Keith Goodrum

Here are a few blog posts you might have missed.

Ryan Healy wrote a funny post this week titled You Know You’re A Freelance Copywriter if…

You go shopping and find yourself analyzing how the store could increase its sales.

You study great copy… only to wind up buying the product being advertised.

You save junk mail — and then proceed to critique it.

You flip through local ad magazines and mutter things like, “I can’t believe this. These guys are so stupid.”

This is a few of the top 10 list Ryan came up with, and really got a kick out of reading what he came up. As I read this Becky she laughed out loud, and said I do several of these things a lot.

Maybe this list could be expanded to include more than just freelance copywriters…

A blog I regularly read is called JT Pratt’s Blogging mistakes. It’s owned by… Who else JT Pratt. He wrote a very good post titled Should I Use A Blog Or A Niche Store. This one caught my interest because I just started using a Niche store software this past week. This software gives you the option of setting up a Niche store, or add a widget to your blog. It’s a very versatile program, and will give a review of it soon.

Anyhow, JT discussed the pros & cons of a blog vs. a niche store. Really great objective review I recommend you should read. Here is a quick overview from his post…

I’ve seen the discussions a thousand times in forums “should I use a niche store (BANS), or should I use WordPress”. Some say “static pages are best for mini-sites”. Some say – “I use a blog and an affiliate plugin”.

What I’m going to do in this post is explain once and for all the clear differences between those three things, including when to use them. My opinions may or may not be popular with some of the so-called “gurus” – but my advice is aimed at those of you still trying to build a monthly income over time, and it’s not to position myself to “sell” you something. When I use affiliate links on this blog, it’s because it’s a product that I use myself to build sites and generate income.

Hope you enjoy these two posts…

The past week I’ve been trying out a couple new widgets in my sidebar.

A Twitter Widget

I found a new Twitter widget to put in the sidebar. You can see it at Widgetbox. Check it out below…

There are several things I like about this new widget:

1. I like the design of this widget. It looks clean, and easier to read.

2. It’s a little wider than the old one I was using. (or at least it seems like it).

3. There is an easy to find link at the bottom called “my twitter page”. When someone clicks the link, it opens your twitter page in another window/tab. It’s a nice feature because it doesn’t take readers away from your blog.

4. In the bottom right hand corner there is a scroll button. This is cool as it lets people click the arrows, and view your previous tweets.

Ezine Articles Widget

I found this widget while looking around inside the author’s area. Check out what it looks like…

I like this widget because it’s another way to show readers what your up to. It’s also a good way to help drive traffic to your articles.

This widget give you multiple display options.

It will be interesting to see if this helps getting more article views, and if there is any backlink power from this widget.

Looks like Dean Hunt’s blog got hacked by hidden spam links last week. It looks like these spam links are tough to detect by traditional ways. He didn’t know something was wrong until his ranking was nearly wiped out by Google…

Here is the story from his post: Has Your WordPress Blog Been Hacked…

What Happened To DeanHunt.com – By Paul

Here’s the technical side of what they did and what we did to get around it, plus a brief explanation of what I coded to try and give people the chance to check for themselves: -

WordPress uses calls to wp_head and wp_footer to allow plugins to alter the content being returned as the page loads, a good example of this working well would be the SEO Title Tags plugin. However this is the functionality that the spammers used to insert a whole raft of links into the footer.

This article WordPress: Exploit We Been Hit By Hidden Spam Link Injection explains the technique for anyone who likes headaches, but in basic terms they are using compromised theme files or adding in new files to your compromised server which act on the wp_footer call to insert their links.

They have been even smarter than that though as they have cloaked the links, so if you pop over to your own hacked site and view the source code you wont see the inserted links. Only when Googlebot comes along are the links shown, which is obviously a bad thing as Google suddenly thinks you’re linking out to a bunch of parasite hosted pills sites and will give you a penalty or remove you as a result.

Note: Dean’s rankings were virtually wiped out in Google

How you can check to see if you’re OK

Paul from SEOidiot is the person Dean turned to for help. Paul has written a free tool to check the links at your WordPress blog. It called CasheChecker, and is very easy to use. Head on over there to check your WordPress blog.

After you check you blog for this security leaks, you can do some preventive things for your own protection. I wrote a series of blog security posts a few months ago titled The Dark Side. It might be a good time to go back and review these posts now. Read Can Somebody Drive A Truck Through The Back Door Of Your WordPress Blog These tips are valuable steps you can take to shore up the security of your blog.

Also be sure to read 10 computer security tips, how many are you applying? to protect yourself online. There is more than one way to hack into your WordPress blog.

Make sure you are doing what you can to protect your blog… it would suck to have all your hard work wiped out by some spammers.