TechnologyInsanity.com

If you haven’t already, you should really switch to permalinks. /?p= is an unfriendly, unSEO link. Go to your settings –> Permalink and set custom like this /%category%/%postname%/

Okay, so at first glance that seems easy enough right? Well yeah.. Not so much. First of all, I had to enable mod_rewrite in apache. (Remember I’m on a VPS) That wasn’t difficult, you just use the command a2enmod on Ubuntu/Debian systems. Now with that done, I could use the .htaccess file generated by WordPress to serve up the new fancy URLs. Wait.. My old /?p= are not being forwarded to the new fancy urls. Well, a simple plugin called Permalink Redirect solves that issue.

Now comes the real fun. Everytime I go to try and access my stats, I get a 404. The stats folder is clearly there, but I cannot access it. So, I remove the .htaccess on that folder. I can now access it, but it’s no longer password protected I really wasn’t sure if this was caused by ISPConfig or the .htaccess.

So I searched around for quite some time. The solution is simple, when you go to a password protected area it looks for the 401 and 403 error files first, before giving you a login prompt. With the new rewrite in place, all the errors are now on the WordPress theme. It doesn’t have these errors, so the resulting error is 404 not found.

Anyway, how do you fix this issue? Simple, add the following lines to your .htaccess file in the root directory.

ErrorDocument 401 /[path_to_file]/myerror.html

ErrorDocument 403 /[path_to_file]/myerror.html

That’s it! Problem solved. I can now access my stats directory with the password, and permalinks are working.

Forum

Discussion

If you’re a really old reader of mine, you’ll know that I participated in this promotion. http://technologyinsanity.com/internet/the-ebay-holiday-doorbusters

Well, FedEx came and left me a note I don’t know how long ago, must have been a month or two ago. I called them, as stated on the card to come and redeliver it. They never contacted me back, and guess what, they shipped it back to eBay. Months later I got a message from the eBay “member” that sold me the gift for $1. They were going to re-ship it, I had complained to them about it before, but just now finally got a response. I was around to sign for it this time, and got the wallet. So, even if they did take months to reship it, I did receive the wallet

Now to figure out what I’m going to do with it. Perhaps I’ll send it back to eBay Really, what am I going to do with a $100 wallet.

Click to enlarge the thumbnails.

Forum

Discussion

I really don’t know what to do at this point. I’m running BadBehavior, and I’ve tried some other spam blocking plugins, but it doesn’t seem to work. I am still getting about 5 spam comments a day. Without BadBehavior running, I had over 50 spam comments in one day. What am I supposed to do? Manually looking through all these spam comments is annoying to say the least, many of them are disguised as real comments.

This is why I am seriously considering turning off comments on this blog. Don’t worry, comments will still function, however they will be on the forum instead of directly under the post. This first post is a trial to see how it works out. I could restrict comments to only wordpress registered users, or install other captchas for comments. However, I have been looking to expand my forum a little bit, and overall it’s easier to manage.

How is it easier? The captcha is a decent one already integrated into phpBB, which allows guests to post. I also think that the forum gives a clearer view of the discussion, rather than a bunch of comments.

You will be allowed to place your website url in your signature, if you register or in your comment if you post as a guest.

The posts will go like this, I will have a direct link to the forums at the bottom of every post, and at the forums comments will take place. No registration is required.  If I get zero comments I will consider rolling back, and trying out captchas on the comments. I know some of you may not like this, but realize it makes it easier for me.

Comments?

Leave ‘em here

Analytics

Analytics states that I’m getting approximately 117 – 150 unique per day, since I started dropping less with Entrecard.

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Now, switching over to just search engine traffic with analytics we see that approximately 50% of my traffic per day recorded by Analytics is search engine based. It’s growing slowly.

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Analytics seems fairly consistent with my ProjectWonderful stats, which means that various blocking plugins for FireFox are not only blocking ProjectWonderful, but Analytics as well.

Webalizer

Now let’s have a look at what webalizer has to say about my traffic.

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Seems as if Webalizer is painting an entirely different picture. It shows that my traffic really didn’t drop off when I started to drop less on Entrecard. I believe this can be explained by my search engine traffic growing, which lead to my drop off of EC not showing up. It’s actually quite apparent to me I’m part of the search engines. Why? Well, I get a lot of spam comments even with BadBehavior running. Without BadBehavior, I once received 50 spam comments in one day.

Conclusion

If you’re using Analytics, I would consider switching to something that is blocked less by the various plugins out there. Clicky analytics was recommended by nukeit.org, and I have to agree. Anything that is being blocked by NoScript/Adblock Plus and the other assortment of things out there, is not going to give you reliable stats. The best stats come from log analyzers such as Webalizer.