I wish the pile of bills were dollar bills but unfortunately they aren’t. The overwhelming constant fear of having to go back into a shelter makes me sick to even think about. There is one thing I’ll never understand something about Doctors. When they want you to go in for some tests. You pay for the tests, then you have to pay the Doctor again just to get the results? Quite frankly, I think it sucks.
Donations have crawled to a stop here on the site. I’ve had one donation this week and it was for $1.00 I’m not complaining about the small donation. I realize that every little bit helps. For all I know it could have been this persons last dollar to his name. I still thanked him for his generosity and sent him the rewards pack. Anyone who takes time out of their life like that to make a contribution to me, is cool in my book regardless of the amount.
I made a couple changes to the site last night. I added a search box just encase someone wants to find a certain tutorial or explanation of a module I talked about a few weeks ago. I also added the ability to translate the site into just about any language. I also put a QRcode up. I’ll let the people with smart phones figure out that mystery.
OK on to the Tutorial Thursday post.
Today were going to talk about something I’ve seen happening for quite some time. When someone installs Pligg they usually have a niche in mind. And with that comes a certain target audience. Generally these audiences live in a particular area or even in a single country. For example: Lets say you have a Pligg site dedicated to Curling. Do you think there are a lot of Curling enthusiasts in Uruguay? No? Then why even bother letting them on your site. Chances are 99 times out of a 100 that person is going to be a spammer.
So think about where your audience would be coming from, and better yet, think about where they shouldn’t be coming from. Now I’m not trying to pick on any one country but the main sources of spam come from China, Russia, and the Ukraine. So think for a minute. Are these places your target audience? Most likely not. And chances are you are being spammed by them. So why not block those countries from even having any kind of access to your site. Heck, blocking China alone will cut your spam by almost 50%
So now the question is. How do you block a country?
It’s actually quite easy. In this example we are going to block China. (Sorry China) Head on over to block visitors by country. Select China from the list. Now you will want to select the output format. Pick Apache .htaccess deny from the list. Then click download.
You will be given a text file with all the IP ranges for china all set up and ready to block. All you need to do is open it up in a text editor. I mean a real text editor like Notepad++ or ConText. Then select all, and copy. Now you will want to paste that into your .htaccess file on your server.
And that’s all there is to it.
The current Bounty from earlier this week is still available
The bounty is that if you get me these sunglasses from my wishlist today, I will design, compile, and submit a custom Chrome App for your Pligg site free of charge. Make sure you check the wishlist first to see if they are still listed. If they are not listed it means someone beat you to it.
To give you an idea of how the new Chrome App for Pligg will bring new traffic and brand awareness. Here is a screenshot of App Stats for Balltribe.com which launched last week.
I would also like to thank Thruzt.com for writing an article about me today.
As always, I hope that you will take a moment to make a contribution. You can see why it’s so important to me, and you can get yourself some free stuff and it also feels really good to give. Try it! If you wish to give a tangible item, you can always check out the wishlist.
Tune in tomorrow.
~ ChuckRoast
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