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In response to Mr. Spirko

December 3rd, 2007

O.K. I gave my opinion on the topic of Izea and Google. In doing so I leveled some criticism at Jack Spirko of Comtechnews regarding this post.

There was a bit of confusion in the process, as my spam filters ate Jack’s response without giving me the opportunity to moderate it. Jack was understandably upset over this. I can understand that, as I would demand the right to defend myself if questioned as well. While this has been corrected, the comment trail has been rendered completely out of order. Not only that, but I felt that Jack’s comments deserved to be answered in their own post. So here we are.

If you’re interested in reading where this all started, read this. I put out my opinion, and I will admit that I was a bit rushed in doing so. This post is in response to the reply given by Mr. Spirko, which is quoted in full as follows:

Well you know I have always felt that a massive blog rant is just that a massive rant. Something you take the time to say because it needs to be said. You don’t do it to please English teachers.

I have also found that when people attack your spelling and grammar it is because your ideas, concepts and explanations are to powerful to challenge.

Did I go on and on about what Izea should be doing, yes and let me tell you I have their CEOs attention. The last time I got someones attention this way it was Donad Trump’s “Trump University” and my firm is now doing their Pay Per Click, Organic Search, General Consulting and in fact today their VP of Marketing publicly on his blog that my firms PR efforts where and I quote, “the first time I truly feel confident that we got what we paid for”. If you would like to read this post by Mr. Katz you can do that here,

http://www.trumpuniversity.com/blogs/marketingmaestro/index.cfm?blogpost_id=1124

Oh yea that all started when I posted at my blog saying that DT had a blog that sucked and what I picked on what that they were more concerned with grammar and spelling then real ideas and conversational tone.

So here is what I have to say to you.

First, the fact that I allowed your track back to my post will probably give your blog more traffic then you have ever had before. Perhaps you may wish to consider that before you pick on my spelling?

Second, Mr. Murphy is a good guy and I like him a lot and I do not question his character. He did respond though mostly because I had a mutual acquaintance that will remain nameless contact him and ask him to read my post. I believe Mr. Murphy read my post mostly because he was told that I have really been dead on about a lot or real messes online in the past.

Third, I would also say you may want to wait and see what my results of pointing out the massive holes in the Real Rank algo before you say I am doing harm. Bud, I think you were a low traffic blogger trying to bait my comments now that you have them, just please do me the courtesy I did for you and allow them.

Fourth, what do you want us to “unite” behind? The flawed Real Rank system? If you read my post (the concepts and reality rather then spell checked me) then you know how bad it is. Let me say I only scratched the surface. I could make a way for you to buy an elevated real rank as a commodity really easy, I won’t but I could that means if anyone every cares about real rank someone will. I know the black hat world better then most, I did a service pointing out these holes. There are much bigger let’s call them “truck sized” holes in this system.

Fifth, As you just go torched the way my blog did you may want to pay very close attention to my post that will go live on Monday morning. It will tell you what to do about it and how to prevent additional attacks by Google in the future.

Look I think Real Rank sucks and I care about people like you first, Izea second and Google well I am clear on that.

Jack Spirko

Fair enough. Now, since this asks multiple questions and gives multiple statements, I will respond to this comment one section at a time.

Read more…

Jerry Blogging, News and Events, Web Design Practice , , ,

Remastering the MasterPlan’s Morning After WordPress Theme

November 26th, 2007

The Morning AfterIt’s not often that I come across a WordPress theme that gets me excited. Most themes out there are nothing more than souped up versions of the default WP theme. Kubrick. While I have nothing against a simple layout, the fact of the matter is that most of the sites I run require far more versatility than Kubrick can provide. Enter The Morning After theme by The Master Plan. Not only does the theme have a metric ton of options to play with, but it’s got a nice, clean newspaper style home page layout to go along with it. It only took one look for me to realize that the main page layout was exactly what I wanted for my food blog… With a few tweaks, of course.

After uploading the Morning After to my WordPress sandbox, I was immediately greeted with an issue. The theme as I downloaded it wasn’t compatible with WordPress 2.3. Thankfully the Master Plan has dedicated support forums and that problem was quickly and easily remedied. Setting the theme up as instructed on the download page was also quite simple. As a matter of fact, if you’ve got even a little bit of design experience, everything about the Morning After theme is simple.

The theme is based on the Blueprint CSS Framework, and once you take a moment to understand the way the framework is designed, any changes you’d like to make to the Morning After is as simple as changing a little bit of css. Everything else is done for you. That simple.

As a side note, if you’re just jumping in to CSS design. (What kept you?), take a look at blueprint. this tool will save you hours of headaches once you’ve learned it.

Jerry General Geekiness, Web Design Practice, WordPress , , ,

Turning visitors into returning visitors.

June 8th, 2007

Getting traffic is wonderful, but if you’re a blogger return traffic is what you’re looking for. There are a lot of articles out there on getting people to return to your site, but the best I’ve seen recently is by Hans at BlogoSquare.

His tips apply to all bloggers, but are especially useful to users of WordPress, and since we here at spunpuppy are serious WordPress supporters, you know that suits us just fine.

Jerry Web Design Practice

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