Sootle Weblog

For the first time I actually suffered from server load problems under the weight of the relentless army of comment spam bots. I now realize there’s one flaw in the WordPress system that comes into play, and that is the spam comments are inserted into the MySQL database and processed by PHP, so when the numbers start hitting 10,000 per day, you end up with real performance issues.

Off the top of my head, I’m figuring on implementing a few different solutions.

1) Add some mod_security rules to examine the payloads
2) Check to make sure the form was submitted from the local domain
3) Look for plugins to augment Akismet

Number 2 is easy enough:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} "!^http://directory.sootle.com/.*$" [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ".*wp-comments-post.php$"

That should cut back on a bit of the troubles and is the easiest to implement. I can also think about renaming the comments page, etc, but that seems like more hassle than it’s worth.

This situation promises to get worse, as more and more dummies discover the joys of automating spam, so any solution you implement will need to be flexible.

Please check out the Sootle Mobilizer. The main goal of this new tool is to take a web page as an argument, and return the page in a PDA friendly format you can use on your mobile device.

This could come in handy if you travel and you run into a website that you want to look at the information for. The Mobilizer will do its best to make all the links on the page PDA friendly, but if the website uses relative links, it won’t work in every case. I’ll keep working on a few finer details such as that.

I will also probably make some sort of a webmaster friendly version, where you can link from you website to a PDA friendly version. My goal would be to do that, and not create duplicate content in the search engines. Give it a try and give me some feedback.

You can use this free tool to check your Server headers. Give it a try and see how well it works. I’ll debug it more as it goes on, but it’s pretty straight forward.

Vegas Baby! Two words that will excite the heart of anyone, especially one like me who’s sitting here in snowy Cleveland in sub-20 degree temperature. But the good news is, I get to check out how well my new Palm-TX works, as I put it through the paces. I plan on using it on the airplane, at the airport, and in Vegas at free Wifi Spots.

The last trip I took, I carted around a laptop, and it was no fun. Just to illustrate how little fun it was, the unit actually conked out upon our return. Time to upgrade to PDA and WiFi technology and get with the times, I reckon. I’ll make sure to post as I test out some of the spots.

Work has begun on the Sootle Link Trade Manager

We look forward to hearing any feedback if you try the tool. We’ll drop in functionality in the next weeks and days as we hear from you.

Make sure to let us know what features you’d like to see.

The holiday season online is different than the offline one, and that comes as no real surprise. The main thing about being online is that the online world is so easy to navigate. For this reason, you can run out and purchase some items without getting caught in a major real-world traffic jam. E-commerce hasn’t killed bricks and mortars stores, but it certainly has gotten more popular in the last few years.

Companies that offer fast shipping promise to do very well for Christmas. People in need of a gift are likely to spend a few minutes on-line ordering, especially if they can receieve the goods quickly.

Good luck to all the e-tailers out there this Christmas campaign. Let’s hope it’s a fruitful time for all.

2005 is almost gone. Time to pull out the crystal ball so we can see what trends will be happening in 2006 in the internet marketing arena. The last few years have seen many methods come and go. Right now the current craze seems to be on publishing articles. Each time a method becomes relatively popular, you can usually expect a backlash to follow as more and more participants come from behind the curve to join the game.

Linking is not dead, despite the multiple protestations of the search engine heavyweights.

Link popularity has ruled the roost on the ‘Net since the go-go days of Altavista. But since the dawn of Google, the demand for links has reached ever great heights. Despite the rush to popularity for link builders, there has been a consistent denial by search engine pundits that linking works. But indeed it always has, and will remain popular in 2006. If Content really is King, than Links are the Queen who actually runs the country.

Article writing will expand in 2006.

The article directory business is doing well, and is a viable operation for many. With the addition of automation through tools such as William Cross’s ArticleSender.com, publishing your free-to-reprint articles is easier than ever. Undoubtedly you could do it all yourself, but this way is just so much easier. Article submissions are quickly emerging as the main method for
SEOs to get backlinks.

Guerilla marketing is the way forward.

Some would argue that it’s always been the way, and they very well may be right. But rest assured, you will need to be a guerilla in 2006 to succeed with the ever fickle internet consumer. As stated many times in 2005, Web 2.0 is upon us. Websites that bond with their visitors are the ones that do the best. The more you can interact and solve the problems of people’s everyday lives, the less likely you are to have beg people to come back. So this means APIs and ToolBuilding. If you build it, the will come.

The best way to market in 2006 hasn’t been discovered yet.

But just give it time. As soon as the year starts, somebody clever somewhere will set the newest trend in web marketing. But once you chase these trends, don’t spend all of your time on them. Always make sure to spend a good portion of your day improving your website so it gets better with age.

Spent a few hours today greatly improving the backend tools. People talk every day about scalability and I know why it’s so important: without true scalability your organization can never get past a certain point.

As a directory gets more popular, submissions go up exponentially, so the time had come to make specific tools which help sort out the complete spam submissions and make the overall submission process more streamlined. With the new tools, the current speed of approvals will increase nicely.

We put up a fun design. Hopefully visitors will enjoy our new design for the directory. I think we’ve managed to keep the structure clean and the pages quick-loading.