Thursday 24 July 2014

Customer Reviews of Strictly AutoTags version 2.9.7

Custom Reviews of Strictly AutoTags version 2.9.7

Here is what people are saying about it!

By Strictly-Software

The new PRO version of Strictly AutoTags is out version 2.9.7 which you can buy for merely £40 from either my site: www.strictly-software.com/plugins/strictly-auto-tags or on etsy.com.

With Etsy.co:m I have to constantly check an old email account OR the site for sales or messages.

Sometimes this can cause issues if you are using Etsy's own message system as I don't get the messages straight away as they don't email to my main account so I won't know about them.

If you are going to buy the plugin I would prefer you did it from my own site: www.strictly-software.com/plugins/strictly-auto-tags as I get notified straight away. Plus if there are any problems I can help solve them ASAP.

If you cannot find my email address or the contact link doesn't work you can always email me at Email me,


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Reviews of Strictly AutoTags

Here are what some of the people who have used my plugin have said about it. Just a quick Google Search will give you more than enough sites talking about it. Here are some of the best reviews.

Manage Your WordPress Tags with Strictly Auto Tags
Tagging was such a chore for me before that I am going to get the paid version of Rob’s Strictly Auto Tags plugin so I can run it with all the extra features and avoid the tagging problems which caused me to get rid of them all before. I did find tags to be a good thing and I do see that they add to traffic and the chance for my blog posts to be found. So, doing away with tags was a good experiment, but I’m bringing them back now. Very glad to have found a plugin to do a lot of the work for me. Sure, I could have ignored all the past posts and just started tagging from here, but that would bug me. I am a bit all or nothing in that way.
http://wordgrrls.com/2014/04/manage-your-wordpress-tags-with-strictly-auto-tags/


I'm so happy I received the paid version. It was a giant goof up and neither of our faults :(.
WOW is all I can say, the extra features in the paid version are just, GREAT!
If you like the free plugin, you will LOVE the paid version!
YAH! 
Dugg Brown
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/paid-version-is-downloading-free-version?replies=5

From BlackHatWorld
This is from a forum about the best tagging plugin to use in WordPress.

Best one is "Strictly auto tags"
Works just like a charm and its hell simple to use.
BlackRat

I find 'strictly auto tags' better than simple or tagpig. Fast and superefficient.
theindiaphile


I am using two plugins at same time. Auto tag plugin and strictly auto tag plugin. I have set some fixed number of tags from both...Auto tag plugin is good as it fetch some keywords from Yahoo and tagthenet while strictly auto tag is really cool...once you will use...you will love it...
chdsandeep

From the BlackHatSEO Forum
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/blogging/261512-best-auto-tag-plugin-wordpress.html

I need to start out by saying that no automated tool is going to be able to match the abilities of a good editor or content architect. There are tools, however, that will help streamline the process and take a large amount of that potentially heavy load off your back.
My go to solution for this scenario is the Strictly Auto Tags plugin.
Geoffrey Fortier
http://itswordpress.com/tips-tricks/tag-you-are-it-part-3-auto-tagging-for-the-high-volume-blogger/#sthash.q9C3ghFv.dpuf


WordPress Reviews on Strictly AutoTags
Simple, Powerful and Effective... a MUST have!!!
I love how easy it is to auto-generate relevant tags on all posts or just the ones that are not tagged already.
There are some valuable options in the settings area to fine-tune what you want the plugin to do for your particular site. Great work!
I wish more free plugins were this powerful and effective at doing what they are designed to do.
By lazy_sunday, January 30, 2013 for WP 3.5
http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/strictly-autotags

Great Tagging Plugin
Am using this on a sports site and it's picking out player names, team names, organisations etc no problems.

By VATCalculatorPlus, May 22, 2014

Great plugin 
it does what it says. 
thanks for such a nice plugin for tagging... 
By anuragk098, October 28, 2013 for WP 3.7                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
User Friendly
User friendly, save lot of time, Increase SEO,INCREASE TRAFFIC
By muqeetsoomro, May 4, 2013
http://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/strictly-autotags

Other sites
Top must have WordPress plugins > http://www.justin.my/2011/11/top-must-have-plugins-for-your-wordpress/
Best SEO WordPress plugins > http://robertmstanley.com/tag/strictly-auto-tags/


Now you have seen some of my reviews I hope that will ease your mind about the quality of the plugin, it's usefulness and ability to increase your sites SEO.

However when used in conjunction with another one of my PRO plugins, Strictly TweetBOT, which has automatic configuration so that the Strictly TweetBOT plugin is linked to the latest edition of Strictly AutoTags.

This means that when a post is being tagged no tweets are sent until the tagging is completed so that post tags and categories are available to be used as #hashtags in your tweets!

The PRO TweetBOT version has an option to disable this auto configuration feature so that tweets are send out immediately after an article is posted.

However I don't recommend turning this on unless you are having problems and are willing to always use default hashtags within your tweets.

I use these two plugins in conjunction with each other on sll my sites and with the new PRO Strictly TweetBot's delay options you can now put your new post into a caching plugin and stagger out your tweets to prevent Twitter Rushes.

With the great dashboard feature and "Test Configuration" option it really is a great tool for autobloggers and when used in conjunction with Strictly AutoTags it makes AutoBlogging a great way to make your site look like it has regulatr unique content as well as unique tweets with relevant #hashtags.

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Check both plugins out on my site:

Strictly AutoTags
Strictly TweetBOT

Or on Etsy.com

Strictly Software Etsy.com Shop

Monday 21 July 2014

Problems with CloudFlare

Problems with CloudFlare

By Strictly-Software

Recently I moved a couple of my sites behind the free Cloudflare proxy option and set the DNS so it pointed to their server rather than the 123reg.co.uk ones I had been using.

However before I did this I tested out whether there was much difference between the sites.

1. I set to use Cloudflare and WP Super Cache.
2. I used WP Super Cache, Widget Cache and WP Minify.

I actually found that that the 2nd set-up gave me better results. Why I don't know.

However in the end due to all the spam and apparent blocking Cloudflare claimed to be able to do I set the other site up behind it.

However after a while I noticed a few things you might want to be aware of

1. I had a number of email scripts that sent out thousands of emails and I used a

set_time_limit(5000);

at the top of the file to ensure it didn't time out by the Virtual Servers standard 30 seconds.

Also and in-between each email (which I appended to a log file) I did a wait command with:

sleep(2);

So that I didn't overkill the server.

However you should be aware that when you use set_time_limit and then use functions like sleep or file_put_contents or file_get_contents the time it takes to wait, access files and retrieve data is not included in the time limit.

Also as I was using Cloudflare, my PHP script which is web based so I can easily call it by hand if I need to, was using the standard domain e.g http://www.mysite.com/mysendemailjob.php.

However Cloudflare it seems has it's own timeout limit which overrides anything you set in Apache or in your PHP file of about 60 seconds.

I noticed this because my script kept bombing out after around 60 seconds and returned a Cloudflare 524 error which you can read about here.


CloudFlare Timeout Error

So to get round this problem I used the "direct" domain method they set as default to bypass CloudFlare.

I have obviously changed mine as you should to for security sake but once changed to something else when I ran the url: http://www.mysite.com/mysendemailjob.php it didn't bomb out any-more and carried on until the end.

Another thing you have to be careful about CloudFlare is if you have spent ages filling your IP Table up with IP addresses that you want banned due to spam, hack attempts or just over use.

Because all IP addresses in the Apache Access Log are now CloudFlare addresses these won't be used and you are now relying on ClouldFlare's own security measures to block dangerous IP's.

The same goes for your .htaccess file. If you have banned a whole countries range say China or Russia (biggest hackers on the earth - apart from the NSA of course) then these ranges won't mean jack as the user from China will be going through a CloudFlare proxy IP address to your site so any IP you had banned him from will now be useless.

The only thing left to do is ban by user-agent, blank agents is a good one and so are short ones (less than 10 characters as they are usually jibberish).

I ban most of the standard HTTP libraries like CURL, WGET, WIN HTTP, Snoopy and so on as most script kiddies download a library, and don't even bother changing the user-agent before crawling and spamming. Therefore if someone isn't going to tell me who they really are then they can get a 403!

So they are a few things to watch out for with Cloudflare.

I know you can get modules that replace the Cloudflare IP with the original users IP but if you are on an old Debian Lenny box then they don't have support for that.

They must be supplying x-forwarded-for or other headers as when I did a scan using the bypass URL I got back my original IP but with a www.mysite.com scan I got back CloudFlare IPS e.g 104.28.25.11 etc.

The only thing you can do if you cannot take a modern module and reverse engineer it to older code is use the WordPress CloudFlare plugin that lets you get real Akismet IP addresses so you can still ban them.

It is a pain and one I am debating on whether to return to the days of before Cloudflare where my own security measures meant I banned over 50% of traffic and my server bills didn't go up and up.

"CloudFlare is supposed to save me bandwidth but ever since I have installed it although it claims it has saved me loads my Rackspace bill for bandwidth use has gone up and up!"

So just be careful when using Cloudflare it may seem like a magic tool but all those rocketscripts they add to your code are just "async" attributes and you can get many a plugin to minify your source and compress it on the server without using PHP to do so.

The choice is yours but be warned!

Friday 11 July 2014

Introducing Strictly TweetBOT PRO

Introducing Strictly TweetBOT PRO

By Strictly-Software

Today I created a premium version of my popular WordPress plugin Strictly TweetBOT.

This is the plugin I use on ALL my sites to automatically send out Tweets to various Twitter accounts related on the content of the article.

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For example on my horse racing site UK Horse Racing Tipster I set up multiple TweetBOT Accounts that are linked to various Twitter Accounts e.g @ukhorseracetips and @ukautobot and when an article is posted the system uses the words in each accounts content analysis box to decide whether to send the Tweet out or not.

You can choose to
-Always send the Tweet.
-Only send it if one or more words are in the article.
-Only send it if ALL of the words are in the article.
-Don't send the Tweet if any of the words are in the article.

You can also prevent Tweets being sent if they contain "noise" words. This can be a list of swear words or other words you would never want tweeted.

Linking your accounts with Twitter is easy and using the new OAuth Twitter 1.1 API.

To link an account you set it up, save it, then when the page reloads a link will appear saying "Click Here To Authenticate", when you do you will be taken to Twitter where you login and are given a PIN number.

You go back to the plugin admin page and enter the PIN number in the relevant box. Hit save at the bottom and if the details are correct your account will now be linked to Twitter.

If you have already linked a Twitter account then adding another is easy as it will remember your credentials and authenticate it automatically.

The Admin dashboard will contain information on your last posted tweets and there is a "Test Configuration" button that will test all your accounts, links with Twitter and any problems you may have. Excellent for checking your plugin is set-up correctly.

The best thing about this plugin is you can use the articles post tags as #HashTags and with its automatic configuration with Strictly AutoTags it will wait until the tagging is complete before Tweeting rather than Tweeting on publish which would mean some articles wouldn't have tags at that point.

This is possible because of the new finished_doing_tagging hook in Strictly AutoTags which is fired once Tagging is complete. Other plugin authors are free to use this hook as well to ensure actions are only carried out AFTER tagging and not on the "onsave" action/event.


The PRO version of the plugin is only £25 and contains some very useful features especially if you are sending out a lot of Tweets or have an underpowered server. 

It can be bought on my site: Strictly TweetBOT WordPress plugin
Or on Etsy.com in my shop: The Strictly-Software shop.

The PRO version extends the performance features including those which enable you to send an HTTP request to the new article to put it into a cache (depending on the settings of your caching system e.g WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache) and ensure when the first visitor hits it they get a cached version of the page.

In the PRO version you can do the following:

-Add a delay of X seconds so that after the HTTP request is made no Tweets are sent for a while. This ensures the caching system has time to build and cache the new post.
-Add a query-string to the URL as some caching plugins require special keys or query-string parameters to force the page to be cached.
-Use a special user-agent when making the cache HTTP request. This enables you to track the requests in your Apache Access Log as well as white-listing the user-agent to prevent it from being blocked by .htaccess rules.
-Specify a delay between each Tweet that is sent out from your site. This ensures not too many Tweets hit your account at once and not too much Twitter traffic hits your website all at once. Staggering out your Tweets prevents Twitter Rushes and stops too many new Apache processes from being spawned.

Remember when one Tweet is sent out you will get at least 50 requests to the new post immediately from BOTS who have found the link on Twitter.

This is called a Twitter Rush and can cause major performance problems especially if you are sending out 6+ tweets (6 * 50 = 300 concurrent requests). You can read more about Twitter Rushes here.

Any messages back from Twitter such as posting duplicate Tweets or API errors will be saved and listed in your dashboard so that you can view the status of your last post and all the accounts it tried to tweet to. It will tell you whether the account matched the content analysis or was blocked and the result of any "sleep" or "caching" actions.

The PRO version also allows you to:

-Specify the maximum length a Tweet message can ever have e.g 137. This will ensure all Tweets are sent as sometimes when Tweets are exactly 140 characters long they still get rejected by Twitter.

-Turn off the link between Strictly AutoTags and Strictly TweetBot. If you are having issues with the combination OR just want Tweets to be fired ASAP on publishing whether or not tagging is complete you could turn this option on.

Reasons might be debugging or the use of categories or default hashtags instead of using post tags in your Tweets. If you don't need to use the tags against a post then there is no need to wait in the first place so this option can be disabled.


AutoBlogging - Automatic Posting On WordPress

Combining two of my plugins, Strictly TweetBOT and Strictly AutoTags, make a powerful force for any auto-bloggers out there.

If you are posting your articles by importing them from a feed then these plugins make your site a diamond in the dust.

Not only do you have do nothing but when your feed importer inserts a new article the Strictly AutoTags plugin will do it's job making your article a custom piece of work by:
-Basic content spinning by removing old HTML formatting as B I, FONT and SPAN tags
-Wrapping important tagged content in strong tags to highlight them and tell SERPS like GoogleBOT and YSLURP they are the important words in your article.
-Converting textual links like www.ukhorseracingtipster.com into real clickable links e.g www.ukhorseracingtipster.com.
-Converting a certain number of important tags into links to their relevant tag page.
-Adding rel="nofollow" to existing links in your article that don't already have them as well as those converted to links

Plus the SEO benefits are amazing (as my sites can testify) as the Premium version of the plugin allows you to find certain words and tag others. For example you could find words like al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban but add the tag Terrorism. You can add as many of these "Tag Equivalents" as you want.

Also for your "Site Keywords", the words you want associated with your site, for example for my racing site it would be Horse Racing, Racing, Tips, Betting etc, then you can set them to be ranked higher than any other words when it comes to relevancy.

And of course you can specify that words in the Title, H1-6 tags, Anchors, Strong Tags and other content be ranked higher than words outside special format tags.

So the AutoTag plugin does it's magic (read more here) and then once it has completed and you haven't turned the link off between the two plugin the TweetBOT goes to work sending Tweets out to all relevant Twitter accounts.

The Strictly TweetBOT PRO Version is even better than normal because it allows you to stagger your tweeting so they all don't get blasted at once causing a Twitter Rush and because you can format each account differently you could have two accounts both going to the same Twitter Account but with totally different messages.

Plus you can use different tweet shortening functions for each e.g Tweet Shrink or Text Shrink.

For example if the article was about a horse race at Royal Ascot titled "Kingman destroys the pack at Royal Ascot" and the first account was using categories (Ascot, Racing News Horse Racing) as hash tags with the format:

Another Ascot news story %title% which you can read about here %url% %hashtags%

You would get:

Another #Ascot news story Kingman destroys the pack at Royal Ascot which u can rd about here bit.ly/34f53 #RacingNews #HorseRacing

And another account that uses post tags (Kingman, Night of Thunder, Royal Ascot, Ascot and many more) as #hashtags with the format:

Racing news from UK Horse Racing Tipster %url% %title% %hashtags%

Would give you this tweet.

Racing news from UK Horse Racing Tipster bit.ly/34f53 #Kingman destroys the pack at Royal #Ascot #RoyalAscot #NightofThunder #JohnGosden

Putting a time delay of 20 seconds in between each tweet would mean that the first tweet would get sent to your account causing 50+ BOTS and visitors to come and hit your new page (a Twitter Rush) and then 20 seconds later another tweet would be sent causing another lot of visitors. Staggering the tweets prevents Twitter Rushes.

Another new feature is the ability to send an HTTP GET request to your new post hopefully causing it to be cached by WP Super Cache / W3 Total Cache or any other caching plugin.

You have the ability to add another time delay after this request to give the caching plugin time to build the file as well as passing special parameters in the querystring (such as special keys or values required by caching plugins to force a cache).

You can also use a special user-agent to make this request so that you can prevent the request being blocked (for example if you ban blank user-agents like I do) or to identify the request in your log files.

If you don't want to use post tags as #HashTags you can use the articles categories or even specify default hash tags. The system will take the list of possible tags and then order them by size and try to fit as many into the Tweet as possible.

It will now even try and scan the title of the tweet looking for tags contained within the tweet itself and add a # in front of the word as this saves room and allows more hash tags to be used in your %hashtag% parameter.


Buy Strictly TweetBOT PRO

So if you want to aid your WordPress sites performance consider buying the Strictly TweetBOT plugin from my site or Etsy.com or if you download the free version please consider donating some money.

If you want to enhance your auto-blogging capabilities then combining the premium versions of both Strictly TweetBOT PRO and Strictly AutoTags Premium Version will do your site wonders as well as saving you time!

If everyone donated just a single pound for every plugin they had download from WordPress then I would have made hundreds of thousands of pounds by now and could spend my time developing plugins full time AND FOR FREE!

You can also buy a voucher from Etsy.com for £15 that will let you hire me to set the plugin up for you if you are having difficulties or are not a WordPress or Twitter expert. All I would need is access to your admin area to do the work.

Also if you haven't checked lately Strictly AutoTags has a premium version which you can buy for £40 and has LOTS more features than the free WordPress version. It also can be bought with a set-up voucher that you can purchase from Etsy.com.

Also if you could please visit my facebook.com/strictlysoftware fan page and "like" it if you could. Leave comments and pass it onto your friends and fellow WordPress developers.



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