Wordpress 3.0 + Nginx

I upgraded nginx on my server and all was well, or so I thought…. (TL;DR at the bottom)

Feeling good about my self I patted my back and went to bed. The next day I was writing a new post when after uploading a photo to WordPress it did not load in the editor. So after a little struggling I figured out why non of the images from the /files/ directory in wordpress were working, but not until after I gave up trying to find the answer in Google.

I tried Googling all this to no avail: (Hopefully this will help some other Googler out there)

• Ngnix not rewriting ms-files.php properly
• my nginx default conf for wordpress was faulty
• no errors in php for ms-files.php WPMU
• ms-files.php corrupting images WPMU
• ms-files.php white (blank) screen of death

79	79	}
80	80
81	81	// If we made it this far, just serve the file
	82	ob_clean();
	83	flush();
82	84	readfile( $file );
	85	flush();
83	86	?>

In the midst of the loss of tech giant Steve Jobs, Facebook rolling out some changes on their Facebook Pages. You were able to import your blog’s RSS feed into the notes to automate the syncing of your blog posts to facebook. What I wonder is if this change will effect the third party apps like networked blogs, from posting on your wall. I guess if you really want to keep syndicating to your wall you could run your feed through a desktop app like seesmic or tweetdeck… As long as they supported RSS feeds….

This is the ultimate add on for any webmaster who wants to see where their website (or their clients) website stands in goolge’s search results pages easily. The only think I can really say is give it a try, you will really love it!!! Just add a campaign to track, and then a list of urls you want to know positions for, and then try some different keywords against the list and save them one at a time.  This way every time you click on that keyword in the future, it updates the list of positions! Great stuff…

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ehbgolklgacemnfnmkkpgekngaaggjjl?hc=search&hcp=main

Have you ever wondered when you are posting a status update, tweet or sharing a link on Google+, how many people you are reaching out to?
Well so were the guys that made Klout, a service that lets you measure your audience, their feedback, and creates a “Klout” score, from 1 to 100.

But it doesn’t end at just measuring your reach. There is also benefits such as “Perks” which are exclusive products or experiences that you earn based on your influence. Like for example, I can get a Subway Oven Crisp Chicken Sub since my Klout score is above 40, but alas, they are all out at the moment. I suddenly don’t feel so impressed by my “41″ Klout score. But then again, Keven Rose only has an 81, and he’s a celebrity.

But Perks aside, I think the best part about Klout is the self aware factor. Once you realize how to focus what you’re talking about, and see what topics trend better, you could really use this as a tool to hone in your online social skills. And that would translate to growing a larger audience, so while I personally am not in it for the “Perks” I’m watching my Klout score on a daily basis. I haven’t figured out how frequently it updates, but I can see that over the next few months it will have a positive impact on my blogging as my social consumption should increase. Speaking of which all this is making me hungry for a meatball and pepperoni sub…

Why not check me out on Klout http://klout.com/#/LarcenIII and follow me on twitter. http://twitter.com/LarcenIII or Google Plus http://➸.ws/~fc5L1

P.S. I’m also a stumbler!

I’m proud to announce our new advertising network  is opening its doors to the internet, and before launch I would like to  informed everyone that we are running a signup for our beta program before we open up. We called our new service Tranquility Ads, and offer something a little “Different” than most other publisher / advertiser platforms. I did a mock interview with Greg, one of our developers in order to showcase some of the questions you may have about our new service and why what we offer is any different than existing platforms (Ie, Adsense, Adwords, AdBright, Technorati, just to name a few).

Me: So ca you tell everyone what is the premise behind Tranquility Ads?

Greg: Well you approached me with an idea for a new type of ad network, and after being a blogger myself, we realized that while advertisers are the life blood of any ad network but the publishers are the heart. Most of the services I’ve tried treated publishers quite poorly. I’ve found that support usually isn’t even an afterthought, much less implemented in any form. So we developed a platform that is both, versatile, easy to use, and provides an unprecedented level of support for any ad network out there.

Me: So is support the most important thing in an ad network?

Greg: No, of course and it’s not the only thing that sets us apart, actually, it’s just one of many things that is different. By versatile I ment that we already have Android and Iphone apps to monitor your stats and funds directly from your phone. We have also reconsidered the whole ad format idea that many other adnetwork use. Most are outdated and only fit older websites. We have HD advertisments, that webmasters and advertisers who design ads for 960px wide and fluid layout sites will love. We also call our matching system “Organic Advertising”

Me: Organic advertising? Sounds like your trying to sell expensive food, lol no offense…

Greg: Lol well you came up with it …  Well we feel that “Organic” ads in this sense, that they naturally place themselves in appropriate places. We use a special system of categorization to match advertisments with publishers. It uses a matrix of categories and ratings that ensure publishers and advertisers are matched accurately. We love Google, but some things that they do we simply can’t, and won’t do. Their ads have a tendency to “Follow”  you around on the internet. That’s because they are tracking you, with a complex system of  IP recording, cookies, and algorithmic search patterns. We respect everyone’s privacy, and feel that if you are on a website about “Cameras” then Ads relating to camera are the only thing that makes sense there. You should see ads for guitars, just because you searched for some tabs a few minuets ago. When you are looking at that camera site, right then, you are not interested in guitars. Even worse is when unrelated ad matching comes into conflict. Like that recent newsite covered a story about a bear attack, and the advertisement was for camping in Alaska to see the bears.

Me: I remember that bear story, I think I saw it on reddit. Lets move on to protecting advertisers. There are many bad guys out there who would love to try and cheat, how do you provision handling incidents like that?

Greg: Well, obviously I can’t say too much about our methods, but fraud protection is extremely important to us. Click fraud is an uncomfortable topic with any ad network, but I can tell you that we have a rollback system, where if fraud occurs, the publisher (and website) is blocked forever, and all clicks and transactions are rolled back. We also use a verified funds system where all clicks are verified before they are confirmed. We have enlisted the help of 3rd party companies that also aid in the detection of fraud clicks, so the experience is there as well. Advertiser safety is a primary concern.

Me: And now the question I know everyone is thinking… What is the % you payout to the publisher?

Greg: Heh, well I don’t think I can divulge here and now, but it will be higher than any other network currently offers. We are giving our beta testers 90% for helping us find problems and for being patient while we trace out the last bugs in the system. This is a huge added value for advertisers as well, because their dollar goes further. We’re not sure how many beta testers there will be, but we are going to control it with a dual control invitation system. We will invite webmasters we think will benefit in growing our base, and then give them invitations that they can share with others in their circles. The other part is that after they are invited, we will still need to approve their website.  There will be a signup form for beta testers on our website very soon.

Me: Ok, when I asked you about the interview, you mentioned some suprises?

Greg: Oh yeah, our system provides another service for publishers. If you’re familiar with “House Ads” blanks, or Public Service Announcments, with other ad networks, or if you don’t know, these are the ads that the network provider displays when there are no ads for your website. With our system, we categorize our sites using a similar matrix to our advertisers, and we use this to display “Fliers”. A Flier is like a coat-of-arms for your website. Your banner gets displayed on similar publishers. So if you run a camera blog, and Fred runs a camera blog too, both of your visitors will see the related blog on the other site. For all the visitors your site generates for other sites, your site becomes stronger in the network, and more traffic is sent back to you.

Me: Wow, ok that’s different alright, but why couldn’t an advertiser just do that?

Greg: Well in a way they could, but the flyers are much more limited in how they can display compared to an ad. Fliers have a set size, like 125 x 125 px squares on a blog. So one adbox may show 4 fliers when it normally only shows 1 ad. That divides that space’s value, but many bloggers recognize the button banners. It’s really a good way to build traffic to your website if you’re looking for more readers, subscribers, etc.

Me: Ok, that’s really neat, I’m eager to see how this is going to all work out. Do you have any concerns about getting started?

Greg: I think if we do a quality execution and continue to provide an experience unlike any other (Trying badly to not sound like I have better than thou attitude) then success will find us. We know from both sides of the fence that there isn’t a perfect system out there. We think we have found an untapped and powerful resource in ourselves and the love of the blogging community that will keep us alive for quite some time.

Me: Well you sound really confident, I think I’ll give your network a try if I could get a beta invite *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

Greg: *rolls eyes* I’m sure we can work something out… lol
Tranquility Ads is the brain child of Jason Green and Greg Wiggleton. Jason works out the design, structure and interface functionality, and Greg writes the backend, API, and database schema. We are both committed to creating a fantastic service and experience for advertisers and publishers alike.

I’ll try to get some screenshots from the beta and I’ll post some updates in the near future.

Thank you Greg for the [mock]  interview. We’ll get some beta invites when they open it up and hand a few out.

Here is a link to subscribe to the mailing list, and a link to the facebook page.

We’ll try to post info in both places, but you may want to subscribe to both, just in case you miss the first message.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tranquility-Ads/258507007494625

Feedburner: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=TranquilityAds

Comment if you want a beta invite, and be sure to include your website URL!!!

example: www (dot) example (dot) com

Image via Wikipedia

Connection Speed

Very high speed if compared with other shared hosting. This is perfect solution for rich media
website in limited scale.

Uptime
If there is no natural disaster,or other extreme situation to cause a failure then all the websites hosted with hostgator is listed as having 99.99% uptime guarantee.

File Type/Size
“Unlimited” disk space is sold to customers with clearly stated limitations. There is no limitation
on file size or type. Any type and any sized files can be uploaded.

Inode/File Limit
Other than Vps this company is offering the moist allowed inode limit of 250,000, which is the best on the market. When many other companies are offering only one fifth of this limit without backup, hostgator is not only offering a large number of inodes but also with backup.

Disk Space
With 250,000 inode limit a webmaster can easily occupy 250GB of disk space which with VPS would be 100 times as expensive.

CPU Resource Limit
Up to 25% of CPU resources are allowed for each hosted account, and the resources are well managed, allocated and optimized for each hosted account. It is really very difficult for any hosted account to go beyond this limit if only 1 domain is hosted under the
account. If any hosted account continuously go beyond this limit then it would be better for a webmaster to think about a VPS as in what our research shows, there is no other shared hosting offering more resource allocation than Host Gator.

Customer Support
Usually any support ticket would be answered within 30-45 minutes. There is a very good support documentation to go through for more knowledge. The support department would even provide guidance about how to optimize a website for better performance. The customer support service is satisfactory.

Satisfaction Guaranteed
It is well known that money talks around the world and with Host Gator it is no different. The cost of hosting with hostgator is 2.5 times higher than average market price of shared hosting and the result is 10 times better service with total satisfaction. For webmasters who want a hassle free, fluent webhosting experience in cheap pricing then Host Gator is the ultimate solution.

Most webmasters are always in a hurry to make their website available for the whole world. In the process of making a website webmasters hardly ever do any research on their needs and requirements for a healthy hosting environment. One of the basic reasons behind this is that most of the webmasters are unaware about hosting logistics. They don’t want to skip a very lucrative unlimited offer to a limited offer; they don’t want to read the Terms of Service and/or Acceptable User Policy. They only compare between the pricing and how many unlimited items are listed, before they decide their hosting provider. And that’s where the tragedy starts with a lot of hidden disappointments.

The hosting providers are usually offering unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited email accounts, unlimited domains, and unlimited databases on their shared hosting plans. But, when these cheap shared hosting plans are compared with vps/dedicated server there will be a big difference between the pricing and the features. Because the vps/dedicated hosting plan is at least 10 to 100 times as expensive as the shared unlimited plans and they come with a lot of limitations.

A simple question to ask yourself is, if unlimited hosting can be obtained for only a few dollars then why do people need to buy vps/dedicated server which has limits disk space/bandwidth? The straight and clear answer is that there is no such thing as unlimited web hosting available on earth. All the unlimited features are having hidden restrictions to provide free disappointments through the hosting period.
Unlimited disk space: It is almost impossible to offer unlimited dist space. Every server has its own limitation which depends on the hard disk driver size that is installed in the server, and there is no such unlimited sized hard disk available in market. Also in a shared hosting plan, there are many websites hosted in the same server, and those websites shares the resources of the server. In this case there is no such possibility for having a unlimited disk space to offer to all those clients, whose websites are hosted in the same server. All the hosting service providers usually restrict the clients from utilizing more than certain amount of disk space with a quota named “inode”. Generally, one file uses one inode. Thus, if you have 50,000 files you have used 50,000 inodes. This inode limitation varies between different hosting providers. But be aware about those hosting services who offer only 50,000 inodes.

Unlimited bandwidth: One website only needs a lot of bandwidth when you are having a lot of visitors and when your website contains a lot of images/large sized files. But all the hosting providers restrict the processor per user under their terms of service or under a acceptable user policy. Cpu uage per user is restricted between 10% to 25% among all the hosting providers. Also sometimes some providers limit the connection per ip address. If the cpu per user is restricted then the visitors will experiment either a very slow performance of your web or will see an error message.

Unlimited Email: Another feature that depends a lot on other features. If a webmaster wants to open unlimited email address then he/she requires unlimited inode count along with unlimited disk space. It also requires heavy Cpu usage when a lot of email clients start to retrieve email/attach large sized files. As all these features are limited, unlimited email accounts is also can only be available in dreams.

All this means is that “unlimited web hosting” does, in fact, have its limitations. There are several criteria of limitations that are applied to unlimited web hosting, including RAM, bandwidth, CPU, queries, FTP uploads, and the number of MySQL databases being utilized. Each of these can trigger an automatic or even manual suspension of hosting/website.
So our suggestion is that whenever you visit a site promoting “Unlimited Bandwidth/disk space” as one of the account features, be sure to visit the Acceptable Use Policy, or the Terms of Service. Read the fine text about the so-called “Unlimited” disclaimer, you will be surprised!

Suggested

Host Gator (Higher Cpu Resource & Inode Count, Fair Bandwidth Ratio)
Host Moster (Higher Cpu Resource, Good Maintenance)
Linode (Good VPS if you are a “Do it yourself” type, Best Price for Performance)

Bad Ones

Justhost (They bought a dedicated server on Singlehop.com, and hosts everything in that server, 10% cpu resource, 50,000 inode count and almost no tech support)
Inmotion (10% cpu resource, inefficient tech support)
Globat ($4/Month for 1TB of space, but it’s so slow it would take you 12 months to fill it up!)

K M Rehan Salahuddin is an Opinion writer for different media & Newspapers. He has freelanced for different media for years before he has started professional career. Currently working at Eximlabs Ltd Hong Kong as Chief of Public Relations (www.sortoflife.com & www.sortofmag.com).

K M Rehan Salahuddin has become a Icon figure among the youth for founding Eximlabs Ltd Bangladesh back in 2001 at the age of 19. The company has created a big crowd as it served 188 clients in a period of 15months to create/design/host various websites/databases/servers. To peruse higher education he left the company at 2002. At 2009 he has again joined back the company and registered it as a Limited Company at Hong Kong. K M Rehan Salahuddin has been awarded best National Debater at 2004. For his charity works and great achievements in study he has also been awarded with Provincial Recognition Certificate at 2007. He is much known as Soul among the young generation for his continuous effort to support the environment and the society. He has published a poetry book “Truth of life” at 2008. He is currently studying as a phd student at PR China. K M Rehan Salahuddin’s interests are broad but there are some specific interest like World Affairs, E Marketing & Technology.

**UPDATED**Scroll down for new information about this offer from Hostable

Since 1999, Hostable a webhosting provider, has recently begun offering for a limited time, an unlimited hosting plan for new customers. There is no specific time mentioned in the official Hostable website about the dead line. So hurry up, You’ve got nothing to lose by purchasing the Unlimited Hosting with Hostable.

It’s worth noting that you do have to pay 0.99 USD one time setup fee to verify as a human to avail this unlimited web hosting plan for 3 years. After 3 years the recurring bill amount will be $6 USD / month.  Take a look at the comparison chart of Hostable to see how they stand againt other leading web hosting providers.

My only fear is that the service like this could easily be over sold and performance run into the ground. It’s full featured hosting, and includes many extras like unlimited databases etc etc… I will do a follow-up with a review of the service. They mention backups daily, but they are not free, you have to pay $5 bucks a month. Still, not bad for free. I mean really, what do you have to lose?

*UPDATE*

After doing some digging, I found a few things out thanks the the fine folks at .
According to one person named “FatWallet” who said

Reportedly owned by Brinkster, which ain’t great according to reviews:

http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/Brinkster

http://www.webhostingstuff.com/review/Brinkster.html

http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews97571.html

Some folks on Slickdeals complaining about extremely slow speed…. so, you might get what you’re paying for. And read this:Hostable reserves the right to charge an early termination fee of $35. As noted on Slickdeals:To all the people using PayPal, VCCs or Visa gift cards thinking that means that you can forget about it in 3 years. Don’t be so certain of that. Yes, doing all those things will mean they will not be able to charge you automatically, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t bill you and you’ll still owe the money. You are agreeing to the automatic renewal when you sign up. Thus if they can’t charge your card automatically, they have the legal right to send it off to collections. The safest thing to do is to cancel it in 3 years before your renewal date. I think saving your credit history is worth a minute of your time. If you don’t think things like this happen, check out the complaints about 1&1 web hosting. That’s exactly what they do. People who signed up with VCCs or had expired CC on file, got sent directly to collections. Once you are in collections, it’s a hassle to remove it from your credit report even if you pay it off.

FatWallet RedFlagDeals.com Forums

Yoast had this great info graphic about wordpress I just had to share with everyone. I reposted here for posterity’s sake because I think this would be usefull down the line for reference as well. Although this does do a great job of going through all the caveats to a traditional theme, not all theme adhere to this model. Some WordPress themes range from very creative to the totally bizarre. I recently wrote a theme that doesn’t strictly adhere to this mantra because of the unique requirements of the design, I took a not so traditional approach, but it was all for the ease of use for the blogger.

Well I got bored one night, and you know how bored evenings can go and I created a Shiny new WordPress 3+ theme named 2Clone.

TL;DR… Goto bottom for Demo and Download Links

Why?

I’ve been thinking of 2leep a lot lately and thought that their layout would make for an interesting theme. So I set out on making it into a wordpress theme, cause it looked like it would be easy and a good place to start off as my first theme. Yes, this is my first WordPress Theme I’ve ever released, so be kind, but any pointers is appreciated. The concept behind this theme is not to make a link exchange, or to spoof 2leep. It’s actually a pretty neat theme when you start playing with it. Contributions are also welcome, in the form of code or cash! Just let me know what you think in the comments!

Features

• Full Auto Thumbnails. Don’t worry about them, other than setting the cache folder to 777
• Front Page sorts posts by Comments, Most Views,Randomly(Shuffle) and by Newest
  (Tracked Automatically via Custom Post MetaData aka Custom Fields)
• Custom Menu for the Top nav. Simpley choose what categories you want and add them to the menu.
• Best Ever, just add any post to a category called “Featured” and it gets on the front page.
  (Similar to sticky posts, but the posts are kept seperate)
• VERY Minimal theme, only Two images, and one css file!
• Colors easy to change, only two green colors in css, find and replace for whole new look!
• 7 Widget areas, Sidebar 1, Sidebar 2, Pre Header, Header,Pre Article,Post Article, Footer
• WordPress 3 Required for Menus and Post Queries
• A Very  Simple Theme, means few files to edit, and loads very fast! My own demo site loads in under 2 seconds, without caching!

The Second Menu (menu2.php) Has 5 Hard-coded links:

• New – Newest posts on top.
• Lately Popular – Shows Posts with most views on top (Uses Custom Field to store post views, so the number of views can be edited if desired)
• Shuffle – Shows Random Posts.
• Best Ever – Shows the “Featured” category. Requires Slug to be /category/Featured/ – changable via menu2.php.
• Commented – Shows posts with most comments on top.

All of the above was achieved via WordPress 3 api’s, so NO PLUGINS REQUIRED! Woot!!

Creative Commons Attribution Required. All free things come with strings attached now-a-days, so just leave the footer links alone. That’s all there is to it! I’m thinking about selling a no Attribution version for those interested.

Planned Features to come:

• Random Posts Widget for the sidebars
• Custom Category and Tag pages to mimmik the out pages
• Custom Post Templates, for making posts the redirect to external urls if desired or to look different.
• RSS Links
• Better  Comments
• Post Ratings? Maybe…
• ?? Open to suggestions ??

Installation

Simple themes require a little more footwork to setup, so after you upload it, let’s get it on with a checklist!

• Step 1: Logo! Change it by replacing /images/2logo.jpg with your own!
• Step 2: CHMOD the cache folder to 777 this is where timthumb saves thumbnails to make your site load faster.
• Step 3: Create a Menu, and save it as the Primary menu.  ( Apearance -> Menus )

Colorization

• Edit style.css and do a Find/Replace on #66AE3E to change the theme color.
• Article box hover color is #d3eac7 in the CSS to change

Screenshots

Demo & Download