Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

Absolute Beginners Blogging Article #1
This is a series of posts I am witting for very beginning wordpress bloggers.

My bloggers are not paid, and their links are for real!

Go to your login page.

It will usually be the address of the blog, followed by wp-login.php.

Here is an example.

httttp:///wwww.thenameof site/yourblog/wp-login.php

Then enter your user name and password. Make sure you get the capital letters right if they are part of it.

Then click on the word Write.

Enter a Title in the Title area.

Write your blog in the Post area.

Scroll down to the categories, and select one and only one category.

Scroll back up and click on Publish.

Here is a list of all the wordpress beginner blogger posts
How to Blog for Absolute Beginners – #1 Start
Absolute Begining Blogging #2 – Catagories
Absolute Beginner Blogging #3 Leaving a Comment
Absolute Beginner Blogging #4 Handling Comments
Absolute Beginner Blogging #5 – Modifying a Published Post
Absolute Beginner Blogging #6 – Generating Viewers
Absolute Beginner Blogging #7 – Links
Absolute Beginner Blogging #8 – Those Funny Links called Trackbacks

Elite Retreat was fantastic. One of the best things of all was that on the first day, I got to sit next to Matt Mullenweg in the back of the room. I would have spent $5,000 just for that! When Matt spoke, he spoke about WordPress 2.5 that had just been released and encouraged us to update our wordpress installs.

Here is a picture of my actual computer, with my blog at bodyabcs showing on the screen right next to Matt Mullenweg. I could see my blog looking jealously over at Matt hoping it would work on it.

Matt left that night, and was unable to come back the next day because of jury duty. The second day I was sitting there looking at my bodyabcs blog and I noticed a few letters at the top of the screen. (This must have happened some time in the past week.)

It said 1f57. (red arrow added to be obvious) What the hell is that? I figured that when I was customizing the header I must have added a few random characters without realizing it.

The funniest part is at this exact moment, Jeremy, Shoemoney, Schoemaker started talking about how important it is to update your wordpress instalation so you don’t get hacked. He had no idea that at that moment I had discovered I had been hacked! It was hilarious that I am struggling in the back of the room to save my hacked blog while Jeremy is discussing how to avoid it.

So I clicked open the source code, and guess what? I had added around 500 links to every page without realizing it!

I looked over to my right, and there was Dave Dellanave, Shoemoney’s ace programmer sitting 3 feet across the isle from me banging away on the keys creating fighters.com their new ultimate fighting site! By the way, I hung over his shoulder watching him code, update the site, look at the site, write code, fingers flying, hand coding in a text editor, site evolving, it was beautiful!

So I show Dave my source code, and ask him what is up? He says, without looking up from his coding,

Dave – “You were hacked, what version of wordpress are you using”?

Me – “Achem”… “It is is an old version”.

Dave – ” Update your wordpress software”

Me – “I have no idea how”?

Dave – “Just untar it”

Me- “I know how to download it to my site, unzip it, and then just copy it over, will that work”?

Dave (still clicking on his keys) “Sure”

Me – “I never would do this at home. It is like having a programming lifeguard watching you while you swim”.

Dave – (click, click, click, click, click)

I then go to wordpress.org and download the newest version zipped. I then unzip it. I then copy the files across to my server simply replacing the old one with the new ones.

I then change the password on my database and also change it in the wp-config.php file.

I then confidently open up my blog, and get an error message.

I then literally drop my computer right in front of Dave and say “Help me!”

He then clicks the button that says, UPDATE DATABASE.

My blog then works perfectly, I am now in wordpress 2.5.

When I look at the page source, the links are still there.

Luckily Jeremy Hermanns is hanging around and jumped right into my wordpress blog, but not before telling me to clean my keyboard!

One of the truly amazing things that was present at the Elite Retreat was the level of trust amongst the attendees. We all just left our computers opened, often logged into servers and other software. People would leave the room with their machines with all of their million dollar secrets just sitting right there. In this case, I just let Jeremy run wild in my machine, something I would normally never allow someone to do.

Jeremy suggested we look at the footer, to find the links. Sure enough that is where they are.
Half of the links are to zen habits dot net.

The other half of the about 500 links are to jp aerospace dot com

Neil Patel then told me he knows the guy who has zenhabits. I laughed pretty hard, and am going to ask Neil to send a link to this page to him. Neil did not think zenhabits would have done this. I looked deeper into this amazingly long code of hack and found more links to jpaeropace dot com. I wonder if he is the real culprit here, and only put the zenhabits links in earlier to throw people off?

Either way, I would love the zenhabits guy and the jpaerospace guy comment here and tell us what is up?

Moral of the story? Backup your blog. Keep your wordpress installation updated!

Getting hacked was really fun. Getting hacked the day after Matt Mullenweg personally told us to update, and a few minutes before Jeremy started talking about why we should update was absolutely priceless! Having a programming problem where I could get help from Dave and Jeremy Hermanns and input from Neil Patel just made it it a fun game. If it had happened at home, it could have been a big pain in the ass.

Having it happen at the Elite Retreat just showed how amazing all of the attendees and speakers were, and how quickly they can solve a problem.

So the trip is done. I still have to drive home tomorrow, but tonight
I finally get to sleep. I have gone 4 days with very, very little sleep.
Today was amazing.
I sent Ma.tt a text and swung by his cool new digs to pick him up for Dim Sum.
Then to the hotel to get Arjun, Neil, and Andy.
On the walk Matt snapped some photos, and I caught one of our part of the group.
How fricken cool did I feel walking with these guys down the street in
San Francisco?

We went to the nice Dim Sum Dive on the border of China Town.
There was a whole nother crew of Elite Retreaters and spouses we met up with. (More to come about them in the next few posts.)

The conversation started light and friendly discussing mergers, acquisitions,
windows vs. mac, switching e-mail platforms, how to pronounce doncha of wordpress’ last name.

The conversation then quickly degraded to way silly, ridiculous humor that included
discussions on Matt’s rediscovery of cereal, specifically Special-K (Do I hear an
endorsement deal coming?), Neils endorsement of honey nut cereal, Neal’s trip to Disneyland, the use
of Black Amex cards at Taco Bell, and Matt’s suggestion that I wear a different wig to each conference since my head is a blank slate.

We had to hold Neal back as he wanted to try his hand at selling Dim Sum at
half off to other tables in competition with the aggressive Chinese waitresses.
The conversation then degraded to a point that was barely
understandable, and mildly inappropriate.
The day is over now, and I can now barely see the screen due to tired blury eyes.
This was such a fun amazing day at the end of a fun amazing week.

Stay tuned for more to come.

Big smile. Snoooze.

SEO Dim Sum!!!! Baby!

I will be writing about the Elite Retreat hopefully later tonight, but if you have anything to do with SEO or Internet Marketing and you read this you are invited to Open Source Dim Sum on Saturday!

In one line though today I got to sit next to one of my hero’s Matt Mullenweg all day, got to hear him, Neil Patel, Andy Liu, Aaron Wall, Brian Clark, and of course the hero of hero’s Jeremy Schoemaker. This event is so worth 5K per pop it aint even funny. o.k., so it was three lines, not one.

Open Source Dim Sum Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 10:00 A.M.

I have confirmed some very, very, big names in SEO, eating little funny looking food served from steaming carts!

The restaurant said we will probably have to wait about 15 or 20 minutes after we get there.

map to dim sum

The name of the place is

Gold Mountain

10:00 a.m.  at

644 Broadway
(bet. Columbus Ave. & Stockton St.)
San Francisco, CA

415-296-7733

This is an authentic Chinatown experience. If you didn’t see all the white faced SEO boys, (except for us ethnic looking types) you would think this was in Hong Kong. I have not eaten at this particular Dim Sum place, but in Zagats it is ranked highly for the Dim Sum places in China Town.

This will be the first ever SEO Dim Sum event!

If you have any questions, please shoot me an e-mail at dk XX purposeinc.com. (Obviously replace the XX with the @ sign!)

This should be a real hoot. There has been a big 0 into planning this event, and whatever happens will be my responsibility! It is not an actual official Elite Retreat event, but Jeremy told me he did not mind me having it.

It will probably cost around $20 per person, and I suggest you bring cash.

Merry Dim Sum!

Much Love,

dk

Oh my god.

I was at the event to help Jeremy take care of little details, but what I got out of it was worth millions.

First off here is the main line up.

How would you like to sit in a room with Andy Liu, Dave Dellanave, Jeremy Schoemaker, Brian Clark, Neil Patel, and Aaron Wahl, who are all there to answer any question you can throw at them?

Once during the event I heard someone say, “I’m sorry but I can not tell you that information.” Other than that, I heard every question asked get answered. I heard dollar amounts. I kept getting confused as to what 7 figures meant or 8 figures and had to keep re-working it out in my head.

Tigh Buckles who works for Jeremy did an outstanding job of organizing and running the event. He was my official boss for the weekend, and it was a real hoot being the one who got to go on beer runs, or go get a door unlocked. I am so used to screaming orders that it was way wicked fun being the one taking them

I actually felt guilty because I went to the event to help Jeremy, and felt like I took way, way, way, more away from the event than I gave.

I got to sit next to one of my absolute hero’s in life who was also one of the speakers,

Matt Mullenweg who is the main founder of wordpress and Automatic.

I always try to link to him, because he has very few links going to his site.

You can see the stars in my eyes standing next to Matt. Guy Kawasaki also came and spoke about his new site he is setting up. The Elite Retreat really lived up to its reputation and promise of giving people full access to superstars of our profession. The amount of intelligence that was in that room was mind boggling.

The attendees were thrilled with the result. I got some great video, met amazing friends, and the food was unreal. I will be writing more about it, but first I have to go meet a bunch of the crew for dinner.

Last night Jeremy treated us all to dinner at Aqua, which is one of the best restaurants in San Francsisco. I have a little insight into the finance of the whole event, and it was an amazing gesture of Jeremy to buy a very expensive and world class dinner for so many people.

And if you run into Neil, ask him about the Cherries in the dessert. They were his absolute favorite, and he kept forcing them on everyone.

One of my goals in this event was for me to work closely with Shoemoney so I could get a sense of who he really is. My conclusion? Brilliant, generous, ethical, and a guy who surrounds himself with the best and brightest. He has my full support.

Gotta go get ready for dinner, pick up my wife and see what she bought shopping today, and then we are off to Anamandara with the crew!

Thanks to all the attendees, the speakers, and especially Jeremy for letting me into this privileged world for what was truly and Elite Retreat!

Much Love,

dk

Tonight, Friday’s dinner is at Anamandara!

This post is about Friday nights dinner.

This is not an official Elite Retreat event.

The post about breakfast on Saturday is here.

Dinner details are below.

Everyone is invited. Dinner is at 9:00.

They have a gorgeous bar where you can hang out before, during or after.

AnaMandara is right by fishermans wharf and Vietnamese / French fusion.

It is a lovely place. It is taxi distance from the hotel.

It costs about $40 per person.

Here is their site Ana Mandara

Here is the google local map.

Some of the guys are meeting by the entrance of the hotel at 8:30 to take a cab.
Leave a comment if you are coming!

(My sneaky attempt at more comments!)

Unbelievable.

Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker is holding his Elite Retreat in San Francisco right this second.

I have the honor of helping out at the event. I get to run the cam-corder, buy more beer, in fact I have even given chiropractic adjustments to a few of the guests.
Jeremy knows how to throw an event. The hotel is unbelievable. It is first class. It opened a month ago, and I think my wife and I are are the first people to sleep in our room. Jeremy had limos out to pick up the guests, and had a great spread with drinks and snacks for everyone tonight. What was going to be a little cocktail get to know each other networking event turned into a full blown party.

I had the honor to meet each of the guests who arrived tonight. I did not know what to expect, and actually wondered about who would come. I was thrilled to run into some old friends.

To speak straight truth without holding back, one for one, they were some of the nicest people. I would be thrilled to hang out with any of them any time. There was not a single jerk in the crowd. It was great to see what a first class crowd that Jeremy draws. I am not at liberty to give out the details of what I learned in private conversations tonight, but I will simply state that the deals, and action people were talking about left my jaw hanging down, and me speechless.

Everyone there was open and interested to meet and help everyone else there. The official event has not even begun yet, and I am not even a guest, I am a helper, and what I got out of it was way, way, way worth more than $5,000. If you were on the on the edge about whether to come or not, you should have , and I highly recommend you do next year.

If you are an attendee this week please ask me for anything you need. I am here to help you guys, so whether you feel like a pizza, need a chiropractic adjustment, need cleaner for your contact lenses, just let me know and I will take care of it.

Jeremy, if you read this, again thank you for your welcome introduction into your truly elite, and magnificent world!

Stay tuned for more stories and pictures as this event unfolds!

Much Love,

dk

Matt Cutts thinks he is skipping April Fools?

No such luck!

Go here, De-Sphunn Matt Cutts Blog.

Then Click on De-Sphunn to make it the most De-Sphunn article ever!!

If you don’t do this you will have bad April Fools luck and people will be playing tricks on you all day!!!

Want to see Matt Cutts tattoo?

Here is a picture of his Cat Tat. I think he may get tired of it.