Luckily, jQuery is prepared to handle this!  Good’ol jQuery.

jQuery has a “noConflict” mode, that will let all the jQuery content to run without using the $.  You just state that you are running in noConflict mode in your first line, then instead of using $(function(){…}, you replace the $ with jQuery, so it looks like this: jQuery(function(){….

Here’s a full example.

<script>

jQuery.noConflict(); // Tell jQuery you are going with noConflict mode.

jQuery(function(){ // Replace the $ with jQuery
jQuery(’div’).doStuff();
});

</script>

This will allow the other library to use the $ without conflict.

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The Wordpress whitescreen of death!

The Wordpress white screen indicates that there is a problem with your current theme.  Unfortunately at this point, you can’t go change the theme to unbreak it, since the theme selector is just going to spit out PHP errors.  See the problem is, the database still has entries pointed to the “current” theme, which is either bugged, incomplete or gone.

Here are the symptoms:

• All Wordpress pages, posts, tags etc. bring up a blank white screen.
• There is no code or html output.
• The Wordpress Admin area still works. (which is a good thing).
• The Wordpress theme selector (Appearance -> Themes) page won’t load and spits out PHP errors.

What to look for:

Check to make sure your theme files are still in place.  Deleting the current themes directory, renaming the theme directory or moving the current themes directory to a new location will all cause this error.

If files were moved or deleted, the best thing to do is to just put things back where they were, switch to another theme, then do your changes or removal of the old theme.

If that’s not possible, you can go manually change the current active theme in the database.  The current template data is stored in the ‘options’ table, option_name “template”.  Just change it to the folder name of another theme.  It’s not pretty, but it works and will get you back up and running.

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Here’s the “official” announcement.

Together with their families

Danielle Gugeler
&
Cory Sessions

would like to announce their marriage on
Wednesday, the 8th of July in Nauvoo, Illinois.

There will be a reception on July 7, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
at the LDS chapel in Mt. Vernon.
380 Lincoln Highway, Mt. Vernon, Iowa 52314

There will be an open house with the new couple July 31, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
at the LDS chapel at 965 W 2000 N, Orem, UT 84057.
This will be a barbecue, so come hungry!

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Now that I have a little group of growing sites, it’s been interesting to see the results.

Some sites seem to just take off. Getting rankings and traffic is pretty easy with them. Other sites take a while before they go anywhere, then they start moving at a moderate pace. Then there seems to be sites that for all you do they just won’t go anywhere and you’re stuck with just a couple hundred visitors a month.

Internet marketing and SEO is a rather interesting thing.  You can talk about it and read about it all day long, but staying at that academic level really won’t help you learn it.  When you dive in and start building sites and driving traffic to them then you really start learning how things work.  You start to see patterns emerging and you get those “A Ha!” moments.  You find out what works and what doesn’t.

So, time to go build another site.

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Today you can see a pair of glowing eyes.

If you’re a code nerd, you can go look at the .css file.  If you do you’ll see several lines are commented out.  If you piece those images back together, you get a picture of … something.  No clue what that is supposed to be.

I have a strange feeling that the image from the css has nothing to do with whatever they plan on announcing…  most likely it’s a Blizzard joke.

Update:

Well, it turns out that all this was for Diablo 3! While I have no idea how the above images are related to the Diablo games in any way… It’s still cool! Time for some hack and slash!

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There are 9 of us in our office.  7 of us would prefer to have the lights off.  2 people want them on and blindingly bright.  So in true democratic fashion, the lights stay on all day as the majority are forced to capitulate to the loudly voiced demands of the minority.

Apparently in a Democracy all you have to do is yell and complain louder than anyone else and you get your way.  And that is how minority rules.

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Our company had a PPC training today, which interestingly, all the SEO guys attended  (I think we are all secretly jealous cause they get instant traffic).  It was really really good.  I picked up a lot of things I didn’t know about PPC.   I have been running PPC ads on a personal project for a while now, but today showed me that I really didn’t know what I was doing.

Later Jared, one of the PPC managers, sat down with me and went though my account.  He was very polite and didn’t openly mock me, to much.  It pretty much came down to: you should delete that campaign and start over.  I was really resistant to that, until he showed me the report that tells you which keywords people are searching when they clicked on your ad.  I was shocked.   I have a ring related website and I was getting searches for rings for piercings in places you don’t want to talk about in civilized conversation.  I didn’t even know you could pierce some of these places…  *shudder*.  Anyway, it basically came down to, 2/3rds of my money was going straight out the window on keywords that had nothing to do with what I was trying to promote.  Part of that was a mysterious “Unknown” section that Google wouldn’t even tell us about that amounted to about 500 clicks.  I guess you doesn’t realize how much you don’t know until someone shows you.

So taking Jared’s advice, I promptly chucked my old campaign and started over.  We’ll see how it goes now.

Below are some of the great PPC related things I picked up today.  Enjoy.

Exact Match Keywords – [keyword keyword]

Your ad only shows up when that exact phrase is typed in.  No more, no less.

• Exact phrase only
• In that exact order

Examples: [red tennis shoes]

Your ad shows up if the search is: ‘red tennis shoes’.

But not for: ‘buy red tennis shoes’ or ‘tennis shoes red’ or anything else.

Phrase Match – “keyword keyword”

This seems to be the one that gets used most commonly.  Also use in conjunction with negative keywords.

• Plural and singular keywords are separate and distinct keywords.
• Keyword order specific

Examples: “red tennis shoes”

Ad shows up for: ‘buy red tennis shoes’, ‘red tennis shoes buy now’

Ad won’t show up for: ‘tennis shoes red’ (out of order), ‘red tennis shoe’ (singular)

Broad Match – keyword keyword

Your ad shows up for the entered keyword, as well as pretty much anything Google deems slightly related.

If you use this, good luck.  This is what I was using, without knowing what it would actually do to my campaign.

• Not order specific
• Not plural or singular specific
• Not order specific

Examples: red tennis shoes

Ad shows up for: ‘buy red tennis shoes’, ‘red tennis shoes buy now’, ‘bobs red tennis shoes’, ‘tennis shoes’, ‘red shoes’, ’shoes’, ‘red’, ’socks’ (cause they are feet related too), ‘Nike’ (cause it’s a type of shoe) etc.  The list is huge.

Ad won’t show up for: ‘Grandma’s knitting’.  Pretty much something completely unrelated.  Cause if it can find a link, it will try to put your ad there.

So yeah, it was a good day.  I learned I had been loosing money for a long time.  But on the bright side, I got to learn about the problem before launching any major projects! 

Oh, and on a side note, it snowed this morning here in Utah.  It’s frigg’in May 1st and its still snowing!  Damn this global warming!  It’s going to freeze us all to death!

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I like that.   Now I need to get my code to show up like that. 

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Note: The election part of this rant has been removed because I am so tired of hearing about politics and feel that the other half of the message has a very important point to make.

Starting quote:

What do these stories all have in common?

• A woman who says she lost more $1 million gambling in Atlantic City sues some casinos for $20 million, claiming they should’ve stopped her compulsive gambling.
• People who bought houses they couldn’t afford with loans they didn’t understand want their lenders to change the terms.
• Congress authorizes a war and then tries everything it can think of to get out of it.
• Our country gets addicted to oil and then blames OPEC when it doesn’t like the price.

These stories prove how personal responsibility has all but vanished in America, and our government is leading the way.

Remember the kid from that interminable 1980s commercial whose father caught him using drugs? The father incredulously asked, “Who taught you how to do this stuff?” and the kid responded, “You, alright? I learned it by watching you.”

Well, we are that kid and our government is that drug-using father who doesn’t think that anyone notices his bad habits.

Our government is leading us by example, and I don’t mean that in a good way. For years, it has spent us into oblivion, mortgaging our future for programs we can’t afford, and Americans have happily followed suit, running up credit card bills and home equity loans for things they never should’ve bought.

Unfortunately, we’re also learning something else from our government: how to avoid taking responsibility for our actions.

From Eliot Spitzer’s alleged hooker craze to the revelation that Arnold Schwarzenegger commutes to work in a large private jet even as he preaches the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, there’s never been a shortage of “do what I say, not what I do” hypocrites in politics.

…

If you want to talk about disenfranchised voters, then let’s talk about why just 17 percent of Americans have a positive view of Congress. Let’s talk about why we still have wide open borders despite most Americans wanting them sealed. Let’s talk about why we keep selling out our sovereignty and our security by borrowing billions of dollars from-less-than friendly countries, such as China.

Americans aren’t disenfranchised because our leaders won’t count votes in a couple of states. They’re disenfranchised because our leaders aren’t doing their jobs. They’re disenfranchised because after working hard to support their families and to raise kids who understand the difference between right and wrong, their leaders do exactly the opposite.

Source: CNN – Glenn Beck: Too bad, Michigan and Florida

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