Wordpress 2.5 Officially Released
WordPress 2.5 was officially released on March 29th - this past Saturday. Although I said in an earlier post that I wasn’t brave enough to test the beta version, I did in fact end up working with it for a couple of days last week and absolutely love the new interface and functionality.
Here is the release announcement at Wordpress.org which includes notes on all the upgrades and improvements as well as a link to the download page. Enjoy!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Lights Out on Google
If you visited the Google.com homepage today, you’ll notice that the background is black, as shown in the image to the left.
That’s in recognition of “Earth Hour” and to spread awareness of the event. Created by the World Wildlife Fund in Sydney, Australia in 2007, where 2.2 million people participated; the event has grown into a global movement in 2008.
According to the official “Earth Hour” website, this year “millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver“.
Tonight, to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation, people around the globe will turn their lights off for one hour - between 8 and 9 pm - in their local time zone.
Although turning off the 2 compact flourescent bulbs that typically light our house at night won’t produce any significant drop at the hydro station - as supporters of any initiative to bring awareness to climate change we’ll be ‘lights out’ here at home at 8 — will you?
Popularity: 3% [?]
Sell Products to Spanish Markets through Clickbank
On March 18th, ClickBank announced its Phase One launch of their Platform Globalization project which allows Clickbank merchants to capture sales from new markets.
The first phase of Platform Globalization includes a currency calculator and the ability to offer products to Spanish-speaking markets. Clickbank has also made it easy for affiliates to identify which merchants in the ClickBank Marketplace are offering Spanish products. See the graphic below.
My search for Spanish language products produced no results, but considering this initiative was launched slightly more than a week ago, I guess we have to give the merchants time to get up to speed.
The new currency converter provides customers with the ability to see the product price in currencies other than USD.
Clickbank also advises that enhancements to their Platform Globalization project will include French and German language capabilities, and the ability to accept orders in currencies other than USD.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Chitika Announces a New Way to Monetize Parked Domains
I don’t know about you, but my Cash Parking Monthly updates from GoDaddy are always pretty meagre. So meagre in fact, that they’re laughable. In January, I made a whopping 53 cents from 10 parked domains and in February, the earnings were zilch.
If your revenue from parked domains is anything like mine, you might want to check out Chitika’s new parked domain solution which looks like a shopping site with product images. The pages include a listing of well known merchants and an easy-to-navigate category listing.
Here is an image of what the display looks like:
For more information about using Chitika’s updated ShopLinc product as a CPC revenue source for your parked domains, see their “A CPC store for your parked domains” post.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Have You Updated Your ShareThis Plugin?
Back in late February MySpace released a new posting API and shortly afterwards, ShareThis included a MySpace posting choice on their social web tab (shown left) that uses the new API, and gives you an easy way to post anything to your MySpace page.
ShareThis also advises that soon you’ll be able to “Post anything on the web to your Blogger, TypePad, Twitter, LiveJournal, and Orkut” and have the ability “to put ShareThis buttons on flash players”.
ShareThis currently supports the following sites:
- blinkList
- del.icio.us
- digg
- Google Bookmarks
- Mixx
- My WebWindows Live
- MySpace
- newsvine
- Propeller
- StumbleUpon
- Technorati
- Yahoo!
You can pick up the ShareThis plugin here.
Popularity: 4% [?]
How to Correct Bulleted List Errors with CSS
I’ve been running across more and more bulleted list errors on webpages of late. An unordered bulleted list should be coded as follows:
<UL>
<LI>1st Item</LI>
<LI>2nd Item </LI>
<LI>3rd Item</LI>
</UL>
The resulting bulleted list will appear like this:
- 1st Item
- 2nd Item
- 3rd Item
However, I frequently see this awful looking mess on webpages and blogs:
<p class=”MsoNormal”><!–[if !supportLists]–><!–[endif]–> 1st Item</p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”><!–[if !supportLists]–><!–[endif]–> 2nd Item</p>
<p class=”MsoNormal”><!–[if !supportLists]–><!–[endif]–> 3rd Item</p>
Why is that happening?
Well, in a nutshell, those bloggers are probably using Microsoft Word to create their posts, which they then convert into HTML code and copy and paste into to their blogs.
That method might work but for the fact that none of the CSS (cascading style sheets) on the sites showing the errors specified paramaters for rendering either a <UL> (unordered list) or a <LI> (list item).
At very least, the following code should be placed within their stylesheets:
ul li {
display: inline;
list-style-type: none;
}
To learn more about CSS and coding for bulleted lists, visit the W3Schools site.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Chomping at the Bit for Wordpress 2.5
On March 18th, Matt Mullenweg posted a sneak peak of Wordpress 2.5 that talked about a “customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times” and included a few screenshots of the new Dashboard, Navigation, Write and Manage Panels. Judging by the number of pingbacks (583 at time of writing), there’s a lot of excitement about the upcoming version of Wordpress.
Today, Matt tantalized us further with a short screencast that shows the new dashboard and how the gallery image uploader works.
For the adventurous, there’s also the option to download and install Release Candidate 2 of WordPress 2.5.
While I’m not that adventurous - at least not with this and my revenue-generating blogs - I’m chomping at the bit to see Wordpress 2.5 made available for upgrade through Fantastico, as I’m particularly looking forward to the one-click plugin updates that are included in the new version.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Live Feeds from the Underground®
I was pretty disappointed when I had to cancel my trip to the Underground seminar this year, but as it turns out, we can tune in to what’s happening.
Yanik’s Y.S.S. Agency has allowed a mole to tap into the video feed and broadcast the closed-circuit footage… LIVE …twice a day! Each day they’ll be sending out 24 minutes of footage of actual content from the presenters.
Tune in LIVE at the following times:
- Friday – 9 AM, PT (12:00 PM, ET) & 4:02 PM, PT (7:02 PM, ET)
- Saturday – 1:52 PM, PT (4:52 PM, ET) & 3:33 PM, PT (6:33 PM, ET)
- Sunday – 11:02 PM, PT (2:02 PM, ET) & 2:52 PM, PT (5:52, PM ET)
Check out Underground LIVE here, where in addition to the live feed, you’ll be able to pre-sign up for Underground® 5 in 2009… which is already on my agenda! 
Popularity: 6% [?]
Agent is Typing… My Eye
Here’s a trick that Internet marketers use that you should know about.
When you try to leave the site, a window pops open and their ‘live virtual agent’ says something to the effect of…
Daisy Says: Hey wait! Super Guru wants me to remind you that this sale could be ending any moment. For a limited time Super Guru wants to offer you this insane opportunity for an easy two pay plan of $12222277. If you want to take one more look to make sure you don’t miss out just CLICK HERE
Take a look at the screen capture below. I typed ‘you’re a bot’ repeatedly and the bot just keeps on with the script that tries to sell me the product.
Now this must be a very effective method to capture additional sales, seeing as how many Internet marketers use it.
However, I don’t recommend that you offend your visitors’ intelligence with such ploys. In this business, reputation is everything and you don’t want to be seen as a marketer that uses tricks and deception to gain additional sales.
What I do recommend using is LiveAgent online chat software which allows you to watch and communicate with your visitors in real-time.
To use the hosted version of LiveAgent, all you need is Javascript enabled browser. There’s no software to install on your desktop.
You just login and you can manage live support from anywhere.
LiveAgent features include:
- Online/Offline Status
- Online/Offlline Messaging System
- Sound and visual Alerts
- Multiple operators in single chat
- Multiple simultaneous chat conversations
- Chat history with search function
- Watch visitor in real-time
- Live referring source tracking
- Customizable Look & Feel
All in all, really talking with your potential customers is a far better option than trying to fake ‘em out with a bot.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Consulting Fee Reduced Until May 1st
Because I’ll be pretty much housebound (or not venturing too far afield) until the end of April, I’ve decided to reduce my consultation fee by $100/hour, to make my consulting service more available to those in need of one-on-one Internet and affiliate marketing help.
If you’ve made any of the following comments…
- I have a website but hardly any traffic!
- How do I attract visitors to my site?
- Why is my site not making any money?
- How do I improve my conversion rates?
- Basically, I need good Internet business and marketing advice.
… now is the time to get answers to those questions!
Visit my telephone consultations page for more information about the process and to order your consultation today!
Popularity: 5% [?]
