I recently had a situation where the admin account on a WordPress installed site got removed or merged into another user account. Obviously WordPress doesn’t allow you to create new admin accounts outside the CMS so I was stuck and locked out from doing anything. Thankfully after much searching I found this great blog post which gave a clear step-by-step instructions on how to resolve the issue using phpMyAdmin. Thankfully the issue was resolved in less than 5 minutes and with no hassle. Well worth bookmarking the article as you may need it one day.
Just canceled my trail access to the new Times website. They predictably made it impossible to find information on stopping my account so I just emailed them in the end. I got the below reply.
Dear Mr Flood,
Thank you for your email. As per your request, we can now confirm that we have cancelled your Direct Debit, and no further monies will be debited from your account.
Kind Regards
John
Times+ Customer Services
All very efficient but…… Considering they need to look after paid members you would have thought the customer retention methods would have been better. I was only on the £1/month trial to see if the content was different and engaging enough to consider paying for. Surely it would be a good idea for these kinds of emails to contain some kind of extended trail offer to keep me on the site?
I think I might have continued the trial if the access rate was low enough.
I’m a massive fan of Joomla, the open source content management system that I think compares to the likes of Drupal and WordPress. I’ve been using Joomla for years on various projects but recently WordPress (version 3) and Drupal (upcoming version 7) seem to be steaming ahead in terms of functionality and user take-up.
The Joomla team have been busy working on version 1.6 of Joomla with beta versions being posted on a weekly basis. One of the best Joomla news sites have put together a fantastic infographic containing some of the best new features that Joomla 1.6 offers. I’m so happy that Joomla now contains nested categories and not sections!
I’ll be installing Joomla 1.6 once released and will let you know how it compares to this blog platform (WordPress).
Thankfully my company has a great spam system. Sometimes though you get a few emails that slip through, especially if they have been sent personally. I got the below email from a London based email marketing company today. I’ve never heard of the company in question or spoken to the person that sent the email.
What made me chuckle was the sentence:
We don’t believe in the notion of “spray and pray” we very much work with our clients to make sure they get the most out of their email campaigns with the focus on driving revenue through the email channel.
Funny then that when they sent out this acquisition email they were most definitely were playing a game of “spray and pray”. Classic.
Got a couple of emails through the contact form on this site the other day. See below:
Kent Cornwall
Message body:
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.
All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.
Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal
and
Travis Crane
Message body:
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.
All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.
Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.
I’ve received emails through the site before asking me if I would take money to place links to external websites but never anything like this. Obviously no search company can promise that it’ll get you onto the first page of Google.
Now I’ve posted this message here I’ll write back to the individuals (I think they are the same person) and update you later as to what happens and what crazy things they promise/try to charge.
At the end of 2008 I mentioned a a UK based online financial management tool much like mint.com over in the states. I thought it was a great idea and used it for over 6 months to manage and budget some of my accounts. I stopped using it eventually as it couldn’t work with some of my accounts and there was no sign of change. Shame then that I got the the below email from them this morning.
So after months of rumor the Apple iPad was finally released to the public by Steve Jobs in usual style. I’ve never seen so much online hype surrounding the new device and to be fair much of it was deserved. Apple must have been rubbing their hands together as all they needed to do is plant a few seeds and the community took over giving the keynote event and product more coverage than any ad campaign could manage. As I said most of the hype was deserved but I think unlike the iPhone there isn’t too much revolutionary here in terms of product. Yes the software and actual design look amazing but it’s still roughly the same hardware platform as the iPhone just bigger.
I’ve just watched most of the keynote speech thinking how great it is and how much it’ll do for me but after I had time to reflect I honestly can’t see myself using it in my daily routine.I’ve put together 5 simple reasons why the Apple iPad won’t work for me. [continue reading...]
Last week I recycled my old iPhone 3G as I’ve just upgrade ed to the new Google Nexus One (blog post coming shortly). I managed to get £190 from fonebank then I got the below email from Envirophone (who I’ve ued beforE) which I thought was not only very timely but was extremely well written. Click the image for a large picture.
This post isn’t really meant to get across any information or anything like that, I just though the email was great and it needed sharing.
Google have released ‘Near Me Now’ to users accessing the search pages on mobile devices. The pretty cool feature will let you search for local restaurants, coffee shops and bars all based on your current location. Google needs to be everywhere when it comes to local search and once again they have released something which keeps them at the miles ahead of the competition.
Was just reading the official Google blog and noticed that they have released some interesting and somewhat astonishing facts about their search platform.
Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than one query per day:
7 out of 10
Proportion of Google users in the United States making more than 10 queries per day:
1 out of 7
Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3
Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5
Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia*
This is the personal blog of Nick Flood. I am the Product Manager of whatcar.com
at Haymarket Consumer Media. This blog covers my experiences, learnings and views on all things related to digital publishing.
The views expressed and information presented on this blog are entirely my own and not associated with my employer in anyway.
