Curious what Submit Suite v.50 will bring?

What will bring the version 5 of Submit Suite products?

• At this point we have updates Feed Submitter, Anunturi and Article Spinner. In a really short time we will update also Article Submitter, Website Submitter, Press Release Submitter and Website Popularity (in these order, please check the release calendar at the end of the post).
• The updates are ready, we are now polish the last changes for these applications
• Cleaner databases. All applications will have a clean and stable database. For Feed Submitter we had around 7000 new suggestions and we accepted only 120 which allowed us to bring back the database at 200 feed sites and blog directories. A big THANK YOU for all your submissions which are welcomed at submission page.
• We removed all the problems related to errors like “Resources not found”, “Invalid floating point operation”, etc which were caused mainly by Internet Explorer 9 ActiveX
• We removed all the issues generated by the sites containing “new” JavaScript code ( for example Google Plus js scripts )
• We add change the code to make the submission as stable as possible
• Submit Suite applications are now delivered with a new digital signing certificate
• Together with the v5.0 we changed some elements in the website (we are not offering anymore SEO services, we will concentrate only on software delivery). We are trying to make the process of trying a software and purchasing a software as easy as possible.
• Together with version 5.0 we will have nightly build for the approved changes, that means we will be able to react much faster to requests or problems in the software

When I can get my v5.0 version?

• 25 February 2012 - Anunturi (Classified ads poster)v5.0 was released
• 03 March – 2012 - Article Spinner v5.0 was released
• 10 March – 2012 - Feed Submitter v5.0 was released
• 17 March – 2012 – Article Submitter is planned to be released
• 31 March 2012 – Website Submitter is planned to be released
• 08 April 2012 – Press Release Submitter is planned to be released
• 15 April 2012 – Website Popularity is planned to be released

Do you have suggestions or feature requests for v5.0? I am waiting your feedback bellow.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Submit Suite database and application updates

Related posts:

1. Preview of the Submit Suite new interface
2. Submit Suite Releases Spanish and Romanian Versions of its SEO Software
3. Submit Suite now pays 40% commission in oneNetworkDirect and ShareIt

What I do in case nothing is working and I want to repair my system?

/etc/init.d/psa stopall
umount -a
xfs_check /dev/md1
xfs_repair /dev/md1
xfs_check /dev/md5
xfs_repair /dev/md5
xfs_check /dev/md6
xfs_repair /dev/md6
xfs_check /dev/md7
xfs_repair /dev/md7
xfs_check /dev/md8
xfs_repair /dev/md8
mount /dev/md1 /mnt
mount /dev/md6 /mnt/var
mount /dev/md5 /mnt/usr
mount /dev/md7 /mnt/home
mount /dev/md8 /mnt/srv
chroot /mnt
/etc/init.d/psa start

Obviously, the above commands must match the existing partitioning on your root server.

How to see the last commands in the system for the current user (or any user)?

less ~/.bash_history

or

history

Note: These two will work ONLY is history hasn’t be set to 0 (like for instance issuing a >.bash_history or export HISTSIZE=0

How can I allow ftp upload resume?

vi /etc/proftpd.conf
/etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Who is using the memory?

top

Where to tune Apache?

/etc/apache/httpd.conf
/etc/apache/server-tunning.conf

Where are Apache logs?

/var/log/apache2

How can I show IPs in case of the bot attack?

netstat -nt

Show unique ips TCP

netstat -anp |grep ‘tcp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Show unique ips UDP

netstat -anp |grep ‘udp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

How can I ban an IP in IP tables?

iptables -I INPUT -s 217.218.36.11 -j DROP

How can I backup the MySql database?

mysqldump –user=admin –password=SSSS –create-options database_name > /tmp/database_name.sql
or
mysqldump -user=admin –password= SSSS –all-databases -p –create-options | bzip2 -c > databasebackup.sql.bz2
or
mysqldump -uadmin -pSSSS –all-databases –create-options | bzip2 -c > databasebackup2.sql.bz2

Note: It is strongly recommended to stop MySQL prior to launch the commands above.

How can I import the MySql database?

mysql -uadmin -pSSSS database_name < /tmp/database_name.sql

Note: If the –create-options parameter has been given when the databases were dumped, databases will be automatically imported when importing

How can I rebuild the Webalizer stats?

rm -f /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
touch /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
chown root:root /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
chmod 644 /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
stat -f /usr/local/psa/var/lib/webalizer/webalizer.cache
cd /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics

How can I restart the MySql?

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

How can I do remote backup?

/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all ftp://username:password@backup.onlinehome-server.info/httpdocs/backup.file

What about a complete big backup?

/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all allbackup.file
tar czf /srv/www/vhosts backup

How to tar a folder (with all sub-folders and files)?

tar czf /volumes/myexternaldrive/backup01.tgz myfolder

How do I extract a file?

tar -xzvf MyArchive.tgz Source_file
or
tar –extract –gunzip –verbose –file=MyArchive.tgz Source_file
tar xzvf /volumes/myexternaldrive/backup01.tgz myfolder/subfolder/thefiletorestore

How to install SOAP extension for php 5?

rpm -Uvh ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/SuSE-Linux/i386/update/10.2/rpm/x86_64/php5-soap-5.2.0-12.x86_64.rpm

How to launch an sql against the database?

mysql -uadmin -pparola baza_date < /srv/www/vhosts/domeniu.com/httpdocs/clean.sql

What version of Linux I am using?

cat /proc/version
cat /etc/issue

or version specifc:

cat /etc/redhat-release
cat /etc/debian_version

Root viruses check – Rhunter

wget http://superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/rkhunter/rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
tar -xzvf rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
cd rkhunter-1.3.0.tar.gz
./installer.sh –layout /usr/local –install

add RHunter in cronjob
vi /etc/cron.daily/rkhunter.sh
and add
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/rkhunter -c | mail -s “RKhunter Scan Details” email@domain.com
exit 0

Root viruses check – chkrootkit

wget –passive-ftp ftp://ftp.pangeia.com.br/pub/seg/pac/chkrootkit.tar.gz
tar xvfz chkrootkit.tar.gz
cd chkrootkit-/
./chkrootkit

netstat -an |grep “[.:]${465}[^0-9.]”
netstat -e -p
netstat -a |grep 4000

netstat -e -p -n -a | grep 465
ps ax | grep 3456

How to change the SSH port?

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config (change to the port 8993)
/etc/rc.d/sshd restart

How to limit the wrong longins (3 mins SSHD)?

iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -m state –state NEW -m limit –limit 2/min –limit-burst 2 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8993 -j DROP

How to list applications connected to Internet and the ports used?

netstat -lptu

How to search a file?

find / -name pleskbackup

or faster if you’ve created an indexed database of files. First run updatedb (and have it scheduled to run from time to time, daily if there aren’t many files or weekly if there are many files) and once the database has been created (and updated) you can simply type: locate filename

For full paths of commands in your path you can use: which filename

How to find the biggest files in the HDD?

du -a /var | sort -n -r | head -n 10
find . -type f -size +500000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk ‘{ print $9 “: ” $5 }’
rm -rf /fisier

How to deactivate ZMD?

/var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
ps -axfu | grep parse-metadata
kill -9 32323
rm /var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
/etc/init.d/novell-zmd start

How to find the users with rights to log into the system?

cat /etc/passwd |grep -v nologin | cut -d: -f1

Who is logged in the system?

w
who -a
users
last (includes also users that have logged since the last time the database has been initialized)
grep sshd /var/log/messages

Bad cases, harddisk is crashed, no boot (needs physical access to the server)

fsck -fCV /dev/md1
mount /dev/md1 /mnt
chroot /mnt
lilo (kinda obsoleted, grub is the standard bootloader nowadays)
exit
umount /mnt

How to check the harddisk partitions?

fdisk -l

How can I see errors in logs?

tail -n 500 /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/mail.info
tail -f /var/log/warn
tail -f /var/log/mail.err
tail -f /var/log/mail.warn
tail -f /var/log/apache2/access_log
tail -f /var/log/apache2/error_log

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Webmaster manual for a root server

Pros:

1. I talked with Andy Brice and some other guys I already knew: Tarek, Jean Francoise and also new guys from RU, CR, Malta
2. I am thinking on going on Russian and Chinese market and Olga si Vladislav from SoftKey.ru will help me in this effort
3. I hat a surprise in the end to see that Press Release Submitter was suggested for the Epsilon Award

Cons:

1. Less iSVs comparing with the last years
2. Track-ul 2 was hard to find
3. The number of sponsors decreased, I would like next time to see also Embarcadero

Here are the presentation I saw, as soon I have a link or a download I will update this blog:

• Alwin Hoogerdijk – The Art of Ignoring
• Gilles Pardon, Softdatabase – Developing successful business in China
• Andy Brice, successfulsoftware.net – Marketing for microISVs – embracing the “dark” side?
• Laurentiu Ghenciu, Avangate – 5 Tried and tested ways to increase conversion rates
• Adriana Iordan, Avangate – How to Monitor and Protect Your Reputation Online
• Dave Collins, SharewarePromotions – Advanced Google AdWords
• Johanna Buckentin Senior Director, DR globalDirect – Site Testing: How to Optimize Your Site to Increase Your Sales
• Robert Martin, Infacta – Email Marketing – Engaging with your Audience
• Alwin Hoogerdijk – Web-Apps: The End for Software Downloads?
• Tetyana Franke – Share-it! – How and Why Does an Email Campaign Work? – Top tips to effective email campaign
• Raj Barman, Acutrack Incorporated – Increase Revenue By Implementing a Backup CD/DVD Solution
• Dave Collins, SharewarePromotions – An A to Z of online marketing
• Peter Kirchner, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH – Seamless integration in Windows 7 – the path towards application compatibility
• Dmitry Starostenkov, Perpetuum Software – Merging of ISV and custom development companies: benefits of cross-selling
• Olga Blazhevich & Vladislav Elizarov, Softkey – The Russian Software market

Thank you Dave and Cristian for the photos bellow.

My presentation “100 SEO methods to optimize your software site” was based on a “blog carnival” named 100 methods to obtain links (Romanian). Here is bellow the English version adapted for the conference:

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

ESWC 2009 – European Software Conference 2009

Related posts:

1. ESWC (European Software Conference) 2007
2. Submit Suite Sponsors 2007 European Software Conference
3. European Software Conference 2008 (ESWC 2008)

Dear SnapNames customer:

I’m contacting you today to inform you of an unfortunate incident at SnapNames, and to let you know what the company is doing to address it.

Recently, SnapNames discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid in SnapNames auctions. This is a clear violation of our internal policy and was not approved by the company. We deeply regret that this conduct has impacted our customers.

Extent of impact

This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions:
* Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
* The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005.

No matter the level of impact, SnapNames takes this matter extremely seriously. When the matter was discovered, the company immediately closed the account in question and began a thorough investigation. The employee has also been dismissed from the company.

SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.

Remedy to affected customers

Though on some occasions the employee won the auction, in many instances the bidding caused the ultimate auction winner to pay more for a name than had the employee not participated in the auction.

SnapNames neither condones this conduct nor wants to be perceived as benefiting from the conduct. Accordingly, we have decided that regardless of the circumstance, in every auction where the employee’s fictitious account submitted a bid which resulted in a higher price being paid by the winning bidder, SnapNames will offer a rebate, with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions. The rebate will be available in cash or in credit on the SnapNames platform, at your discretion.

SnapNames has moved quickly to address this situation. The company has retained Rust Consulting, an independent third party, who will administer the rebate offer. Within the next week, Rust Consulting will contact affected customers to provide details regarding the offer.

Your business and ongoing relationship are important to us and we can assure you that we have taken all necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the platform and reinforced controls and procedures to avoid any possibility of further breach. These include:

* Enhanced monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior
* Additional controls over financial transactions
* Specific domain name registration policies for employees

In the meantime, if you have any questions, you may consult the FAQs here, or contact the SnapNames support team: By e-mail: support@snapnames.com Phone: +1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.) +1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

SnapNames, and all in the Oversee family of companies, are deeply disappointed with this incident. Since its founding in 2000, SnapNames has been committed to the principles of fairness and trust; the company wants to assure customers—through both words and actions—that it remains committed to those principles.

Thank you again for your business, and for your ongoing trust in SnapNames.

Sincerely,

Jeff Kupietzky Craig Snyder President and CEO General Manager,

SnapNames.com SnapNames 1600 SW 4th Avenue,
Suite 400 Portland, OR 97201

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Can we still trust Snapnames?

He has also the reputation of not telling the whole side of the story. Because of the nature of his job he is probably forced to keep away from our ears some “details”. Bellow you can find some of the interviews and Q&A sessions with Matt Cutts.

Answers related to on-page SEO and website structure:

• How to structure a site?
• What’s a preferred site structure?
• What do I do after being hacked?
• Can I tell Google not to use the posting date in my snippet?
• Is excessive whitespace in the HTML source bad?
• Can I disallow crawling of my CSS and JavaScript files?
• Do ids in heading tags affect search engines?
• More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?
• Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of alt Tags
• Does the ordering of heading tags matter?
• Should I use nofollow in links to my disclaimer and privacy policy?

Answers related to Search Engine Optimization:

• How can I optimize for
• How do I optimize an e-commerce site without rich content?
• Should I tweak my titles and descriptions to improve my CTR?
• Two questions about nofollow
• Is redirecting a large number of domains suspicious?
• Qualities of a good site
• Optimize for SE or Users?
• Some SEO myths
• How to Get Better Visibility on Google
• Which SEO agency do you recommend?
• Will SEO still exist in five years?
• Will domain registration changes ding me in Google?
• Can you talk about the change in Google’s referrer string?
• How can new pages get indexed quickly?
• What are your views on PageRank sculpting?
• Can product descriptions be considered duplicate content?
• Why is the @ character ignored in search queries?

Answers related to urls-s:

• Does the position of keywords in the URL affect ranking?
• Does anchor text carry through 301 redirects?
• Should I strip file extensions from my URLs?
• Should I use underscores or hyphens in URLs?
• Static vs. Dynamic urls

Answers related to Google Analytics:

• Is SearchWiki or Analytics data used for ranking?
• Does Google Analytics work with Web 2.0 and social media?
• Does Webspam use Google Analytics?

Answers related to social media:

• Has Google changed the relevancy it awards to social media?
• Is Google doing anything different for Twitter results?

Answers related with the way Google is indexing your website:

• Should we expect more spelling corrections in search results?
• Why does Google index blogs faster than other sites?
• Are Google SERPs moving to Ajax?
• What can I do if a competitor is spamming?
• Is Google putting more weight on brands in rankings?
• Matt Cutts Discusses Snippets
• Supplemental Results
• Reinclusion requests
• Hotel Travel Industry Search Trends by Google’s Matt Cutts – Part 2.1
• Hotel Travel Industry Search Trends by Google’s Matt Cutts – Part 2.2
• State of the Index 2008
• My tips for SES
• Crawl dates in the Google cache
• Recap of SES San Jose 2006
• Do site load times have an impact on Google rankings?
• Why is the @ character ignored in search queries?
• Do not buy links for SEO
• Can I publish 100+ pages at once?
• Will DiggBar create duplicate content issues?

Answers related to canonical rel:

• Can rel=”canonical” index my hostname and not my IP address?
• Does rel=”canonical” make it safe to use tracking parameters?
• Canonical Link Element
• Matt Cutts Explains Canonical Tags from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft

Answers related to other Google products:

• Matt Cutts Discusses Webmaster Tools
• Two questions about the link: operator
• Will Google add guest accounts to Webmaster Tools?
• Will Google use non-link references as a signal?
• Will Google provide a rank-checking service?
• Google Datacenters
• Google Webmaster Tools
• How are load times displayed in Webmaster Tools calculated?
• Why aren’t penalized sites notified in Webmaster Tools?
• Datacenter comments
• Matt Cutts, Google, discusses mobile search
• Preventing Virtual Blight
• Interview with Matt Cutts
• Google Terminology
• Lightning Round!

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Matt Cutts is answering your SEO questions

Press Release Submitter has a database which is already used in our press release distribution service. At the moment we have 15.000 media contacts from US, later we will add also German, Spanish, French and Romanian media contacts.

The application will be easy to use, in the line of Article Submitter or Website Submitter. Some of functionalities will be:

1. language detection and spam filter (a press release in German canot be send to a english contact)
2. the possibility to filter the media contacts based on complex selections, categories, TV, radio, magazines etc
3. The PR sending is done using SMTP ( support + SSL), with defined delay time between sending
4. Editing capabilities for the database of media contacts (import, blocking contacts etc)

Here are bellow 2 images with Press Release Submitter (eta 01.07.2009, the estimation price will be 279$ ).

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

First news about Press Release Submitter

Related posts:

1. Article Submitter database temporary solution
2. Directory Submissions Simplified with Website Submitter 1.7
3. Press releases as marketing tools

The small ebook is produced in partnership with Microsoft Office Live Small Business and is aimed to small businesses. The book touches the following themes: What is Social Media?, Case Study: They don’t use social media in my industry, Blogging“ The front door to social media, Case Study: Blogging Customer Stories, RSS , Social search, Social bookmarking, Social networks.

I will quote also the author conclusion:

As you can see, when technology is leveraged to facilitate and enhance social interaction, a great deal of value can be created. But tread carefully. This savvy audience can be turned off if approached in the wrong way. Use these new tools properly and they’ll prove to be invaluable in your effort to strengthen existing customer relationships and capture the hearts and minds of new consumers.

The ebook is free to download.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Free eBook TALK Social Media for Small Business

Google has released a few days ago in an official post a 22 page PDF document outlining recommendations for web site optimization rules. The basic guide is touching a number of basic elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, no follow link attributes, hyphen etc.

You can download and read the Google SEO starte guider PDF. The document is a great proof of what all SEO-s are doing, a chance to validate the value of your techniques and it validates the SEO practice overall.

The main chapters in the starter guide are:

- Create unique, accurate page titles
- Good practices for page title tags
- Make use of the “description” meta tag
- Good practices for description meta tags
- Improve the structure of your URLs
- Good practices for URL structure
- Make your site easier to navigate
- Good practices for site navigation
- Offer quality content and services
- Good practices for content
- Write better anchor text
- Good practices for anchor text
- Use heading tags appropriately
- Good practices for heading tags
- Optimize your use of images
- Good practices for images
- Make effective use of robots.txt
- Good practices for robots.txt
- Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
- Promote your website in the right ways
- Good practices for promoting your website
- Make use of free webmaster tools
- Take advantage of web analytics services

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current. So, the next time we get the question, “I’m new to SEO, how do I improve my site?”, we can say, “Well, here’s a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out.”

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Google SEO starter guide

Related posts:

1. Lesson 4 – Title and META tag creation
2. Lesson 2 – Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank

Here is bellow my list of Firefox plugins which are helping me on the SEO work or on checking some parameters for a website, for bloging etc:

Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

ScreenGrab

Screengrab! is an extension for Firefox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window – from a small selection, to a complete page.

Google UnPersonalized

This plugin prevents you from seeing personalized search results, when searching from your browser’s search box. In Firefox, this plugin also adds suggest functionality.

InFormEnter

InFormEnter adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted – no typing required. You can configure it to display your frequently used information such as name, email, address…

User Agent Switcher

Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

Search Status

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox hat allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

TwitBin

TwitBin is an extension for firefox that brings the power of twitter right in your browser.

Seo Quake

Seoquake is a powerful tool, aimed at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

SEO and Firefox

Hard to belive, but if you are a ISV or microISV, Microsoft is offering in BizSpark (a program launched towards ISV and microISV at European Software Conference 2008). If you are a small company Microsoft will offer you the tools, database and even hosting for developing your applications for FREE. Is such an offer possible?

The conditions are simple:

• Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business1
• Privately held
• In business for less than 3 years, and
• Less than US $1 million in annual revenue.
• To be eligible to use the software for production and deployment of hosted solutions, startups must also be developing a new software as a service solution (on any platform) to be delivered over the Internet

What is Microsoft going to offer you:

Design, development, testing and demonstrations rights with regard to:

• All the software included in the Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium subscription
• Expression Studio (Version 2)
• VSTS Team Foundation Server (Standard Edition)
• Production Use rights to host a “software as a service” solution (developed by the startup during their participation, on any platform) over the Internet, with regard to products including: Windows Server (all versions up to and including Enterprise); SQL Server (all versions); Office SharePoint Server; Systems Center, and BizTalk Server and all these for your whole development team

Above all these, the support will be free. Hard to believe such an program exists. There is catch you will ask? A 100$ program offering fee is due when the Startup exits the Program. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to Startup success, there are no initial costs for Startups to join BizSpark.

More information can be found in this pdf.

Article published in Submit Suite Blog.

Microsoft BizSpark is offering free licenses

Related posts:

1. ESWC 2008 – Free SEO Audit and advices