Spammers Can Get Your Blog Ranked For Viagra

A friend of ours had their site hacked by spammers. The blog had thousands of comments about cialis and viagra. In fact the volume of comments was so large that it overwhelmed the site’s true content.

Google started ranking the site for keyword phrases like erectile disfunction. It managed to get onto page 4 on Google which was better then the page 6 placement for the key phrases the site should have been ranking for. Not funny.

How did she recover from the spam?

WordPress Spam Protection

We migrated her content (minus the inappropriate comments) to a WordPress blog set up with both the WP-SpamFree and the Akismet plugins. WP-SpamFree detects and bins spam comments before they are logged and Akismet checks any logged comments for spam and classifies them as ‘spam’ rather than ‘pending approval’. This belt-and-braces approach has kept her new blog spam-free.

At the Power Blog Service we keep up to date with the best techniques on handling spam so it is one less thing for you to worry about.

after upgrading wordpress my blog STOPPED WORKING automatically

Now You See It; Now You Don’t

It is a common scenario: you do a one click WordPress upgrade and your blog disappears.

Usually, it is not the fault of WordPress, more likely it is some plugin that is incompatible with the latest version of WordPress.

WordPress Plugin Incompatibility

However, you you then need to work out which plugin is causing the problem. So you deactivate the all your plugins, then activate them one at a time until you find which one is causing the problem.

Okay an hour has passed – it was not the ‘one click’ experience that was promised.

One Click WordPress Upgrades Are Not Guaranteed

In fact it was was never a promise of one click: you did have to acknowledge a disclaimer such as:

I have read the above notes, and understand that XXX cannot be held liable for any data loss caused by this upgrade. For more information, review the XXX Terms of Service Agreement

Maybe you would like to know how to update wordpress reliably and have no risk of data loss?

WordPress One Click Upgrade Can Be One Click Too Many

For most people, most of the time, the WordPress One-Click Upgrade is just fine. One click later, WordPress has been updated. However, it does fail sometimes and you can end up with a blank screen and an inaccessible blog.

Always Backup Up Your Database Before You Upgrade

If you followed the upgrade instructions properly it will have taken you more than one click. You were advised to take a backup of the database first.

The backup is very important in the unlikely scenario when the One click Upgrades results in a blank screen. This is typically because some plugin or some custom code is incompatible with the latest version of WordPress.

Restoring Your WordPress Database Is Not Trivial

If you have done the database backup then you will have the option of going into phpMyAdmin and restoring the database but before you do this you need to revert to the previous version of WordPress. This may require and bit of fiddling about with FTP or if you host has set up Fantastico to allow installation of different versions of WordPress then it might be a simple as a single click. But you will also need to remember to save your .htaccess file and your wp-config.php file.

In other words the whole thing database restore can get a bit complicated.

A Reliable Process To Upgrade WordPress Which Is A Lot More Than a Single Click

I suggest you read the 14 step thoroughly reliable way to update WordPress.

A rock solid upgrade will take around 30 minutes. That’s if you follow the recommendations to the letter in order to have a risk free upgrade.

Is there better a alternative? At the Power Blog Service, we think there is.

Power Blog Service Zero Click WordPress Upgrade

We call it the Power Blog Service Zero Click WordPress Upgrade. Yes, we upgrade WordPress for you while you sleep. You wake up the next morning with an email telling you WordPress site has been upgraded to the latest version. Painless or what?

where do i find a web designer who knows all the technical & SEO stuff?

Google Does Not Care If Your Website Is Pretty

On the web, content is more important than looks. So having a good looking website, beautifully styled by your web designer, will not give you more visitors. It might help convert more visitors into customers but it does not bring you more visitors: for that you need SEO – search engine optimization.

It is a very common problem to have a website and not enough traffic: and often your web designer that can’t help you with that challenge.

Find out more at My Website does not have enough traffic

Web Sites Need To Please Search Engines As Well As Humans

You have your brochure website that shows off your products and services to great advantage. You love the way your site looks, especially bright images and the background colour of cerulean. It is precisely that perfect shade of blue: the colour of the sky on a hot summer’s day. The web designer made a great job of making your site looks just peachy.

But there is a problem – not enough visitors.

If only you could get more people to visit the site then they would surely buy your products.

Is SEO for $99 a month a Good Deal?

You have heard about something called SEO, Search Engine Optimization, which means “getting found by Google”. You ask your web designer for advice but he does not know much more about it than you do.

You then go and find some companies that are willing to SEO your site for $99 a month. But you have no means of knowing whether they will give you good value for money.

How Much Should You Pay For Google Adwords?

A friend of yours mentions Pay Per Click and Google Adwords. After investigation you realize it costs $3 per click for your chosen search term. This is way too expensive. As you don’t know for sure what people looking for your service are typing into Google anyway.

You realize you need some help to work out how to get more traffic.

WordPress Sites Are Loved By Google

Google likes WordPress sites. There are are a number of reasons: the syndication of content, the regular updates, the quality of the code.

And if you apply a little bit of knowledge you will make good use of title tags, descriptions and headings: this makes it easy for Google to know what your site is about. The result: improved search engine rankings and more traffic.

But that is only getting started with SEO…