Automated Blog Carnival Submissions in 4 Easy Steps - Xingla Pro Review

If you're not running a blog as part of your online business, then you're really missing out.  Not only are they a great way to provide good content to your customers, but there are also some fantastic ways to get traffic to your site that you'll need a blog to take advantage of.  One of these methods is by submitting to blog carnivals. Here's a tool that makes this even easier, but first… Read more

Popularity: 4% [?]

Audible.com Review

I guess you could say that the bottom line for this review is that I absolutely LOVE Audbile.com.

One of my goals towards the end of 2006 and moving forward into 2007 was to read more.  With so much garbage on TV and in the media, I felt it was important to focus on information that could help me grow, both personally and in my business.  And if you're a bit of a slow reader like me, then you can probably already see how valuable it is to have books delivered in audio format versus paper and ink (though some of the best books warrant both formats).

Now I have to admit, there are few drawbacks to what Audible has to offer.  It can be pretty easy to get distracted or not be fully in tune with the audiobook you're listening to.  Also, some books just lend themselves better to being in print, especially if there are lots of checklists, steps or exercises throughout the book.  Audible takes care of some of this by giving you PDF downloads with this type of info, but for many audiobooks, that option isn't available, making the print version a must have.  In addition, though Audible offers both abridged and unabridged versions for many of their books, the unabridged versions are sometimes prohibitively long.  I mean seriously, who's going to EVER finish an audiobook that last 20+ hours?

Despite from those drawbacks, there are a few reasons why I like Audible so much.  First, I can multitask a lot easier when I'm taking in an audio book rather than reading.  Reading is a very active pursuit…you have to be totally focused.  With audiobooks from Audible.com, I can be working out, driving to or from work, taking care of things around the house, or any number of things while still getting great info from one of the thousands of books available from their site.  To be honest, this was my saving grace when I was living in Korea during one of my assignments in the Air Force.  How else do you make it through a 13 hour flight (4 times!)?

Another thing I like about Audible.com is that it's brain dead simple to get the audiobooks into Apple ITunes or my Apple IPod.  It used to be more of a challenge, requiring a different program and not exactly a seamless process.  Now, as soon as you purchase your audiobooks, it asks you if you want to download them.  As long as you have ITunes set up as your player for your audiobooks, you're all set and they'll download right into your ITunes library. 

I'm firmly convinced that the combination of the IPod with a service like Audible makes for one of the most powerful learning environments you can get for your money.  If you don't have one, or a similar MP3 player, you're doing yourself a disservice and should really consider getting one.

So I'm sure all that sounds great, but you're probably wondering about the cost.  Well before we cover than, first consider the fact that often times if you wanted to get an audio version of a book from the book store, say on CDs or tapes, you'd probably pay more than the cost of the print version of the book.  It could be $30 - $40 for a book on CD.

However, Audible.com makes purchasing audiobook super affordable.  They have a couple of packages available which vary based on monthly fee and number of audiobooks you can download per month.

The package I'm on is about $30 per month and that gets you 2 credits each month.  Your typical audiobook will only cost you one credit so that's 2 audiobooks per month.  And it doesn't matter how much the retail price of the audiobook is.  So whether it's a $9.95 audioibook or one that costs $29.95, you're only docked one credit. 

There are a few exceptions, such as some of the foreign language materials, since they're so much more expensive, with retail prices in the hundreds of dollars.  So those might cost more credits.  But for the most part, the one-book, one-credit model is pretty consistent.

You can also roll over your monthly credits.  So if you want one of those more expensive items that requires more credits, you can "save up" for it.  But it might be cheaper just to purchase it outright, depending on the cost.  And that's the other option you have.  Instead of using your credits, you can simply purchase audiobooks.  So if you've already used your credits for the month and find another audiobook you just can't wait to have, of course Audible would be more than happy to give the chance to purchase it.

So all in all, I'd have to say I'm thoroughly pleased with Audible.com.  If being able to consume more content at the speed of sound appeals to you or you'd like to be able to breeze through entire books in a matter of hours, I recommend you check out Audible.com and give them a try.

Popularity: 6% [?]

SEO Elite

SEO Elite is an incredibly powerful tool to have in your arsenal if you’re intersted in getting organic search traffic from the major search engines and you’re willing to actually use it.

There’s nothing magical about what it does and it’s certainly not "black hat". However it’s so much easier using SEO Elite to optimize your site that it’s just crazy not to own it. My only gripe is that I sometimes find it unintuitive to use, especially saving and opening projects. However, that might be more a case of me not using it as much as I should or there could be some user-interface improvements that might be good to add to the next version. I still wouldn't give it up but I’ll let you be the judge. Read more

Popularity: 7% [?]

CPanelSiteSaver: Automated CPanel Backup and Restore Tool

I just wanted to share a quick bit of feedback on a resource I found that you might want to check out.

The Problem: I lost one of my Wordpress sites when my hosting company botched a transfer to a new server. So I've been looking for a way to back up my stuff. I finally realized that there's a backup function built into CPanel but you have to go in and do the backup for each site (both the directories and the WP database). I also didn't know how to restore that info, which is just as important. Then I did some research on Google and found CPSiteSaver. And the short story is that this program rocks!

What it does: CPSiteSaver automates the backup function already present in Cpanel and allows you to schedule backups that are saved in a "ready-to-reinstall-if-things-go-haywire" format. First, you setup a folder on your local machine (say “Website Backups” for instance) and it creates subfolders underneath that for each of the sites. Within each site’s folder, it will save the main files (…/public_html or …/www stuff) and it will create another folder for that site’s database (or multiple databases if you have other stuff besides WP). Second, you setup profiles for each site, specifying the CPanel login info, database name and some other stuff. Result: Now you can do manual backups at the push of a button or set scheduled backups.

How well does it do it: Well, after I got this and tested it, I also decided to ditch my web host. Long story but it made for a good test. It was pretty straightforward, backing up before I changed the DNS settings, then uploading the backup files and backup database to the corresponding domain on the new host (this is done via CPanel…there's no mass-reinstall feature built into the program). There were a few snags that I ran into so I'll share them here:

• When you restore, you have to setup a user in MySQL (the same username and password as the old installation) before Wordpress will work. If you use something like WPManagerDX to mass install your Wordpress, download the wp-config.php file and open it in a text editor. You'll find the username and password there.
• When you install on the transferred domain, use the same username for CPanel. That username affects the username of your WP database (it'll be something like mysite_wrdp1). So you could screw things up if the names aren't the same. I guess that username is present all throughout the databse, so if you change your CPanel login, you’ll have to change that username within the database too. Just more work.
• If you decide to reinstall WP on an entirely new domain, you'll have to open your database file in a text editor and change all references to the old domain to the new domain. This is a simple find-and-replace. You can use WinZip to open the .gz files that CPSiteSaver creates.

*** A Word of Warning!!! ***

Be absolutely, 100%, bet-your-life-on-it sure that you enter the correct database name when setting up your profiles. CPSiteSaver will download empty or non-existent databases and you won't know you typed in the wrong thing until you go to restore it…and find nothing there! Ask me how I know this

Other than making that mistake a couple of times, I've had absolutely no problems with this program. It's a dream if you have multiple WP sites and relieves you of one more thing on the "to-do" list. And if you have tons of WP sites, the last thing you want to have happen is have all that data get lost. Trust me, it's not fun. I suggest you pick up a copy of this program ASAP!

To your online success,

Popularity: 14% [?]