I have been rather quiet here on MyMarketer. It’s not that I have given up on blogging or all the beauty that goes along with it. Rather I have my head somewhere else.

Back in November my wife introduced me to an amazing website—Pinterest. Unless you live under a rock you have heard of Pinterest. If not, you can check out my collection of tutorials that shares anything you want to know about Pinterest.

Tags are often a misunderstood element of WordPress. Many people for some reason use tags and categories interchangeably, which dilutes the point of either function.

The way I like to explain the relation of tags and categories to your blog is that of a book with chapters and an index. Categories are the chapters to a book and tags are the index to the same book. Categories should focus on high level segregation; whereas, tags are more on the granular bases with your information division.

The amount of tagging is really dependant upon the content, but if you are only adding one tag to a post you are not optimizing the value of the tag and might as well just use your categories. Having multiple tags provides several entries in your blog’s content “index,” and makes it easier for the post to be found.

General George Patton once stated, “…an imperfect plan implemented immediately and violently will always succeed better than a perfect plan.” That is how I feel with the design and layout of the new MyMarketer.

I actually took my site down for 12 days to work and implement on the design. After almost two weeks of work I still had a lot of bugs (just try out the navigation drop down menu) and I was not completely satisfied with the design.

After five years of blogging on anything and everything related to the Internet, MyMarketer has undergone a new focus and look. The focus is geared around my philosophy of how to be successful with web marketing.

Over the last decade I have seen, and have been guilty of participating in, many get quick or get rich marketing campaigns. It is a rare day that one, if any, have succeeded to bring the desired results to those who participated in them.

However, contrast these glitzy empty marketing strategies, with the marketing principles surrounding the laws of the harvest. Time and time again I have seen people climb to the top of their game and achieve their marketing goals by following the first law of the harvest: You Reap What You Sow.

A little while ago my friend, Reina, asked about my thoughts concerning the recent change in the FTC advertising guidelines. I have a strong opinion on why I feel the FTC is meddling with bloggers (and other web entities). Below is my answer to her question. It may come across a bit as conspiracy theory, but I don’t believe I am wrong (I guess conspiracy theorists usually believe they are right).

REINA: So today is slow at work so I was going back through all my emails at work and found an article about changes in FTC guides regarding web endorsements. I’m curious if you’ve heard about this, if so, what your thoughts are on it, and also how it has affected blogging and advertising. Have you noticed a difference? Is this sort of thing enforceable or will it be online business as usual? The article made me think of you. Just curious what your thoughts are. Here’s the article.

It might be a little strong of language to refer to Matt as a god, but he truly is amazing with what he has done with wordpress. I actually meet Matt last year at a WordCamp in Utah. The event was really good and it was also nice to rub shoulders with Matt. He really is a down to earth bloke who loves what he does. Not to mention he has a stellar piece of software.

Any one who knows me, knows that I am a wordpress geek. Plugin, themes, blogs, anything wordpress I study and analyze just about anything I can, and I do it just about every day. Pathetic…possibly, but a good career as well. Anyway, I found the below interview of Matt on WordPressOfTheDay.com and thought I would share it. I really like the cinematography done by SpeakingEvents.com (the company interviewing Matt), and I feel it gives a good insight to what wordpress really is all about. I particularly like the part that he talks about why wordpress is free. You can almost see pain in eyes as he talks about putting ads on wordpress (he is talking about wordpress.com). It’s funny and inspiring all at the same time.

yodas-page-rank I find it fascinating how everyone is trying to kill page rank, including Google. I was just reading a blog that shared, “Page rank means nothing.” The blog further states:

“Ya, I said it. It’s a loose comparative tool for relative sites but does not rank the site’s productivity. A less than google-perfect site can still be making tens of thousands of dollars. I know this because one of my sites has well over 550,000 in traffic monthly and ranks #1 out of more than 2 million sites… and has a PR of …. ready for this? PAGE RANK 2.”

I don’t doubt the blogger when she say that she is getting “550,000 in traffic monthly” and that her site “ranks #1 out of more than 2 million sites.” What I seriously doubt though is that all that traffic comes from just one single #1 ranking keyword. If so, that single keyword is very unlikely to be “low hanging fruit,” that a page rank 2 site can easily snatch up.

These days I use wordpress for anything related to web management or development, or at least some variation of wordpress (bbpress, buddypress, and anything else press). Recently, I received a forwarded email from a friend who was making a case for wordpress. The email was to the executive leaders of his company who are thinking of creating a custom blog system from scratch and trashing their current wordpress blog they’ve had for over a year.

I do not doubt other individuals have run into similar issues with their own company. When I worked for Oracle I spoke with many billion dollar companies who felt they could create something better than what Oracle had.

identy-theft I still have several blogs that are on WordPress 2.6.1. Recently, I received the following notification from my host:

“Please note that versions of WordPress older than 2.6.5 have known vulnerabilities and can be potentially exploited to deface your website (or any under the same user account), send spam, run phishing scams, or similarly detrimental (and possibly illegal) activity.”

“The current version of WordPress (available at wordpress.org or via DreamHost’s One-Click feature) is 2.7. It is important that you update WordPress as soon as possible to secure your sites. If these are old or unused copies of WordPress, please remove them from the server or move them out of the active domain directory.”

spam When I first started blogging my friend Janet helped setup my blog. One thing she did for me was to create my wordpress comment blacklist. I really appreciated this, because it is never fun to have to write all the filthy words that you can think of. However, over the years, I had to add to her list and create more words that she didn’t think of. I also added spam websites that were found on other comment blacklists.

All this effort has given me a list of 300+ words and sites that don’t ever make it to my blog. I thought I would pass on Janet’s kindness and offer you my list to download. One thing to know about WordPress’s Comment Blacklist is that it will match your blacklisted words inside other words. So, if you put “sex” on the list it will also block “sexy.” Since, I never want to discourage my readers in expressing how sexy they find my writing I don’t add that word to my black list =).

If you have any words to add to the list let me know. Happy spam fighting. ~Paul