Domain Registrars and DNS Hosts That, Well, Suck

I encounter people every day who use domain registrars that have absolutely ridiculous policies, sub-par services, and who should be avoided, like the plague.

Below you will find a list of three said companies, and a few brief reasons why I strongly recommend against using their services.

There are definitely many others that belong on this list, so I may make future posts following up on this, however, for the time being, these are three that cause the most aggravation, generally speaking.

 

  • 1and1
    • Ridiculous wait times for minor changes, such as deleting a subdomain.
    • Inability to manage DNS for a domain within one interface. If you want to create a DNS entry for the www host, well, you’ll have to create a subdomain of “www” and then edit the DNS for that subdomain.
    • Ticky, touchy, broken, counter-intuitive, confusing, error-ridden UI.
    • Terrible customer service agents who speak broken English and have snotty attitudes, and treat you as if their craptacular system is the best thing since sliced bread. By the way, you’re an idiot for thinking that something as amazing as deleting a subdomain should be something you can do in realtime. All they do is read their on screen prompts, huff and puff, and are generally annoyed that they have to deal with you at all.

 

  • Yahoo Small Business
    • If you were expecting their UI to load a page in under 30 seconds, you should lower your expectations.
    • Terrible DNS management UI and options.
    • Recently changed their system to Aabaco Small Business which uses the same horrible interface and has the same old problems, with no real advantages that I can see. Also, upon trying to access the new system for the first time, if you indicate that you are a business, they ask you a ton of questions whose only purpose is to data mine you, and the best part is that all of the fields are required and you can’t even complete the initial account migration. While on the phone with a client, we hit the “back” button and switched to a personal profile to avoid this garbage.

 

  • Network Solutions
    • Oh, you’d like to forward your domain somewhere else? You’ll need to pay extra for that.
    • Laggy UI in that when you make an update, you’ll need to continually refresh their UI to see those changes take effect.

The Flawed Logic of Today’s Search Engines & SEO in General

Search engines, as an industry, are destined to change or fail. The reason I make this statement in such a straightforward manner is the absolute truth behind my outlook on their logical approach to search. I’ll list a few failed assumptions the current search engines are making below and then delve into each in greater detail.

Failed Assumptions

  • All searches are equal, and the best way to display results for any given search is a list of results from highest ranked to lowest ranked.
  • Search engine optimization, or a company’s understanding of SEO, or their budget for SEO, etc., directly correlates to that company being the best service provider in every industry across the board.
  • The search engine’s opinion of who the authority is on every single topic under the sun is the correct opinion.

When you really sit back and consider those three points, you see what is missing from their logic:

  • Choice, especially when you consider the very limited ability of an end user to do any sort of their own sorting of the resulting data for their search.
  • Vetting, as if any computational algorithm based on the programming or popularity of a web page can truly determine who the industry leader is.
  • Ego, or moreover, the expectation that every business on the planet should adjust to your algorithm for determining credibility and authoritativeness.

Local search is a step in the right direction, and in some ways breaks away from the first failed assumptions of today’s search engines, but not nearly enough. The same can be said for image search, and other types of search that are more specialized, however, these are still very poorly implemented generally speaking.

First of all, let’s remember that we’re humans looking for something, and we’re using a computational interface to assist us with that search. The first rule of computer programming says that a computer will do exactly what you tell it, so the first thing we need is a way to override the default behavior of the program if it gives us results that are off the mark. Unfortunately, the only way to do that now is to start a new search, most likely by altering the search phrase.

By offering a few options prior to starting a search, or even by starting off with a quasi-advanced search UI, much better results could be realized in many scenarios. For instance, if you’re looking for a news item, you shouldn’t have to necessarily go to a news search page. The same is true if you are doing some shopping.

Let’s look at a scenario where choice is downtrodden in today’s search methods. Take looking for a restaurant as an example. The search engine doesn’t know what type of price range you’re looking for, and basing the results for a search for food on the programming of a restaurant’s website is just really bad to start with.

What would the best solution be in this case? The searcher is looking for choices. Not a #1 result, they’re searching!

I hope that statement made a light bulb go off. In fact, every time we do a search, we’re looking for choices, unless of course we’re looking for something concrete, like a mathematical equation, definition, etc.

Google has begun displaying an area with information for static factual information such as definitions, and this is a move in the right direction in my opinion.

Revisiting our search for a restaurant, given this is a local type of search, wouldn’t it make much more sense to display the results in a way that’s not top to bottom, first to last? In fact, after much deliberation here, my approach of choice for choosing a default order would be very simple: randomize it!

Why should the search tool try to determine who gets the customer? Situations like these are where Google gets in the way, and needs to take a deep breath and take a seat and let us humans do some thinking for a change.

The same is true with respect to many industries. For instance, let’s say you’re looking for a CPA, an insurance agent, a lawyer, real estate agent, or other type of professional. Essentially what Google is saying is, whichever real estate agent has the strongest web presence (according to Google’s algorithm), should be displayed at the top of the list every time, and deserves the majority of the traffic. While any professional service provider needs to have a web presence these days, just for the sake of visibility and reputation if nothing else, this in no way carries any weight regarding their capability to deliver results in their industry.

If you want to give them all a fair shake, the only way to do so is to display the results in a non-list type format, but more of blocks or buckets in a grid fashion, and to load the results in a random order. I’d be strongly in favor of a button to serve the results a second time, which would cause the results to be randomized in a new order as well.

There are so many professionals these days who are apprehensive of SEO, web search, and even of having a website, because they feel like they don’t really have a shot unless they pony up the big bucks to compete with the bigger companies in their industry.

Finally, allow the person spending their time to do the search to sort the results as they choose based on sets of criteria. After all, the job of the search engine is to provide information, and there is no way Google will ever be able to achieve ranking websites in a manner that the first result displayed for every search will be the best result for the person doing the search. It’s just not going to happen!

The best thing to do at this point is stop striving after perfection in a flawed logical approach. Let’s bring competition back into the equation in a legitimate way (what I mean is, let’s not base rankings on an unseen algorithm that everyone is trying to figure out so that they can cheat that algorithm, and which doesn’t even display the best result first anyway), even the playing field, and work to improve the way information can be provided to searchers, not opinions from an algorithm.

Fiverr Revenue Card via Payoneer Review: Yep, It’s a Scam!

I provide services on Fiverr from time to time, and I just had to relay this to everyone selling services on Fiverr or thinking about doing so, in the hopes that you can avoid the major headache I have suffered today.

My recommendation, withdraw your funds to PayPal, and hopefully, have a PayPal debit card, meaning the transfer is instant, no fees required, and you can spend it instantly from your PayPal debit card.

So, I decided to give the Fiverr revenue card a try, because I read that it actually acts as a bank account, and direct deposit can be setup with it as well, so I figured hey, what the heck, I’ll sign up for it and load the card and see how it goes. Worst idea, ever!

Here is my experience. I signed up for the card, waited for it to come in the mail, activated it, submitted the documentation to qualify for receiving US payments via bank transfers / direct deposit, and then made a withdrawal from Fiverr to the card.

First, I had to wait 2 days for the load to complete, and had to pay a $1 fee (per load fee) to load the card, of course, I could have made the load instantly, for a $5 fee, instead of a $1 fee, per load. Also, a $5 one time activation fee was charged. So, already out of the gates, I’ve paid $6 in fees. The load was for $192, so I was left with $186 once the funds were loaded, before I spent dollar one.

Now that I have my bucks loaded onto the card, I decided to get the money off the card. Here’s where the real fun begins.

The stated ATM fee is $3.15 per transaction, as stated here: Fiverr Revenue Card by Payoneer Pricing & Fees

It is also stated that purchase transactions are free, well I would hope so, lucky me! /facepalm

In light of this, I decided I would go stop by WalMart and do two cash back transactions instead of a single ATM transaction. A single ATM transaction would incur a $3.15 fee, plus the actual ATM’s fee, usually $2 – $3 in my area, for a total of $5 – $6 bucks to withdraw the $180 bucks I was hoping to cash out. I’m not down with paying $5 – $6 bucks for a single ATM withdrawal, so of course, cash back is the way to go.

Also, I’ve never heard of any fees being assessed on cash back transactions for a debit card. Furthermore, Payoneer even states in their FAQ that cash back transactions are the way to go, to “get the most value from my funds.” You can see this response under the item titled “How to get the most value from my funds” in their FAQ.

The max cash back amount per transaction at WalMart is $100, so I picked up a few items for the household, and proceeded to self checkout. I rang up one item, totaling with tax, $1.71, and opted for $100 cash back. The transaction was approved, and I received my $100 in cash back. I then rang up my remaining items, totaling $4.15, and opted for $80 cash back. My transaction was declined. Now I’m getting angry, because I know it’s going to be downhill from here. I said to myself, maybe if I lower the total by a bit, it’ll approve the transaction, so I drop $1.50 cash into the machine, lowering the total due to $2.65, and opt for $80 cash back again. Again, I am declined. Now I’m really angry, so I decide to install the Payoneer app on my smartphone to check my balance, right on the spot (it was late, no one was in line behind me). I install the app, and what do ya know, it’s not showing any transactions – at all – not even the load, or load fee, or activation fee, and it says that transactions are updated every 6 hours. Yep, you read that right. Transaction history is updated every 6 hours. What world do these people live in, and what year is it there? 1991?

So, I opt for $60 cash back, for a total of $62.65, and the transaction is approved. I take my $60 cash back, and head home to see if I can check my balance there, since their worthless app isn’t giving me any information at all, it’s showing my account with a balance of $0!

I get home, login, and have to manually click a button to refresh my balance. Again, it states that transactions are updated every 6 hours, so I cannot see my transactions, but I can see my balance, which is $13.69. Mind you, I started out with $192, paid $1 loading fee, $5 activation fee, bringing the balance to $186, and then I made 2 purchases of $101.71 and $62.65, for a total of $164.36, meaning my account balance should be $21.64. Instead, it’s $13.69, $7.95 in fees had been charged to my account for 2 point of sale debit transactions.

Now, I’m really livid, but it’s the middle of the night, and their contact information on their Contact Us page states that their phone lines are only open 9 – 6 EST, M – F. I’m on the east coast, so I decide to try live chat, because it says live chat is online.

When the third response I received started with “O we” instead of “Oh we” I knew I was in for plenty of Shenanigans from their support representative.

Their rep explained to me that cash back was the same as an ATM withdrawal, and that I had been charged the ATM withdrawal fee most likely, but that he couldn’t be sure, since the transaction was less than 6 hours old, and it didn’t show up in his system yet (yes, you read that right). I explained to this young whipper-snapper that cash back and ATM withdrawals are two different things, and that I have never in my life paid a fee for a cash back transaction. He tells me that the merchant may have charged a cash back fee as well. Again, I have never paid a cash back fee at WalMart, never ever, however, this was his attempt to explain the fact that even if I had been charged the ATM withdrawal fee of $3.15 per transaction, totaling $6.30, that still left another $1.65 unaccounted for.

He told me I would be better off calling customer support in the morning, and knowing that even though his level of professionalism is a joke, I know he is not the person making the rules, so I tell him thanks for his answers and have a good evening, I’ll call in the morning.

The morning comes, and it’s not quite 9 yet, but I’m able to login to my account and see the transactions now, since it’s been over 6 hours since the transactions were made, so they actually show up in my account now! WOW!

I see two transactions, one for $105.88, and one for $66.43. That means a fee of $4.17 on the larger transaction, and a fee of $3.78 on the second smaller transaction. Now my level of livid is rolling strong, again. I start up a live chat session since I’m under the impression customer support doesn’t open for another 30 minutes. Guess what? I get the same representative, hi Ari! What are the chances? No, really, what are the chances? I’m guessing pretty good.

I explain the updated situation to him, and then link him to the FAQ where it clearly states that cash back transactions are free.

He then proceeds to ask me if I would prefer for him to call me. Mind you, it’s not 9 yet, so their customer support lines shouldn’t be open. If that was the case, he could have called me the night before! Just being glad that he’s trying to be proactive, I say sure, go ahead and give me a call. He closes the chat session on his end, so I wait for my phone to ring for about 5 minutes. The phone finally rings, and I answer the call, I say hello, and he says hello 3 times, to which I reply hello, and then he hangs up. His call came from 646-658-3695. I wait a few minutes, and he doesn’t try to call me back. So, I decide hey, why don’t I give you a call Ari? I dial the number, and low and behold, it’s a call center that’s supposed to be closed. I get a representative, thankfully not Ari.

She explains to me that the bank Fiverr uses is based in Belize, which is stated in the Terms and Conditions of the card under point 7, and that any transaction made outside of Belize is considered a foreign (international) transaction, and that a percentage based fee applies to any foreign transaction, and not only that, since I was making a cash back transaction, I was charged the ATM withdrawal fee, because it was a cash advance. I inform her that cash advances are when you request a cash withdrawal of cash that you do not already possess, but are asking for that cash on credit, and that cash back is asking for cash you already possess, and that I have never paid a fee for cash back, in my natural life.

I ask her if there is anything she can do, she puts me on hold for a few minutes, comes back, and tells me there is nothing they can do because the fees are charged by the bank and not by Payoneer. So, I ask her for the contact information for the bank in Belize, that I would like their phone number, name, and website.

To that, she asks if I would like to speak to a manager, which is what I requested initially at the beginning of the conversation with her, before I explained anything. I take her up on her offer thankfully, and then wait for the manager to come on. I guess I caught them in a lie, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

She was very pleasant with me, I had no problem with her, except for her misunderstanding a cash back transaction as a cash advance, but I was not rude, because again, I know she is just doing her job and does not make the rules.

This manager is a total toolbox from the word go. He seems pretty annoyed to even have to speak with me, so now that I’m speaking with someone who actually has the authority to do some more-than-warranted refunding, I explain that I know he doesn’t make the rules, but had no problem sharing my level of aggravation, especially given his snotty attitude.

He gives me the same line, telling me that cash back is the exact same as cash advance, and thus, I was charged the ATM withdrawal fee, plus the international transaction fee, which can be up to 3%, however, in the case of the bank in Belize which Fiverr uses, the international fee is 1%. I then ask him for the contact information for this bank. To this he says that the bank isn’t charging the fee, Payoneer is, well big surprise, tell me something I don’t know, but I’m glad I cornered him into admitting that, especially after the fact that he just told his rep 2 minutes previous to tell me that the bank was charging the fee, and not Payoneer.

I explain again that cash back is not a cash advance, to which he starts arguing with me. After shouting at each other for about 5 minutes, I’m able to silence him long enough to tell him that the FAQ on their website (linked to earlier on in this article) states plain and clearly that cash back transactions are free. Now all of a sudden, his snotty attitude has changed to “oh crap.” He asks me for the URL where this is stated, which I quickly read off to him. He pulls it up, and agrees with me that it is stated plain as day that cash back transactions are not cash advances or cash withdrawals and that there is no fee associated with them (except for foreign transaction fees).

He asks me to hold while he transfers the call over to his desk, I gladly hold. When he picks up, he informs me that his desk isn’t equipped with a phone system that can put someone on hold, so I’ll just have to sit on the line with him without the elevator music while he looks into the issue, which is fine with me, but come now, really, your managerial workstation doesn’t have the ability to put someone on hold? Like I said earlier, what world do these people live in, and what year is it there?

Next, his phone drops the call. He calls back, his phone drops the call. He calls back, his phone drops the call. He calls back, his phone drops the call, again. Then he calls back, and hangs up before I’m even able to answer. I wait a few minutes, and he doesn’t call back, so I decide to call the call center again. After I’ve waited about 10 minutes in the call queue to reach the first spot in line, he calls back.

He tells me that he is going to refund me $6.30, this time, but next time I will need to be aware of the fees. That’s right folks, I’ll need to be aware of the fees, even though it states on their website FAQ that cash back transactions are free. He explains to me that WalMart processed the transactions as 2 cash withdrawals, in the amounts of $101.71 and $62.65.

So after it’s all said and done, my account balance is $19.99. I think it’s pretty sufficient to say FML at this point.

Under point 22 of their Terms and Conditions (linked to above) they state complaint resolution information, the highlights of which are:

“If you have a complaint about Payoneer services you should raise it in the first instance with our Customer Service Manager at 1-800-251-2521 or at CustomerServiceManager@Payoneer.com.

If you are not satisfied with the response given, you may complain to the Payoneer VP of Operations at VPOperations@Payoneer.com.

Residents of the State of Texas may direct their complaints to Texas Department of Banking, 2601 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, Texas 78705, 1-877-276-5554 (toll free), www.banking.state.tx.us.”

Since I had already spoken with their customer service manager, I decided to email a link to this article to their VP of operations, and I received the following automated response:

“Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting us! We take your inquiry seriously.

This is an automated reply. Our Customer Support staff will contact you within 2 business days.

Kindly note that more information regarding your account and possibly your inquire can be found in our FAQ page and in our How To Videos.

To help track your inquiry we have generated a unique ticket number. Please use this ticket number in any further communication.

Sincerely,

Payoneer Customer Support”

I must say I’m impressed, I get to wait 2 more business days before the VP of operations can be bothered with the issue, and as you’ll notice, their automated response contains a grammatical error (…and possibly your inquire can be found….). While I’m impressed, I’m certainly not surprised.

If you have had similar experiences with Payoneer, I strongly urge you to pass on your complaints as well.

On another note, the whole point I got this card in the first place was because of the bank account features, allowing for bank transfers and direct deposits to be routed to the card. Well let me say my piece on that notion.

Even though the bank which is used to facilitate these transfers is Bank of America, (e.g. your routing and account number for the transfers is a Bank of America account), the money will ultimately be transferred to your Payoneer card, which is not drawn from that account! It’s simply used for transfer purposes. Which ultimately means, once you receive your direct deposit or bank transfer, you’ll then be blessed with foreign transaction fees on EVERY transaction you make outside of Belize!

Regardless of the fact that my address is in the US, the address on the envelope I received my card in is a US address, the bank used to transfer money into the account is in the US, the bank that actually holds the funds is in Belize, and us lucky cardholders get to pay foreign transaction fees on transactions anywhere outside of Belize.

Thanks Payoneer and Fiverr, but I think I’ll pass.

In closing, I’m happy to say that I still have never paid a fee for cash back, ever in life, as the fees that Payoneer attempted to charge me for cash back transactions were refunded (the 1% foreign transaction fee was indisputable, even though it’s totally ridiculous), and I will never again use this Fiverr revenue card for cash back or an ATM withdrawal. I’ll simply spend the remaining $19.99 (minus the 1% foreign transaction fee) and then happily cut that card into 200 hundred pieces, burn it in the fireplace, and call up Payoneer and close my account.

Affiliate Marketing: Stop Lowballing

If you’ve ever read much into affiliate marketing or read some courses or other informational material, you’ve probably been told to find your niche and get a domain name based around an exact match to the keywords you’re targeting, based on search volumes published by the Google AdWords Tool.

Let me be the first to tell you, good luck with finding an exact match domain name that is available for normal registration, whose exact match search volume is higher than a thousand or two. They’re out there, but they are very obscure, and to be frank, it’s a waste of time anyway to put hours and hours of work, and perhaps investing into advertising, SEO, marketing, etc., based on a domain name with low search volume, if you’re taking an EMD approach.

The trick is to stop lowballing when it comes to picking out your domain name. Stop scrounging around low search volume keywords and find one that looks great, with an exact match domain that is available via auction or buy it now price that isn’t astronomical. I would say $300 or less is a good range. The reason is that you’re just starting out, but consider this: If you were doing business in a physical setting, would you buy an office suite tucked away in a part of town that very few people frequent, or would you try for a nice storefront with heavy traffic?

Now I know, this means more competition, however, simply by having a more prime piece of real estate, all of your efforts are going to go further. For instance, think of posting a link to your website on a forum, or just the action itself, of a potential visitor mousing over your link and seeing your domain name. How likely is someone to click http://www.thepoint.com versus http://www.gettothepointalready.com? Obviously, if it’s a long tail keyword EMD, perhaps that appeals to them, however, getting to the point appeals to them too, and makes your “brand” look much more trustworthy.

A catchy domain name is good too, however, we’re about to start talking about traffic, so unless you’re going to be doing some serious SEO, some other considerations need to be made as to how you will get traffic. 

One thing that people don’t consider much is type-in traffic, meaning, someone just says “I wonder what’s at http://www.whatever.com.” Just based on the keyword phrase, they’ll go check it out. While this isn’t the norm, and you won’t get a ton of traffic this way, most likely, it will lead to some traffic, if you have a shorter domain name that is spot on for your target audience.

What I’m getting at is this: if you’re not ranking highly in Google, and you’re not doing any other promotion of your website, type-in traffic is all you have. Of course, you’d want to do much more than that, but when you’re starting out and you don’t have big G sending organic searchers to your website, or may never reach that point, consider that type-in traffic is free.

For instance, if you are doing PPC advertising and paying, say, even a low amount such as $0.10 per visit to your website, every type-in visitor you receive is basically $0.10 earned, in a manner of thinking. I’m not saying type-ins are going to be a huge source of traffic, but, it can be a nice added stream of traffic, if your domain name is chosen wisely.

Furthermore, having a domain name that is higher up in the hierarchy of keyword group(s) you’re targeting allows you to go after long tail with increased power, since not ALL of the long tail keywords are part of your domain name, but some will be, and they’ll be echoed in your actual page / post URL.

Also, consider the value of your website, if you decided to put it up on the open market one day. Lots of factors contribute to what it should go for, and what it will actually sell for, however, if you have the same stats and revenue on two websites, with the only difference being a lengthy long tail domain name, I’ll virtually guarantee you that the shorter domain name will sell for more, simply because there is more opportunity for higher search volumes that match the domain name.

Also, from a branding standpoint, it’s much easier to brand a shorter domain name, than a long tail domain name, and easier to advertise it using methods that are a bit outside of the box.

For instance, if you’ve got a really great domain name that is only two to three words, you could even get into image watermarking. Simply add a solid color bar to the bottom of all of your images, with your domain address clearly posted within that bar. Then, whenever you share that image off site, you’re putting your domain name in someone’s face, and if it’s short enough, they just might remember it, and type it in, even if there is no link to it.

Also, this saves you a lot of trouble, as you’re not posting a link to your website. The audience, and the moderators at wherever you are posting said pictures probably wouldn’t even know you are the owner of that site, unless you make it apparent, however, what I’m getting at is that you open a lot of opportunities to advertise your brand that just wouldn’t work that well if you have some long drawn out domain name, and you don’t have to be allowed to post a text link.

Additionally, images are becoming more and more useful in the world of affiliate marketing, through the sharing of images. If you can get a few watermarked images to go semi-viral in your niche, you could be looking at some pretty nice traffic. You could probably even take a shot at creating a MEME with the hopes of going viral, with your watermark appended to the image. 

Keep in mind to watermark tastefully. You want it to look professional and not overpowering or intrusive. You want it to add to the image, not take away. Avoid posting the watermark over the actual image itself.

Using this approach, even without big G, you could realistically draw traffic to your site, with only investing time instead of money. The money was invested pre-launch, in the quality of your domain name. Your business should be something you’re proud of, even if it’s just one of many affiliate marketing websites. 

You will feel more positive about investing into the website, since for one, you spent more money on it, and two, it’s a more prominent domain.  Gauge your own level of excitement when you’re searching for domain names. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect to keep working on it for months and years to come to ensure it’s profitable? Also, if you’re not excited about it, how do you expect your visitors to be excited about it?

Consider how many long tail domains you’ve purchased for cheap (if you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer), and look at what wound up happening with them. There’s probably a good chance that quite a few of them, you never even got around to building, or monetizing, or maybe you just let them expire when their registration came up for renewal, etc. Stop wasting time and money jumping from one thing to the next, and focus on quality first, and quantity second. Quantity is still very important, however, quality should be first.

If you’re putting hours and hours into domain names that are long shots to start with, think of how far you could go with a quality, high search volume, exact match domain name. Think about how you would feel working on a domain like that, versus one of the cheap long tail, long shot domain names you’ve worked on in the past.

Even if you’re not spending a couple hundred bucks, even spending $50 on a domain name should allow you to up the ante for yourself, and result in a much more reputable domain name.

You’ve spent $50 on much worse investments haven’t you? Ever purchased a crappy info product? I think that’s enough said.

Give it a try, and I’m sure you will feel more energized about working on the site, will have a brighter outlook (which is very important), and you’ll be more heavily invested from the word go since you paid a pretty penny for the domain, rather than using a 99 cent promo code.

The Best WordPress Security Plugin, Hands Down

If you’d like to secure your WordPress website without spending a great deal of time doing so, the best solution is to use one of the freely available WordPress security plugins.

There are quite a few options, but my security plugin of choice is Better WP Security.

I’ve installed and configured this WordPress security plugin on hundreds of WordPress installations, and I’ve never had a single WordPress property hacked with it on duty.

So, why do I like Better WP Security versus the rest?

For starters, it covers a lot of problem areas, and allows you to customize the settings for your particular needs. It also handles database backups, and will send you those backups via eMail attachments hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

I usually don’t enable all of the security settings, as some of the settings can be a little intrusive or bothersome. I don’t need all of them enabled to secure the website satisfactorily, but, they are there in the case that I decide to enable them for a particular site that needs a few extra layers of security.

The basic configuration I use covers the following points:

  • Your WordPress header is revealing as little information as possible.

  • Non-administrators cannot see available updates.

  • The admin user has been removed.

  • The user with id 1 has been removed.

  • Your table prefix is not wp_.

  • You have scheduled regular backups of your WordPress database.

  • You are blocking known bad hosts and agents with HackRepair.com’s blacklist..

  • Your login area is protected from brute force attacks.

  • Your .htaccess file is fully secured.

  • Your installation is actively blocking attackers trying to scan your site for vulnerabilities.

  • Your installation does not accept long URLs.

  • Better WP Security is allowed to write to wp-config.php and .htaccess.

  • wp-config.php and .htacess are not writeable.

  • Version information is obscured to all non admin users.

For me, this is enough. I can configure the settings quite quickly. At first, it would take me about half an hour to go through everything, but as I have become increasingly familiar with the installation and configuration process, I can usually knock this out in 10 to 15 minutes.

To give you an idea of the performance of this plugin and it’s settings, I once had a WordPress website owner contact me, telling me that his website had been hacked. When I visited his website, there were various “graffiti” present representing a particular “cyber army” which was claiming the blame for hacking his website.

He supplied me with access to his cPanel, and within about 10 minutes, I had regained access to the dashboard. I then went through all of the active theme files one by one, removing code added by the hackers.

Then, I installed Better WP Security, and configured it using the settings I normally use, without even activating any of the additional security settings, except for those listed above.

Within a couple of hours, I began receiving eMail notifications that someone was locked out of the site. Since the hackers were using proxies, I got quite a few of these notifications. I then went into the security dashboard, and permanently banned all of those proxy IP addresses manually.

Over the next few days, I got more notifications, and more notifications. The hackers were attempting to brute force their way into the website, however, they could not defeat Better WP Security.

In my opinion, unless you’ve installed a third party plugin that has security vulnerabilities, Better WP Security will keep your website hack proof, unless someone with a lot of time and computing power comes along, who also has great skill at hacking WordPress websites, and they are hell bent on getting in. Then, perhaps your site might get hacked. I would imagine that before it did, you’d probably receive enough alerts from the plugin to know that you had better contact your host, and let them know someone was attacking you, ensure you had up to date backups of everything, and perhaps enable a few more layers of security temporarily, until the hacker got tired of failure, and moved on.

I recommend Better WP Security to anyone running a WordPress website, it’s protection is excellent.

Should you need assistance in installing or configuring Better WP Security, I’m always around to lend a helping hand, via my WordPress Maintenance Service business linked in the navigation menu here on the Digi Purpose blog.

Elegant Themes & Forums: You Don’t Have a Compatible Theme!?

Today, I was setting up a new WordPress website that is a forum. 

I decided to use the bbPress plugin for the forums, and then began looking for a nice theme for the website, that has bbPress support.

The reason for this is that if a given theme doesn’t have bbPress support, the bbPress content won’t be styled up like the rest of the website, meaning the developer (in this case, me) will have to create custom CSS styling. Also, since I would be using a theme, I would have the task of implementing styles that fit that theme well. While this isn’t that tall of a task, it’s a waste of time in my book, because I can find a theme with bbPress support, and completely skip all of this extra work, and focus on the important part: making the forum as good as possible to provide valuable content to the visitors, and to also focus on building the forum community, and marketing the forums.

I stopped by Elegant Themes to see what they had to offer, but after looking through their 80+ themes, I was unable to find a single theme which looked like a forum, or was specifically tagged as a forum based theme. Also, there was no mention of bbPress support anywhere. I decided to contact Elegant Themes, and ask them directly if any of their themes had bbPress support. A few hours later, their reply came, and I was disappointed.

Elegant Themes does not have a single forum based theme, or any themes with bbPress, or other forum plugin, support.

This really blows my mind, since Elegant Themes doesn’t offer single purchases of their themes, and offers all 80+ themes for a yearly subscription price. I’m not saying that isn’t a good value, however, if you’re marketing a theme subscription to be a one stop shop for themes for any type of website, not having a single theme based on a forum site is really missing the mark, in my opinion.

Even if there was only one theme that was forum based, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to a popular theme developer like Elegant Themes to build at least one theme with bbPress support, or create their own forum platform, or, if I was them, a theme with support for all of the most popular forum plugins, so that a customer wishing to setup a forum website could use the theme, and decide for themselves which forum plugin was best for them. I would even take it a step further and have at least one theme with support for BuddyPress, as it’s gained huge popularity, and social is very popular right now.

I don’t really mean to bad mouth Elegant Themes, but for instance, their affiliate program boasts that it pays out over $1,000,000 per year to 21,000+ affiliates. If your business is paying it’s affiliates over a million bucks a year, you would think you could spend the time and money to develop a few themes that support popular platforms like bbPress and BuddyPress.

Take into consideration the fact that standalone, one person development ventures on ThemeForest develop themes with bbPress and BuddyPress support. Some even specialize in these platforms, and virtually all of the themes they develop have support for these popular plugins, and more, built right in.

If I was the CEO of Elegant Themes, I would have my own premium forum plugin as part of the subscription plan that includes their premium plugins, along with their premium themes, and perhaps even a social platform plugin. At the very least, there would be support for bbPress and BuddyPress, if nothing else.

Think of how many people out there don’t purchase an Elegant Themes subscription because of this, or, have an Elegant Themes subscription, but then have to go elsewhere to purchase a premium WordPress theme or plugin, or both, to handle a forum based WordPress site.

The Future of SEO & Search

When I think about the future of SEO, I have to think first about the future of search. Almost immediately, I think you’ll agree that this will bring you to the question, “how does a search engine provide a better experience for the user?”

Starting from this point, let’s look at things from the standpoint of a company who wants to provide the best search service possible. Obviously, the best possible experience as a search user is finding exactly what you were looking for in some cases, while in others, it may be finding some hidden gem of information that you hadn’t previously considered.

Often, it occurs to me that when I’m making a query to Google, there’s probably some no name, perhaps even underground, site out there somewhere in cyberspace with exactly what I’m looking for, but, my chances of finding it via Google are probably slim to none.

Now, why would I think that? Well, for starters, competition. People are online to make money these days, and the more time or money you have to invest towards placing in searches for a given term, the better your chances. What about that guy or gal out there that just has some random tidbit of information on a particular topic that is absolutely groundbreaking? Where do they fall into that equation? Well, I would say that currently, their content going viral thanks to the super quality of their content, is really their only chance, if they’re not investing time or money in SEO, etc.

This really is a shame, since finding good content is the job of the search engine, and shouldn’t be the job of the search user. That’s why we’re at Google’s search engine, to find the best possible result for what we’re looking for! Well, in my opinion, given the size of this Earth and number of inhabitants here, there’s a lot more than 10 “top results” for a huge list of terms, and furthermore, in many cases, it’s all about who can jump through hoops the best, as to which 10 sites will be displayed on the infamous first page of results.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about directories. Isn’t that strange? It seems like going backwards, it seems counter-dynamic, however, look at the strong points of directory based results. First of all, you can see a lot more than 10 results per page, without the page running extremely long, or taking forever to load. Most directories just list the titles of the results for a given search anyway, and even if you included the description, there’s definitely a way to display more results in less space, resulting in a larger choice for the user.

That brings me to my next point. Why is choice bad? It’s as if Google is telling us, we want you to click the first result, it’s the best! If you think otherwise, well, you’re wrong. How many times is the first result of a search the only result you need? I would venture to put it like this: the first result is the only result I need, about as much as the first result is nowhere close to what I am looking for, at all.

Also, search engines are about discovering, right? So, what’s the harm in showing the user 50 results on a nicely laid out page and letting the user actually do some discovering?

For example, go do a search for sneakers. The first result is for the movie Sneakers, followed by SneakerHead. Get my drift? We’re all falling all over ourselves to rank #1 in Google, but look at how the end result actually plays out. The best sneaker marketplace on the net is still #2 to a motion picture result.

Now, I’ll say that I should have been more specific in my search, however, if I somehow became the owner of http://www.sneakers.com, I’m pretty sure I’d try to sell sneakers before I would make it an ode to that classic movie. Yet and still, you see the discrepancy.

Also, we have to consider things from the business side, from the black hat side, from the spam and scam side of things. The next big search system has to handle these issues better than Google. I will say that Google gets better over time, however, usually a big improvement also causes a huge amount of unrest from people who run sites that get tagged by their algorithm updates, for what would seem like no reason.

Also, isn’t diversity, competition, and freedom good? I’m not saying that unverified information should be the word of the day, such as taking Wikipedia at their word, on every post, however, taking Encyclopedia Britannica at their word for every post is just as dangerous.

As times change, people come up with interesting points of view on virtually any and every topic. Don’t they deserve a chance in the limelight?

This led me to an interesting thought. Consider a directory based search, that provides classifications on results, displayed in columnar format. The engine would identify the type of site the result was for, e.g., is it an authority site? Is it a trusted news source? Is it a personal blog? Is it an online store?

Then, results could be displayed in columnar format, as follows:

If you did a search for sneakers, you’d be looking at multiple columns of results, such as “Entertainment” with results for the film, “Sneakers,” a shopping column, with results for sneaker marketplaces, an informational column about the history of sneakers, and perhaps a personal blog column with results from bloggers talking about their latest activities involving sneakers.

This is a very general, and rough, example, but you can already see the value in the approach. Rather than seeing #1 result, IMDB’s page for “Sneakers” followed by a few sneaker marketplaces, you’ve got a page showing you everything that has to do with sneakers, from various angles, all with relevant information, and say, 10 choices in each column to choose from.

Now, that’s a page of search results that I really like. Also, it opens up the door to more competition. Even if you’re just a blogger out there, if you’ve got the most popular blog post that’s all about sneakers, you’ve got a chance to be heard, right next to Zappos, Converse, and IMDB, without someone having to do a specific search to come across the hidden gem that is YOUR perspective and experience on the topic at hand.

Of course, there could be many more columns, e.g. classifications of websites, so why not throw some check boxes next to the search box to select which classifications of websites you want to see results from. Only want marketplaces? Cool, just check the shopping box, and you’ll see 50 results of marketplaces for sneakers.

I know this can be achieved, in a way, with Google by using the specific tabs within search, but it’s nowhere close to this approach, and for things like Google’s shopping results, the site owners have to jump through some more hoops to get listed there, so for me, it’s pretty blah.

Also, I think a cool feature for search would be “random.” That’s right, random. Throw the wild card in there! Why? Well, for one, it’s more fun, and for two, you never know what you might find, depending on what it is you’re searching for. Sometimes, you just want to read the point of view of a lot of people on a given topic. What better way to do that, than by seeing random results on the topic, within a classification you choose? So, you could select “personal blogs” or it’s equivalent, and fire off a random search for sneakers. The results would be something you’d never come across without a lot of digging in Google today. You’d get the point of view of 50 random people talking about sneakers. While this might be useless in a lot of cases, what if you’re planning on selling sneakers and you want to know what your audience is talking about? Well, with this functionality, you could find that out a lot quicker, and discover more in depth information than is currently available in a few minutes of reading versus a few hours of searching and reading, as things are now.

So, who will the next big search engine be? Do you think they would be attracted towards approaches to search like these?

Cheapest WordPress Hosting: Customer Service, Business Practices, & Why I Use Who I Use

As a web developer and WordPress expert, I’ve worked on hundreds of WordPress websites, and even more websites that are not built on the WordPress platform.

Also, I have maintained a great many personal websites over the years as well, and thus, I’ve worked on websites that were hosted by a plethora of hosting companies.

I’ve experienced the performance of these hosts, their customer service, their client areas and cPanels (or proprietary management panels), and learned how much they charge for their services.

Not every website has the same needs when it comes to hosting, however, if you’re running typical WordPress websites, I have some great information for you the next time you’re in the market for cheap WordPress hosting.

I use my current host for a number of reasons, besides the fact that they are the cheapest WordPress hosting company I’ve found for the quality they provide.

First, they allow you to pay monthly, even from day one, which many hosting companies these days (such as BlueHost) do not offer as an option. This blows my mind, but it’s how they and many others do business.

Second, even paying monthly, I get an SSL certificate as part of the deal. I didn’t pay a little extra for it, it’s included in the package, meaning I can choose a domain name to have protected by 256 bit Positive SSL. That’s really awesome in my book.

Third, I don’t have to transfer any domain registrations to the host, or register a domain with them. For some of their packages, they do offer a free domain name registration, however, they will allow you to setup a hosting account with them without requiring you to have a “primary domain” registered with them.

This saves a lot of headaches, and many times, a web hosting company wants you to have, at the very least, your primary domain name registered with them. Then, when you decide to stop using their services, you’ve got to transfer the domain name elsewhere, which many times will cost you money, or, continue to pay for the domain registration through them. This means you’ll likely have one domain name registration on that account, their renewal fees probably are overpriced, and it’s just a headache. I like having my domain names registered with domain name registration companies like GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc. It helps me stay organized, rather than have various domain names scattered across old web hosting companies I don’t use anymore.

Fourth, they’re flexible on due dates, even on monthly hosting. They grant a 7 day grace period once an invoice goes overdue, and if you require more than 7 days to pay the invoice, all you have to do is create a support ticket and explain your situation, and usually, they’ll grant you an extension without any further inquiry, jumping through hoops, or headaches. I wouldn’t recommend doing this regularly, but if you get tight on your budget one month, it’s nice to know that your host isn’t going to suspend your account, delete your files and databases, and basically hold you hostage. Also, what if you just forget, or your card expires and the new card hasn’t come in the mail, etc.? There are quite a few scenarios that could arise to put you in this situation if you’re an individual website owner.

Fifth, did I mention their customer service is friendly, responds quickly, and is actually on your side? Every once in a while, an issue will arise that warrants you to contact support, and if that goes badly, you better bet I’m cancelling my service or letting it expire and moving on. I do my very best to provide excellent customer service to my clients, and I expect the same from anyone I do business with. If my money isn’t worth your time, I’ll take my business to someone who takes customer service seriously.

Also, they offer true customer service, which many times, when you’re dealing with large hosting companies, they simply take every opportunity available to toss marketing at you to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server, even when it is not necessary, or even close to necessary! GoDaddy is the worst in the business when it comes to this. Their support team is nothing more than an extended sales team in my opinion.

Sixth, you’re able to scale up your package at any time, which is key when you’re dealing with cheap WordPress hosting companies. If you start to get a lot of traffic, chances are, your shared hosting account is going to start to experience issues with handling the traffic, and by that, I mean that your resource usage for your shared account will be over the limit.

When this happens, many web hosting companies take it as an opportunity to once again, hold you hostage, suspend your site, and make you upgrade your account. This means all that traffic you are getting, is now going to a broken page, or probably, an advertisement based landing page all about your wonderful web hosting company, who is holding you hostage. That stinks!

I’ve never heard of anyone experiencing this issue with the host I use.

I invite you to check out my recommended cheap WordPress hosting company, or read even more of what I have to say about them and watch my YouTube video by visiting the navigation link here on my blog.

Child Please! No Really, Please Use a Child Theme

As a developer who does a lot of work with WordPress, I run into the following scenario all of the time:

A developer has made custom changes to a theme, and following an update to said theme, the custom changes go “poof” and are gone with the wind!

Then comes the interesting part: determining if there is a backup of the files containing the custom code, determining which files contained custom code, obtaining those files from the backup if it exists, and then reincorporating that custom code into the newly updated theme or plugin. However, if I’m the one doing the reincorporation, a child theme will be getting created, from the word go.

The reason is that creating a child theme will prevent this same issue from arising the next time an update is released for said theme.

While this approach isn’t fool proof, and can cause some issues with the new version of the theme, they’re easily remedied! The best part is, you do not lose code. Worst case scenario, the developer will have to copy and paste the contents of the new version of the files in question into those same files in the child theme, and then situate the custom code appropriately. This is much easier to deal with than having to find lost code, or recreate lost code if there is no backup available, all the while, leaving your site gimped and missing the custom code, that probably does something fairly important (or you wouldn’t have had it custom coded to begin with).

The next time you need a developer to customize any theme files, make sure they are using a child theme, and if they don’t plan on using a child theme, request that they do, ask them why they do not use child themes, and promptly replace them with someone else more savvy with WordPress (if you really get brave, I’m available for such rescue operations).