Eric Odom

Where do I start?

As most of you know… we had severe down time last week that presented a challenge unlike anything we’ve experienced to date. I want to go into that in a bit, but first, let me address the communication failure.

As the site administrator and owner, it’s my responsibility to communicate with each of you when something as significant as this happens. While I wasn’t personally aware of the “source” of the problem for several days, I understand it is my duty to let you know what is happening and I failed to do that properly.

Where the communication went wrong

Unfortunately, we haven’t kept a list of emails for blogivists. I’m not really sure why we never went through the database and did a proper address export, but the fact is… we never did. So, because of this, I didn’t have your email addresses when we were hit two weeks ago. I had an old list, but constant contact gave me problems because there were a LOT of bouncebacks and spam reports on the last blogivists message we sent out. That list was scrapped.

In short, I had no way to make an announcement. Like you, I couldn’t get into the site, and I couldn’t get email addresses from it either.

By the time the problems hit critical mass, we were getting pummeled by emails about blogivists and just couldn’t keep up.

But the reason is not really relevant at this point. The result is. And the result is that we didn’t properly communicate with you, our bloggers, and this caused a lot of problems within the community.

For that, I personally want to apologize. You have my word… it won’t happen again.

The problem explained

Running a website as large as blogivists is no easy task. And, unlike organizations that are well funded and overstaffed, we’re an all volunteer team with zero funding. We pay for the servers that host blogivists out of pocket, and when a huge problem comes along, we have to pay developers to fix it. I’m not suggesting that we’re not capable of getting problems solved, but I will admit that solutions to problems as large as the one we recently experienced will take longer to find for us.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ll always eventually be able to find the solution.

Anyway… so over the past few months we’ve seen a tremendous rise in spam blogs. At the same time this was happening, our volunteer staff was dealing with several large scale campaigns such as TaxDayTeaParty.com and a few other time consuming efforts. A few weeks ago, when we were at our weakest with regards to time dedication to blogivists, the site got hit with thousands of spam blogs.

The spam blogs were being created so quickly that it eventually overwhelmed the server, shutting down the entire system. Allen Fuller had to immediately freeze the site to get the database interaction and memory use under control before the server would/could be damaged.

This is why everything went dark. And this is why we couldn’t access anything.

The solution

First, we had to get a bigger server with more RAM. The blogivists database is so large that the site will require an entire server just for itself. So we had to pay for a brand new server, and buy extra RAM, before we could bring the site back online.

Allen Fuller and his team, with the help of Lennie Jarratt, carefully moved all of the data over to the new server, and we believe the site is finally starting to stabilize. There are still some slow moments and there may be a few glitches here and there, but we’re working on them and we hope to be running smoothly soon.

The future

We now have a brand new server that is fitted just for blogivists. We’re currently having a custom design built for the new homepage, and we’re going through to delete all spam blogs and implement new spam fighting features.

Also, we’re hoping to be able to hire an intern who can work with the community and help us know what needs to be changed/fixed/implemented.

It was unrealistic for us, as volunteers, to assume we would be able to manage a large community like blogivists as a 100% volunteer effort. We understand this is a problem, and we’re trying to work out a few ways to address the situation and make sure we’re better positioned for system problems moving forward.

I hope you’ll continue blogging with us here at Blogivists.com. Please know that even though there have been some challenging times in the past, we’re working hard to make things better and strengthen the community.

-Eric Odom
Blogivists.com

During the past few days I’ve noticed a lot of junk results in our GetClicky account. We track several thousands visits a day via GetClicky, and a major portion of this traffic comes via organic search. Most of it via Google.

These “junk results” (this is what I consider them) basically show Google.com as the referrer, and include no data on the keywords or keyphrases searched to reach our pages. Usually what we see is the full URL for the search query, which gives us keyword data and in turn helps us understand our audience and what they’re looking for.

At first I had no idea why this was happening, and my first instinct was to blame GetClicky for providing the junk data. However, when I logged in today I saw a link to this GetClicky blog post.

I’m not going to quote any of the post here because unless you read the entire page you might end up a bit confused. In summary, though, Google is testing a change in the way they handle referring URL’s that essentially blocks analytics programs from being able to track search data.

What this means for you and I is that if Google proceeds with this (and we’re already seeing it roll out into production stage), you and I will have no clue what people are searching for when they find our pages.

And if that doesn’t already get your blood boiling, here is the real kicker… Google can STILL track data and provide it via Google Analytics. Why? Because Google still has this data internally, so there is really no reason to assume they can’t push it into Google analytics.

In other words… Google appears to be telling webmasters and anyone who tracks search data that you have to use Google Analytics or you simply can’t track search data at all. Which, in effect, might render stat trackers obsolete.

The Smackdown blog has a great rundown of the situation. I highly recommend you have a read.

I think this is a really low blow if it turns out to be a permanent change. What say you?

Last week, while in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Kevin Farley and Myrna Sokoloff of the upcoming film An American Carol.

After having a wonderful lunch with Farley, the main character in the movie, and Sokoloff, the story writer, I became convinced that the folks behind An American Carol are top notch, free-market minded, and extremely deserving of the help of center-right activists and online professionals throughout social media realms.

It was made clear that An American Carol Read more…

An independent group of web 2.0 minded eActivists have decided that the free-market side of the political realm was lacking in investigative resources looking to pry into the lives of Presidential candidates. The new site, Talk Straight, aims to provide a collection of fact sheets and investigative pieces into the politics of the 2008 Presidential election.

Talk Straight, unlike most other investigative websites (which are mostly funded by the left), is looking to expose Barack Obama and his ties to far left money and corruption. The site will also work to reveal the shallow lines in Obama’s policy and promises. The founders plan to follow the dollars, expose Obama’s character, reveal his lies, tackle his policies, and debunk some rumors.

Indeed, the opposition is not only well funded… it’s actually owned and paid for by the Obama campaign. Meet Fight the Smears, an Obama campaign website looking to spin the message and fight back against sites and organizations who work to expose Barack Obama for who he really is.

The part I find most interested about Talk Straight vs. Fight the Smears is that one is a total grassroots effort and the other is a campaign controlled effort. In times where media, politicos, strategists, and virtually everyone else claims the left is controlling the online realm, it’s ironic that a group of center-right, online activists have single handedly launched an independent site that has the potential to counter Obama’s “Fight the Smears”.

The #dontgo Movement also recently proved to the world that center-right activists do indeed understand internet activism. The #dontgo Movement, of which I am proudly a part of, used Twitter and other social media tools to help dominate the energy message and organize a complete online movement.

Now Talk Straight goes live, proving that center-right activists can not only compete, but can be active from the bottom up, not like Obama’s top down method.

Three ways People can get plugged in:

1. Donate. We’re fronting the cost for all of this. Any help would be much appreciated.
2. Sign up for our Action Alert Newsletter. We’re not going to send you our blogs - this is a real action/task driven newsletter
3. Click our sponsor’s on our site and maybe buy a sticker or something. Everything is on sale and it helps us keep our sponsors.

Ali Akbar, the site founder and publisher, is proving to be one of the web’s top activists. Ali A. Akbar is a young Online Republican activist working to bring web 2.0 and interactivity to campaigns and right-leaning causes. He’s a previous BlogTalkRadio show host of RightTalkRadio. He also has a number of affiliations with today’s online Conservative movement sites.

Center-right campaigns and organizations need to pay very close attention to this rising star. If Akbar can continue publishing state-of-the-art political efforts such as Talk Straight, I believe he’ll be one of the true leaders in online activism moving forward.

If you haven’t done so yet, do yourself a favor and go check out Talk Straight.

-Eric Odom

And they use the typical name calling tactics of the left.

They also fail to realize that I’m simply a paid consultant for Sam and I do all of this #dontgo stuff on my own time.

But once again, no one contacted me before attacking, which is standard when the left goes postal like this.

Thanks to Prairie State 2.0, it has come to my attention that Progress Illinois took the Open Left talking points that I debunked earlier today and ran it as fact without doing some checking of their own.

Let’s be clear. This is a “movement” that originated at the highest level of powers in Washington. It’s a movement that, if successful, would benefit large oil companies and their rich executives far more than the average American consumer. It’s a movement with protests populated by paid staffers from industry-funded organizations. In short, there is nothing “grassroots” about it.

I find it fascinating that the left is stumbling over themselves thinking this is a beltway movement, when in fact it’s much, MUCH bigger than that.

Anyway, as one of the two #dontgo founders… I felt it my duty to respond to this false accusation.

Please also note that Progress Illinois is funded by SEIU Illinois State Council.

Below is my response. Read more…

Now that things are starting to slow down a bit, I feel I can finally address the laughable charge and confront it head on. For those of you who do not know the back story, you can read Mary Katherine Ham’s piece in the Washington Examiner to catch up on the #dontgo movement story.

While the Washington Examiner story explains the #dontgo Movement from the GOP side of the story, I would like to take you into the much larger, much more privately organized “outside the beltway” part of the movement.

Indeed, far left groups and blogs are frothing at the mouths to proclaim this grassroots movement an “astroturf” campaign with strings being pulled by Republicans and Big Oil Companies. Read more…

Much to my surprise, StumbleUpon has referred almost 20,000 visits to my Ultimate Libertarian Quotes List. And it’s not slowing down either. In fact, I’m still getting about 4,000 visits per 24 hour period.

I’ve had a few pages Stumbled before, but never like this. Not even close. It got me thinking… “are most Stumblers like me?”.

I Stumble a lot myself. I probably spend at least a half hour every day Stumbling, sometimes more. The three things I love the most are lists, images, and anything to do with Libertarianism. One of the reasons I got into Stumble is because there was so much pro-freedom content available and it seemed, unlike Digg, that the Stumble crowd was very non-partisan. Or at least, not into party politics.

While the assertion made in the title is purely an educated guess and contains no statistical data, 20,000 visits from StumbleUpon is a pretty big deal. And apart from a few comments and emails that seem to believe Democrats somehow represent Libertarian values, most of the comments and e-mail I got from that post were very much in support of true American liberty.

This tells me that a huge segment of Stumblers enjoy lists and are not in favor of the current two party system.

That makes me proud to call myself a Stumbler.