Reaper-X » Website

My Google Pagerank just dropped

Reaper-X — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:07:32 +0000

It seems that i didn’t pay enough attention at all to check the pagerank value of this site because i just noticed that this site PR (Google Pagerank) dropped from 5 to 4 today after reading various website that says their site Google Pagerank dropped, lol

Back then Google assigned a PR 5 to this site early this year in January 2007 when there was a Google Pagerank Export update going on, but it seems that this site no longer receive that PR 5 again since last month update (October 2007)

Based on what i’ve read on various web sites (such as Techcrunch and Andybeard), most of the sites that lose their pagerank usually caused by selling text link ads on their web site (via direct advertising or third party broker such as text link ads). But i’m 99% sure that this site doesn’t sell any link and all links placed on this site are genuine (back then i have 1 – 3 text link ads placed on some post but since i never earn money from it, i’ve removed it since looong time ago) and just in case you didn’t know a lot of them are complaining because of this issue, and probably because they think if they lose their pagerank they’ll lose their traffic too or my best guess is they complain that if their site pagerank dropped they can’t sell text link ads anymore because of their low pagerank value

So what might be the source of the problem that caused this site pagerank to be dropped ? the only thing i can guess is that most of the site that link to this site gets their pagerank value dropped by Google, because i never bought any link on another website, never sell links (except for once but that’s a loong time ago but i never make any money from it because i coulnd’t reach the minimum payout and that’s why i choose to removed it)

But does this site lose it’s traffic ? … Thanks God … the answer is no, in fact this site traffic for October 2007 increased by 150,183 in pageviews and also gets an increased in terms of returning visitors compared to previous month (September) ! and here’s a screenshot just in case you want to see it directly (using my Google Analytics account because Google analytics often give you the lowest results compared to other site tracking service, for example my wordpress.com stats tracking account, though there’re no big differences between it … because my wordpress.com account says this site receives 353,278 views for October 2007)

October 2007 Site Statistic :

So the question is … should you worry about your pagerank ? … the answer is of course depend on whether you are using your site pagerank to earn you some money by selling text link ads or not :) but of course if your site loses it’s traffic because of pagerank drop that’s another story, but i always believe that if you put your site visitors above anything else, eventually you’ll see the result of your hard work :)

At last just in case you didn’t know (based on what i saw that most people seems to forget about this because all they do is just blaming the recent Google Pagerank update / export) …

Actually pagerank value gets updated more often than you think before you can see the actual value / exported data in Google Toolbar (if you are using this) or in any other site that offers pagerank checking or various seo tools that is updated 3 months or probably more which mean the pagerank value you saw is different from the pagerank value that is stored in internal Google machines … just as Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webspam team) said :

I believe that I’ve said before that PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm. From time-to-time, that internal PageRank value is exported so that it’s visible to Google Toolbar users (see the question below for more details on the timing).

0x87485B96 | Tags : Personal, Website

4 Things to do after creating your first Website / Blog ever

Reaper-X — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:56:32 +0000

So you just finished registering your own domain name for the first time ever, and you got yourself a good web hosting company and already created / use some custom themes for your website. But you’re confused on what you should do next in order to get your website listed on various search engines and in the end you’ll get some nice traffic from those search engines ? or even better you could make money from it ?

1. Create / Write a useful content first

This step is the most important thing you should do first, because in order to get your site listed on various major search engines, you’ll need to create a useful content or two. Of course the best thing you could do is create a unique post that your site visitors think it could be useful for them

2. Avoid placing advertisement on your website

Most people think that they can make money directly right after they just created their first web site / blog ever which is wrong. Because when you just launched a new website, you’ll need to create a good impression to your site visitors, and ads are well known to drive visitors away from your new website (especially to those who dislike ads)

3. Ask for honest opinion about your web site from your friends

After finished with the above two steps, now you’ll need to ask some of your friends to visit your new web site and ask them for their honest opinion about your web site, and you’ll need to listen to their opinion carefully because they are going to be the first one who’s going to visit your web site and perhaps can also helps you to promote your web site

4. Make other site link to your web site

Back then getting other web site to link to your website can be considered as hard task, but now you don’t need to worry about that anymore and that’s all thanks to various social bookmarking web site that can be found easily on the web, such as Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Digg

Those social bookmarking website of course can bring an incredible amount of new visitors to your site especially if you can get your site listed on their frontpage (the worst case is your server might get overloaded because of the huge incoming visitors). But even though your site didn’t make it to the frontpage of those social bookmarking website, you’ll still get a backlink to your site, and that’s really help your site to get listed by major search engines

That’s it … and of course if you know some other good tips to those who are just creating new website, feel free to write it in the comment area below :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Website

Why forcing user registration to view a single article on forum is bad …

Reaper-X — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:18:17 +0000

Did you know that forcing people to register on your forum just to see a single article on your forum is bad ? If you don’t know about that already, here are the top reasons on why you should make your forum available to search engine and at the same time also allow normal visitors to read some articles on your forum without registering first …

1. Most people are just lazy, and in the end you’ll risk losing potential returning site visitors

I’ve to admit that sometime i don’t really like when i have to register a username first just to check a forum, even for a big forum that has incredibly large userbase such as Webmasterworld, but in my case that’s because i just love to read without registering first (eventhough i have automatic web-form filler in place and ready to use) although that may change depending on the forum itself (if i see lots of friendly people there, of course i’ll join the discussion too) … and you know what ? most people also think that way

2. Say goodbye to search engine, and any search engine traffic

Eventually you’ll realize that your forum can’t be found anywhere in the search engine although you have some good content in your forum that is created by your regular visitors, and that’s all thanks to your decision to prevent search engine from visiting your forum by forcing user registration

3. Forget about monetization

Although making a forum can be considered as an easy task, but paying your monthly hosting bill and other bills can not be considered as an easy task, and that’s why you should monetize your site at least to pay your monthly hosting bill and your internet bill, but because you didn’t allow search engine to crawl your forum, you just missed another opportunity to monetize your forum. Simply because even though those visitors (read: lurkers) are just reading your forum without registering, your statistics still counts. And just in case you didn’t know, those statistics can be useful especially if you’re going to monetize your forum later

Now … the question is … are you going to force user registration after thinking about it carefully ?

0x87485B96 | Tags : Opinion, Website

Finally reached 1.000.000 Page views

Reaper-X — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:14:41 +0000

Wheee finally today 18 September (actually it’s 19 September in my local time) this website finally reached 1.000.000 Page views (to be exact 1.002.150 Page Views recorded) according to my Google Analytics account (after 1 year, 1 month and 3 days)

While for some people this number can be considered as normal, but if it’s for me … of course i’m really delighted for it because i just never thought that i would reached this amount (beside i never dreamed about it before) … and that’s all thanks to Wordpress. Because if i didn’t create my first blog ever in their free service, there’s no way this site exists (except there’s someone else buying this domain name at the first place)

And here’s the breakdown of this site analytics for 1 year, 1 month and 3 days :

540,031 Visits
428,694 Absolute Unique Visitors
1,002,150 Pageviews

As for the technical profile :

50.66% Visitors using Microsoft Internet Explorer to visit this site
42.83% Visitors using Mozilla Firefox Browser
4.32% Visitors using Opera Browser
and many other user agent recorded, from a Playstation 3 User-Agent, to someone trying to do some XSS attack via their browser user-agent (duh) … and it’s all recorded by Google Analytics (wow!)

And finally here’s an image to shows you what this site statistics looks like until i reached the 1.000.000 Page views taken from my Google Analytics account

Note : The above image shows you the number of visits this site receives since the beginning / the day i moved from Wordpress.com to a real web hosting (15 August 2006) until 18 September 2007 :)

So … at this time i’d like to say many thanks to all of this site visitors for coming to this site, and to those who’s interested on reading my previous journal when i just started this website, or things i’ve learned ever since i started this website … feel free to check this site archives

As for my next target … i’d really love to get 1.000.000 Visits first and then perhaps the absolute unique visitors can also reach the same amount :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blogging, Journal, Website

4 Things you should know, before moving into VPS

Reaper-X — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:44:46 +0000

You are interested on moving your site into VPS based hosting (i called VPS as second level hosting, while shared hosting as first level), but you’re still confused on how your site are going to perform under VPS, is it going to be worse than shared hosting or is it going to be a lot better than before. And to make explain few things about it, i’ve decided to write this post

Okay here are what you should know before moving into VPS hosting :

Control Panel

Most shared hosting use CPanel for their client, and that mean if you want a smooth transition from your old shared hosting account into your new vps, your best option is of course to choose the vps hosting account that is using the same control panel like your previous control panel, beside you already familiar with it

Guaranteed Memory / RAM

Back then you don’t need to worry about RAM / Memory problem because most shared hosting use 4GB RAM (at least on my Hostgator account) for their customers, although it’s shared with hundreds or thousands other customers and your memory usage is capped at certain level. But that things won’t happen anymore at VPS, because you’ll get what you pay for

And as a note, memory is the most important things you should consider before getting your vps other than the control panel itself, and trust me if your vps doesn’t have enough memory you’ll see lots of services aren’t going to start / often fail, like the HTTPD (Apache Webserver in my case)

PHPSuexec vs mod_php

Many shared hosting use PHPSuexec on their server, because it is necessary for them to do that as security purpose which is good. Unfortunately, your new vps aren’t going to use the same setup like your previous hosting (most of the time you’re going to use PHP which is loaded as apache module by default on your VPS) so you’ll need to make some modification to your new vps account before started using it

And just in case you didn’t know what is PHPSuexec, i’ll give you an example on what PHPSuexec actually does :

For example, you were running some php script / cms / blogging software that requires you to change permission (using chmod 777 command / change permission using your ftp program) on some directories / files in order to give access to write something into that directory or file

Back then when you’re under PHPSuexec, you can just safely ignore that instruction that tell you to chmod certain files / directories to 777, beside when you run under PHPSuexec you’re going to get a server error message if you try to chmod some files into 777 because PHPSuexec doesn’t want you to run a script with insecure permission

in other words, by using phpsuexec, because it’s (the script) run under your own userid, you can write anything in your own directory (files, etc) without having to chmod it first into world writable permission (777)

As a side note, if i should choose between running php as apache module (mod_php) and phpsuexec, i’d definitely choose to use phpsuexec although that mean i’m losing the server performance and taking up lots of server resources

Basic / Intermediate Knowledge on how to set up things on your VPS

Even though you’re using a managed VPS, you’ll need to know some basic unix / linux command (if you choose linux vps hosting) also knowledge on how to configure something by yourself. Because most web hosting company aren’t going to help you on optimizing your VPS

So what’s the conclusion ?

Based from the above paragraphs, i think you’ve guessed that shared hosting is the best and the easiest way to get your website up and running perfectly. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use a vps, because vps is the way to go when you’re serious about your website

0x87485B96 | Tags : Web Hosting, Web Servers, Website

VPS Plan Upgraded

Reaper-X — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:14:31 +0000

2 days i just ordered VPS Hosting from WiredTree with 30GB RAID-10 Disk Space, 300GB Bandwidth (Wow … i do not think i’m going to reach this amount), with 256MB Ram (Burstable to 1GB) …

At first i thought that capacity is enough for this small site, but i guess i’ve made a wrong decision because if you’ve visited this site since yesterday, i’m pretty sure you’ve noticed that this site is unreachable (i’m sorry i didn’t notice it first when i wrote my previous post about my new host) … and that’s all thanks to the low RAM

But … today i just contacted my web hosting company, and ask them to upgrade my vps plan into using 512MB RAM … and things seem to be working a lot better now … so in this post i’d like to say sorry to those who’s trying to access this site earlier, and get an unreachable page

Conclusion : With this new server specs, i guess i need to work even harder so i can pay my monthly hosting bill and my internet bill

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Web Hosting, Website

Please Welcome … WiredTree Web Hosting

Reaper-X — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:29:17 +0000

So yesterday i’ve finished moving this site to a new web host named WiredTree (after doing some testing with my other domain name), and i must say although at first i want it to have no downtime at all … but it seems that’s almost impossible for me to do it, because … well … i forgot to make few changes to the .htaccess file which is previously used on my previous host Hostgator (this cause several errors), forgot to add Zones for the site feeds itself, need to reconfigure ome modules installed on the server (if you visited this site yesterday you can see it from the Server Error Message), and i’m pretty sure the DNS records may not have fully propagated yet :P

Overall … the experience has been great (Many thanks to WiredTree Zac and WiredTree Joe), every ticket responded in just less than 5 minutes (if you don’t believe me try it for yourself) because there’s no way i can call them directly (it’s really expensive to place an international call from here … but the most important thing is … well you see about that in the next paragraph)

As a side note, they really call your phone number to verify your order (at first i thought they’re not going to call me directly to verify my order) … and to be honest, i’m really nervous when answering the phone call from them because that’s my very first time ever receiving a phone call from another country … beside … they do speak fast unlike in movie (that’s how i learn english language)

Anyway, if you’re looking for a Managed VPS, i’d definitely recommend WiredTree because they offer good prices for their package with top notch support team

But just a suggestion to them, just in case they read this .. perhaps it’d be better for them to put 301 Redirect on their domain name as SEO purpose and / or offer some affiliate account :P

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Personal, Web Hosting, Website

Feedburner Ad Network for me ? i’m sure there’s a mistake

Reaper-X — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:32:11 +0000

I’m not to sure why i get this message when i was looking at the monetization tab in my feedburner account today (previously it didn’t show me this message)

Although i’m interested on trying Feedburner Ad Network (FAN), but i’m sure there’s a mistake somewhere in the Feedburner system. Because based on what i read from someone else comment at Problogger, and Yugatech. You need to get at least 500 RSS Subscribers to join the Feedburner Ad Network … while in reality, this blog only has 155 Subscribers (today) … and the number usually going up and down although it usually stay in 100 – 139 area

Anyhow … eventhough there are no errors in FAN system, i still can’t join them because in order to join FAN you must have paypal account first (i do have a verified paypal account, unfortunately my paypal account can only be used to send money only) :(

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Making Money, Personal, Website

Wordpress 2.2 Released

Reaper-X — Wed, 16 May 2007 10:50:05 +0000

Wordpress 2.2 has been released today, and like most of you already know that everytime Wordpress released a new version especially major version that means there’re various changes into it such as new features, bugfixes and so on …

And here’s what new in Wordpress 2.2 :

Improved comment editing
Widgets (no longer a plugin but available under Presentation tab)
Deactivate Plugins automatically (activate automatically not in yet)
New Blogger Import
Fewer clicks and better user experience for upgrades
Improved login accessibility
Improved UI when deleting Drafts
Improved clarity regarding “Spam it:” and “Delete it:” in comment notification e-mails

Just like before, i downloaded the tarball release into my computer and tested it right away locally to make sure the currently used plugins, theme, etc are compatible with the new release before deployed it into my site. After tested it for a while and did not see any problem (no error, no incompatible plugins, etc), i decided to apply small changes i have made previously to this new release and then begin another test to make sure it is still okay … and so on

And the final result is … well … you can see it by yourself when you see this post

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blog, Journal, Website, Wordpress

Digg Protection using htaccess

Reaper-X — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:00:22 +0000

Today i just saw a referer to this site coming from Digg Upcoming page (i guess someone submit this blog to Digg website) although i doubt that it’ll reach the main page, but i think it is better for me to prevent this site from going down (the worst case is my page changed into my host suspended page) just in case someone submit this site to various big website and it appear there

And now this is the method is use to try to redirect everyone who came to this site from big site such as slashdot. Btw i found this method via PlanetOzh at Joseph Scott’s Blog which is taken from Ottodestruct (although i get 404 error not found message when i tried to visit the page mentioned in Joseph Scott’s blog) … and of course Full Credits goes to them because all i do is just adding “/” add the end and modify it as necessary to use in this site also changed the port to 8090 because coral cache use that port now instead of the old 8080 :)

So here’s the code :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?digg\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?fark\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?somethingawful\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?kuro5hin\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?boingboing\.net
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com.nyud.net:8090/$1 [R,L]

As always the IfModule used to prevent your site goes berserk by returning HTTP 500 Error Code when modrewrite is not loaded in Apache. And i already tested this on this site, by faking the referer address to www.digg.com and digg.com without www (and as you can see, that this method only work to those who’s not faking / forging their referer)

And of course there’s downside when using this method which is already explained here :

The problem, of course, is that Coral runs on port 8090, and how many people will be blocked from that?

But i think it is still better than you got suspended by your host because your site causing high load on their server (if you’re using shared hosting) :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Linux, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools, Website