simonbunker dot co dot uk Wordpress, technology and general stuff

Diary of A Blog Launch – Introduction

I recently posted in one of my updates that I am in the process of moving my book challenge to a completely new blog.  Well I have been busy getting that new blog up and running, whilst doing this work I thought that it might be a good idea to document the blog launch process.

So in this new series I will cover the whole blog launch process, from domain names, hosting all the way through to launch and promotion.  I really hope that this series will be useful to anyone who is planning to start a blog or is in the process of launching a blog.

Tomorrow I will post part 1 of the series which will cover the initial concepts and the theory behind the blog.

To keep upto date with this series I recommend that you subscribe to my feed (its free) just pop your email address in the “Subscribe box” over on the right and you will then receive updates directly into your inbox.

Simon Goes Ad Free – Well Sort Off

One of the Jobs that I have been doing over the last few weeks is analyzing this blog and trying to figure out what works and what does not.  One of the key areas that I have been concerned about is the advertising.  Yes, I do affiliate marketing and it kind of comes with the territory but it just did not seem to blend well with the site and to be honest they were not really converting that well.  So I have decided to pull all the banner advertising that appears on the sidebars and within the posts, I will still run some text links and have kept the Stuff page which has a few banner links to products/services that I recommend, although the Just Host banners may well be disappearing shortly given yesterdays outage .

So there we are, no more ads annoying the readers.

Comment Love!

Question – What do you think of banner Ads on Blogs?

Discuss

Just Host or Not As The Case Maybe!

For the observant amongst you, it may have come to your attention that simonbunker.co.uk was very much dead for nearly all of yesterday thanks to a serious server outage Just Host who host this blog.  Since moving to Just Host at the back end of last year I have been really impressed by them.  They have proved to be responsive and reliable.

So yesterday morning at approx 0700 , I awoke to find that my site was down as was the new blog that I had planned to launch yesterday as well – marvelous.  So I headed over to the Just host site and used the “Live Support” tool, personally I am never a fan of these solutions as I find the level of support is always pretty woeful and very much scripted.  Anyway I got through to the agent and it was soon established that the server that my sites are hosted was down due to a hardware failure, I am totally fine with that, after all shit happens and servers do break.  I did a little probing and was informed that the site will be back up in 1-2 hours which again was cool.  So far so good and then the geek came out in me and I probed further as to what is actually going on with the server not sure why I did this but hey what the hell.  At this point the agent then said that that the server was being upgraded and they were having problems and the techs were working on it.  Now at this point I was bloody confused, less than a minute ago it was a broken server and now it was a server being upgraded.  Two entirely different scenarios!  I decided to leave any further questions and thought oh well 1-2 hours is not the end of the world, so said thanks for your help etc etc.  Then the agent had the bloody cheek to send me a message to say thanks for your call and would you like to buy xyz upgrades to your hosting account for a special one-time discount.  Clearly this is probably a pre-canned script, but for crying out loud it aint a clever idea to up sell services to a client who is pissed off that his current services don’t work!  Just Host, if you happen to read this sort that bit out, it is a stupid thing to do

Forward on 3 hours, still no website.  Chased for an update and got this:

am sorry, your server crashed because of a hardware failure.
We are restoring it now to the latest brand new server.
The restoration will take about 16-20 hours more.

The files will be synced to the old HDD from cl33 so no data will be lost.

We are very sorry for this unexpected outage.
We are doing our best to bring the server back online ASAP.

Right so at least I know now that it is a hardware problem and not a planned upgrade, but 16-20 hours to restore!  I am not sure why it would take so long but I personally think that this is ridiculous.

Forward to 2100 Hrs and finally my server is back and to be fair its all running well.  I personally fully understand that servers fail, it happens and always will but the level of stupidity and lack of any form of customer service displayed by Just Host is quite simply staggering.  I held Just Host in high regard and have referred many people to them, who I know have experienced good service, but I am considering another move after this debacle.

My apologies for anyone who was trying to access the site yesterday.

If anyone can recommend a good host especially for Wordpress then please do let me know by leaving a comment

Simon’s Blog Update #2

I have been a little remiss in posting lately, largely down to the fact that I was travelling a fair bit last week and got sidetracked for one reason or another.  Anyway its about time that I posted another update to whats going on in the world of Simon and his blog!

Book Challenge

The book challenge is moving in the right direction, albeit with a slight set back last week when I mislaid my copy of Trust Agents on a plane, so I have had to order another copy up which will push me back a little.  I am also a little behind on posting the review of the last book that I read Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business the reason for this delay is down to that fact that I have started working on a new “Book” Blog which will be launching over the coming weeks.  I plan to use that as the main platform for the book challenge so stay tuned for updates on this.

I must confess that I have been a little disappointed with the uptake on the book challenge, so I am looking at ways of improving the promotion of it and hopefully this will all coincide with the launch of the new blog.

Hundred Articles in Hundred Days

This challenge is slowly making progress, I am nearly 50% of the way through and did manage to draft out some future articles so I am on track to complete this by April

Affiliate Marketing

I slacked off with the whole affiliate marketing towards the end of last year as I was flat out with this blog and other projects, but recently I have kicked things back into life and am slowly making some decent money which is nice.  Personally I am finding the whole affiliate industry fascinating and very enjoyable.  Granted, its bloody hard work but the enjoyment is the key for me.  I am pushing more into the PPC and PPV markets and its been a massive learning curve.

I will be posting regular updates on my progress on this blog so stay tuned for new updates! Also if you are a UK based affiliate marketer it would be great to hook up.

Blog Management

This is a recent service that I introduced and so far it has been well received.  I am drafting a post which will cover in detail the services that I offer, but basically I take the pain away that managing a blog brings, leaving you to focus on the content all very simple and very affordable.

So thats the summary on progress so far this year.  Please check back or subscribe to my feed (its free) to get regular updates.

Thanks again for all your support

Make Your Mouse Proud!

Mouseproud.netClearly one of the benefits of networking “offline” is that you get to meet some great people and some fascinating businesses.  Over the last couple of years that I have been networking “offline” I have had the privilege of having met some fantastic people who run some fantastic businesses amd yet I have never really made a big song and dance about them.  This got me thinking and I have deceided to blog about businesses that I have worked with or whom have done work for me, after all a blog is about sharing!

To start the ball rolling I am going to cover Mouseproud. Mouseproud is run by Chris Harding (@ChrisMouseProud on Twitter) whom I met last year at a 4networking meeting in Portishead.  Chris provides software training to small business and home clients he covers the usual gambit of Microsoft Products such as Word and PowerPoint as well as some mac based applications, however he is flexible and knowledgeable enough to pretty much turn his hand to any training requirement that a typical user would have.  What I think is pretty cool about Chris’s approach is that he does either traditional 1-1 based training or, which is the bit I like, he will produce a video screencast of the task that you are struggling with or want to find out about, send you the link and you can follow in your own time with no pressure and the good thing is that you have constant access to the video so you will never forget what to do!!  I think this is a wicked way to deliver training to small businesses who don’t have the time or budget to hire in a trainer.  Chris has amassed a number of videos on a variety of topics from MS Word to Google Analytics some of which are available online from his Youtube Channel.  I know he is working on a whole host of other training videos so if you are looking for somthing specific then please do contact him and he will be happy to help you out.

Aside from Training Chris is a bit handy with PowerPoint and he puts together some quite stunning PowerPoint presentations.  Personally I hate PowerPoint but Chris does things with PowerPoint that I didn’t know existed and actually makes presentations look decent, professional and above all fun.  If you need a presentation doing then I would thoroughly recommend that you get Chris to help you out.

So thats my big-up to Chris @ Mouseproud.  Great guy and a very professional level of service.  If you are looking to make your software click! then I recommend that you give him a shout.

Book Challenge – Latest Winner

A very quick post but the latest winner in my book challenge is Danielle Raine so my congratulations for winning and thanks so much for your support.

I will be posting the review of the last book Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business in the next few days.

For those new to reading about my challenge then you can read about it on my initial post located right here

I would like to thank everyone so far who has supported this challenge and please continue to tweet/comment, remember you might just snag yourself an Amazon Kindle!!!!

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Blog……Comment

Blog Comments - Simon Bunker Dot Co Dot UKThere I was just the other day talking to a chap whom I had never met before.  Anyway we were talking about blogs and blogging etc etc.  Anyway the subject turned to my blog and he mentioned that he liked one of my posts, cue the really smug happy feeling! anyway I asked if he left a comment? to which he replied “No, I had already left a comment on a previous post and didn’t want to seem like I was just posting for postings sake”  I kind of dismissed this and continued on. The mere fact that I had some positive feedback was enough for me!!

Anyway, after the event I started to reflect on the conversation and more so the comments about blog comments and it got me thinking back to the time when I first started blogging and moving in online social media circles.  Back in the day, I would be very hesitant to comment on other blogs or post a tweet and it very much reminded me of the first time I started to network offline.  You know the time, when you enter a room full of people you don’t know, your mouths dry, hearts racing and you hug the perimeter of the room hoping that nobody will notice you and you can eventually slip away unnoticed.  Trouble is some bugger always spots you and homes in on you and your tagged!  Your pitch that you have revised in your head countless times deserts you and you turn into a bumbling idiot.  The only saving grace is that you can blame your “newbie networking” status and generally get away with it for a short while.

For all intents and purposes, the whole blogging thing is exactly the same.  You start your blog and quietly slip in under the radar, nobody notices you and thats ok.  But soon you need to promote yourself or as my good friend would put it “Stick your pecker out” so you start to mingle in online circles, reading other blogs, getting jealous that they have traffic, readers and people that comment on their work.  The experts say that you have to comment on blogs, advice we ignore in the early days.  But sooner or later you’ve got to do it, you surf on over to your favorite blog, find a post that you really like, rehearse the comment you are going to write and then you write “Great Post” and quickly hit the submit button! Phew thank god thats over.  You will then probably never post another comment to that blog for the exact same reason that the chap in the first part of this post gave, after all you don’t want to seem to keen!

Comments are a good thing whether its to compliment a good post, disagree or just present your opinion and personally I don’t think that it should be a capped exercise.  If a post warrants a comment then comment regardless of how many times you have previously posted.  Overcome the fear and you will find that commenting helps not only your confidence but also will help you connect with other bloggers, which can only be a benefit to your blog.  As long as you have something decent to say then I am pretty sure that nobody will think you are a dick for leaving a comment!!!!

Photo Credit – LaughingSquid

Challenge Book 4 Announced

All the votes are in and the next book that I will be reading in Simon’s Great Book a Fortnight Challenge will be Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

Thanks to everyone that took the time out to vote.  The review of Free: The Future of a Radical Price: The Economics of Abundance and Why Zero Pricing Is Changing the Face of Business
will be posted next week, not quite finished it yet :-(

Thanks again for everyones support.

Import Your Posterous Blog to Wordpress.com

I recently wrote about some great micro blogging tools for people who really are short on time when it comes to blogging. One of the tools I featured was Posterous

Starting out with tools like Posterous is a great way to start blogging, but what happens if you want to progress to a more functional and flexible blogging platform like Wordpress.com?  Well help is now at hand, because the team at Wordpress have recently announced the Posterous Importer.  I have just tested it out on one of my test wordpress.com blogs and it really is a simple and easy process and here is how to do it!

Login to your wordpress.com dashboard.  Click on the “Tools” option and click “Import” then select the “Posterous Importer”.  You then simply enter your Posterous hostname and username/password and hit the submit button.  Bingo the importer will works it magic and when complete wordpress will send you an email to confirm that all is done.  Simple!

Currently the importer will bring across posts, tags, images and all your comments.

Personally I think this is a great solution that will help anyone who wants to move across to wordpress.com

Shove Your Content Out

Coloured ShovelsOne of the key things when you start blogging is to get your name out into the blogosphere as quickly as possible.  Now at first this seems easy, but when you get going it can be as labour intensive as actually writing the content.  Eventually you may find that you start to slip with the promotion or on the reverse side spend to much time promoting and not enough time writing.  Being somewhat lazy efficient :-) I went looking for ways to streamline the whole content syndication, although I prefer to call it “Shoving your content out”, thing.  So after an extensive amount of googling!  I came across a service called Onlywire

Onlywire is a service that automates the whole shoving of your content, it will automatically post your blog posts to a vast array of social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg and Mister Wong to name but a few.  It does the whole twitter and facebook things as well should you wish to.

How does it work?

Well, the good thing about the Onlywire service is that it is really easy to use.  Once you have registered, it is free but there is a paid service which I will cover later in the post, you can install a Firefox or IE browser plugin or simply drag the “bookmarklets” to the bookmarks area on the browser.  A little note, Onlywire offer two ways of submitting content from the browser.  The first is “No frames” and the second is “With Frames”.  Its not difficult and the easiest way to describe it is as follows:

No Frames – When you bookmark a link it will redirect you to the Onlywire site where you login and add the submission.

With Frames – Does the bookmarking within the page that you are on, without redirecting you to the Onlywire site

Check this blog post for more information and screen shots

You will need to configure from within your Onlywire account the sites/networks that you want to syndicate/shove your content out to, but that is not difficult as they have a full list of the available networks.

The second way is to use the “Bookmark & Share” button.  This button can be installed on your blog or website and presents your visitors with a range of options to share your content. Installation of the button on wordpress is easy, just download and install the Onlywire plugin.  Configure the plugin by entering your Onlywire username and password and you are good to go.  From now on the plug-in will automatically post all your new content to the sites that you have configured in your Onlywire account.  As I have not used the service on non-wordpress platforms, I cannot comment on how easy or difficult it is to set-up, but full instructions are available on the Onlywire website.

Pricing

Use of the Onlywire service is “free”, the reason I have quoted that it because the free version is ad supported and you must install the “Bookmark and Share” button on your website or blog as apparently they check! and will disable your account if they cannot find it.  If you don’t want the ads you can pay for the service which is $2.99 per month or $24.99 if you prepay for 12 month, which is a quite reasonable considering the amount of time it can save you.

So that’s Onlywire, a great little service to help spread your content around, and well worth looking into.

Photo Credit – Yuankuei

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