There is a super “Typhoon Mina” currently headed for the Bicol Philippines region. Gloria Gamat from our Battling Arthritis blog .. currently resides in this region. Apparently, this Super Typhoon is expected to hit early tonight (GMT+8) if it doen’t change direction. (couple hours from now)

If the region is hit badly, there may not be electricity and a lot of damage and that could put a log of bloggers from the region without online access .. include Gloria.

BE SAFE GLORIA! OUR HEARTS AND THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU AND YOURS!

We hope everything and everyone will be okay, and that goes to everybody in the region …

View Larger Map

Information Sites:
The Inquirer.net
The Manilla Times
ABS-CBN Interactive News

IMAGE SOURCE: ABS-CBN News

Between June and August 2007 the HART-Empire Network experienced growing pains and downtimes .. due to bandwidth issues, and CPU resource limits. Having many blogs affects the CPU resources by constantly accessing out MySQL database.

I started with a “mega corporate site” with Blacksun.ca, a Canadian server in Saskatchewan .. and was quite happy with them. My PetLvr site was on there, as well as my 1800HART site, the HARTandYVONNE site, the PapillonLvr site and the CorydonClock site. These were the most popular of my sites, and also used the most physical space to store videos, pictures, and other files.

I then obtained a “reseller Pro account” at Ace-Host.net which allowed me to create as many sites that I needed as I was growing and expanding ‘The Empire’. By June 2007, I had over 40 blogs on the reseller Pro account. I have a few friends on the site, but I wasn’t reselling anything. All sites created were for my own personal use.

In May 2007 my PetLvr site reached a combined bandwidth and traffic overage cost that made it financially out of my reach to continue hosting at the Canadian Site. There was a solution – and ultimately, I’m probably paying just as much for a comparable solution now – but, all it would have accomplished was to cover the initial 5 blogs and not leave me any room for growth, or independence in creating new accounts whenever the impulse urged me to do so.

So – June 2007 I moved to … MIDPHASE HOSTING.

Although it’s all related, when I say “Midphase” .. I really mean to include the 3 arms of Midphase.

(1) Midphase Hosting – this is for the individual shared account hosting
(2) An Hosting – this for the larger accounts and virtual private servers (larger shared accounts)
(3) Singlehop Hosting – this if for the dedicated servers and large accounts.

The HART-Empire Network is being hosted on Singlehop Hosting dedicated server right now. I had to upgrade the basic service to increase the RAM to 2GIG .. plus I have opted for a general management package. You can see my costs in my monthly “WooHoo” posts where I post my earnings each month.

Since September 1, 2007 .. everything seems to have been working smoothly, and nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I think my sites are loading fast, and I noone has really reported that any of my sites are hanging up or anything like. So, HI-FIVE to Singlehop for that.

And, it’s mid-November 2007 now .. so I think I feel confident in actually making a recommendation if you are looking for a new host provider .. at least, do not REMOVE Midphase and the other brands from consideration. And, as an affiliated user … they have brought to my attention some deals that may help you in your consideration and thought I would just post the banners in here:

MidPhase Hosting

AN Hosting

SingleHop Hosting

Performancing is celebrating their 2nd year anniversary, Helping Bloggers Succeed, with a massive online treasure hunt.

Check it out, if you are interested in that type of stuff .. it could be fun! You could win prizes! Just click their logo, below .. for all of the juicy details!

Remember that cool amazon plugin from days of old by Rich Manalang? It didn’t work after version 2.0 of wordpress. After a while, he managed to get it ‘sort-of’ work … if you used Firefox and the Visual Editor in your profile.

Well, I hate Firefox and Visual Editor, so I stopped using it altogether.

But .. I was browsing the WP-Amazon Google Group and noticed .. this plugin was broken when the 2.2 version of wordpress came out.

BUT IT CAN WORK ON 2.2 and even WORDPRESS v2.3!

This is thanks to Jacob Lundberg and if you used this program before, at least now you can use it again …

* INSTRUCTIONS:

1) download latest version 2.0 Beta 1.1 of the plugin – from Rich Manalang’s site
2) download and OVERWRITE files from – Jacob Lundberg’s site … that’s the following files:
../plugins/wp-amazon/wp-amazon.php
../plugins/wp-amazon/js/jquery.accordion.pack.js
../plugins/wp-amazon/js/jquery.dimensions.pack.js
../plugins/wp-amazon/js/wp-amazon.js

3) That’s pretty much it.

You have to use Firefox still, in visual editor .. where you can drag and drop product pictures .. and generally if you click the title of the amazon product it will open a new tab and you can copy/paste some of the information related to the product.

Alternatively, what I am using on a few sites .. is the Amazon Widget for randomly selected products (that I picked) that show up .. e.g. cancer.BattlingForHealth.com (see sidebar) .. or, there is certain code you can place in the footer that will try to place code on specifically named titles you might specify around your blog’s content.

I will not be adding this plugin to all of my sites, but it is nice to know that if I wanted to – I can.

Every day my dedicated server automatically sends me a “LogWatch” email run at 4:00am every morning. For the most part, there is not much in there to worry about.

However, on some occassions I receive some details such as the following:

sshd:
Authentication Failures:
unknown (66.221.196.201): 6083 Time(s)
~~
etc

What I do is use my PuTTy program (to access SSH) and post ..

iptables -I INPUT -s 66.221.196.201 -j DROP

… and voila – that IP is permanently banned from accessing anything on my server, or in technical terms denies a specific host from accessing my gateway!

It’s a neat trick my server Tech Support taught me to do – and, it works. I wish I was more technically adept at stuff like this, but with a blog .. it’s easier to post about something and search for it later, than find a stickum on my office wall fall down behind my desk onto the floor!

So, if you knew about this – nothing new to see here~! In the meantime, welcome to my new stickum site! hehe

* I’m keeping track of my HART-Empire Earnings for 2007 Online ..

Here is the link: HART-Empire Network Earnings Spreadsheet Document

September was another great milestone for me and my network .. I decided to consolidate my network into a handful of sites, rather than 50+ sites. This took a little doing for me, actually doing it 3 times I mean, because I had some obstacles in my way in getting everything to work properly with regard to transferring the old domains to the new domains, and the structure involved. I wanted to have mega sites .. with the format .. http://megasite.com/subsite/ but ended up having something like .. http://subsite.megasite.com ..

These are the mega sites created so far:

* http://BattlingForHealth.com >> BATTLING FOR HEALTH >> health and fitness and resources
* http://AndYouWill.com >> AND YOU WILL >> self improvement and related resources
* http://HARTmarket.com >> @ HART Market >> shopping and affiliated product sites and reviews including a newly created site Halloween @ HART Market offering hallowe’en supplies while they last! (I haven’t yet created the portal site for @ HART Market yet)

I will be writing an article documenting how I managed to convert everything hopefully, before the (Canadian) Thanksgiving is over. If you have been following my earnings pages here (the Woohoo! category) .. it

So, needless to say, I consider September 2007 another month of slowdown in my postings and well .. I think you can see this in my September 2007 earnings. I did reach the minimim $100 level payout with Google Adsense this time, but barely. It was mostly due to a splurge in postings over at PetLvr blog, for the Blogging Against Abuse campaign – I was blogging 9.27.2007 to help stop animal cruelty and pet abuse.

The earnings are on an “Accrual” basis, where I’m documenting what I’ve earned, but monies will usually come in the following month, or (if ever) when I reach the minimum threshold for release of my earnings for payment. The expenditures are on a “Cash” basis, as I pay something related to my online earnings, I just load up the spreadsheet and modify it.

Summary of Gross Earnings 2007

* January 2007 – $344.61
* February 2007 – $372.37
* March 2007 – $492.41
* April 2007 – $491.85
* May 2007 – $620.99
* June 2007 – $632.47
* July 2007 – $672.66
* August 2007 – $701.72
* September 2007 – $704.35

** Year-To-Date Gross Earnings (Jan-Sep/2007) – $5,033.49
* Average (YTD) $18.44 per day or, $559.28 per month
*** Still not enough to quit my day job!~

Reflection

The expenses were still high, and despite my revenue for September growed slightly over August, my expenses didn’t leave me with any profits. I continued my experiment with some PLR content and freelance writing costs, and trial and error, I will probably be continuing this for the next few months as I try to find out if there is a balance in easing my time in the content generation part of this business, before next season’s tax season comes upon me (where my meat and gravy is). Although, if I could net about $3,000-$5,000 per month I might reconsider where my gravy really is and shift my efforts with a greater consistency. Currently, for the 3 quarters ended September 30, 2007 .. it would appear that I have NETTED $1,317.65 USD in profits – but, I can assure you – there is no savings account or payal account filled with this profit. Oh, where does the money flow .. let my count thy ways.

I should note that on October 16, 2007 .. will be the 2nd anniversary since I created the HART-Empire Network. Hopefully, all of the consolidation and reorganization will be complete and I can concentrate on the postings and growth and promotion of all sites within this network of sites of mine.

If someone wants to advertise on any of my sites, I am still trying to create a nice advertising page over at HART-Empire-Network.com/advertise/ however, I’m kind of waiting until all the mega sites and domains are converted – so, I can do it right once for all.

Take care
HART (1-800-HART)

I’ve got to admit .. it’s nice to be able to find all the posts by a single author of your blog now .. I actually needed to do this on one of my blogs. Also, in another blog .. it showed me about 150 authors that were created by spammers with the .ru email address!

I should probably watch that more carefully. Hmmm… what to do with all of these spammer subscribers to my blog … Hmmm

I am in the process of consolidation of the HART-Empire Network, to coincide with my 2nd year anniversary as a network of blogs and sites around October 17th ..

Basically, I am relocating separate blogs on separate domains to separate subdomains of a single domain.

Meet: AndYouWill.com

I have moved the following sites and these will be their new permanent addresses effective October 1, 2007

NEW BLOG: >>> http://AndYouWill.com (And You Will)
NEW RSS FEED >>> feeds.feedburner.com/AndYouWill

For all the sites moved, the RSS Feed remains identical to what it used to be, so if you were reading these blogs in your Bloglines or Google Reader .. nothing should change.

All the old sites, have 301 Redirects in place, and should maintain its link popularity for the sponsors (who I have been providing gratuitous links each month to thank) and for the search engines (hopefully!)

And You Will Garden

Old URL / Name – AndYouGarden.com (And You Garden)
New URL / Name – garden.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Garden)

And You Will Have Kids

Old URL / Name – AndYouHaveKids.com (And You Have Kids)
New URL / Name – kids.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Have Kids)

And You Will Marry

Old URL / Name – AndYouMarry.com (And You Marry)
New URL / Name – marry.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Marry)

And You Will Play Poker

Old URL / Name – AndYouPlayPoker.com (And You Play Poker)
New URL / Name – poker.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Play Poker)

And You Will Renovate

Old URL / Name – AndYouRenovate.com (And You Renovate)
New URL / Name – renovate.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Renovate)

And You Will Retire

Old URL / Name – AndYouRetire.com (And You Retire)
New URL / Name – retire.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Retire)

And You Will Travel

Old URL / Name – AndYouTravel.com (And You Travel)
New URL / Name – travel.AndYouWill.com (And You Will Travel)

Coming Soon

And You Will Help
And You Will Graduate
And You Will Laugh
And You Will Succeed
And You Will Network
And You Will Play Hard
And You Will Live
And You Will Die

(okay, I’m not sure about those last two 😀 .. these blogs have not been created yet~

~~~~
PS: If you would like to write for any of these blogs .. please contact HART (at) HART-Empire-Network (dot) com

In case you haven’t yet upgraded to the new WordPress version 2.3 yet …

… the familiar blogroll of people have now been officially replaced with:

Blogroll

* Development Blog
* Documentation
* Plugins
* Suggest Ideas
* Support Forum
* Themes
* WordPress Planet

And What Do I Think About The Above?

Maybe someone can explain to me why my readers will want me to link to a URL where I can get plugins for this blog or possibly different themes .. does wordpress really think I would just add any new plugin or change my theme because of a link in my sidebar?

* The theme links could have ended up on the Presentation screen page
* The plugin links could have ended up on the Plugin screen page
* All the rest could have ended up on the Dashboard.

In my humble opinion of course.maybe I should .. SUGGEST it!

It’s one of those things .. I wish I was cloned!

I have two online projects currently taking a lot of my time. One of them is the attempting to consolidate the blogs on my network into a smaller structure. I have been working on the “Battling-Series” of blogs first.

What I would like to do is move each of my “Battling” blogs into a subfolder location of an entirely new domain. It’s easy enough to transfer domains to another location on the same server …

How I was Moving Blogs To Another Domain Subfolder

1) Backup/FTP Files of old blog to local computer
2) Backup MySQL database
3) Options/General/ and change both the WordPress address (URL): and Blog address (URL): to the new URL
4) Update (and you will get booted out)
5) Restore/FTP all the files of the old blog to the new location
6) Login/Options/Permalink and update!

* Generally – in most cases that works. Here’s the problem.

When I created the MySQL database for the original blog, if I named the account (as an example) as “stress1” and it was created in my server account “stress” which is where Battling-Stress.com residess .. then the cPanel created a MySQL database know as stress_stress1. MySQL databases are kind of below all of the accounts on a server and available to everybody. I guess that’s why they associate both the account and the name because well .. let’s face it – if everybody had a MySQL database called wordpress there would be lots of conflicts!

And, if my new location account is called “health” … although I want a new database called “health_stress1” .. the blog will still work adequately using “stress_stress1” database in my health account.

* But – what if I want to delete “stress” account?

My initial plan was to keep all the extra domains ‘live’ for at least another year, to the end of September 2008. This way, the new blog should be well on its way to being a stand alone blog. When the year was up, I would just delete the old account, and not renew the domain. Overall, I’d probably be saving about $500 per year just on domain renewals! Someone advised me that even if I don’t use the original domain, I should always renew these domains so I don’t ruin the ‘brand’ of “Battling-Stress” .. which, is pretty good I think (even though I am biased) . and apparently there are bulk renewal opportunities that can even make it cheaper for me to renew everything at once, once a year or for several years in advance.

But – here’s my biggest worry. In a year from now, I might just say … “Nah, no thanks! And delete the “stress” account from my server like an impulse shopper, and just do it. If I do that, then when I delete the old cPanel account – EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT also gets deleted.

That’s right – even the “stress_stress1” database that this new “health” account would be using. Everything would be deleted and I would be s.o.o.l. (sh*t out of luck)

* And that’s not all!

I’m not too talented to do this myself, and having problems getting the 301 redirect to work from a /domain/ to a /domain/subfolder/ .. Every month I have been giving sponsors a permanent link in my blog with my thank-you posts. I want the link popularity to still be good for them! Yet, the best I seem to be doing is re-routing everything back to the root. I have enough money sitting in my paypal to pay someone to do this for me .. but, with a lot of domains and blogs I want to fix, the multiple just isn’t there and I can’t afford it anymore. So – I’ve tried this 3 times already to no avail.

I have moved 2 Battling Series blogs over .. 1 small and 1 medium size.

http://Battling-Diabetes.com >> http://BattlingForHealth.com/diabetes/
http://Battling-Stress.com >> BattlingForHealth.com/stress/

I might have to try again and delete those subfolders .. and instead try it with subdomains – like..

Stress.BattlingForHealth.com
Diabetes.BattlingForHealth.com

What do you think of using subdomains instead of subfolders for blogs? I hate them personally! But, as far as I know – I think that might be the best way to transfer everything over. Plus, I can have addon domains to it where (i think) might solve my risk of deleting the only MySQL database.

It’s a learning curve when you don’t know what you are doing. Until I’m ready, in the meantime, I am reluctant to keep posting on these old sites until I’ve given up. Otherwise, I’ll have to do another export etc.

Hopefully I will fix this thing before the weekend.