Last week I had the great pleasure to download, and test-drive a brand-new plugin from MaxBlogPress creators; it is called
‘Subscribers Magnet’… perhaps you have already heard or read reviews about it!

Here’s my opinion about it and why I think you should or NOT buy it!

First of all, ‘Subscribers Magnet’ is a wordpress plugin which will rapidly build your email list by using the technology in some unconventional and unique way. It’s unobtrusive and highly impactful. Watch this video to see it in action.

You have the option to add your opt-in form all over your blog, and actually ‘seduce’ your visitors to join your list, in a very friendly manner.

You can add your form in your blog sidebar, in the footer bar, within the post itself and even in the comments.

The most exciting part about this little plugin is that you have full control over the look, feel, location and functionality of your forms; the plugin works with AWeber, GetResponse, and all the other major autoresponders out there.

What I don’t like about this plugin is that it’s too EASY to use. You don’t need any html coding or programming skills. And I think with the ease of use, it’ll attract people who will wrongly utilise it and with just like any software or method, it’ll decrease its value and effectiveness overtime.

Yet, in the hands of potent and smart bloggers, this is so powerful, it could triple your sign-up rate almost overnight, without you having to get more blog visitors than you’re already getting. For example, if you actually get 100 unique visitors to your blog on a daily basis [on average] and you get a 5% conversion rate, meaning 5 subscribers, then using this plugin, you could get 15 subscribers instead, from the same amount of traffic.

If you’re all about optimization, you’re going to love the plugin — that’s for sure!

For example, imagine your visitors landing on your blog. This plugin will automatically fill the visitors’ name/email in the opt-in form on your blog. They won’t have to type in their email and name anymore. It’s all done for them, on auto-pilot!

Now, please listen closely. You should NOT buy ‘Subscribers Magnet’…

1. If, once you finish reading this plugin review, still don’t see its real value
2. If you receive less than 10 visitors a day to your blog
3. If you don’t plan to actually test-drive it on your blog.

On the other hand, you should BUY ‘Subscribers Magnet’…
1. If you want to double, triple and even quadruple your subscription rate ‘overnight’ – and do it over and over again, day and night, week after week, month after month!

2. If you are sick and tired of not getting optimum list conversion and want to get the maximum from your blog’s real estate by placing your opt-in form in strategic, non-intrusive locations, where anybody can see it.

P.S. Here are some other mind-blowing features, perhaps not found elsewhere:

A. You can show footer bar which is highly visible but not obnoxious. Very good for turning first time visitors into subscribers.

B. You can SEND “automatic” and highly-personalized ‘thank you messages’ by email, on the first occasion someone comments on your blog? Think of the possibilities! In that message you can invite them to join your newsletter or rss feed. It’s another “friendly” reason to bond trust with your readers and get them on your list, in a non intrusive way!

C. You have unique tracking available for each subscription method – you will know for sure which forms perform better than others; with this new found knowledge, you’ll be able to boost your sign-up rate like never before!
Bonus: Download your copy of ‘Subscribers Magnet’ PLUGIN and receive a free copy of “Multiple Hit Strategy” with your purchase. This bonus item is actually a step-by-step manual detailing the multiple hit strategy for rapid list building.

Let me rant a little bit with my post today.

What will you do if you woke up one morning and you can’t access your blog?

You’ve tried other browser, still your site is inaccessible…

You’ve tried other internet connection, same problem…

You’ve asked your colleagues, same result as yours…

You’ve tried to change the DNS of your modem, still no reply…

You ping, and the reply is “unknown host”…

Multiply this with 4 blogs and what do you think are you gonna feel?

I’m sure most of you will get mad already.

This was exactly what I’d experienced last Thursday. 4 0f the numerous blogs and websites that I’m managing went into oblivion.

I sent an email to the technical support of the web host provider where these 4 blogs are hosted and guess what?…

They replied after 11 hours! Wow, that was  too fast wasn’t? Do you think that’s a reasonable time to reply to an urgent and critical technical support?

I thought that they are monitoring their servers 24×7? Why is it that I need to ask them what happened before  telling me the real issues? Isn’t they supposed to be more active in reporting this kind of incidence to their clients?

I’m working as an I.T. consultant managing webhost servers too and we have a policy in our company that we need to send an incident report to all our clients whenever there’s a critical network outages.  Aside from this, we are also required to send a report every 30 minutes to lessen the anxiety of our clients.

I’m not expecting the same treatment from this webhost provider but I hope that they’ll be more pro-active in dealing with their clients.

The  Worst is Yet to Come

Not only that  their technical support is horrible but also on how they managed their web host servers. When I received their email, I was expecting that perhaps the problem is just a simple DNS problem but I was alarmed when they told me that there was a hard disk failure.

Hard disk failure??? How could it be? I know that webhost hardware are using server grade hard disk, meaning they are configured to recover itself from this kind of failure. This kind of hardware are supposed to be using multiple hard disks. The minimum hard disk for this kind of setup is 2. If one of the two drives should fail, the other will still be available to run applications or recover files.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt but their excuse is really lame.  This is really unbelievable.

Additionally, they told me their weekly backup was corrupted and they can’t put back all the files,  although they gave an assurance that they’re doing their best to restore all files as much as they could.

The Resolution

They’ve sent my account information but telling me nothing on what should I do with this information.  After sending them numerous support tickets, finally they replied that I need to setup all my domains again and start from scratch because their previous backup for the month of June were all gone! I have to setup domains on WHM, make Packages, upload all files, install wordpress, themes, plugins etc..

Can you believe that? Remember, they’ve mentioned on their first email that only a week time of backup was corrupted? Now here it is, they’re saying  the whole previous month is corrupted too.

The only consolation that they gave me is they won’t bill me for one month. Thanks but no thanks. Don’t know they that my clients lost more than the cost of the free one month they are offering? The lost of traffic, lost of income opportunities such as payperpost, adsense, affiliates and more.

Sadly, one of my clients whom I have been working with since 2007 transferred to another host.

Signs You Have a Bad Webhost

Based on my experienced, here are the signs you have a bad webhost and you’ve better think twice to RUN or stay with them if you see these hints.

1. No 24×7 customer support. Your online presence is not only limited within your time zone, and if something goes wrong, you need to get it back up no matter what time day or night it is.

2. Poor or lack of  support. You pay them good money and it’s just appropriate that they will treat you like an important customer but if you’ve noticed that only 1 person is answering your support tickets then it means that they are understaffed.

3. Hard to get in touch with their customer support service. This is almost synonymous with no.2, but if the webhost provider isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then be careful and stay away from them.

4. Your site or blog is down on a frequent basis. As I’ve mentioned on no.1, your site or blog must be running  not only on a 24×7 basis but it should be up also for at least 99% all the time. This is what the webhost providers are offering. You need to find a provider that can guarantee you a 99% uptime or more.

I had almost one week of sleepless night trying to recover all  4 blogs of my clients. Some have backups on their local PC but not updated. It’s been a week also the live chat support of this webhost provider that I’m using is offline. How can it be “live” when it’s off?

Sorry for this post but I hope you will learn a lesson or two on my experienced. It has a big impact on my clients (financially – lost of income opportunities, etc.) and to me  as well.  I lost one big client, and it affected my emotional  and physical health too.   I was not able to ride my bike and play badminton for almost a week since I’ve spent  sleepless nights to make the 4 blogs work again.

I hope dear readers this won’t happen to you. I tell you, it’s costly. So go, find the best and most reliable webhost provider you can afford.

WordPress 3.0

Straight, no chaser – this is the dictum of the latest version of WordPress.

Just like any drinking session, sometimes a well planned event can lead into some unfavorable consequence. This is what happened when I tried to upgrade BlogDeManila.com from WordPress 2.9.2 to WordPress 3.0 or known as “Thelonious”.

Right after I read the email  from Matt (founder of WP) that the latest WP 3.0 is already released, I was excited to install it immediately. Without a second thought, I login on BlogDeManila dashboard and quickly click on the Please Update Now link and chose the Upgrade Automatically (1)since I’m used in upgrading WP plugins automatically instead of downloading them manually on my laptop. I even ignored the warning sign -  Important: before upgrading, please backup your database and files (3). By the way, I even clicked on bulk Upgrade for my plugins (2).

Blog De Manila WordPress Dashboard

The upgrade was a blaze! It was the fastest WP upgrade I’ve ever seen. It’s finished in less than 2 minutes, much faster than the famous 5 minutes fresh installation. Like a shot of whiskey – straight up.

The difference is visually visible.  I looked around the new Admin dashboard and played with the promised easy and friendly drag-and-drop menus. It’s so cool!   I’m very much delighted for being able to organize the navigational menus.

The interface is much lighter than the previous version. It seems it has more white spaces and lighter menus.

I started to delete some comments but after clicking on the “spam” the dashboard turn into a black page. No errors, no warning, just plain blank page. I thought WP 3.0 is still working on the background perhaps trying to mix some vodka.  After some few seconds, I realized there’s no more activity on my browser. I can’t logout from the dashboard since everything is gone. I’m not hallucinating due from this “drinking” session. The closest thing to do whenever you are on this situation is escape.

I closed my browser hoping that WP 3.0 will return to it’s senses. I logged in again and yes, everything seems back to normal and the spam I deleted is gone.  I tried to delete another spam comment and boom…I got the blank page again.

I called Mr. Google but unfortunately, he’s not aware WP3.0 is already in town. I searched high and low, gave up and searched again. I was not able to get help from Mr. G.

The reality sinks in.

Finally, I searched from the source of WP3.0.  I’ve found out that plain vodka of WP 3.0 doesn’t mix well with some flavored plugins. The blank page nausea is called White Screen of Death.

The solution to WP 3.0  hallucination ( nice rhyme, isn’t?).

If you forgot to deactivate the plugins before the upgrade, try to rename the plugins one by one until you find the culprit. Another trick is, rename your plugins folder to plugins-old through FTP  and see if that fixes it.  Next, login to your WP admin and see if  the blank page is gone. If yes, make a new plugins folder and copy your plugins back, one at a time, testing each copy after activating them.

Luckily for BlogDeManila, the first plugin on the dashboard list is the source of the problem. After renaming it, the blank page is gone. BlogDeManila can live without that particular plugin than a blank Admin page.

Here’s the list of some plugins  that can’t fully mix and match with the latest flavor or Wp3.0, based on other bloggers experience.

1. Ajax Comment Posting
2. W3 Total Cache
3. Sociable
4. Ravatars
5. WP Tuner
6. HeadSpace 2
7. Podcasting Plugin by TSG – an update is provided already.
8. Nextgen Gallery

If you notice, there’s really nothing wrong with Wp3.0.  The problem is that some plugins developers (and other themes too) were not able to update their source code to work with the latest WP.

If you know any plugins that is making a havoc or if you are having a problem  with  WP 3.0,  just write your comment here so we can update the list.

Even with this hiccup,  I still consider  WP 3.0 the fastest, sexiest and smoothest version ever!

Do not delete SPAM…yet.

What I’m talking about?

This may sound stupid but you’ve got to submit the spam to the web before hitting the “delete” or “delete all” button on your WordPress Comment Page dashboard.

Well, this post of mine applies only to all who are using Akismet on their site, either a blog or a corporate site.

I believe Akismet is the most useful plug-in/API ever developed for a blog. This is also the reason why it’s a default plug-in of WordPress, aside from the well known fact that the man behind Akismet is also the main developer of WordPress.

If you are a big fan of WordPress, you are using your Askimet, are you?  If not, then you are missing the most important tool for your blogging battle.

What is Akismet?

In a very straight and simple definition – Akismet was developed to kill Spam.

That’s it. No more no less.

Some people call it ” The Silence of the Spams“. It kills spam in the background automatically without intruding your blog life.

So why did I tell you not to delete Spam? Because you have to inform Akismet that you’ve got a spam on your Comment Pending Page. Akismet cannot kill it unless you or other Akismet users had already submitted the ‘specimen’ of the spam.

This is how Akismet works. When a new comment comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which will test the comment if its a friendly comment or just a plain spam. This includes  trackback, or pingback too.

Look at BlogDeManila Comment Page. Some comments look genuine but if you check the sites of those submitted URL, you will know that they are just purely Stupid-Pathetic-Annoying-Message or SPAM.

BlogDeManila Comment Page

If you see this really annoying comments or pingbacks, just mark them as “SPAM” to inform Akismet web service. Do not click on trash …yet.

Once you marked them as negative comment, they will be transferred to your Comment Spam Page. From here you can delete them permanently or let Akismet do it automatically.  Make sure that you’ve chosen the option to automatically discard (or delete) spam comments on posts older than a month.

Akismet Option to Delete Spam Automatically

Akismet becomes more effective and intelligent the more you use it. So use it freely!

Is Akismet FREE?

Yes and No. Akismet is free for personal use and non-profit organization and educational institution. BUT, yes there’s a big but here, according to Automaticc ( the maker of Akismet), if your blog is earning more than $500 a month, then are you are encouraged to get a $5/mo pro-blogger Akismet API key.

If you are running a commercial venture in your blog or corporate site, then you must get an enterprise subscription  for your company starting at $50/mo. The last thing that you want to see in your corporate  blog  are good old-fashioned pill, porn and Viagra ad comments, right?

You have a lot of better things to do than fight dozen and dozens of  ever-changing, high-tech spam aliens.

Don’t forget your best, automatic laser gun is already in your arsenal. All you have to do is  is activate, configure and use it. Forget that spam was ever a problem again. Hasta la vista, spam baby!

It’s Official.We all need Speed…for our blogs in order to rank high on Google’s search page.

Google announced on April 09,2010 that they incorporated site speed as one of the over 200 signals in determining the position of a website in the search results.

According to Google Webmaster Central blog, they launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing and not too many people noticed it.

Google’s Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only a few percentage of websites:

“Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don’t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that ‘We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.’

The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change.”

7 Tips to better optimize your blog and keep it listed in Google search results.

There are a number of articles on the internet on best practices for improving your website’s load and response times. Below are just some of the proven tips that you can easily apply to improve the speed of your blog.

1. Use Google Page Speed tool to speed up your site. You can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of your blog pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.
2. Choose a fast and reliable web host with a good connection to the Internet. Slow servers can cause problems.
3. Use as few images and videos as possible on your blog .
4. Make sure that all images have height and width tags.  The tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it.
5. Use media content provider such as Flicker and YouTube to host your media images and videos instead of loading them on your webhost.
6. Use only the plugins you really need, and delete the rest.
7. Delete unnecessary PHP tags and database access.  Convert some PHP commands to HTML.

Blog reader wants immediate results. Most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Even if, they are just dropping your EC button or clicking on your Adgitize widget. The faster your  blog pages load, the more readers of your blog will be.

If you need more explanation on how to apply these tips, I’ll be happy to elaborate them one by one. Just make sure to wear your seat belt when applying these tips

With hundreds of web hosting companies offering all kinds of hosting plans, it has become challenging to find the best web host company that offers balance between  features, performance and support.

What about Prices? Well, this is relative in one way or the other. Some web host provider will offer you a “cheap” entry for as low as $1 only for your first month but you have to sign-up with them for at least 2 years in order for you to avail of that special price. Other providers, on the other hand, can give you a special prices which are valid for a limited time.

So what is the best web host provider for blogs? For me, no other provider can beat BlueHost in providing the best price-value for blog sites. Alright, maybe I’m lying because Bluehost is not only the best web host for blogs but for any other web site too from simple static page to social networking sites.

How do I know this?

1. I am using BlueHost, our company is using it for our corporate site, support website and in our social networking site. We are using BlueHost even in our business/project websites.  The only drawback is we cannot use BlueHost for our Windows hosting need. BlueHost exclusively provides their hosting plan in Linux only and I’m not aware if they have plans to offer in the future.

2. If you don’t believe on my personal testament, just do a simple Google search for “best web host for blogs”, check some of the sites on the first result page and I assure you that BlueHost is is always mentioned, if not listed within their top 3 choices.

3. Even WordPress,org, on their recommended web hosting page, put BlueHost on their first choice. see http://wordpress.org/hosting/

This is not a pay-per-post review. I’m just one of their satisfied customers but to be perfectly honest with all you my dear readers, the link to BlueHost contained my affiliate ID which may give me some moolah.

Wow…time flies so fast! I’ve been out of town for almost a month…travelling in all directions with my whole family.  Tiring, but a lot of memorable moments were bonded.

My last post was more than a month old already. I’m very sorry for that, but let me tell you that I did not procrastinate nor I’m a  Blogcrastinator.     A  Blogcrastination – the deferment of writing a blog post to a later time; often a mechanism for coping with anxiety.

In fact, all the blogs that I own and most of the sites that I’m maintaining ( I’m not the blog owner) were all updated even if I was on a vacation except for blogdemanila.com. This is of course due to WordPress scheduling techniques. All the articles were set to be posted on a scheduled date.

So how did I earn while traveling? Simple, by just letting my blogs run on their own. To tell you the truth,  my earnings for this past four weeks  where I was mostly offline are more than what I’ve earned  on my first year of blogging.

And here’s the other truth;  I don’t really do ALL the work. It’s all outsourced or automated.

It’s simple really when you already have set-up your “blog empire” and let the soldiers do most of the work. All you have to think about is the strategy you will use in conquering your next loots.

Just like the old English idiom, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, there’s also there’s WAY more to blogs than running a few clunky ads.

Spilling the secret box

My secret box is composed of a mix of revenue streams including:

• Services (setting-up sites and blogs)
• Affiliate products and services
• Ads (such as Adsense and Bidvertiser)

I know that some of you are earning a lot doing product reviews and/or using pay per post networks. Honestly, I’m not good on this. I’m not a good writer and so I shy away from this task as much as possible.

Since I’m not good in writing,there’s another SECRET that I’m going to reveal on my next post.  I just have to schedule the articles that are needed to be posted on all the blogs that I’m maintaining. Don’t worry it won’t take long.

Please bear with me while blogdemanila.com is getting a facelift.  It has been ages already since this blog was given a makeover. It won’t be an extreme makeover but just simple upgrading and tweaking of the layout.

I’ve promised that I will use a custom theme for this blog, but due to unforeseen new projects that came-up, I don’t have the luxury of time to create my own theme anymore.

If you find anything unusual or awkward in this site, like broken links, missing posts and images, please be calm and patient.

If you have noticed that I seldom post here at blogdemanila.com, this is due to some offline projects that I’m doing . It doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit blogging. No, never!  It won’t happen.

In fact, I’ve already lined-up some topics that I’m going to post like basics of blogging, link building, adsense tips, seo techniques and services that blogdemanila will offer.

So, please stay calm while I’m  fine-tuning and adjusting the layout of blogdemanila.com.

Mye,  a blogger friend of mine informed me about the WordPress scheduled post problem and asked for my help.  She experienced it when she installed the latest WordPresss 2.9 version. The installation was successful except that, her setup of scheduled post were not publishing.

I know how important scheduled posts are specially for those who are into Project 365 (it’s a project wherein you post about your daily activities or take a pictures of what you are doing) , and don’t forget the members of Adgitize who are trying to post every day in order to get more points ( and more earnings).

For those who haven’t experienced a missed WordPress post schedule, here’s how it looks like:

The normal status of a post are published, scheduled, pending review and draft . As you can see from the captured screen the status of the post is “Missed Schedule”.

How To Fix The WordPress Scheduled Post Problem

1. Good news! WordPress developers were alerted of this bug as soon as they uploaded the 2.9. If you installed this version, all you have to do is install the WordPress 2.9.1. It fixed this missed schedule problem and more.
2. If you are not using WP 2.9 and yet you are experiencing this problem, I recommend that you use a plugin.

2.1 Scheduled MIA – a WordPress plugin that looks for posts with a date in the past and that still have post_status=future.
2.2. Missed Schedule – It runs automatically every 15 minutes and will publish “future” posts in database.

I just want to tell you my dear readers, that not all bugs can be seen by the developers of WordPress.  Remember that WordPress is an open source application written by hundreds of contributors. The least we can do is be patient  and report the bugs encountered. WordPress needs your help too!

Best WordPress Theme

If you rely on your blog for the food in your table, I highly recommend that “never upgrade without doing a local test”. Setting up a local test is very easy, but this is not our topic for today. I might just blog about that in the future.

Happy Blogging 2010 everyone!

As promised, WordPress 2.9 was released as scheduled. The new version, code named “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae is now available for download.

WordPress 2.9

This is not just an upgrade but a major release. This new version comes with over 500 bug fixes and enhancements which makes it a recommended download and install.

Over 140 developers contributed on this released version.

New Features include:

1. Undo – you can now undo or unerase a post or comment if you accidentally deleted them. No more annoying  “are you sure” messages on every delete.

2. Built-in image editor – no more Adobe Photoshop for me.  This is a basic image editor that  allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images

3. Batch plugin update – It’s now possible to upgrade up to 10 plugins at the same time, and it will check the compatibility too. No more surprises if a plugin will work or not

Best WordPress Theme

4. Oembed(Easier video embeds) – allows you to just paste a URL on your post and WordPress will magically turn it into the proper embed code. It supports popular sites such as YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

5. Improved theme and plugin Editor - When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to the exact line after you save.

6. Automatic repair database – This is one of my favorite enhancements. Just enable it in your wp-config.php file by adding define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true).

7. Sidebar description – put a nice description  on your sidebar on what they do.

You can upgrade easily from your WordPress Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org

Here’s short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new released version: