relativity Syndication Co-op offers businesses the opportunity to recession proof their business as well as increase their market share globally by connecting with other businesses using their cooperative model. You’ll be able to stretch your marketing dollars with less effort and less time, and for a very small investment for your connection to the marketplace. The reason for the successes that Relativity Syndication CO-OP has garnered is due to their high quality content driven approach as well as their understanding and utilization of syndication and social network marketing. The CO-OP’s proven traffic driving techniques will drive traffic to your business site(s) from
- Multiple referring sites
- Major search engines
- Blogs and Blogging
- Major Social Networking Sites
- Numerous other Sources