WordPress Under Fire for Search-Engine Spamming

One of the most popular Weblog-publishing tools, WordPress, is stirring a controversy over search-engine gaming because it included thousands of articles related to popular search terms on its Web site while largely hiding them from site visitors.

Bloggers and search-engine marketers are accusing the open-source WordPress project of spamming the major search engines, while at the same time being one of the advocates in an effort to combat comment spam in blog postings.

The discovery emerged late Wednesday when the blog Waxy.org revealed that thousands of articles about such popular search terms as asbestos, mortgages and debt consolidation appear on sections of the WordPress.org site while being hidden from visitors to the site's home page.

News of the search-engine gaming technique spread quickly on the Web. As of Wednesday evening, search results to WordPress.org pages with the articles began disappearing from Google's Web index. Yahoo Inc. followed suit Thursday, removing the WordPress.org pages from its index because of what a spokesman confirmed was "noncompliance to our content guidelines."

Google officials declined to comment on why WordPress.org pages had dropped from the company's index, but its Webmaster policies bar techniques that display different content to its crawler than to site visitors.

The article pages were still appearing in results on MSN's search engine as of Thursday afternoon, though WordPress appeared to have removed them from its site. Links to the articles returned a "page not found" error, though a cached version still showed the articles.

WordPress is one of the blog-publishing tools supporting "no follow," an HTML tag that Google, Yahoo and MSN are beginning to recognize in order to ignore hyperlinks included in the comment sections of blogs. Search spammers often insert such links into blogs in an attempt to gain higher search rankings for their sites since search engines consider link popularity in determining a site's ranking.

"This is a big deal given the fact that they're supposed to be combating search spam, and [instead] they are generating it," said Danny Sullivan, a search-engine expert and editor of Search Engine Watch.

The lead developer of WordPress who oversees the Web site, was unavailable for comment on the controversy. According to his blog, he is on vacation. But in a support forum on WordPress.org, he previously acknowledged that the site was hosting articles and Google AdSense ads from a third party in exchange for a flat fee.

AdSense is the name of Google's program for syndicating ads to content partners. In the ad model, advertisers bid on keywords in an auction and pay based on the number of clicks on their sponsored listings.

"I'm not sure if we're going to continue it much longer, but we're committed to this month at least," Mullenweg wrote in a posting dated March 24.

"It was basically an experiment. However, around the beginning of February, donations were going down as expenses were ramping up, so it seemed like a good way to cover everything."

As an open-source blog-publishing tool, WordPress is supported largely through donations from users and supporters. The project, which celebrated 100,000 downloads of WordPress 1.5 earlier this month, also has begun researching the creation of a foundation to support and operate it.

Jonas Luster, a WordPress user who is leading the foundation effort, said he agrees that Mullenweg made a mistake in using the articles as a way of generating revenue for the project.

"Matt [Mullenweg] was and is trying to do right by the community," Luster said. "Has he chosen the right way? I'm not happy about it either. [But] we're all entitled to make one or two mistakes."

Luster said he expects to discuss the search-engine gaming issue with Mullenweg and to try to rectify any ill will in the WordPress community about it. He also cautioned against calling the technique "spam," saying that while he opposes the attempt to game search engines, it is not the same as filling e-mail inboxes or blog comment sections with unwanted messages.

While the articles on WordPress.org discussed legitimate topics, they appeared to have little to do with blogging or with WordPress as an open-source project, Sullivan said. More troubling, he said, is the fact that the home page of WordPress.org contains links to the articles that are viewable to the search-engine crawler but do not display in modern Web browsers.

"The articles may be perfectly fine, but why are you carrying them?" Sullivan asked of WordPress. "You do not intend for people to find them from the home page, and that's the thing that makes this stand out."

At least in Google, WordPress.org carries a high rank because it is a site widely linked to by bloggers using the tool, search-engine experts said. By showing search crawlers' links to content for terms such as "mortgages," "asbestos" and "debt consolidation," WordPress also can help boost the relevancy of its article pages for those terms.

For instance, in one example viewed by eWEEK.com, WordPress article pages appeared as the 26th and 29th top results in a Yahoo search for "pet insurance" before Yahoo stopped displaying WordPress article results.

Some of the targeted terms also are associated with Google AdSense ads that carry high prices for clicks.

"It is documented that [WordPress.org] was targeting keywords like asbestos, mesothelioma, insurance, debt consolidation, diabetes and mortgages," said Barry Schwartz, president of RustyBrick Inc., a Web development and search optimization company. "Those keywords are known to cost up to $100 per click."

Schwartz, who wrote about the issue in his Search Engine Roundtable blog, said he considers the tactics used on the WordPress site to be search spam. Sites fighting for top search-engine positions in areas such as online gambling and pornography often use similar techniques, though most would hide home-page links using less obvious approaches, he said.

As for the impact of the search-gaming controversy on the larger WordPress community, Luster made a distinction between the WordPress.org Web site and the project developer and blogs using the WordPress software.

"WordPress.org is a site that is maintained by Matt [Mullenweg] and not the WordPress community," he said. "Just because one thing happened [there] doesn't mean the tool or developers or the community has lost credibility."

source:- pcmag.com/

SugarCRM Announces Sugar 5.1 General Availability

The world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced the general availability of Sugar 5.1, which includes new reporting and wireless capabilities for SugarCRM. The new reporting and analytics engine provides SugarCRM users with improved insight into sales effectiveness and customer behavior. Revamped wireless capabilities deliver the feature-rich SugarCRM user experience on mobile phones, including support for the popular BlackBerry^® and iPhone™ smartphones.

Sugar Community Edition 5.1 is available at http://www.sugarforge.org/content/downloads/. To sign-up for a free trial of Sugar Professional 5.1, please visit: http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ondemand_eval.html.

Community Support

SugarCRM’s commercial open source model invites the download and inspection of source code by users, developers, customers and partners, producing a higher quality product than possible in proprietary development models. During the beta process, Sugar 5.1 was installed over 10,000 times and tested by over 25,000 users.

Sugar 5.1 builds on a product legacy that has made SugarCRM one of the most popular open source projects and CRM products in the world. Since its founding four years ago, Sugar Community Edition and its related components have been downloaded over 5 million times. Over 80,000 registered community members, including 14,000 developers, have created over 500 extensions and 75 language translations of SugarCRM at www.sugarforge.org, SugarCRM’s community web site. SugarCRM’s user base consists of over 400,000 users on 50,000 installations in 195 countries.

“Software is transitioning from lock-in based proprietary systems to an open, standards-based world,” said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM. “As the mass adoption of SugarCRM proves, users want freedom and choice in their software, not artificial constraints and dictates from software providers.”

Sugar 5.1 Features

Sugar 5.1 offers new features and improvements across end-user and administrative functions, including:

• Advanced Reporting and Analytics provide support for complex reporting sets, matrix reports, run-time filters and integration with Microsoft Excel.

• New Wireless HTML Client delivers an improved user interface, new search capabilities, and support for BlackBerry^® and iPhone™ smartphones.
• Tracker Reports provide a snapshot into system usage in order to increase user adoption and visibility into CRM utilization.
• Data Import Enhancements have been strengthened, making it easier than ever to move data from applications such as Excel, Act!, Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com into SugarCRM.
• Module Builder Enhancements support new relationships and templates, auditing and support for creating end-user dashlets.

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

The iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs.

source:- businesswire.com/

EstHost: Script Installation Made Easy

(PRWEB) EstHost, Inc (esthost.com), a US-based hosting provider, announces that its virtual hosting customers can now install in seconds popular blogging, portal and message board scripts with Fantastico De Luxe, a powerful automatic installer for most popular scripts. The extensive list of supported scripts features popular open source projects, such as Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, phpBB, PHP-Nuke, and many more.

Pre-made, open source web scripts for popular web site types (like blogs, message boards, or content portals) enable to take ideas and businesses online without major development investments. These solutions are massively popular among virtual hosting customers. EstHost, Inc is now offering virtual hosting products powered by a combination of cPanel, an account management software, and Fantastico De Luxe, a popular automatic installer that allows the users to set up their script-powered sites in a matter of seconds.

Fantastico De Luxe makes installation process easy and quick, it also handles directory structures, MySQL databases, file access rights and all other details needed to power a web site with one of the leading scripts on the market. No technical expertise is required to install dozens of scripts for a variety of purposes, including blogging (WordPress, Nucleus), content management (Drupal, Joomla, PHP-Nuke), message boards (phpBB), image galleries (Coppermine Photo Gallery), and more. The total list of scripts supported by Fantastico De Luxe is available here: http://www.netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php.

By implementing Fantastico De Luxe, a widely used script autoinstaller, EstHost, Inc (esthost.com) enables its virtual hosting account owners to get their sites up and running in a matter of minutes without having to learn the technical details and hire web experts. More information about Fantastico De Luxe is available here: http://www.netenberg.com/fantastico.php. You are welcome to contact EstHost, Inc to find out more about Fantastico De Luxe and ways how you can make your online business benefit from the script.

Started in 2004, today EstHost, Inc offers professional, reliable virtual hosting, dedicated server and Virtuozzo-powered virtual private server solutions. Test EstHost, Inc services before becoming a customer by using the company's free 5-day trial period. Domain-related services can be obtained from http://estdomains.com, including registering new domains, setting up email forwarding or managed DNS. In addition, customers are welcome to auction their domains at http://bakler.com or purchase old unused domain names from other webmasters. If needing more information about EstHost, Inc, contact the company's customer support department by creating a ticket at https://support.esthost.com.

source:- http://www.prweb.com/

Design Your Site with WordPress Magazine Themes

As with any website, design can be key to your overall performance. Many already know that WordPress offers some great features for blogs and sites alike. But did you know that you can get great magazine style themes to ensure maximum design efficiency online?

That’s right. WordPress magazine themes are outstanding design frameworks that include a wonderful, easy to manage homepage instead of the traditional blog homepage. Now, you can set any html page as your homepage when using WordPress, but this method requires little know how and even less technical ability. And at least one of them is free.

WordPress is the most used open source CMS out there right now and it takes little work to build and SEO powerhouse. Google loves it and indexes all pages easily if you have everything working properly.

But when visitors come to your blog, they frequently see a standard blog home page, with snippets of posts in a list and some sidebars containing various items of interest.

Magazine themes eliminate that aspect of this. They give a well structured, easy to follow foundation for the rest of your site and aid in directing traffic from your home page to various key areas of your site.

Three Great WordPress Magazine Themes

Mimbo 2.2
The first magazine theme called Mimbo 2.2. Mimbo creates a wonderful area for featured articles, sub-categories and less important categories individually. This is done with ease and a little code manipulation. You can get assistance with the code from the creator Darren Hoyt. It uses category key numbers to determine what content to place where and then uses WordPress’s custom fields to place the pictures.

The best thing about Mimbo is it’s free! Below is a screenshot of a Mimbo 2.2 theme in use right now.

Mimbo is the only free magazine theme found that merits any recognition; but there are also two for purchase that are just as outstanding, if not more so.

Revolution
Revolution is a top notch, for purchase magazine theme. It is a widget-ready, customizable theme that is an ideal solution for online magazines, online newspapers and other websites that wish to use WordPress as a content management system. It offers a little more flexibility and a different homepage layout than Mimbo.

Revolution also has other magazine style themes specific to news, business and more. A set can be purchased for around $80.00 for single use.

WP-Magazine
Also of note is WP-Magazine Theme. It has a great scrolling image on the home page with a larger area to work with and less white space. The basic option here sells for around $80.00.

Now you have the resources to build a powerhouse publication website with a great design, ease of use and fun right at your fingertips. Why are you still reading? Read more about WordPress and the great things you can do with it now… More Info: cmswire.com