Aaron Donohoe

I’d just like to point out, that this post is my personal opinion and experience and doesn’t reflect whatsoever on FireStats - just a disclaimer so the nice people at FireStats don’t go taking my house for my bad mouthing of them

Anyway, I’ve taken the decision to uninstall FireStats from my blogs, I’ve taken this decision after encountering numerous problems with the plugin, mainly with the load it puts on my database and subsequently my website.

Other errors included fatal errors resulting in having to reinstall the plugin - my idea of a stats plugin is it records information over a long period and emits graphs etc… However, it isn’t that effective when you’ve to often reinstall the bloody thing!

It also doesn’t record some visits, I’ve checked this out by logging on to the blog on a friends computer and upon returning home it hadn’t logged the visit - where it logs most actions from my IP and certainly others, it often fails to record some.

I’ve decided to resort back to the ol’ reliable Google Analytics - I’ve found over the time period it has performed well, as I’ve kept it active as I have with FireStats.

Don’t go flaming me saying I should have installed the latest version etc…, well infact I have tried the latest version as well as the BETA version and found them both to have the same problems. Don’t get me wrong, FireStats is a great concept, just needs to fix those bugs, and until then I’ll be sticking with Google Analytics!

Been quiet around here lately - not much has been happening in my humdrum routine. So it’s time to rely on the ould favourite of blog tools, and various little widgets to keep you lot happy and content. I was reading Vincent Chow’s blog, and came across The Blog Readability Test, which basically scans your blog, websites, or MySpace profile of it’s literature and grades it on how readable it is, and what educated standard you must have to be able to understand it’s entirity. Of course it’s not accurate, but it’s good fun all the same

I just hate it when nothing interesting happens, makes my life seem boring - most of my ramblings I’m afraid are too inappropriate for the blog…or are boring (IMO) to others. So bear with me during the dry spell

I came across this great little widget known as ‘lijit‘ a play on the word ‘legit’ me thinks, a must have for all social bloggers! It’s a widget for your blog, that allows people to search and find out most about your online presence (such as Flickr, Digg, Technorati, Twitter etc….). A handy little function in my opinion, as it allows your users to find out more information on you, and for you for find out information on your visitors or other websites/blogs you frequent.

As well as gathering all your social network and blogging sites, it also gathers your blogroll and tells you, your blogrollee’s Twitter, Flickr, Digg etc… Handy no?

It’s closely connected with MyBlogLog as far as I can gather, so that must mean Yahoo have their foot in the door if they’ve not invited themselves around for tea already.

But still, well worth checking out and tinkering around with! Lijit! - Visit my profile over at Lijit here

I’m still only getting to grips with all these blogging tricks of the trade, Pinging was a new one to me - and still is! Basically, it’s when a blogger (me!) creates a new post, a tool sends a signal to ‘Ping Servers’ which compile and generate lists of updated blog posts - which inturn lists them on Google
Still confused? There’s nothing really to it, as there is a list of blog ‘pinging’ services which you include into your blog, that when you make a new post inturn will automatically send the ping signals to these servers - saves you doing it manually via Ping-o-Matic, and other services like that.

I found this list off the net (can’t actually remember it’s been so long!), so I’m not claiming copyrights, or any of that jazz of the content, I’m simply raising awareness of it
Basically you:

1. Login to the Admin panel of your Wordpress install (/wp-admin.php)
2. Select Options - Writing Options -Update Services
3. There should already be a url inplace in it by default: http://rpc.pingomatic.com
4. Replace with the following list of urls:

• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://api.feedster.com/ping
• http://api.moreover.com/ping
• http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://ping.amagle.com/
• http://ping.bitacoras.com
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://ping.feedburner.com
• http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
• http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
• http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
• http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
• http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
• http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
• http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
• http://rpc.newsgator.com/
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
• http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
• http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
• http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
• http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
• http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
• http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
• http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
• http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
• http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
• http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
• http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/
• http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
• http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

You’re done! Your blog will now be automatically be ‘pinged’!

Oh, BTW, Alexa Rank has updated AGAIN to 1,338,566