Category Archives: The Site

How to stop Comment Spam

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askimetI’m not sure what everyone else uses, but the most reliable service to stop comment spam on my site has been the Askimet plugin for wordpress. I dont know what I would do without it. A little over six months ago I got hit with some serious comment spam and I had to do a few hours of manual deleting to get all the comments off my site. After this experience I decided to fight back in ensure my site was protected.

So far Askimet has really made a difference in the spam moderation on my blog. I don’t know why I decided not to use it from the beginning.

If you don’t have this installed, you definitely should consider it. You can download the most updated version here. Its has really helped with all the comment spam I’ve been getting. I’m not too sure why this is, but it has almost tripled in just a little over the past three months.

How much spam do you get on your site??? Any ideas to why I get so much?

Optimizing my WordPress Blog

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iheartwordpresssignI visited Jaypee today and he posted a very interesting utility called Xinu. Basically, it gives you all types of information about your blog such as pagerank, backlinks and website syndication just to name a few.

While I had a very decent Google Pagerank and positive diagnosis for 7milesdown’s description, title and URL (using the All in One SEO pack plugin for wordpress), I noticed that it lacked in many important areas to get the proper exposure on the web. With this in mind, over the next few hours I spent my time searching the internet and looking for ways to help optimize my site.

The very first problem I discovered was that my blog was in a subdirectory. I really dislike the clutter of setting up wordpress in the root of my server so I placed it in a folder called “/wp“. This was a bad move. I wish I had known more about SEO or Search Engine Optimization before I started this blog. You can read this article for more details on this.

As for my solution to the problem it wasn’t very simple. Originally, I had a redirect from my root to my subdirectory using a simple redirect script in HTML. I finally decided it was in my best interests to allow access to my blog using the root instead of “7milesdown/wp”. I didn’t however want to lose all the traffic I’ve generated from almost three years online, so what I did was kept the install in the subdirectory while allowing access from the root by following these instructions. It seems to have worked out pretty well. I had to adjust my permalinks to mirror the changes made, but it was pretty simple to do and things seem to be working fine. While doing this, I found out my two sentence post on the postal service exam is ranked sixth when you type in Postal Service Exam. Who knew?

There is still quite a bit of work to be done but I’m happy with what I accomplished so far. My next step is to try to monetize this site like John Chow did with Jonchow.com less than a year ago. Its hard to believe he is making over $10,000 a month off one blog alone! Simply amazing. If I could make just $1000.00 extra per month I’d be ecstatic, wouldn’t you??

Tropical Storm Kong-Rey

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ts-kongrey-41Spring Break just started on Friday and now a tropical storm is intensifying into a typhoon in our area. Guam residents are always prepared for the worst, but I hate these storms because they can knock out power and internet services for weeks. I just wanted to update everyone who regularly reads this blog that if there are any lack of updates, its more than likely due to this storm approaching. Hopefully it will miss us and we’ll just get the tail of the storm instead of take a direct hit.

Damaging winds due to Tropical Storm Kong-Rey are possible in the Marianas beginning Monday night, with stronger winds reaching typhoon intensity along the track of the storm. National Weather Service meteorologist Chip Guard told KUAM News, “This is our best guest of what’s going to happen: We expect the damaging winds of 40 miles per hour to arrive about 7pm Monday and then the destructive winds that can blow your roof – especially tin roofs through the air – about 1am Tuesday. From 4am-9am Tuesday possible typhoon-force winds may arrive. The damaging winds that arrive tomorrow night may last about twenty-four hours. The destructive winds that arrive at 1am will last about twelve hours.”

NWS officials say the center of storm is heading more towards Rota, Guam is not in the clear as the typhoon stretches a few hundreds of miles across. Guard says typhoons can move twenty to thirty miles in one direction or the other. He said, “If the direction were to change just a few degrees closer to Guam, like to shift to the northwest, we can get the core of the storm over the northern end of the island. So we have to plan for a typhoon.” Other storm affects include heavy rains of up to 6-8″ may result in local flooding in low-lying areas.