In working on my latest project, I’ve made a bunch of development changes. I’ve switched over to Ruby on Rails (which has been great so far), started using Git in my workflow, and have automated my app deployment with Capistrano. There have been some learning curves, especially with the lack of coherent documentation for most of the stuff, so it has been frustrating at times. I made sure to take detailed notes though as I worked through the process of learning all of this stuff, and I’m planning on posting a few guides here on how to do some of the stuff that I now use daily. So hopefully that’s something that will help anyone interested in adding some new stuff to their current workflows.
I’m not going to go into too many details as to why Git is great or the technical explanation of how the hell it works because quite frankly I don’t really know. I do know enough about it to know that it’s better to use than not use and if you’re serious about coding, you should use it. Main reasons why?
So basically, Git allows you to break shit without risking your entire project (and sanity).
Anyone expecting a long, thorough guide, will be disappointed. But that’s a good thing in this case, because setting up your own remote repos on your own Linode VPS is stupid easy. There isn’t that much documentation out there for some reason on this topic (I guess all the cool kids are on Github), so that’s why I’m writing this now. So here we go…
1) Install git on your server. SSH into your Linode, and (assuming you’re on Ubuntu) run “apt-get install git-core”
2) On your local machine, install Git. Depends on your OS, there are guides everywhere for this.
3) Back on the server, navigate to and create a folder where you’ll house the remote repo. This should be a non-public folder. I chose /srv/git (my apps are stored in /srv/www/[app-folder]). Assuming you’re using /srv/git, the workflow would be:
4) In your new project folder, run the command git init --bare. This will create an empty repository for your project.
5) Back on your local machine, you need to add the remote repo as a remote target to your Git setup. To do that, run:
What that did was add the remote target of origin. I have no idea why everyone calls their remote repos origin…if someone has an answer, I’ll mail you a cookie.
6) Now, work locally on your project. When you’re ready to commit and push to your server, the workflow looks like:
So if you were working on your master branch, you would use git push origin master. That command would calculate all your repo deltas and push only your changes to your server. WIN.
Once you’ve nailed that workflow, there’s some awesome advanced stuff you can do. Namely, deploying a Rails app with Capistrano and Git. It’s sexy when it works, but confusing as hell to figure out. I’ll post a few more guides that will hopefully help you get started with that stuff as well.
Bummer to see the site down, seems like a database corruption issue. Curious to see how things turn out in the next few days. If you have SEO questions, feel free to ask them at SEO Loudmouths…I’m going to get all caught up on the lingering open questions by tomorrow.
If things stay down for a while on WF, I’m not sure what will happen in terms of something to replace it. Too early to tell now.
PS: I’m working on something so fucking epic for SEO research you’re all going to love it. I’m hoping to launch it within two weeks and will officially kick it off (with a special Layered Thoughts discount) as soon as its ready to go. Stay tuned!
I’ve been sitting on this code for a while and decided to whip it up into a public, usable script that is (ugly?) styled. All this calculator does is allow you to figure out what keywords are actually worth going after (especially useful for CPA affiliates) as well as the effects of payout bumps for your different offers that you’re focusing on.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget the kinds of volume you need to actually get a decent revenue stream going from a CPA site, so this tool kinda helps keep things in perspective. Also, it helps you keep your eye on the prize for increasing those front page rankings of your landing pages because you can quickly see how much of a revenue jump a higher ranking can provide.
The data produced by this calculator isn’t the be all end all. You probably won’t get exactly this much money each month. The BIGGEST CAVEAT to remember is that if you’re just plugging the Google search data (as most of us focus on) you’re only getting a slice of the search engine data pie. I have sites that do much much better on the traffic from Bing and Yahoo than they do from higher traffic volume from Google. It really depends on your demographic you’re targeting and the nature of your offer and keywords.
Play around with it and let me know what you think. I have it set with the Cornell Eye Tracking SERP data currently, I might make a radio button toggle to test the same inputs with the AOL research data. Let me know in the comments if that’s something that you’re interested in.
I found Pay With A Tweet online about a week ago and thought it was really cool. The basic premise is you have something to give away (guide, report, free app, etc) that you would normally require name and email address to download (classic list building method). Rather than require that though, the download link is hidden behind a Twitter Tweet or Facebook Like button, so in order to get to the download, a user must tweet a link to the landing page on their account and then they’ll gain access to the download page. Then, anyone who follows that Twitter user or is friends on Facebook who is also interested in gaining access to the download must click the link in the tweet/link, which has the Tweet button on it as well, and they must then tweet to all of their followers.
Depending on the niche, something like this could work REALLY WELL. Any tech savvy niches, like SEO, social media, affiliate, etc (really, any niche where people have Twitter or Facebook accounts) can create a big rush of traffic because of the exponential growth potential. Sounds really hyped up, but it seems like a sound principal.
Since I’ve just started using Twitter again and am working on growing my follower count to increase my reach on it, I think I’ll try a few tests of this system soon to see how effective it is. An ideal setup for me would be: Tweet the link, go to download page, subscribe to blog, receive download link. Seems like a really solid way to increase my feed subscriber base as well as increase the brand of the blog.
I’ll post some updates soon of ideas I want to test this system out with.
Alright, added the Digg Digg plugin to this blog today because I found it on a few sites and liked it a lot. I’ve quickly browser tested it and it definitely loads on all of them but it can load wonky sometimes. If you guys could just tell me if the thing is decent or if you hate it, that would be awesome.
Also, just cleaned out my twitter account of a bunch of old shitty tweets and will start passively using it this month to try and add some traffic here. I have a gaggle of posts waiting to be written, will start on them this week.
Happy March
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