I haven’t added anything new to this blog for a while, but today I stumbled on a really useful trick that allows you to force a file download of specific file types via .htaccess. More after the break.

Let’s say you want to provide some registry files (.reg) on your website or some videos and MP3’s that users should only download not watch on your server, then this will come in handy.

Create a .htaccess file in your download folder e.g. /downloads/ and then copy and paste this

<Files *.*>
ForceType applicaton/octet-stream
</Files>

This will force the browser (IE, Firefox, etc. all supported) to download the file instead of trying to open it!

I hope this helps some people, because it clearly sucks when people can’t download your files and you did not notice it.

If you find this in your apache error.log: Premature end of script headers in index.php and get a 500 error on your wordpress blog, then you should check your suexec log. When it reaches 2GB you will receive a 500 error and the message: Premature end of script headers

You can find the log here: /var/log/apache/suexec.log or simply enter locate suexec.log

Also check your /var/log/suphp.log … if it is over 2GB large you will receive the 500 error!

If you find this error in your apache error.log you most likely have rebuild your system and broke a few apache modules.

I received the error after rebuilding my system with EasyApache and using APC + Memcache. I compiled memcache and APC myself, so after rebuilding the system via EasyApache it would receive the error: child pid exit signal segmentation fault 11

If that is not your problem, you should rebuild apache without eaccelerator, acp or memcache, because they can cause the problem.

… if you encounter this or a similar problem the easiest solution is to validate your feed.

To validate your RSS feed, simply go to http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=

Enter your Feed URL and hit enter. Now you know if the feed is valid or not. Most likely it is not. Write down the error line and find out what entry is causing the error. When you found the post you should remove any signs that might cause problems. In my case I had to remove the “&-sign”. Because HTML hex-codes normally start with the “&”-sign they are causing some problems sometimes.

We all hate them, yet there’s no way around them .. sometimes. Well, actually sometimes they can be even useful. What if you are programming a web 2.0 site and want to create some neat popups that explain how this or that works? Popups can also come in handy if you want to make sure that visitors to your blog don’t miss any important information.

Anyway, after looking around I found two solutions. From now on, I’ll always differentiate between the “Blogger solution” and the “Marketeer solution”. If you don’t know why I am doing that, I suggest you subscribe to our mailing list and grab your free eBook.

Popup Script in Javascript for Bloggers

The following script is intended for bloggers. This is *not* a popup that will automatically popup, although you could probably modify the code so it does, but it is a neat plugin that helps you to open a windows “on click”.

A link would look like this:

<a onclick="superPopup({url:this.href, type: 'someGroup'}); return false;" href="popup_window_url.html">link text</a>

Eric “Webstar”’s Superpopup: http://www.ericwebster.net/

Popup Script in Javascript for Marketeers

Looking for a popup that is unblockable? Looking for a way to open up a little advertising window that can will open:

a) once per browser session
b) every site refresh
c) once every “x” minutes

If so, then you might want to look into this little script:

	var nba_pop_toolbar = ( typeof nba_pop_toolbar != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_toolbar : 0;
	var nba_pop_status = ( typeof nba_pop_status != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_status : 0;
	var nba_pop_menubar = ( typeof nba_pop_menubar != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_menubar : 0;
	var nba_pop_scrollbars = ( typeof nba_pop_scrollbars != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_scrollbars : 0;
	var nba_pop_resizable = ( typeof nba_pop_resizable != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_resizable : 1;
	var nba_pop_page_delay = ( typeof nba_pop_page_delay != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_page_delay : 1;
	var nba_pop_limit = ( typeof nba_pop_limit != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_limit : 'session';
	var nba_pop_type = ( typeof nba_pop_type != 'undefined' ) ? nba_pop_type : 'over';
 
	var nba_ie = false;
	var nba_popped = false;
 
	function nba_launch()
	{
		if ( ( nba_get_cookie( 'nba_pop' ) == false ) && ( nba_popped == false ) )
		{
			nba_set_cookie( 'nba_pop', 1 );
			nba_popped = true;
			window.open( nba_url, '', 'height=' + nba_pop_height + ',width=' + nba_pop_width + ',left=' + ( ( screen.width - nba_pop_width ) / 2 ) + ',top=' + ( ( screen.height - nba_pop_height ) / 2 ) + ',toolbar=' + nba_pop_toolbar + ',status=' + nba_pop_status + ',menubar=' + nba_pop_menubar + ',scrollbars=' + nba_pop_scrollbars + ',resizable=' + nba_pop_resizable );
			if ( nba_pop_type == 'under' )
			{
				window.focus();
				window.setTimeout( 'window.focus()', 100 );
			}
		}
	}
	var nba_url = 'http://domain.com' ;
	function nba_init()
	{
		if ( navigator.appVersion.indexOf( 'MSIE' ) != -1 )
		{
			nba_ie = true;
		}
		window.setTimeout( 'nba_trigger()', ( nba_pop_page_delay * 1000 ) );
	}
	function nba_trigger()
	{
		if ( nba_ie == true )
		{
			document.getElementById( 'nba_field' ).fireEvent( 'onchange' );
		}
	}
	function nba_set_cookie( name, value )
	{
		var expires = '';
		if ( nba_pop_limit != false )
		{
			if ( typeof( nba_pop_limit ) == 'number' )
			{
				var d = new Date();
				d.setTime( d.getTime() + nba_pop_limit * 60 * 1000 );
				expires = '; expires=' + d.toGMTString();
			}
			document.cookie = name + '=' + escape( value ) + expires + '; path=/';
		}
	}
	function nba_get_cookie( name)
	{
		var re = new RegExp( '(\;|^)[^;]*(' + name + ')\=([^;]*)(;|$)' );
		var res = re.exec( document.cookie );
		return res != null ? unescape( res[ 3 ] ) : false;
	}
 
	var nba_body = document.getElementsByTagName( 'BODY' ).item( 0 );
	window.onload = nba_init;
	window.onclick = nba_launch;
	document.write( '<input id="nba_field" style="width: 0px; top: 0px; position: absolute; visibility: hidden;" />' );

Now that’s quite a long script and you will have to call it like that:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--mce:0--></script>

Uncomment whatever you need

//var nba_pop_limit = 1; //once every x minutes
//var nba_pop_limit = false; //every page load
var nba_pop_limit = 'session'; //once every browser session

You need to specify your URL in the first snippet, modify nba_url:

var nba_url = 'http://domain.com' ;

Twitter has updated their TOS (Terms of Service). What does their new TOS say?

First of all, Twitter underlines that you own your tweets and not Twitter, but is allowed to share it with anyone.

Secondly, the Twitter TOS states that they may include relevant ads to the content:

The Services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the Content or information on the Services, queries made through the Services, or other information.

Twitter wouldn’t be Twitter if they would go for the plain banner advertising, that’s why they will smartly integrate ads that are highly relevant – at least that’s what I expect from them.

There are rumors that they might also be launching a “pro” edition of twitter that gives you access to additional features and will probably not include advertisements.

Update: Oh yea, here’s the link if you want to read through the TOS http://twitter.com/tos

I’ve noticed that more and more people call all the methods that allow you to make money online “scams”.
Do you also think that making money with blogging is a scam?

Some people make beginners believe that they can earn money from blogging straight from day 1. They make you buy their tools, subscribe to their mailing list or lure you into a monthly subscription program that will cost you tremendous amounts of money. That’s why many people talk about a conspiracy and a so called “make money blogging scam”. There are even some affiliate programs that will lure you into their program by telling you that you can make $1000’s per month by putting links on a website.
It’s not that easy, but it’s also not as diifcult as many people think.

Let me tell you something about the real way how bloggers make money. The most popular way how people monetize their websites is plain and simple “advertising”. Two of the top players are Google Adsense and Chitika. I suggest you apply to both if you own a blog that is already receiving some visitors. However, advertising is cheap. The internet is growing, more and more sites offer ad inventory on their websites: Advertisers have a good choice and can be very picky. Of course they will only pick the best sites with the best converting traffic and a target audience that is interested in their products.
Unless you have a very big site that is receiving 20,000 and more visitors daily you will not be making much money off advertising. Well, there are of course exceptions: If you are receiving just 10,000 daily and you are in a highly competitive niche like “poker” or “home loans” you will probably earn some good money just by advertising, but highly competitives niches are also harder to rank for and you won’t receive 10,000 visitors per day that easily.

Anyway, if you want to really find out how people make money, I suggest you subscribe to my mailing list and download my free eBook to learn where the real money is.

Well, sometimes you might feel like writing your posts in Word until you realize that copying from Word to Wordpress doesn’t work very well.

What to do then? Well, it’s tricky, but I have found not just one, but several solutions. Some solutions are good for short posts without much formatting, others work better for long posts, ebooks or articles.

Word to Notepad to Wordpress

I guess you figured out that the easiest solution would be to simply convert the Word text into a plain text without all the crap MS Word is inserting. Copying the text into notepad will erase all the text formatting. Well, we don’t want that, but if your text is short this is the easiest solution.

You can also use a wordpress plugin to convert your word text into plain text with just one click: Wordpress Plain Text Plugin

Got a long text with lots of formatting? No worries, let’s move on to the next solution:

Copy & Paste from Word to Wordpress

The following video is a guide that will show how to copy text from word and paste it into Wordpress properly. The video is about 10 minutes long. It’s a great video that explains how to copy & paste from Word to Wordpress properly and it will explain how to fix the messed up Word code.

My solution

If you are about to write an article, follow the steps below and you wil be able to publish a blog post through Open Office. This might come in handy when you are traveling and you can’t go online all the time, then you will simply format your article using the ICE Open Office Toolbar and you are able to publish the articles as soon as you have a connection again!

Word to OpenOffice to AtomPub to Wordpress

1. Download and install OpenOffice.org

2. Download ICE toolbar for OpenOffice.org (development version)

3. Install the toolbar using these instructions.

4. Download and install ICE

Open your Word document in OpenOffice Writer and follow the instructions below.

1. It is important to know that you have to style your document using the ICE! That means you have to re-apply your formatting via the ICE toolbar.

2. Make sure to save  the document

3. Enable the ICE Toolbar (it should active if you just installed the toolbar), click on Atom Pub.

   

4. Follow this example:

Publishing Content Through OpenOfficeImportant! URL for publishing to Wordpress will be formatted as follows: http://yourusername.wordpress.com/wp-app.php

You should check out the demonstration, and test it via this sample document.

The information about the ICE toolbar have been found on: http://ice.usq.edu.au

I have just acquired a really good domain via Snapnames.com.
Initially there were 4 bidders, but luckily none of them was bidding more than the initial bid. Overall, I used three different backordering services.

Whenever you backorder a domain, you should make sure to know the *where* to backorder the domain. Every registrar gives special rights to some dropcatchers, which means that the “own” backorder services of the domain registrar will get a priority bonus that will allow you to pick up the domain with a higher chance. Makes sense, right? Domain registrars are not stupid they know how much money they can make with backorders (that are usually between $60 and $70 per domain), that’s why they are giving more kudos to their own backorder services.

However, I would still recommend that you backorder a domain with every major backordering service (if you really want that name!).

The three major backordering services are:

Pool.com $60
Snapnames.com $59
Namejet.com $69

I did not list GoDaddy, because their service rarely catches a name that has been backordered by any of the other major backorder services as well. The best backorder service is probably snapnames. If you don’t backorder there, you risk loosing the name.

Where to backorder your domain if the registrar is ..

Ok, here’s a short list that lists all the domain registrars and the backorder service they give the most kudos to (= higher chance to backorder).

networksolutions.com – Snapnames*
register.com – Snapnames*
BulkRegister.com – Snapnames*
moniker.com – Snapnames*
domainsite.com – Snapnames*
name.com – name.net/drop/ – Snapnames*
name.net – name.net/drop/ – Snapnames*
itsyourdomain.com – Snapnames*
directi.com – Snapnames*
mysticblizzard.com (directi) – Snapnames*
bluefractal.com (directi) – Snapnames*
atomicgiant.com (directi) – Snapnames*
falconzone.com (directi) – Snapnames*
digupdomains.com (directi) – Snapnames*
007names.com – Snapnames
1stdomain.net – Snapnames
4domains.com – Snapnames
aboutdomains.com – Snapnames
aitdomains.com – Snapnames
alohanic.com – Snapnames
annulet.com – Snapnames
answerable.com – Snapnames
bestregistrar.com – Snapnames
bumperjumper.com – Snapnames
criticalinternet.com – Snapnames
dns-net.de – Snapnames
domus-llc.com – Snapnames
dotearth.com – Snapnames
fatfirm.com – Snapnames
fortuneinternet.com – Snapnames
getyername.com – Snapnames
hostingfort.com – Snapnames
inname.net – Snapnames
mouzz.com – Snapnames
name2host.com – Snapnames
namebay.com – Snapnames
namesecure.com – Snapnames
nameshare.com – Snapnames
neonic.com – Snapnames
nominate.net – Snapnames
pairnic.com – Snapnames
planetdomain.com – Snapnames
plisk.com – Snapnames
primalstore.com – Snapnames
publicdomainregistry.com – Snapnames
retailstudio.com – Snapnames
rrpproxy.net – Snapnames
safenames.net – Snapnames
simplynamed.com – Snapnames
tahoedomains.com – Snapnames
topclassnames.com – Snapnames
totalnic.net – Snapnames
urbanvolcano.com – Snapnames
vividdomains.com – Snapnames

…

the list goes on and on, but to get the full list you have to subscribe to my mailing list. Don’t worry I won’t spam you and from time to time I’ll give away some golden nuggets and freebies that you will find nowhere else on the net. Yes, that includes CPA and PPV tools as well.

Are you looking for an online article rewriter? I want to present 4 of the best online tools that are working like a charm:

RandomPaper is a free online article rewriter that does not fully reorder sentences, but replace keywords with synonyms. This is very useful and will make your article unique. The disadvantage is that synonyms do not always have the same meaning and the search engines might still count this as duplicate content.

Another great *free* online article rewriter tool is the “Quick Content Wizard“. Similar to RandomPaper it replaces words with synonyms. The quality of the rewrite is a little better than RandomPaper.

ArticleChanger is the third tool that I want to recommend to spin your article. In my test it was replacing a few words less than the competition, yet it’s still a great tool like FreeArticleSpinner. Free Article Spinner does have a plus, you can select the spin density. The higher the more words will be replaced. If you are looking for content that is still readable you could do that and then rewrite parts yourself.

Article Rewriter make text unreadable

Yep, that’s why a combination of online tools and manual article spinning will be the best. But who says that you can’t make manual article spinning easier? JetSpinner is a great tool that allows you to create perfectly readable articles by hand. Best of all, you can define mutliple replacement words and even replace full sentences. After that you can pay $20 and submit your articles to 400+ article directories – fully automated!

Actually I wanted to recommend JetSpinner to you, but after reading some reviews and many other complains of users I “deleted” the text above. this

Instead I would like to recommend Unique Article Wizard to you. Despite my hate for sales pages, I have to underline that many of the top article rewriters make use of this tool. It’s simply the best article rewriter that lets you submit your article to all the major article directories.