State Of Search: Recommended WordPress Backup Plugins For 2013

Not sure if I’ll do this which much regularity, but I keep forgetting when and where I’m featured on other websites. I’m looking to compile a list, but at the moment it’s quite barren, so before I build up said list, I’m going to start linking to posts featuring me as a talking head, or commenting on something.

Meh, it’s content!

I’m not featured in many places, so I think this’ll be fairly easy to keep updated.

Anyway, the first one is being featured on State of Search (a blog I regularly read, and one of a small handful of SEO blogs I actually bother with) talking about my recommendations for the 6 Top WordPress Backup Plugins of 2013.

I was featured along with Michael Wester, Bastian Grimm, Dan McGuire, Carla Marshall and Dean Cruddace, and for the record, I recommended WP-DB Backup for a Free Plugin (which I must admit is more out of habit, I really should check out BackWPup recommended by a couple of people), and Vaultpress if you can afford it.

Thanks to Jackie Hole for featuring me!

How To Sort Spotify Playlists into Alphabetical Order

So this week I took the plunge and purchased Spotify Premium. In truth the ads were getting annoying and some of my favourite songs were disappearing due to the over five plays, and do you know what, I like it, I like it a lot.

I like the syncing feature with my phone and the offline mode (which is great when listening to music on your phone as you don’t get charged a metric shit load of data) so I set about creating a playlist featuring songs I listen to regularly, which raided all my previously made playlists (including my Epic 90’s Playlist) and the Manual Link Building playlist that we usually listen to in work.

Unfortunately, on test run one, it was tricky to find songs, as instead of being listed A – Z (like it should be), it listed it in the order I copied & pasted it (I’m not a firm believer in orders of playlist, sorry, I don’t care about music that much).

Anyway, there is a workaround, which I’d thought I’d share (until Spotify implement this feature).

1. Create Your New Playlist – Something Like [Original Playlist Name – A – Z]

In this example, I’ll use my equally epic Welsh Music Playlist. If you don’t know how to do this, then really you’re struggling.

2. Organise Your Original Playlist Into Alphabetical Order

I do this by track (as on Spotify Mobile I find it easier to find stuff). To do this click on the track heading.

3. Copy Your Tracks into the New Playlist

Boom!

As I said, it may be obvious to some people, but it took me ages to figure out. Google wasn’t much help, but now it will (hopefully) be. 🙂

Does Anybody Else Get Fooled, Then Annoyed When Google Does This?

I was going to Tweet this, but then I’ve not had a blog post up for a while.

Lets say I do a Google Search, finding the directions between Witton Albion to Northwich Victoria. I click search and this gets brought up.

Useful, but not exactly what I want. Instead I want Google Maps. And I click on the link highlighted in the green arrow. This what happens:-

The query disappears!

I can’t be the only one who does this, am I? I know you can click on the links down the side, but surely it’ll be more useful preserving the queries between the links on the top of the page.

Anybody? Or just me?

Why Rand Fishkin is More Powerful Than Hulk Hogan….

….and how you can be as well

For those of you who follow me on twitter on almost stalkerish levels, you’ll know that a URL I have analytics access to was retweeted by Hulk Hogan yesterday (not sure why I’m linking to Hogan, if you don’t know who he is you really have lived a sheltered life). I took bets on how many visitors he’d bring to the website. One person – Sam Crocker – gave a suggestion. He was off. Way off.

So, at 7pm on a wet Thursday in Manchester, here’s what the Analytics have shown for the page that was tweeted by Hogan:-

60 visits. In comparison. I got retweeted by Rand Fishkin once and here’s the traffic I got:-

Over 1000 visits! Therefore, Rand Fishkin is more powerful (in terms of online reach) than Hulk Hogan.

How You Can Be Too…..

I guess I should explain about the tweet in question that Hulk Hogan retweeted. The tweet was about Callum Murray. Callum is a 9 year old kid that suffers from Arnold Chiari Malformation. You can read the full story here. It’s long, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s white text on a black background. Long story short the poor little guy is in pain everyday and desperately needs an operation from the only place that specialises in this condition – The Chiari Institute. The Chiari Institute is in New York.

If you can help, please please do. Be it a retweet of this post, or if you can donate cash. Every penny will be greatfully received.

Please Donate Here

As an incentive, if that total rises above £500 by next week, I’ll link on my Twitter to a wrestling match I’ve been in. You can probably find it on youtube, but you’d now be a selfish cunt for searching for it now & not donating.

Thank you.

When One Website Bear Scrapes Another Furry Bear’s Website, That Makes Me A Sad Little Panda

I can’t be the only person who thinks of this when people talk of the Google Panda Update?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5I9TWMA4U8[/youtube]

Who lives in peace ‘neath in Mountain View?
Google Harassment Panda!
Who explains Google harassment to me and you?
Google Harassment Panda!
Don’t cloak that, don’t link there..
Don’t be evil says the silly old bear!
He’s come to teach you what’s right and wrong..
Google Harassment Panda!

In other news: I’ve noticed nothing untoward, so I’m going back to bed/pub/doing what I should be doing.