Commission Blueprint Review

It seems that there’s a new Internet Marketing package out called Commission Blueprint that everybody and their nest mates are trying to sell to you via fake ‘reviews’ and the like. Well, I’m going to tell my dad to save his bananas based on this Commission Blueprint Review by Splork of Lost Ball in High Weeds.

Splork calls ‘em like he sees ‘em and his review takes on the whole silly ugly Internet Marketing sales page thing to task. He skewers the fake testimonials, the fake robo-sales agent that offers you $10 off before you leave, the excessive number of people buying ads and doing SEO to get high placement in Google search. Splork’s cynical take on the whole Internet Marketing Guru Sales Machine is a funny read. I almost regurgitated my orange pellets through my nasal cavity!

I asked my dad about Commission Blueprint and, while he hasn’t bought it and doesn’t plan to, his opinion is that it looks like another in a long series of regurgitated material on using Google Adwords to make money selling Clickbank products. With a little research you can dig up virtually the same info for free on various blogs and forums. Why spend $77 for something that you can get for free? Do like Splork says and save your bananas for something else. Maybe something like pre-owned domains or even a nice bunch of bananas for an important family member (hint hint!).

Where’s the Scuttle Documentation?

My ‘Dad’ experienced a bit of frustration last night while trying to install Scuttle, the open source social bookmarking script, on one of his domains. It was quite a learning experience for him and me. He learned a few things about Scuttle and I learned a few new interesting phrases straight from Dad’s Marine vocabulary. I’ll save those for the next time the ‘Grandparents’ visit.

Anyhoo, Dad asked me to pass along a few hints on my blog about Scuttle, the lack of Scuttle Documentation and so forth. He said I needed to make myself useful if I wanted some fresh bananas.

The first trick is in the config.inc.php file. You have to make sure that you enter your correct database information. That means the full database name, as in [username]_[database name], otherwise you’ll get a 500 server error and start cussin’ like my Dad did. You can also change the name of the site from plain old ‘Scuttle’ to something you like, such as ‘Banana Bookmarks’.

Another change you may want to make in the Scuttle config file is to have your links followed. They’re nofollowed by default which means they don’t pass Google link juice. If you make them followed this can give a boost to sites listed in your Scuttle bookmarks. My Dad says that’s one of the main reasons to have a Scuttle site.

Now, this is really what got my Dad in a pissed off mood. Once he got Scuttle installed right he added some bookmarks. However, these links did not show on the front page, the index page, of the site. Even though there were links available Scuttle said, “No bookmarks available.” That’s when I learned a few new phrases! As it turns out there is a subtle bug in the query for the index page of a Scuttle site. This bug causes the query to not return any data until the next day. So, be patient, eat a banana, don’t cuss or panic, just wait and your links will be on the front index page shortly.

One last little hint I’ll pass along. You’ll want to delete or rename your Scuttle site’s register.php file. Otherwise every spammer in the universe will come to visit your Scuttle site using automated tools like Bookmarking Demon and jam pack your database with links to all sorts of nasty sites. You can add your and any of your friend’s registrations in before you do this or add them in from your database’s control panel.

OK, that should earn me a tasty banana and maybe some grapes. If you have any Scuttle questions, ask me in a comment and I’ll pass them along to my Dad when he’s in a better mood.