MediaTemple’s Database exploit and why I’m Glad I left

I had been a huge advocate of MediaTemple, even sent clients there to host their sites on their servers. But recently when it came time to renew my virtual server I shopped around and found an amazing deal with GoDaddy. Four times the server for the price I was paying with MediaTemple. I could have a 4 GB server for cheaper than what I was paying for a 1 GB server on Media Temple. And because my need was for only 2 GB it was like a birthday present to save $64 a month and still have 1 GB more RAM than before. Not to mention a new version of Plesk and cheaper backups.

But the last straw came when we found out a few of our clients sites had been infected by hackers. MediaTemple seems to want to blame WordPress and hackers figuring out passwords–I can only tell you that I use a password software and 12 digit passwords with special characters and numbers. And if WordPress was exploitable why haven’t the 20 sites I host on GoDaddy infected too? Or on anyone else’s servers. This was a MediaTemple exploit. Hackers somehow infiltrated the gridservers on MediaTemple’s servers and were able to access databases. That is very scary.

So, if you end up seeing this code in your WordPress hosted site on MediaTemple: http://ao.euuaw.com/9
You better get it off. Immediately. And then switch hosting providers. Sorry, but I went from huge MediaTemple fan to detractor. No matter what people say about GoDaddy, their virtual server is rock solid and outperforms MediaTemple’s hands down. I’m far from a GoDaddy advocate–but this time they’ve got a solid product.

Redbox Coupons

Usually Redbox scores with smart emails about upcoming rentals and interesting tidbits about movies. But I thought the latest email was a bit odd: Rent 8 movies in August and get one rental free. It’s not that free isn’t a good thing, especially if you will already rent 8 movies over 31 days, its that you are only saving $1 while spending $8. That seems like a lot of work to rent and watch 8 movies to get one for free.

So I did a quick search and found a website dedicated to Redbox codes. So why wait on Redbox to give you a discount when someone already figured it out.

Social Media for Credit Unions

In September I’ll be presenting to credit unions from all over the state at an annual conference. The topic is social media. It’s a hot topic no doubt. This will make it a half-dozen speeches I’ve made on this topic alone. And each one has to be unique to the industry.

Social media for credit unions or banks, for that matter, is interesting. If I was in the market for a loan or a new bank it would be interesting to gauge the personality of that credit union or bank. It would also be great to follow along with them on social media for possible deals. Sometimes the best deals come when you aren’t necessarily looking for them. If you are flexible then you can get great deals, and are ready to pounce, you often win.

One recent example of this is my upcoming trip to France. We were following Trip Advisor for deals on flights to multiple cities. One day I got an alert that airfare was half-off. The catch: it had to be on a specific day and for 7 days. It was too good to pass up and now I’m heading to Paris. Credit Unions could really win using a similar concept.

How to make WordPress 3 multiuser

You’d think that the WordPress team would be all over touting the power of the new WordPress multiuser. It’s a huge bonus to anyone who uses WordPress. It’s amazing. It’s not documented.

So want to know how to do it?
Here are the steps:
1. Jump into the wp-config.php file and add the following code to the end of your code:
/** Enable or disable Worpress Multi-site features **/
define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);

2. Now, jump into your dashboard and go to Tools and then go to Network. Just follow the instructions on there.

3. One important thing is to find out if your host provider will allow for you to place a wildcard (*) DNS for your subdomains. If you can’t then just use directories which is easy enough.

4. You will need to make sure your .htaccess file is writeable or nothing will work.

5. Enjoy!

Google SKtool can help with adWords and SEO

Have you ever used Google’s SKTool? It’s simple to use and extremely useful when you want to know what words you should be bidding on or what words are showing up for your site via search.

What Google says about SKTool: “The Search-based Keyword Tool generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren’t currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns. The tool goes one step further by tailoring the keywords and other data (such as the amount of competition for the keyword, the suggested bid, and more) based on your language or country/territory settings.”

It’s important to know that this tool does a few very interesting things:
1. It Displays a list of relevant search queries that have occurred on Google.com and are keyword ideas that are relevant to your site, but aren’t necessarily based on your site.

2. The tool compiles a list of search queries relevant to your website that don’t already appear in your AdWords campaigns.

3. Offers keywords potential customers are using when they search Google for your products in your language or region, you may have a better chance of reaching your target audience.

So how do you take advantage? It’s all really simple:
1. Go to: http://www.google.com/sktool/
2. Put in your (or your clients) url
3. You can put in keywords or phrases you’d like to show up for or leave this blank. I often leave it blank first to see what I get.
4. Even if you think you know keywords and put some in you might not help yourself–instead you might end up with a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you put in a bad keyword then Google will focus on that–good or bad. So leave it blank unless you are 100% sure–and even then leave it blank the first time.
5. Export the terms you deem closest to keywords that you’d associate with your site.
6. If you are using keywords for AdWords you now know some great keywords to use and a suggested bid price
7. If you are using keywords for SEO then start writing articles based around these keywords.

How to change your Primary Contact Info on the Droid Incredible

Perhaps there are a few people out there in the world who will suffer from the madness of trying to change a contacts primary information. Recently I moved from an iPhone to the Droid Incredible and found that many of the functions that are on the iPhone don’t translate to the Droid Incredible. Changing primary contact information is one of those.

What I’ve come to realize is that when in doubt about how to do something just press on whatever thing you want to change and just hold it. So, if you want to change a person’s primary contact number just press down on the number you want to be the primary contact number and then a screen will pop-up. Just press set to primary number. And you are done. Hope this saves some people a bit of grief.

Microsoft Office is Online with Skydrive

Earlier today I wrote about how Microsoft was going to be competing with Google Docs and then I got an email from Microsoft. Because I’m a Office 2010 Beta user I’ve got access to Office online via something called SkyDrive.

It’s surprisingly good actually. It isn’t as robust as Word the software, but its 95% of what you would need to use every day. It’s easily as good, if not better than Google Docs. It doesn’t export PDFs, but you can download a Word document. You can also have access to a slimmed down version of Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. And yes, you can share!

It appears this is only in beta and only available to those who have downloaded Office 2010 Beta–which is a shame. My guess is that a lot of people would want to jump on board. Microsoft should take a cue from Google and give limited betas to your friends.

One extra request: Allow exporting as a PDF.

The killer app: If you could use Outlook for free and it was similar to what comes with the enterprise Exchange server and Microsoft might actually be able to put up a fight with Google.

Microsoft to bring Office Suite online

According to The Financial Times Microsoft is going to bring Office online like Google has with Google Docs.

I happened to stumble onto the article after doing a search to see if it was already being offered and oddly enough the news was released today. I think that Microsoft actually has a great opportunity here for the exact reason I was searching to see if they offered it–Google Docs pretty much sucks.

Sure, Google Docs is getting better but their tools would be competitive with Microsoft Works circa 1997. The offerings are weak and the deliver isn’t much better. A document isn’t much more than writing an email in Gmail. There is one reason why I use Google Docs: sharing. If Microsoft incorporates that and programs like Word, Powerpoint and Excel respond as quickly as Google Docs then they might have a winner. I’m surprisingly excited about the prospects. Lets just hope that Microsoft delivers. And its free.

Zazzle is a pretty surprising disruptive innovation

Today my new test business cards arrived from Zazzle. Where they perfect? No. They were only $15. It was a sort of trial because I didn’t think they could possible be good–so I ordered the cheapest set possible. But now that I’m convinced they are legit and can do a good job. So, its time to order a box of linens and do it the right way. That’ll be around $24 for 100 business cards.

Sure, you can get 500 business cards from a printer for $125 and they are usually pretty great–that price is if you design the cards. But I don’t need 500 and most print shops charge you just about the same regardless if you print 100 or 500 because they have to set the plates or whatever. Yawn.

Almost no one needs 500 unless they are going to a conference, and even then you may not need that many. Now I can buy 100 cards for $25 and order them the next time I need them. And not have a huge box of business cards sitting around waiting to see if my business will last as long as my box of cards.

Sorry Mr. Print Shop. Zazzle is kicking your tail.

GNC owns Email Marketing

I bought some vitamins and hesitated to give GNC my email address–because I hate to get spammed by silly things like Sears or Sony. But GNC does something different, literally every day they have a deal of the day and great sales. I’ve never opened emails on a daily basis from many companies, but GNC sucks me in. They could teach a lot of companies a thing or two about email marketing. And for those who think email marketing is dead–just go to GNC and you’ll see that it doesn’t have to be.