Luckily for me SoftLayer support managed to recover everything for me and I was back in business, but during the two hours it took to recover everything I was thinking about what I needed to do if the file system could not be recovered.

I had backups spalttered across different machines, none of which were completely up to date. Databases were not properly backed up. All this on top of the set up time for the OS etc. It was not a pleasant two hours.

As it happened I had been planning on an upgrade to this server anyway, and had already looked at a couple of SoftLayers partners for managed services, so as soon as the file system was recovered I started shopping for a new server and support contract.

I got a good deal on the server itself from Softlayer, and went with BobCares.com for support. I had read about other companies who were supposedly better in forums etc, but it is easy to spoof a forum post, and BobCares were listed as a SoftLayer partner, so I went with them. There was no price difference between these companies, it just came down to who I thought would be better. I also contacted other Softlayer partners, but BobCares services most closely matched what I was looking for.

I took out a monthly pro-active server plan and paid additional fees for server setup and migration.

As I was in a hurry the guys from BobCares started work before their usual processes were complete, i.e. before I had properly registered everything I needed to. I was very grateful for this, but, this action combined with some of their staff taking annual leave resulted in things getting a bit anarchic. I was having different people ask me the same questions, tickets were splattered all over the place, I just got the impression it was chaos.

The BobCares website itself is pretty grim looking, and the company actually seems to be owned by another company PoorNam which I guess is an Indian outsourcing company. Most of the staff seem to be in India, which I guess is how they deliver the service for the price they do.

However, after a week or so of chaos and a few misgivings on my part, everything was set up properly and what would have been “normal business” (had they not jumped through a few hoops to get things moving quickly for me) ensued.

I created an account of SoftLayer so that they (BobCares) could raise tickets, reboot and access recovery mode via the SoftLayer portal, in the event that they got locked out of SSH etc.

They are now providing 24/7 monitoring, optimising performance, applying patches, sorting out proper backup routines / dissaster recovery etc.

I have raised a couple of tickets and seen them go off to SoftLayer to get support there, so I know that process is working well. Last night I had a routing problem, raised a ticket with BobCares and went to bed, this morning I could see the conversations that had taken place between BobCares and Softlayer and the problem was resolved for me.

So far Im very very pleased I went with BobCares. They are a little disorganised at times, and their website, web forms and some of their processes could definitely be improved upon, but, they seem to have very good helpful people who know what they are doing, and offer a service that is actually affordable to me.

For some time I did not think I could afford a managed service like this, and in the UK that is certainly the case, but by offshoring BobCares are able to offer a very valuable service utilising skilled server admins at a price that a small startup company can afford.

I will update this post from time to time… hopefully things will continue to go well with it!

For now I am still enjoying my new found freedom from worrying about / meddling with a crumbling server!

Now, a rank of 167k is nothing to be proud of and most sites would not want to publish such a poor score, however it is improving (it was 280k last week) and I like playing with Alexa.

The reason I have installed this is because, legend has it, that running it improves your rank!

This is a complete myth, it does nothing of the sort, but does encourage your readers to install the toolar themselves, and this indirectly boosts your rank. Alexa only counts hits from people with the toolbar installed, so, the more readers running the bar the better my rank, and that of any other sites these readers choose to visit.

For FireFox users there is a good Alexa Plug in which I reveiwed recently.

No self respecting Blogger or Webmaster should be without an Alexa Bar

Have fun!

It is widely known that some Adwords pay very well, and others poorly, a subject a number of people have written about.

A quick google for “Top Paying Adwords” or “Top Paying Keywords” will get you to an article which ‘claims’ to show how much different adwords pay.

I know for a fact that these figures are vastly inflated, but they do indicate with some accuracy the relative value of different phrases.

Posting articles of this nature is a dangerous game, as discussion around the value of specific keywords is forbidden, and you risk being banned by Google, and if that happens, you really are banned!

Also, there are plenty of Adsense whore sites out there trying to scrape an income from these words, so targeting them is probably less viable than it was a year or two ago.

Furthermore, anyone paying large sums for clicks will have rigid controls in place to prevent spam sites eating up their advertising budget!

All that said, it is possible to vastly vary the income from Adwords by tweaking the articles you write.

What I mean by this is that you stay on topic for your site / blog, but use slightly different keywords within it.

In particular the page title (or post title on a blog page using permalinks) strongly influences the Adwords that are selected for display.

A simple trick is to keep an eye on which topics bring in the most revenue, and to bump posts on this subject, i.e. occasionally re-date your best paying articles so they appear on your front screen.

Whilst this may be appropriate for blogs with a transient readership, it is likely to annoy regular readers. You will have to decide for yourself whether this is something you can get away with, for example, I do not use this technique on this blog, but I do use it on another which has a high turnover of readers.

If you wanted to soften this technique down a bit, you could vary the time a post appears on your front page, for example, quickly following a poor paying topic with a higher paying one, then leaving the higher paying topic in place for a longer period.

One way to track which kind of articles generate revenue is to create Adsense “channels”, duplicating the actual Adsense code, but varying the identifier within it.

In your Adsense stats you will be able to see:

• Theme 1
• Theme 2
• Theme 3

With this information you will start to get an idea of which ‘themes’ genearate the best revenue.

JohnChow.com used channels in this way to identify the best placement for advertising on his site. Rather than using channels for keywords, he named them after the location they appeared in the page, for example, on this site I could use:

• In Line
• Top
• Sidebar
• Post Footer

Once you have identified a ‘theme’ that generates income, you can refine the words used within it by visiting Googles Adwords pages.

These are the pages used by customers of Adwords (not the pages used to set up Adsense) and show the relative competitiveness of particular phrases.

The higher the competition, the more advertisers will have to pay to get themselves exposure.

Statistics on the Adwords page are comparative, that is they do not show which keywords pay the most, you cannot search for words with a high value (figures are not disclosed). Instead, it compares side by side permutations of the key phrase you are looking at, revealing which have the highest level of competition amongst advertisers.

This is extremely useful as you do not really have to change anything on your blog, simply using a different phrase of the same meaning (particularly in the post title), for example swapping between:

• computer spares
• PC components

The meaning is the same, your readers will not complain, but the difference in PPC could be significant.

I wrote this article as over the last two days revenue from another blog dropped through the floor. I used the Adwords tool to identify better paying phrases, changed a couple of post titles and, so far, things look like they are looking up again.

The goal posts are forever changing. Advertisers are doing the exact oposite of site owners, looking for the least competative terms, from which they can derive the maximum number of relevant clicks per dollar. Advertisers will always be looking to cut costs, reduce PPC.

As more Advertisers switch to different phrases, so the new phrases become more competitive, and the old less so, until, the advertisers realise this and switch back again.

Also, advertisers set monthly budgets, if that runs out, cheaper adds will appear in their place. So, if a lot of sites go after the competitive terms, the high paying adds may burn out quickly.

Whichever side you are working from, advertiser or site owner, it pays to keep an eye on these trends!

World Wide Web Consortium CSS Tutorials

W3C offer the best free tutorials for beginners I have found anywhere. Whether you want to learn (X)HTML, CSS, PHP or a host of other technologies this site should always be your starting point.

Sliding Doors of CSS

I use this technique a lot, it allows you to render tabs using graphics in CSS. The fact that it uses CSS makes it very easy to add more tabs, you simply add more code in your (X)HTML and a new tab is rendered. This makes it a particularly useful technique for use in dynamic sites as the menu’s can easily be generated programatically

Hover Box Image Gallery

The Hover Box Image Gallery uses only CSS to create a cool mouse over image gallery. I am not sure how practical this is for most sites, but its a nice technique. More information on Hoverbox CSS can be found here.

Spiffy CornersSpiffy Corners is a very popular technique for creating rounded corners on a box without using JavaScript. If and when CSS3 is released / supported in browsers then this technique will change, as CSS3 has better support for adding images to corners. However, with CSS3 some way off, and the fact that a lot of people will continue using older browsers this (famous) technique will remain in use for some time

Float Tutorial

I should have put this at the top of the list, floating is an indispensable CSS technique, essential if you want to create multi column CSS layouts.

Listamatic

A long list of CSS tutorials on creating lists!! Lots of useful information on CSS lists to be found, too much in fact

Vertical Menus

Apply graphical styles to your CSS menus, some very nice examples.

Free CSS Templates

OK, this is not a tutorial, however this site lists basic CSS layouts, i.e. they are not complete sites, just the bare bones. This makes them very useful as a learning aid as it is easier to see how they work. Using these CSS templates you can more easily build your own design. If you want complete fully featured templates visit the Open Source Web Directory, however, these will be more confusing to a beginner.

Forty CSS Layouts

Again, not a tutorial but a list of templates. As with the link above the fact that these are basic templates makes them suitable as a learning aid.

CSS Drop Shadows

Another essential technique you simply must have in your toolbox!

Style Sheet Switcher

Allows you to switch the style / theme / skin of your site at the click of a button, very nice technique but really for an advanced user who has taken the time to develop multiple skins for a site

Anyway, this shows a bit more of what SEOLINKPRO is about, have fun:

And in case you have not read it yet, check out my previous post on SEOLINKPRO here

If you do not know syndk8, it is a popular black / grey hat forum run by some guy by the name of Earl Grey. Quite an amusing forum, containing lots of edgy humour as well as a lot of useful SEO information.

They have released a couple of link building tools in the past, and have just added a new one to their line up “SEOLINKPRO”.

Little is known about SEOLINKPRO at the moment, other than the fact that it will use social bookmarking sites to generate free backlinks for you.

There is a promotional page on SEOLINKPRO here, and a promotional video of SEOLINKPRO here.

The video of SEOLINKPRO contains very little useful information and is a bit tongue in cheek, either that or its just plain bad . However, I think that is just a teaser. Earl and Neek (the developer) are keeping a lid on things at the moment, but more details are sure to follow in the next 24 hours.

There is also a twitter feed for SEOLINKPRO here where updates are to be posted shortly.

This tool should be pretty good, if their previous products are anything to go by. In the past their tools have earned the sale price back pretty quickly, but, unfortunately there don’t seem to be any discount coupons available for SEOLINKPRO at the moment.

It remains to be seen how good this tool really is, I think it will be a few days before the first reliable reviews of SEOLINKPRO are available, but it is certainly one to watch.

As with all tools of this nature, it is the first few to start using them that derive the most benefit. Once sales go up things start to get a bit saturated and less effective.

Anyway, if your interested in SEOLINKPRO you now know where to look!

Edit: Neek, you have a very suspicious mind, of course its me

To enter her competition you just have to write a short post linking to her site, like this one…

Shes assures me it is working and its just the colour she doesn’t like… I’m not sure I would buy a used car from her on that basis, but Ill risk a blog post  :mrgreen:

In between winning and giving away prizes, Ms Danielle is the author of a rather pink blog site  :lol:  :lol: discussing Music, cartoons, pay per click and other blogging stuff….

Gary Lee lives in Southern California and currently works for himself as an Internet Marketing/Business Development Consultant after a few years of helping drive an old asian online dating site into the ground.

Learning from his one mistake of working for a moron, Gary now consults a number businesses to drive more traffic to their site and also how to monetize that traffic wisely………… Gary also likes to talk about himself in the third-person as it gives him a sense of importance and self-worth.

If you haven’t read Mr Gary Lee yet then you should! Its entertaining and has some good lessons regards SEO, in particular Gary seems to have a talent for viral marketing and spin witch-doctoring and watching how he promotes his blog is a lesson in itself… very cool stuff…

There are a couple of posts on internet marketing, a few more would be nice, but the lessons lie in watching what Gary does, as opposed to being spoon fed all the answers.. much more fun .