Automate Your Business

Archive for the ‘AYB Toolkit’ Category

I’m about to make some changes to the AYB Autoblogger, which means I’ll be raising the price from it’s current $30.

The first change is to rename this version as the “Standard version”, and add the ability to import feeds in a wider variety of formats than is currently supported. So at the moment, the software is tightly configured to support the feeds from Oddity Software. The upgrade will allow you to use feeds from places like Commission Junction and Linkshare, who offer affiliate feeds from many of their merchants.

I’ll also be releasing a “Pro” version, which will allow you to set up as many feeds as you want, posting to as many Wordpress blogs as you want.

Current customers will get the new Standard edition free of charge, and there will be a small fee ($10) to upgrade to the Pro version. The only exception to this will be people who purchased under the “fast movers” deal, who will get the Pro upgrade free of charge…

That’s one of the benefits of being a fast mover.

If you are not sure whether you are a fast mover or not, I’ve just sent a mail to the fast mover list, so that’ll confirm it for you. No mail = not a fast mover.

If you have NOT purchased AYB Autoblogger, now is the time – you’ll get the upgrade when it’s available (next week) for the current price of $30 instead of the increased price. Here’s the link to take advantage of the current price.

Whilst doing last minute checks last night, one of the social bookmarking sites started playing up. It worked fine outside PromotionBot, but something about PromotionBot was causing the “Log out” link to not work.

I *suspect* it was because Internet Explorer was busy doing other things in the background, outside Promotionbot, and that there was some interference, but I couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

So I’ve quickly added an alternative bookmarking site, and have just about added proxy support and email verification (ie, it will scan your email inboxes, and “click the link” to confirm your account setup).

So… a couple of days (OK, maybe 4 days given that New Year is coming up) delay, but you’ll gain two key features.

Apologies for dragging this out…

A customer emailed me recently to say that someone (he says his host, but admits it might have been him, by accident) had deleted the backups from his server in order to save space. Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with his site(s), just that he was left with no backup to restore in case of future problems.

Realising that it’s a bit of a risk having no backups, he wisely went on to purchase the Cpanel Auto Domain Backup script that I sell. Which means that not only will he have backups made overnight, but he’ll have them both within Cpanel and also FTPed to another location. Ideally this will be a different physical location, so if his host server farm goes up in flames, his backups are safe somewhere else. Don’t laugh – similar things have happened to me.

Are you exposed to a similar risk? If so, take a moment to review the backup software.

I’m pleased to finally be able to say that version 3.07 of Caffeinated Content Scheduler is available. This adds functionality to not only support v3.38 of the Caffeinated Content plugin (which allows you to populate your autoblog with articles pulled from EzineArticles.com), but also adds support for non-English WordPress installs, as well as fixing a couple of issues.

The download details should already be on the way to existing customers, and if you’ve not yet purchased this product, but are interesting in finding out more, please see this page.

OK, as far as I can tell, there is one difference between 3.37 and 3.38 which will impact the scheduler. The creator of the plugin has added EzineArticles.com to the possible sources, which has also entailed a change to the previous articles source, ArticlesBase.com

As such, if you are using articles, please bear with me one more day as I get the upgrade package for the schedule ready. I’ve finished writing it, and will be testing & releasing it tomorrow.

If you are not using articles, you can upgrade the plugins whenever you like on your WordPress blogs, then just install the Scheduler update later in the week. Using the 3.38 plugin on a blog when the Scheduler thinks it is 3.37 shouldn’t cause any problems if you are not using articles.