As bloggers, we all have the same fear - losing our blog. We put so much hard work into our blogs that we nearly faint with the thought of losing it all. At night when we’re asleep, we toss and turn with the nightmare that in an instant, everything could be gone - forever.

Ok, so maybe not the nightmare part.
But losing our blog certainly is our worst fear.

Now, plainBETA has been online since May 10th, 2007. (For those of us who are slow at math, that’s about five months) Since then, I have not upgraded Wordpress once. After reading about how to make your Wordpress blog safer, I figured it would be a good idea to do so.

But I didn’t get around to it. I kept putting it off, and putting it off… And then I slapped myself and said, “Brian, just do it!” So, I did.
Or thought I did.

Turns out, I screwed something up - and my blog was gone. Completely and utterly gone. Thus began the scariest fifteen minutes of my life.

I worked and worked and worked, and finally got my blog back.

What did I do? I followed Wordpress’s Extended Upgrading Instructions.

How dumb can I get?

What You Can do to Avoid the Horror

1: Backup Your Blog
After that scare, I cannot impress how important backing up your blog is. And it’s not that hard! So do it!
Simply go to your Admin Control Panel > Manage > Export > click “Download Export File.”
For extra security, backup your Wordpress files in a secondary place - in addition to your computer’s hard drive. Simply placing the files on a flash drive, CD, or a service like Mozy can save you a world of pain.

2: Keep Wordpress Upgraded
Despite how scary upgrading Wordpress is, it should be done. Just be careful not to copy the ‘wp-content’ folder and your ‘wp-config’ folder, and you’re as right as rain.

3: Double Check Before You Click ‘Delete’
Have you ever accidentally deleted a file without meaning to? Yeah - me too.
When the file is on a computer it’s no problem - simply retrieve the deleted file from the trash bin. But when you’re in the internet, it’s a whole different story.
Web services do not move your information to a trash bin. When you click delete, it’s gone forever.
So before you click delete, pause for a moment and make sure you’re deleting what you want to.

So keep yourself safe!
Don’t lose that blog!

I am a small blog. Plain and simple.
So what can you learn from my traffic sources?
Well, a lot actually - especially if you have a small blog.
So, let’s dive into my stats.

my traffic sources as of 9.20.07 - yes, they’re lame aren’t they?

As you can tell, referrals are by far my greatest traffic source. Second is direct, which is probably made up mostly of my RSS subscribers. And third is search engines.

Let’s get a little more detail.

(click to enlarge)

In the break down, direct visitors are in first. In second is clicks from Random Jabber, followed by PhotoshopLovr, Digg, Xanga, ProBlogger, and then some insignificant others.

So, why do the stats fall out like they do?

I have been an RSS subscriber of Random Jabber since about two months after it’s inception. plainBETA topics are pretty much the same as Random Jabber’s. Since I discovered Random Jabber, I have been the leading commenter by a good deal. Furthermore, my bounce rate is at 35.85% from Random Jabber (my over all bounce rate is 54.93%) and on average, Random Jabber visitors visit 5.32 pages per visit. That is pretty good.

After Random Jabber is PhotoshopLovr. Similar to Random Jabber, I have been a RSS subscriber and regular commentor there less than a month after it’s inception. However, unlike Random Jabber, PhotoshopLovr covers a different topic than my blog and it shows in my stats. My bounce rate from PhotoshopLovr is at 53.57%. That is a bad bounce rate.

Following Photoshop Lovr is Digg. I submitted my article The new iPod Nano (and iPods) article to Digg (here) and didn’t get a single digg. But I did get twenty three clicks with a bounce rate of 91.3%. (which is the worst bounce rate I have)

Next in the rankings is Xanga. Those clicks came from my Xanga blog and was simply an attempt to get my friends active in my blog. Through that attempt, I know I got two RSS subscribers and two regular commenters.

And the final stat we’re going to analyze is ProBlogger. I have been subscribed to ProBlogger ever since I wanted to have a ‘professional blog.’ Since then, I have been a regular commenter and have tried to throw in as much quality as I can. That has resulted in a 66.67% bounce rate.

Google Searches don’t show up until #8.

So What Does This Tell Us?

By analyzing these stats we can come to several conclusions.

1: Commenting on Similar Blogs Works
If you comment regularly, and with substance, on blogs that address similar topics as yours, you’ll get quality visitors.

2: Commenting on Differing Blogs Doesn’t Work as Well
If you comment regularly on blogs, even with substance, but those blogs address different topics, then you get poor visitors.

3: Digg Only Works if You Get Lucky
Despite how many blogs become famous through Digg, you have to be lucky to do so. You need the right people to discover it and digg it at the right time. It’s quite dicy.

4: Get Your Friends in on Your Blog
This only works if your friends care deeply for you, or have an interest in the topic you’re blogging on. But, if any of your friends fit in those two catagories, you’ll get subscribers who will comment.

5: Commenting on Large Blogs Isn’t as Effective
If you comment regularly on large blogs, you will get visitors, but not as many as if you comment on smaller related blogs. However, if you get lucky, you could get featured in a post, which will result in a large amount of visitors. (Example - see point #4)

What about you?
Where do you get your visitors?

Remember that BlogRush hype about a week ago? (Learn More) Well, right after it’s launch, practically everyone in the blogosphere signed up for BlogRush hoping to get tons of visitors through it. Needless to day, BlogRush didn’t live up to the expectations that everyone had.

This is due mostly to spammers, too broad of categories, and only one widget.

BlogRush Issue #1 - Spam Blogs
In the web world, people still have the disillusioned idea that you can make money from a web site that tells you nothing, but has a lot of AdSense Ads. These web sites hoped to get on the BlogRush bandwagon and put the widget on their web site. Thus, honest blogs were having their links show up there, and wouldn’t ever get clicked on.
BlogRush is fixing that problem by using a manual submission process. Each new BlogRush member has their blog manually reviewed.

BlogRush Issue #2 - Straight Up Spammers
There are lots of dishonest people in the web world, and BlogRush users are no exception. There were people who designed bots to automatically load pages to earn points for their BlogRush account. And like the Spam Blogs issue, no one was looking at those pages, so all of us honest bloggers weren’t getting our links viewed.
BlogRush is fixing this issue by introducing security measures that are above my head - but they’re supposed to fix that problem.

BlogRush Issue #3 - Broad Categories
Argubly, the greatest issue BlogRush has delt with is their broad categories. Some blog’s posts simply weren’t related to the blogs they were being displayed on through the BlogRush widget - and thus, no click throughs.
BlogRush is fixing this third problem by introducing more specific categories.

BlogRush Issue #4 - Only One Widget
The final problem that BlogRush has is only one widget. (view it) BlogRush is taking care of this final issue by adding BlogRush Flavors. There will now be twelve different ‘flavors’ to the BlogRush widget (Check them out!) which should be versitile enough to fit with just about any blog color scheme.

So, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and wait a little longer before casting your final verdict on BlogRush.

Don’t have a BlogRush account? Sign up now!