Category — Uncategorized

Sorry for the delays in approving blogs, been extremely busy recently, lots of things getting in the road of checking the site,

but Im back on it now, the queue is over 10 THOUSAND blogs, so I am going to be rather busy!

Now some good news, Im trying out some better hosting, its more expensive, but hopefully will be a lot faster.

Im slowly migrating the site over to it, starting today with the database - lets see how it goes!

Despite the large amount of blogs accepted, the queue is now around the four thousand blog mark, so it will take some time for new blogs to be accepted.

Thankfully (in one sense) many submissions will be rejected, as spam, so not all the blogs need checking fully.

The forum also suffered from spam recently, so I have mass deleted hundreds of posts and upgraded the software whilst doing so. I *may* upgrade again soon, so holding back on tidying up the forum until I decide.

I have been quite busy accepting/rejecting blogs recently, trying to get the queue down to a reasonable size, its currently down to just under a couple of thousand blogs waiting to be checked. Apologies for it taking longer than normal for blogs to be accepted, but the queue is very large. Your turn will come in time.

I have been unable to check the change requests for a while, but will be back on top of that when I get the queue down a bit more, so it looks like there is plenty of fresh content guaranteed for quite some time.

I have managed to get back up to speed with the submission queue, lots of new blogs have been accepted, although there are still several hundred waiting patiently in the queue. If yours is one of them, dont worry I will be getting around to it soon.

As lsblogs gets more popular the amount of spam submissions also grows, you would not believe (well perhaps you would) how many non-blogs get submitted, I dont know why they bother, as they just get deleted, and often a ban applied.

Finally, we moved servers again recently, this time back to godaddy, as the beta program we were on ended before schedule due to unexpected issues. The move went smoothly, apart from a few hours downtime, but all is back up and running again. I have not decided where to keep the site, I may move to another server if I experience problems on godaddy. One plus point is the major problem I had with godaddy not being able to open remote files (the site started of on godaddy) is now no longer an issue. Only downtime and speed are concerns now, I will give them a spin and see how they go, if they are up to it, then I will stay, if not, another move will be in the pipeline.

Said it before, but I will say it again, It cracks me up when someone� who has a SEO (search engine optimisation) blog, who claims to be a expert on SEO, cant even get the URL correct for their own site when submitting to a directory.

If they cant get it right for their own site, what chance do their clients have, who pay good money for their services?

Needless to say, the submission went in the bin, along with any others they did.

Just a quick post to remind people we have a toolbar available for download, its free and has some useful features. My favourite one is the “random blog” button which picks a random blog from the directory each time you press it.

Its a great way to find blogs that you would probably never see, as its random!

I use it all the time, to do random spot checks for dead sites, and the good news is there are very few in the directory, I can surf for quite some time before hitting the occasional unavoidable dead site (and most of the time its just a temporary problem with the site in question, not actually a permanent failure).

You can download the I.E and Firefox compatible toolbar here

I have had to take the adbrite ads of the site, as I discovered yesterday that they they had started publishing ads that I had not been informed of, had not approved, and by the looks of it was not even going to be paid for!

The adbrite rules are very clear, I get to approve all ads before they go on site, and I made sure the settings were set that way.

Maybe the move to another server (more on that later) confused them, but I dont see how, as the normal ads were still showing, so they knew which site they were ‘on’.

As I was getting way to many ads showing, and they were for ones I had NO CONTROL over, I pulled the code and stopped the ads completely until they get back to me.

Problem is, I have no idea how long it will take for them to get back to me, going by past experience it could be a long long time, if ever, as support at abrite is not very good in my opinion, to put it mildly

I still cant believe that there system failed in such a manner, the last thing I wanted to see on site was a advert for a online pharmacy - Im so sick of online pharmacies spamming the site that I never want to see another!

So, if you had a ad with adbrite on this site, then I apologise for pulling the code off, adbrite should not charge you for any days that the ad is not showing, but I would check to be on the safe side, as they dont seem very on the ball…….

Its funny, but you often dont realise just how much you use, like, or love something until its gone…..

I have been checking alexa rankings, out of curiousity for quite some time now, I know they are not exactly a scientific or reliable method of ranking, as they are based upon users having a toolbar installed, and are quite easy to fake, but still I like looking at how various sites are doing.

But I cant at the moment, and have not been able to for a few days, as it turns out that they are moving from their dark dank basement to shiny new offices, and whilst they are moving, their servers are stuck in the back of a van.

I really hope that van is locked up somewhere safe, I dont want to read that some car thief drove of with the whole of alexa over night, or broke in and stole their servers!

Hopefully they will be back up soon, and I will be able to satisfy my odd compulsion

After a nice suprise with Adsense today, I have decided to buy some more memory for our PC’s soon. The nice suprise came about when one of the people that had signed up to adsense using LS Blogs earned their first 100 dollars.

When that happens, google pays the referrer a nice bonus, and thats what I will be using to purchase some more ram with.

If you dont know what adsense is, then where have you been for the last few years!

Adsense is a service, provided by google that lets people place advertisements on their sites or blogs, and its loved by many bloggers, but its also disliked by many others who do not like adverts.

If you are not using it, then it wont hurt to give it a shot, as it is free, the worst that I can imagine happening is people saying hey we dont like those ads! In which case, you can always take it off, but when its on you can sit back and hope for some earnings from google.

It wont make you rich, unless you have a incredibly well trafficked blog, and I do mean well trafficked, and the content of your blog will make a difference to, as the ads are contextual.

This means that the ads are based upon the content on your blog, so as you can imagine some topics attract higher amounts of competition than others (more competition = more people bidding for the ad, which means more money for the publisher)

If you were to sign up, I would suggest reading the help that google provides, as they have some good tips on how to place the adverts, and how to make the most of the service.

Most important of all - do not try to cheat the service

I will repeat that one again

Most important of all - do not try to cheat the service

as if you do, when you are caught, and you will be, you will lose out on the chance to participate in the service again, and you can kiss goodbye to those ill-gotten gains.

Google has been around long enough to be able to tell if you and your friends are going click mad to earn money, its easy to spot, and they will boot you when the spot it. So dont do it!

Google adsense is best thought of as a bonus, if you make anything from it, then great, go and treat yourself, if it takes a long time for the treat to arrive, then so what, its still a free treat at the end of the day.

Serious bloggers with a lot of traffic could earn more, and faster, the only way to find out if it is for you is to try it.

Getting back to the memory, once I have that, I will be able to tweak lsblogs even more, as at present my pc cant really cope with the demands I am placing on it, and its slowing down my development cycle.

In time, I will get around to getting the bits needed to complete another spare pc, which I will use solely for background tasks needed to keep lsblogs ticking over, which should make the site run a lot smoother.

Sorry for the slight decrease in acceptance of submissions recently, but I have been asked to help out on another forum, and it has been taking up a fair bit of time today, with some people throwing their dollies out of the pram so to speak.

Regular service will resume soon.