Massive traffic lost...

Funnily and oddly, website traffic dropped approximately three fold. Bad, very bad. What could be the reason?

Being a blog hosted on Blogdrive, naturally at first instinct the blame would go to Blogdrive's bad down time.

Hey come on now, we (I above all ) should all know better than just blaming Blogdrive. Some form of investigation was taken and guess what I found?



Google is the culprit:

• Dropped from Google?
• Indexed pages way down?
• Google Problem
• My site has completely fell off Google..
• Recent changes in google criteria?
• Has the removal of the 5 billion page site hurt you?
• Disappearing and Reappearing rankings - Everflux or something else?
• Sites being heavily penalized by Google

sigh...

Companies surveys blogs for Recruitment

An article on New York Times have a very good article about this trend.

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang. It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

I know of a few friends who was hired by their company because of their blogs or personal social networking online profiles.

Come on, if a company were to hire reliable worker an extensive background study has to be made. Isn't it? Looking through whatever is available online is just (honestly) very brief and basic.

So people, be careful of how you express yourself online.

Maybe Abby may want to add this to her research project.

Blogdrive is not DOWN

But why can't I see my blog?

I hear you. It's not just you, me too (and as ARS reported it in the forums too)

As many of you know, I'm a computer nomad. I don't make love to the same computer all the time. It's not that I'm cheating or unloyal, I do have feelings for these machines but it's just that ... I'm non-commitment kinda guy. I just want to enjoy myself as much as the computer does. Live for the moment, Carpe Diem. You know what I mean?

Anyway, back to the main topic. I had no problem accessing the admin section or the Blogdrive forum but I can't get to my blog, or any other blog for that matter. The funny thing is, I can access all blogs that are FEATURED as Blogdrive Favorites. Not any others.

This is racism. Just because I'm not on the favorites, shouldn't I get to access my blog?

As I was saying, I travel around, a lot. I've had experience with young, beautiful and energetic new flat-screen desktops with smart, intelligent operating systems (winXP). To old, mature but rock solid late-90s computer who likes long walks around the lake, dogs and cats. One of these days, I'll try to get my pants into the new Vista baby. And no, it's not paedophile.

My point is, from all these different computers there are some times (especially these few days) where I CAN or can NOT reach my blog. And guess what, it has nothing to do with the differences of these computers. It's their location or rather ... their connection source, a.k.a. Internet Service Provider. It became harder to get to my blog if the internet connection I get is rather dodgy, like a wireless network, proxy connection or dynamic IP addresses.

SO,

speculation of the day is:

Blogdrive disables blogs connection to dodgy computers.

why?

my guess, based on what I've been suffering for the pass few days is to fight spam. I've received more than 50 odd contact form spams in two days. Click on the image to have a better view.

Now, how is this fair? I'm a subscriber but I can't get to my blog. What about my visitors? For your information, my visitor stats have been down by 50%. It's a huge traffic blog so stats differences are very notable despite daily fluctuations.

Lets look on the brighter side of things. By cutting connection to dodgy computers, spam attacks can be reduced and this saves the server from crashing again. At least, Blogdrive isn't entirely down. Right?

But what about those that do have an account here, are loyal Blogdrive users and even are subscribers. Why can't they be exempt from being classified as dodgy? Why can't they get access to their own blog? at the very least.

Dear readers, do you have other ideas as to why I can't get access to my own blogs?

UPDATE: ~justme~ » "Posting from this IP is not allowed. You are posting from an IP/proxy server that is known to distribute SPAM and the author of this blog blah blah blah

justme was having trouble commenting, whatever happened to the antispam feature introduced not too long ago?

Tags: Blogdrive, ISP, spams, internet service provider,

co.mments tracking (Blogdrive supported)

Good news! Remember the last time I talked about co.mments? I was just talking to Assaf yesterday and they have added support to track comments on Blogdrive. I must thank him for the quick response and how fast he wrote up a parser specifically for Blogdrive. I think it's a great service and I'm hoping that in the near future everyone will start using it.

The great thing about this service is that you can track any comments, whether if it's your blog, other Blogdrive blogs or even other blog services. It works great! All you need to do is just "Bookmark" that blog.

Also, it is possible to generate a Comment RSS for your blog. Look at mine.

This would save me a lot of time going from blogs to blogs trying to see if I get a responce from a comment I left earlier. Or if there are comments by other people on a particular topic.

Go sign up an account now. Signing up for an account allows you to have all your conversations stored.

Tags: blogdrive, co.mments, comments, track,

Four secret Blogdrive goodies that you should never know

While we are constantly complaining about how much Blogdrive can improve, let's take a moment to be reminded of all the good stuff we have here on Blogdrive that you shouldn't have known.

If you are reading this article right now you should turn off the lights and make sure there's nobody behind you. If you are discovered to have obtain these information, an assassin will be sent to murder you.

1) Built-in search feature - Search your own blog with the blogdrive's built-in search feature, it's originally only available for subscription blogs but if you use a GET method on your url, you'll get a free (temporary) feature. However, it only search your blog titles.

2) exceed your bandwidth - for free accounts, an allocated amount of 50mb monthly bandwidth can be exceeded even without any upgrades. If you have a subscription blog, your allocated monthly bandwidth will be higher but again your files will not fail to load in the event that you exceeded it. So, what are you complaining about? (please note: you can't store more than what you should)

3) store HTML / CSS / JS documents in your filemanager with .jpg extensions. Okay, this is supposed to be a techy hack but it works.

4) the amazing Seige - this isn't just a goodie thingy but the coolest lad I've ever known on Blogdrive. He's smart, brilliant and above all massively fantastic. Oh, did I mention that he's got a great sense of humour?

Do you have other ideas or suggestions?

Tags: blogdrive secrets goodies