Well, I’ll stop writing (ok, moaning) about my fan site and the lack of Google love to those keywords that I’ve been nurturning from the get-go. Not to say all is bleak and boring, as of this morning I saw a couple of keywords reappear and the others that hung in there are higher in the ranks.

But…

I’m still working on the site, adding content as we go and see if anything reappears on the radar for the site and those keywords - if not, I know when I’m out of the sandbox those keywords will be kicking butt… and I’m all over that.

I’ve also joined in on the whole “U Comment / I Follow” trend - I had honestly thought that all links out of this site was actually going to the owner’s site and giving a little PR/Search Engine Love. Well… I found out my site was jammed with the “no-follow” for links - I suppose this was in attempt for stopping Spammers from getting link love, etc, etc. But I’ve got a few things in place that allows me to weed out the spammers (for the most part) and those that do make good comments/any comment that’s not spam, that I want to acknowledge you.

I’ve used - Link Love - which is awesome if you’re looking for a bit of control over who gets the link love. After 10 comments by a particular poster - their no-follow rule is stopped and link love explodes. Another one I’m using right now is DoFollow and it removes the”no follow” tag in comments - with no restrictions. So I’m hoping my anti-spam plugins don’t crap out… and I can acknowledge the people who contribute their thoughts and ideas here.

…. AND IN OTHER NEWS! Chrissy mentioned today a site called Niche Content Products, where you can eliminate the Headaches of Creating Content Yourself! and I thought I’d take a roll by and see what it was all about.

I have to say the site has a gorgeous design and I’m totally tempted to give it a whirl. I think any bit of help to make good sites, with good content is always welcome on the ‘net. So I’m off to give that a try… as soon as my paycheque clears

… ok, I’m done.

Popularity: 10% [?]

You may have found a link to this site floating around on your Dashboard in WP.  WP Zipper seems to be a bit of a godsend when you are trying to find those plugins for WP and if you’re anything like me - and not too good at keeping things organized on your harddrive or misplace them in 5 different folders, because at the time leaving them there seemed like such a good idea, but now you can’t find them… well, even if you’re super organized… you might want to to check out this site where you can add plugins to your download folder and zip them up and send them to yourself.

All of this… FREE.

Check out WP Zipper for some nifty plugins to zip for WordPress 

Popularity: 4% [?]

Just incase you’re a widget freak like me - I found WidgetBox - seems like there might be a bit of something for everyone who blogs.  Check it out, what do you think?

- Here’s one for Money Makers 

Popularity: 3% [?]

Last night I spent some time working on my project.  I wanted a little more interactivity between the site’s articles and the people who read them.  Also, since it’s a recipe site, I thought having ratings would be kind of fun - this way people can see what is super good and those you might want to pass on.

So I spent about an hour looking through some WordPress plugins…. the rating system, I had found right away and it was super easy to load up… but I had some issues with the layout - and where the ratings were posted within the WordPress Loop.  So I must have mucked around with it for about 20 minutes.  That was alright, and I think NOW I’ve got it how I like it

The next plugin on my list was trying to find a plugin that would allow me to place PHP script within the WordPress Loop - within an article, or post.  I found one… and it worked.  Well, sort of… I ended up getting errors for it - and since I’m not totally adept to PHP I might just do as the Ratings plugin said - and place the “Top Rated” php script outside the WP loop.  It worked well when I tested it in the header.php.  So I think that’s what I’ll end up doing….

Unless I get really inspired!

The site is slowly coming together.  I’d like to get a few more recipes up on the site and then start offering a couple of ebooks that I have that fit well for the niche I’ve picked out.  I’m not looking at making tons of cash… but a few extra dollars (or even offering them for free…?) might keep people coming back, or recommending the site to their friends.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I was using the Nathan’s Users Online for a couple of months and all was really well - I really like the plugin, it tells me who’s here and how many.  Very cool plugin.

… until yesterday.

I couldn’t even login to this site because that damn plugin crapped out on me.  Or maybe my database did.  Either way it jammed up the site and RSS feed.  Totally weird.  After a momentary panic attack - I read/figured out to rename the plugin through my FTP.  When I did that and logged back to the site - the site was working.  No errors on the top of the page.  The only thing not working was the plugin on the sidebar.  I was once again able to log back into the account and disable the plugin and then took the plugin off the sidebar.

Now my site is back to normal.

That was totally freaky… and somewhat scary.

Popularity: 2% [?]