Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Busy few days – updating website and more

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Gee I haven’t made a post on this blog for a few day … what’s up with that? I usually post at least one if not two or more posts a day.

Well … to tell you the truth I’ve been pretty busy over the last few days. I’ve been doing a major update on my main website (reptile related info). The site needs a complete redesign, but there were a few issues I couldn’t ignore any longer so I spent the last three days working on updating various aspects of each and every page on the huge site.

I’m a real type A personality and once I start something I usually keep going until I get it done and well, that’s why this blog and most of my others are lacking new posts for the last few days. I think I’m done working on the main website for a while so things should get back to normal now.

Other news … I was right, I am losing weight. I’ve got Crohns and I’ve been on medical leave from my job as an ER nurse for close to two and a half years. During my time with Crohns I’ve gone through periods of massive weight loss. One time I lost close to 40 pounds in one month … weight I really didn’t need to lose! That was bad. I wouldn’t doubt some people thought I was taking handfuls of weight loss pills. Strangely enough, over the last two years that I’ve been home I never did go through a period of weight loss due to the Crohns. Instead I seemed to have gained a little bit of weight very slowly during my medical leave.

Well it seems things are turning around. My metabolism is revving up as I’m constantly hungry and the weight I gained seems to be coming off. I’m not doing anything different really. I’m a little more active now that spring is here, but I still feel pretty yucky so it’s not like I’m going out jogging or anything.

Anyway, I consider this good news – well as long as I don’t start losing weight really fast it’s good news. I’ll be lookin’ good by the time it’s warm enough here to start wearing shorts.





Free Music downloads with MP3Rocket

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I don’t listen to enough music these days. We used to have a stereo, but it was old and when we moved to this house several years ago we never set it up. Instead I’d use the radio tuner on our home theater system to listen to the radio or I’d listen to CDs, or music stored on my computer.

Unfortunately, about half a year ago, our home theater system started giving us an overload message whenever we turned it on. We haven’t fixed it or replaced it yet so that means no more radio or CD music through the surround sound system. I’ve noticed that I’ve slowly stopped listening to music over the last few months because of our home theater system being on the fritz.

So earlier today I went searching for music online and I found a site that offers unlimited free music downloads. It’s called MP3Rocket. They have free software that you can download. Within minutes I was able to begin searching for shared MP3 files.

rocket_logo.gif The MP3Rocket software works by connecting to the Gnutella network and it’s very user friendly. I won’t go into all the details of how it works here because there’s a software demo on the main page of the website that explains everything way better than I could in this post!

The only thing I noticed when I was finished installing the software was that it had added an Ask.com toolbar to my Firefox browser. I’d rather know about those things ahead of time and either opt in or opt out during the installation process. It wasn’t a problem though – some of you might actually appreciate the Ask.com toolbar. I’ve already got way too many add-ons for my browser so I simply went to my computers Control Panel, clicked on Add or Remove Programs and easily un-installed the Ask.com toolbar. Simple.

There’s a Pro version of the software too if you want to upgrade. There’s a lot of added features in the Pro version.

I already spent sometime using the software searching for MP3’s earlier today. Now I’m going to spend some more time this evening looking for my favorite bands.

WordPress and PHP based sites have altered and extra files – check yours!

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If you use WordPress or any other website platform that used PHP you should take a look at your files to see if any changes have been made to them in the last month.

A month or so ago I noticed that three of my WP sites suddenly said that they were using version 2.5 … heck they really weren’t even using 2.3.3 yet! Remember I was behind in my updates. So I decided to use my FTP program in order to take a look at the files on my server and much to my amazement I found that a lot of files had the date 10/4/2008 as the last time they were modified. Oddly enough I noticed the change to wp 2.5 on a few of my sites prior to all the file changes on the 10th of April. I wrote a post about it (see link above) on the 8th of April.

In addition to file date changes I found extra files some with PHP extensions, others with pngg and jpgg extensions.

I also found that a line of code had been added to the top of many of my files. Just go to your WordPress theme editor and take a look at each file for the current theme you are using to see if there is code with MD5 and debugger in it at the top. If there is you can remove the code with ends at exit >.

I went to WordPress.org to see if I could find anything about sites getting hacked or attacked and the first time I searched wordpress.org and did a Google search I didn’t find much, but last weekend I found lots of info. You can learn more by reading this WordPress security issue discussion.

Apparently a number of sites have been hit. That’s why I’m urging you to take a good look at your files to see if code has been added or if new files created.

Like I said I discovered changes on my sites shortly after they were hit – maybe April 12th or so, but I didn’t realize how widespread the problem was until I started digging deeper and got more information. I’ve basically spent a good portion of the last two weeks going over EVERY file on my web hosting server – even the /TMP directory.

It took me so long because I’ve got a lot of sites.

I even went through my Joomla CMS sites directories as well as my HTML based websites directories and I found extra and altered files there too, so if you run a few different kinds of sites don’t forget to check everything.

I also changed the passwords on all my sites as well as my server password. Every password for each of my sites is different.

Have you tried using Chitika to increase your blog or websites earnings

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I don’t know if you noticed, but over the last couple of months I’ve been trying out different forms of advertising in the sidebars.

Today I added a link to Chitika to my left sidebar and I’m trying out some of their products – eminimalls – under my posts on a few of my blogs. I’ve actually been with Chitika for about two and a half years, but I stopped using their services on most of my sites about a year ago because it wasn’t working out for me.

Now they’ve come out with some new products and ads that pay by impressions or by clicks so there are more ways to generate earnings with Chitika than when I first started with them. They’ve upped their game and I’m willing to give them another try. In the past few months I’ve seen a few bloggers discussing the company and stating that they were doing well with Chitika. Now it’s my turn to see if it’s true.

Lets see, what else have I tried in the last while? AuctionAds – now ShoppingAds, Widgetbucks, Shopping.com and a few others. To be honest I haven’t done all that well with ShoppingAds and Widgetbucks. I’m still testing Shopping.com. So far it’s the best of the three.

I’m just trying out different things in order to increase my passive income. Now that’s a misnomer as you do have to work at optimizing your ads to really see what works for your various sites.

I’ll write an update post in the near future to let you know how Chitika is working out for me. In the meantime I’d love to know if any of you are using it and how you’ve found the program.

Meanwhile, I’m still tinkering with my Adsense displays as I slowly read through the Adsense Secrets 4.0 e-book. Considering that I’ve only adjusted the Adsense code on two of my sites I’d say that Adsense Secrets is helping as my earnings have increased slightly. I can’t wait to see how much my earnings increase once I’ve optimized all my sites.

Double or triple your Adsense Earnings with Adsense Secrets 4.0

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Normally I don’t write posts quite like this, but I’m excited about this product and I hope that you will be too! Read on to see why I’m so excited.

About a week ago Adsense Guru, Joel Comm, came out with the fourth edition of his best selling e-book Adsense Secrets.

The last edition of this best seller was in 2006 and if you’ve been following and or using Adsense on your sites you know that they’ve introduced a lot of changes since that time. Adsense Secrets 4.0 has been updated with all the changes up to early 2008.

Normally Joel sells this e-book for $97 – most feel it’s worth much more than that of course as many have said that once they started implementing some of the suggestions from his book their Adsense earnings doubled, tripled and more.

Joel has been increasing successful with his own sites since 2004 and has been happy to share what he’s learned. He’s been thanked many times over in the last four years for the knowledge he’s passed on and he wants to do something special to say thank you to his followers and those new to his products.

For a limited time, Joel is offering AdSense Secrets v4.0 to you for just $9.95!

This book is the definitive guide to making money with AdSense and it is the only book you ever need to master AdSense. Joel regularly earns $500/day or more in passive Adsense income and there’s no reason why you can’t as well.

I’m not sure how long Joel will generously be offering this Adsense Secrets e-book for the low price of $9.95 – so don’t hesitate for too long!

I went to his site and instantly downloaded my copy a few days ago. I do ok with Adsense – I certainly use it on all of my sites, but I know I could do better.

I haven’t had a lot of spare time to go over the whole book, but I already made one or two changes to my sites Adsense wise and I’ve seen a slight improvement in earnings. Over the weekend I’ll be implementing more of Joel’s suggestions and I hope to at least see my Adsense earnings double. Certainly the changes that I’ve already made will pay for the e-book!

One thing I must tell you is that when Joel introduced is updated Adsense Secrets 4.0 last week there was a bit of a glitch in how things were set up. You see, his sales page is long and along with selling visitors his Adsense Secrets for $9.95 purchases were also asked to opt into a monthly newsletter called The Top 1% Report. The monthly cost of this newsletter is $29.95 and when you opt in you’ll get your first issue along with a Free Bonus CD filled with more secrets absolutely free.

Most people didn’t notice the opt in earlier in the week and if they might be surprised when they get a bill of $29.95 a month from now on their credit card.

Don’t worry … he’s changed things around. He makes it clear now. When you get to the end of his sales pitch page you have two options.

The first option is for the Adsense Secrets 4.0 e-book for $9.95 and the first month of his newsletter free (plus free bonus CD). It says:

“I understand that I will have an opportunity to read and enjoy my free issue before you bill me $29.95 for the next issue, and that I can easily reach you to cancel at any time! “

As it says in the offer you can get your free stuff and then decide to opt out without ever paying more than just the $9.95 for the e-book.

The second option is for Adsense Secrets 4.0 and nothing more.

You can select whichever one you prefer and then proceed to the checkout.

When I purchased my copy of the e-book I knew about this controversy. He hadn’t changed the links yet to make the options obvious but there was still a way to opt out at the checkout.

I decided to get the free Top 1% Newsletter and free bonus CD and then decide once I receive them whether to opt out and not be billed a monthly fee for further newsletters.

In future updates as to how my implementation of Adsense Secrets I’ll let you know how good the newsletter is and whether I decided to continue to receive it or not.

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