One Man's Blog » Site Updates

More OMB Changes

John P. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:28:01 +0000

Folks, a few more changes for the old blog here today:

Removed the MyBlogLog widget. Sorry, but I got sick of it slowing down the page loading time. Plus I just don’t use it any more, so it was time to go.
Added new Facebook integration! Now you can log into OMB with your Facebook account! How cool is that? You can also have your comments appear on your Facebook wall and stuff like that.
Removed the “Top Commenter” widget. Sorry for those of you who really liked that feature, but it was attracting so many spammers that I just didn’t want to deal with it any more.

Oh, I also added a Facebook Group for OMB, so please join it if you haven’t yet. It’s going to be a good place for us to all chat about stuff without having to do it in the comments here on the blog.

Changes to OneMansBlog – FEEDBACK NEEDED!

John P. — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:21:27 +0000

Howdy folks. I’ve made two fairly significant changes to the old blog here today, and I’m hoping to get a little feedback from you regulars as to how these are turning out.

I updated my “Related Posts” plugin to use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Though it was a more complex install than the old one, it does two things that I like better. First, it seems to be a little more accurate. Second, it shows a short preview of the related post by the link. I think this makes it easier to determine if that related post is actually interesting or not to the reader.
I installed a new caching / content distribution system from Steady Offload. This is NOT a free service, so if I want to keep it here I’ll have to pay for it. But the purpose is to make all of the images and pages in general load quicker on the blog. Personally, the site seems faster to me. But I’m waiting to hear from you guys. Do things seem faster? You should especially notice on posts with lots of images.

So, please let me know if things have improved for you, are the same, or worse. Cheers!

200,000 Spams and Counting…

John P. — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:48:12 +0000

Well, looks like it only took about 3.5 weeks to bump the number of Spam responses up over 200,000.

So, I hit the 100,000 mark on May 7, the 175,000 mark on August 7, and the 200,000 mark on September 2. It looks like I’m averaging about 25,000 Spam comments per month, or over 800 spam comments per day!!! To put this in perspective, I currently have just over 9,000 legitimate, approved comments on the blog.

At the current rate we should wrap up 2008 with over 300,000 and then in 2009 we should see the 700,000 mark. Of course, I would assume that the numbers will increase, and if they do there could be well over 1,000,000 spam comments on this blog by the end of 2009.

I can’t wait until the first time some geeky Webmaster tracks down a spammer and murders him just for spamming. I will contribute to his defense fund. Furthermore, I’ll vote for any presidential candidate who promises to make Spamming a capital offense punishable by death (or at least time in a federal prison.).

Thanks to Automattic for Akismet, without which I would probably have quit blogging.

Spam Problem Growing – 176,000+ Caught So Far

John P. — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:33:46 +0000

Well, it was exactly three months ago that I shared the fact that this blog had reached the 100,000 spam mark according to the spam fighting plugin Akismet. But it looks like in the last 24 hours the count has crept up above the 175,000 mark.

76,000 spam comments in 90 days is just a little out of hand, don’t you think? So, this is why I heavily moderate comments and delete anything that looks spammy. You would have thought that maybe they would simply go elsewhere since it’s not getting through. But instead they just keep increasing.

Should I Allow Comments on This Blog?

John P. — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:35:05 +0000

Ok. Here is a question that is going to rile some people up.

So, there is a site that wrote an article titled “The Best Places to Get Quality Backlinks” that lists sites for people to leave comments on for the sole purpose of increasing their Google PageRank since they get to leave a link back to their site.

Guess which site is at the top of the list? Yeah. This one.

So, when I get comments from people who come directly from that site I think of them as disingenuous and completely discount their validity. I mean, I spend time to write articles for those of you who really enjoy the same general stuff as me.

Now, if ANYONE leaves a comment – no matter how brilliant – which contains a spammy link, I delete it as fast as possible. So the question is why should I treat bullshit comments any differently? Shouldn’t I just can them as well?

PS – How do I know when they arrive? Woopra.

Google Sucks Again!!!

John P. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:23:05 +0000

Damn! Someone over at Google has seriously got it out for me! Why is it that just 30 days ago I reported that I was number 2 for a search for “John P.” and number 12 for the word “John“, but just today I was amusing a friend and noticed that if you search for John I’ve now dropped to number 206! Oh, and Pope John Paul II just passed me for “John P.” But I’m going to let that one slide…

Oh, this is such a huge blow to my ego. I’m just not sure I can keep going on. I’m no longer more important than John Dvorak, Sir Elton John, John Travolta, and the Johns Hopkins University. How do they justify this egregious act!

I’m telling you. Someone over at Google reads my blog and they are manually manipulating results to keep The Man down! Just like YouTube. Those people keep turning off the videos I link to within a day, even if they’ve been on YouTube for a year! And just because of a little copyright violation? Bah!

These big and powerful Internet companies need to stop messing with little old me.

Yet Another Man’s Blog

John P. — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:50:34 +0000

There seems to be a proliferation of bloggers following my lead. First there was AnotherMansBlog.com, and now there is YetAnotherMansBlog.com! What’s next? StillAnotherMansBlog.com? Why not OneWomansBlog.com? And where is OneDogsBlog.com?

By the way, those blogs are probably better than mine. So you should read them too.

PS – Did you see that Another Man quit blogging? You guys better go and prod him…

John P is Number 2 on Google!

John P. — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:14:51 +0000

Folks, this amuses me. By the way, make note of the date. It is NOT April Fools day…

Yesterday when I was on Cali’s show I randomly mentioned that I wished I was like Matt Mullenweg because if you search for Matt he comes up as the first result in Google. The last time I checked “John P” I was like the 90th listing. However, someone watching the broadcast dropped me a note to let me know that I’m actually now the second listing!

It looks like the number one position is occupied by a gospel singer by the name of John P. Kee. So, if anyone out there wants to help me take over as the king of “John P”, just link to my blog using my name (”John P.”) specifically and it might even drive me to the pole position!

Either way though, number two isn’t bad out of 46,800,000 results! :-)

Oh, and incidentally, it looks like if you just search for “John” now, I’m about 12th from the top out of 141,000,000!

That is just crazy! It looks like I’m right after Senator John Edwards and singer John Mayer (whom I’m a big fan of), and before Senator John Kerry, popular columnist John Dvorak, and singer Sir Elton John. Amazingly I’m even ahead of John Travolta, and Johns Hopkins University (which won’t make my sister in law very happy).

Anyway, thanks to all of my loyal readers and the thousands of Web sites that have linked to me!

UPDATE: I’m now #1 for a search for John P.! Yeah! :-)

Cali Lewis Live Interview Saturday June 7 at 3:00pm CST

John P. — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:10:37 +0000

Hey folks, on Saturday June 7, 2008 at 3pm Central time in the U.S. (-5 GMT) Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell will be coming by to live stream an interview with your’s truly. We’ll be chatting about chicken nuggets, quantum string theory, plasma torches and bikini waxes.

Well, maybe not. I actually have no idea what we are going to discuss! But what I do know is, if you stop by http://www.ustream.tv/calilewis/ you’ll be able to watch live, and if you click “Go to Show Details and chat”, you can choose a username (no password necessary) and join in the conversation.

I’ll be taking questions from anyone and everyone on religion, politics, abortion, war, famine, disease, and Michael Jackson. I might not answer any of those questions… but I’ll certainly take them! Otherwise, I imagine we’ll probably talk a little about Woopra, Layered Tech, OMB and other geeky stuff. So mark your calendar and come on by!

OMB Tops 100,000 Spam Threshold

John P. — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:35:10 +0000

You know, I think of myself as a pretty prolific blogger. With over 1,100 posts in under two years, its hard to find others who can match my output. So would it surprise you to learn that even with multiple anti-spam measures in place, there are 100 Spams posted to OMB for every post I write!

That’s right. Akismet alone has saved you guys from reading over 100,000 spam comments, so a big huge thanks goes out to Matt Mullenweg and the gang over at Automattic for offering this service.

Woopra Featured on GeekBrief

John P. — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:18:48 +0000

Folks. I have a confession to make. I’ve been secretly cheating on all of you for some time now. Oh, and to make matters worse, I’m proud of it.

Yes, you already know that a few months ago I joined Layered Technologies as the Chief Marketing Officer… but I’ve got another on the side. And she’s called Woopra. I’ve been secretly working with Elie Khoury and Jad Younan on this project, and we just unveiled it yesterday at WordCamp, making Beta accounts available for the first time for all participants.

What can I tell you about Woopra? She’s hot, smooth, smart, and sexy. But don’t take my word for it… Here is what Cali from GeekBrief had to say after just a few minutes with Woopra.

So… Do you want a taste of Woopra? It’s in VERY limited beta right now, but I will send invitations to track one Web site over to my regular readers… so if you want to give it a try, drop a comment below. You need to be a registered user on my blog, or an e-mail subscriber so that I can know that you’ve actually been a reader for a while in order to qualify. (Regular known commenters qualify too.)

If you haven’t been a long time reader, but you go ahead and subscribe via e-mail with a promise to stick around, I’ll consider handing out additional invites. :-) For anyone else, you can register on Woopra and add a Web site to track and we’ll get around to approving it as we have the capacity. (It takes a lot of infrastructure to support all this…)

Oh, and one other thing, you have to promise to do a writeup about Woopra and tell Elie, Jad and I what you think.

New Gift Ideas Section on the Blog

John P. — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:24:06 +0000

Today I added a new Gift Ideas section on the blog (just look up at the top) because I thought it might be helpful to share things that I’ve found which would make for birthday, anniversary, wedding and other gifts. I get a lot of catalogs, and I do a lot of shopping in general, so as I come across cool things I’ll add them into the Gift Ideas page.

The underlying technology behind the Gift page is an Amazon Shop. Any affiliate can set one up, and most people would usually do it to try to earn a little cash. Please remember, I donate ALL proceeds from OMB, so I didn’t set it up for that reason.

So, check out the new tab, and remember we’ve got it the next time you’re pressed to come up with a gift idea for that someone special.

OMB’s 1,000th Post

John P. — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:24:36 +0000

Well, it’s been 11 months since my 500th post, and 18 since the inaugural post. Clearly it’s taken me almost twice as long to get the last 500 out as did the first 500. But hopefully everyone feels like my quality has improved.

I would like to once again thank ALL of my loyal readers. I never would have guessed that I’d be getting 15-20,000 page views per day a year ago, or that I’d have thousands of regular readers, but I can tell you that I really appreciate the fact that you all keep coming back.

As I’ve stated before, I’ll continue to give all of my advertising revenues to charity, or return them to the reader community in the form of member contests.

After a year and a half, and 1,000 articles, there is just one favor I’d like to ask of you all. Nothing pleases me more than seeing the subscriber count grow, so if you could help me spread the word to just a couple of friends or co-workers by suggesting they subscribe, I sure would appreciate it. And if you have any suggestions for ways I could improve things around here please don’t be shy about dropping a comment to let me know.

Thanks again!

OMB Named ‘Weblog of the Year!’

John P. — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:59:21 +0000

Well, maybe not yet… but it could be if you help! :-)

You know, about two months ago when I got nominated very, very late in the game for the Blogger’s Choice awards you guys all came together with a bunch of votes in a period of only a few days. The problem was, the voting had been open for an entire year, but we were only in on it the last week of the year.

Well, I just found out that the 8th Annual Weblog Awards are accepting submissions up until Jan 11, so if any of you guys want to see One Man’s Blog in the running now would be the time to do some submitting. (Shameless plug duly noted.) After the 11th they are going to narrow down the submissions and pick just a few that will be open for voting for some period of time thereafter. It sure would be something if OMB somehow scored a major upset and made it onto the list!

Now I know that with 70 million + blogs out there we’ve got like a one in a million chance, but as Lloyd said in Dumb and Dumber…

“What you’re telling me is, we’ve got a chance!”

As far as I can tell, the categories most befitting this blog would be “Best American Weblog”, “Best-Kept Secret Weblog”, or the elusive “Weblog of the Year” – of which I’m certain we have no chance at winning. But heck, I guess this is really about mobilizing your reader base as much as actual blog quality, so in the end doesn’t that really mean this is a vote about YOU, my dear readers, and not me?

So, if you can spare like 3 minutes to throw a vote my way in return for the 950 posts I’ve put out in the last year and a half I would really appreciate the gesture!

If you don’t have time, it’s no big deal really! I just appreciate the fact that you guys keep reading and commenting on my crazy ramblings day after day. In the last year I’ve gone from around 100 to 1000 regular subscribers (as reported by Feedburner), and an average day around One Man’s Blog means at least 10,000 readers – so again… Thanks!!!

Full E-mail Feeds are Back!

John P. — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:50:48 +0000

Folks, a while back I had turned on the full e-mail feed so that you guys could read the entire articles without having to click through to the site. Unfortunately when I upgraded to the most recent version of WordPress it changed the way the feeds are handled and turned off the full e-mails.

Well, good news! I found a plugin called Full Text Feed and hopefully that is going to take care of the issue. So, please help me keep an eye on things as from now on those of you getting e-mail updates or subscribing via RSS should be able to read the whole thing.

By the way, I also found another plugin called Dual Feeds which might be more appropriate for some folks.

Complete List of OMB WordPress Plugins

John P. — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:41:02 +0000

I recently completed the upgrade to WordPress 2.3 and thought it was about time I gave some credit where credit is due. So, the following is a complete list of all of the plugins that are in use here on OMB.

Perhaps others will find these plugins of use as well, but more importantly I want to thank the hard work of all the developers that make OMB what it is.

To start out with, I use my own Rapid Access theme, which I built from the ground up to be fast, accessible, and skinnable. Feel free to grab it and to modify it.

Performance

WP Super Cache – My main man Donncha massively improved WP Cache to increase performance by about 300%! No blog should be without this plugin, and if you’re using WP Cache you need to upgrade immediately!
FeedBurner FeedSmith – redirects RSS feeds to FeedBurner to relieve burden from my server and provide for better tracking.

Revenue Generation

No Adverts for Friends – Again Donncha changes the character of my site! This plugin allows my regular visitors to NOT see ads, while ensuring that transient visitors DO see them. My Ad revenues increased even though regular readers never see ads.
MightySearch – Although WordPress has decent search functionality built in, if you switch to MightySearch and use your Google AdSense account you can earn a little cash from their embedded search.
Donncha’s Competitive Ad Filter is also compulsory reading. My AdSense revenue doubled because of him, so you might wanna pay attention!

Spam Protection

Bad Behavior – provides protection against automated script-bots.
Akismet -checks all comments against a known spammer database. Catches 99% of em’ and also flags a few incorrectly which I have to manually release later.
Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form – after getting off to a bit of a rocky start, we got things sorted out and I’ve installed this plugin for spam free feedback and to demonstrate there are no hard feelings.

SEO and Navigation

WP Admin Bar Reloaded – Adds a small admin bar to the top of every page. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!
No WWW – Matt Mullenweg built this little gem to redirect all domain requests from http://www.yourdomain.com to http://yourdomain.com. This improves search results.
Other Posts from Cat plugin for WordPress – Notice the related links below each of my posts? Well, this is the plugin that handles that.
Google XML Sitemaps – creates a sitemap which helps search engines fully index all pages to ensure better search performance.
StripTease – Strip â€œ#moreâ€ fragments from â€œRead Moreâ€ teaser links so the short article summaries on the home page link to the top of the individual page.

Commenting

Comment Quicktags Reloaded – provides the handy little buttons for “Bold”, “Italics”, etc. at the top of each of the comment boxes.
WP AJAX Edit Comments – allows you to edit your own comments for up to 15 minutes after you submit them. This lets you correct those horrible spelling mistakes you notice AFTER you post a comment.
Comment Referrers – Again my boy Donncha comes through with a plugin that appends referrer info to comment e-mails.
Paged Threaded Comments – one of the greatest plugins of all time, this functionality should be incorporated into the WordPress code! It threads the comments so people can respond to specific comments and keep related responses grouped together.
Recent Comments Widget – A must have, this shows the most recent comments over in the sidebar – a very popular feature on the blog here.
Subscribe To Comments – allows commenters to check a box to receive notification of follow ups.

Show Top Commentators – creates a highly customizable list of top commenters on the blog. You’ll see it over in the sidebar as I use this in conjunction with the Executable PHP widget.

Site Functionality

Executable PHP widget – Allows you to execute PHP commands from a plugin within the sidebar. I use this in conjunction with the Show Top Commentators plugin you see over on the right.
PJW Mime Config – used to add new upload capabilities to the built in WordPress uploader. I use it to add unusual file types like the Google Earth KML or KMZ files on posts like this.
runPHP – Allows you to put PHP code into a post and have it be executed.
Wikipedia nofollow – Searches for links to Wikipedia.org, and adds a rel=â€nofollowâ€ tag if necessary. Why? Because they do it to you!
WP-DBManager – Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling.

Graphics and Multimedia

Audio Player – converts all MP3 links to an embeddable player. Example: Get Your Virtual Haircut and Other Auditory Illusions
URL Absolutifier – Fix URL in all links and images to be absolute instead of relative. This is necessary so images work in feeds if you use certain image uploader plugins.

OMB Google PageRank Back to PR7

John P. — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:18:14 +0000

Well, I know you guys normally notice this before I do, but I was filtering through the spam here on OMB with FireFox when I noticed the SearchStatus bar was reporting we’re back up to a PR7. It’s not quite the PR8 we used to know and love, but it’s better than the downright insulting PR4 we suffered with for a couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, now my previous rant seems a little silly. But I do wonder if someone saw it and corrected things (mostly) as a result? It’s impossible to know what to do to appease the Google Gods. I’ll just keep sending random offerings of frankincense and myrrh.

WP Super Cache Speeds Up WordPress Blogs

John P. — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:37:11 +0000

Donncha O’Caoimh, one of WordPress’ lead developers spent the last few weeks working on a brand new plugin called WP Super Cache which is, without a doubt, the biggest advance in WordPress performance in years. (Please Digg it fast!)

Donncha has not only improved the existing ubiquitous WP-Cache system for users that are logged in (bug fixes, added plugin capabilities, etc), he’s literally invented a new methodology for static caching of documents for visitors which renders at least a 2-3X performance improvement over WP-Cache.

Some of you have noticed that I had a couple of service disruptions in the last few weeks, and this is because OMB was playing guinea pig to this new plugin during the development phase. Although the plugin has worked flawlessly, I had a couple of server configuration issues that have been challenging.

All of those issues have been worked through now, and I’m telling you, every WordPress blogger on the planet WILL BE using this plugin for a long time to come. It is truly revolutionary, so if you run a blog I strongly encourage you to install it.

Overview

Most WordPress users are familiar with the excellent WP-Cache 2 by Ricardo Galli Granada. It caches the pages of your WordPress blog and delivers them without accessing the database. Unfortunately it still means loading PHP to serve the cached files despite what the wordpress.org wp-cache page says.

WP Super Cache gets around that. When it is installed, html files are generated and they are served without ever invoking a single line of PHP. How fast can your site serve graphic files? That’s (almost) how fast it will be able to serve these cached files. If your site is struggling to cope with the daily number of visitors, or if your site appears on Digg.com, Slashdot or any other popular site then this plugin is for you. There are a few caveats however:

If you’re logged in or have left a comment you’ll never see a super-cached page. You’ll see plain old regular WP-Cached pages instead. That’s not so bad since a huge majority of your visitors will never leave a comment.
Mod Rewrite is used to serve the static HTML pages. As fancy permalinks is also a requirement it should already be installed.
Some of the more dynamic aspects of your site’s template won’t refresh quite as quickly. For example, recent comment sidebar plugins.
Some sites have problems serving compressed html files and need extra configuration.

How it works

A classic method of preparing an underpowered site for a Digg frontpage appearance or a Slashdotting has been to manually save copies of dynamically generated pages, and place them in directories that match the permalinks structure. This method of performance enhancement does help servers handle a higher load without crashing, but is only effective when an oncoming rush of traffic can be anticipated. WP-Cache alone, while helpful, is not adequate in many cases, so WP Super Cache was created to effectively mimic the manual page caching method, but to handle it in an automated fashion.

When a visitor who is not logged in, or who has not left a comment, visits they will be served a static HTML page out of the SuperCache subdirectory within the WordPress cache directory. If you navigate to that directory you can view an exact replica of your permalink structure as well as the HTML files within the directories. To determine if a page has been served out of the Super Cache, view the source and the last line on the page should read .

If a visitor who is logged in or who has left a comment views a cached page, it will be served from the standard WP Cache function and the last line in the source code will read

WP Super Cache has also been tested under real world load conditions. The following articles appeared on the Digg front page without issue while running WP Super Cache:

25 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Time – 6,000+ Diggs
13 Amazing Cirque du Soleil Performances – 624+ Diggs
The 10 Craziest Competitive Sports (You Never Heard Of) – 520+ Diggs

So again, this plugin is not even optional! There is simply no reason NOT to run it, so go get it and follow the instructions in the Readme.txt file to install it. If you have questions, you can either ask them here, or over on Donncha’s blog and we’ll get you assistance in making sure it’s running right.

OMB’s Performance Problems Resolved!

John P. — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:18:54 +0000

Thanks once again to my good friend Roy Kaldung for yet again saving our ass and keeping One Man’s Blog alive and kicking!

Several of you guys sent me e-mails today notifying me that OMB was down for much of the day. Unfortunately I was tied up for most of the day, but when I did get free I spent a few hours trying to determine what the problem was. Of course, I wasn’t making much progress…

Well, bright and early in Germany (like 6 am mind you!) Roy went to check on the OMB server, then IM’ed me when he noticed it was having issues. After about an hour of heavy duty trouble shooting he finally figured out that the culprit was actually the Dragon Design Sitemap Generator plugin I was using on the site.

After going through some rather technical troubleshooting steps involving watching every line of PHP execute until something broke, Roy noticed that there were 736,808 lines created with the prefix “ddsg”. It was pretty easy to figure out which plugin that was…

Next, he noticed that the 736,808 rows in the table were marked with the option autoload, but the server simply didn’t have enough memory to handle all of that. Now, this plugin has been on the site for a long time, but I guess we’ve only just gotten to the breaking point where it began causing real issues.

The fix involved simply disabling the plugin and then updated the table and setting all these entries to autoload='no'. Although I like this plugin, it took down my entire server multiple times and was getting progressively worse until Roy caught the problem, so unfortunately I won’t be able to re-install it.

It’s almost 2:30am and I wanted to share this with everyone that was concerned before I head off to sleep, so please join me in thanking Roy for taking his morning to troubleshoot this issue for us so that we can continue life as we know it. (That is for those of you who even noticed that OMB was unavailable in the first place!)

Sorry About Today’s Outage

John P. — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:04:02 +0000

Hey, for all of you that have been trying to access the site today, sorry it’s been down for hours. :-( I hadn’t noticed because for the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a super-secret mission. Perhaps I’ll tell you guys what I’ve been up to in the next week or two…

Anyway, the server is obviously back up now, but I’m working on the root cause of why these things are happening. You know, all I want is a freakin server that will just stay up and running all the time! All I do is run this little blog, so why is that so hard to accomplish?!? The site is waaaayy too busy for a managed Virtual Private Server, and even though I bought a ginormous dedicated server that sucker is once again struggling to keep up with demand.

Grrr…