22 Nov

Helium Not Reachable

By: dragonblogger  //  Category: Internet      //  3 Comments »
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I have the strangest problem that started in the last five days which is that I cannot reach helium.com anymore with any browser on my computer. It is either a routing issue or something to do with the network layer, but I tried with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. I get the same error with each browser no matter what I try.
Heliumchrome
heliumff

I have already rebooted my computer, rebooted my router, cable modem and nothing resolves the issue. Clearly helium.com is not down as many other people say they can reach the site just fine, yet I cannot hit the site at all. Is there a routing issue between the Cox subnet and helium.com subnet?

Wonder how long until this resolves itself, or if it will resolve.

-Dragon Blogger

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21 Nov

Adding Google Analytics to your Wordpress Blog

By: dragonblogger  //  Category: Internet, blogging      //  11 Comments »
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I have compiled a list of tips and helpful hints for anyone who needs to add Google Analytics code for your Wordpress blog.  Some of these tips were provided to me by my blog mentor Damien Riley especially about the WP-HEFO plugin.  I have been troubleshooting my Google Analytics for several days now, I originally had it working and noticed for the past 2 days I had 0 traffic at all, when all my other blog stats have shown a fair amount of unique visitors.  Between 70 and 120 visitors per day was my average at this point.  I spent all of today troubleshooting and learned the hard way:

Don’t mess with your footer.php page included with your theme, they hide some custom stuff in there that will break things if you try to tweak or replace the file.  Especially if it is a compressed php where it looks like garbled text.

Don’t accidentally have Google Analytics code in more than one section on your side, always view Source and make sure you don’t see 2 GA code snippets on same html page, if you do, this will definately break reporting to Google Analytics.

With that in mind I wrote these simple instructions anyone can follow to add Google Analytics to their blog, read on.

  • Pre-requisites:
  1. Make sure you are only using your theme’s default footer.php file, if you edited it, deleted it and swapped a new one, you may have problems like I did.
  2. Make sure you have no google analytics code or widgets installed, if you have duplicate google analytics code then it will not report your site stats to google.
  3. Download and install the “WP-HEFO” plugin
  • Configuring Google Analytics on Wordpress Blog
  1. First you have to create a Google Analytics account, log into http://www.google.com/analytics and create an account.
  2. After you create an account, link your blog.
  3. After you enter the information and register your blog click on Edit under the settings for your blog
  4. Then click on “Check Status” on top right
  5. You should see instructions for adding trackin code (ga.js)

This code should look like this below:  (Note, your getTracker(”UA-*) will actually be your unique identifier.)
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

  • Adding Google Analytics code to your blog with the WF-HEFO Plugin
  1. Keep the GA code handy from the previous step
  2. Open web page up and open up your wordpress blog
  3. Click on Design -> Header & Footer
  4. In the Footer: Section cut/paste your full Google Analytics code.
  5. Click Update
  • Validation of your Google Analytics Code
  1. To make sure your Google Analytics code is working right on your blog I found an exceptional website called EpikOne’s SiteScan
  2. This site for free will scan your website or blog and analyze ever page to check for the Google Analytics Plug-In.
  3. This site found and scanned all my pages and confirmed my Google Analytics was working, it provides a great report summmary:

Screenshot of SiteScanGA Summary:
sitescanga

  • In Summary:

With the WP-HEFO plugin by Kaloyan K. Tsvetkov and the www.SiteScanGA.com I was able to get Google Analytics up and working properly with ease.

With these easy steps I was able to get Google Analytics working and reporting correctly for my website.  If you have not setup google analytics for your blog and have wanted to go ahead and follow my instructions.  Please let me know how well they work for you, and/or if you think I need to amend some steps.

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20 Nov

Received my IZEA Thanksgiving Care Package

By: dragonblogger  //  Category: Entertainment      //  4 Comments »
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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.

jgizeaToday I received my Thanksgiving Care package from IZEA which included a really funny Turkey Hat and a sample of Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda which was one of the strangest beverages I have had tasted in my life. I don’t drink soda except for diet versions since I have allergies to sugar but I decided to give the soda a try and it is very sweet.
I found the flavor to have a slight sugary gravy flavor but I couldn’t really tell if there was turkey flavoring in there, it was a great gift to give to somebody who just has to try something new. My wife who is a chef was surprised and thought it was a great idea and laughed that they even tried to make a Turkey and Gravy flavored soda, A++ for the effort and the clever attempt, but I don’t think it actually tastes like it.
My kids however loved the turkey hat and have been taking turns wearing it all day, I do enjoy the care packages that I receive from IZEA and it was a blast to try the Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda even though I didn’t care for it that much.

-Dragon Blogger

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20 Nov

DragonBlogger Advertising Special

By: dragonblogger  //  Category: blogging      //  3 Comments »
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I am running a Holiday Special right now on DragonBlogger.com instead of paying $20 per month ($5 per week for your 125×125 ad to be hosted), you can purchase 30 days advertising for $5 for the entire month. $5 will get you tens of thousands of pageviews, according to WP125 these were the last click results from previous advertisers:
AD Results

Though the clicks are probably a bit inflated a bit by repeat clicks from same people it still shows that you can get some notice and traffic by advertising with DragonBlogger.com.

Contact me now to purchase an AD for only $5 for 30 days on DragonBlogger.com

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20 Nov

The New Twitter Retweet

By: dragonblogger  //  Category: Twitter      //  9 Comments »
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Twitter is rolling out the new Retweet function and my account is one of the beta accounts that was able to test out the new retweet functionality.  First of all, to even know if your account is able to use the new retweet you must use the twitter.com homepage as at the time of this article HootSuite, Twaiter and Tweetdeck don’t yet support the new Twitter Retweet function.

The first thing you will notice is that when you look at someone who you are following you see the new “Retweet” symbol which looks a lot like a recycling symbol.  This symbol indicates you will see all retweets in your timeline from this users.

retweetnotice

The next thing you will notice (when the new Twitter Retweet fully rolls out and your account has it) is that there is a new “Retweet” button on each of the tweets in your friends timeline and you hover over it to “reply, DM or fave” but the biggest change will be the new retweet symbol you will see in some of your timeline messages.

Now when somebody retweets a message you will no longer see a RT @username RT @username anymore, instead you will see this retweet symbol and the original persons tweet. No matter how many people retweet the message, the original message will always remain intact and there won’t be any prepended RT @username added to the retweet.
retweet

This will start making peoples tweets show up in your friends timeline even if you are not following them, so if one of your friends Retweets one of their followers you will see that persons tweet even if you aren’t following them. This may be confusing at first but if you look at the tweet, there is a new message at the bottom that tells you who the person was who retweeted it that was in your friend list.

These changes are dramatic enough that I think most twitter programs will have to do some serious recoding to figure out how to implement, they will need to add these little retweet logo’s into the tweet stream and have additional options to show who tweeted them. I hope Tweetdeck and Hootsuite will fully support the new Retweet functionality by the time it goes fully public.

I personally think this will be excellent for original tweet creators, their tweets will never be altered when retweeted. This also means though when you retweet an article you are only retweeting the original person who created the tweet, and the other people who retweeted won’t be included as happens with the RT @username RT @username…etc, which may means that you will not likely be as noticed for performing retweets and retweets will truly be more about promoting the original persons tweet instead of tagging long for the ride.

What do you think of the retweet functionality, let me know your opinion.

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