emails Archives - Adam Yamada

Link Requests are really Annoying

Recently I've been getting a lot of Link Requests from various people and content marketing companies. While I can understand why people do this and why people will ask for a link, sometimes it just gets really annoying and is a waste of my time.

Some people might be wondering “What are Link Requests?” Essentially a Link Request is when someone asks to place a link on your website. Most of the time people offer to guest post or blog in exchange for placing a link in the article. In my opinion this is a perfectly fair practice and Google doesn't have a problem with it. (As long as the article is reasonable and wasn't written by someone who isn't a native English speaker from some far off Asian country.)

However, what I have a problem with is when I get email Link Requests like this;

Dear Adam,

Hello, my name is Jimmy. I'm the webmaster and editor of
Shitty-Affiliate-Laden-Web-Hosting-Site.com. I'm writing to plug our newest article
on our blog: 101 [Shitty] Google+ Pages for Web Hosting News and Tips. I
thought that you and your site's audience might be interested in having a
look. Check it out:

“Link Goes Here”

I would appreciate if you could link to our article if you find it of
interest. And please feel free to e-mail me with any questions or suggestions
for the list.

Thanks,
Jimmy

What did this guy do wrong?

First it's clear he spent too much time writing his horrible article instead of actually reading or looking at my blog or anything I've worked on. He doesn't point out any content that I've written that he likes nor does he give me a compelling reason to link to the shitty article. So he really doesn't know who my audience is. Second, why the fuck would I send visitors to look at a blog post covering 101 Google+ pages about web hosting on an affiliate laden site? Seriously, do you people think I haven't been around the block and consequently that I am a idiot? The site this guy runs offers little value outside of the fact that he makes money on affiliate links. It's not even like this site posts reviews or offers good web hosting advice on the blog. He's probably one of those people at Affiliate Summit I would have met and largely ignored. By the way nobody has the fucking time to look through so many social media pages on a blog post. In addition a lot of those Google+ pages didn't cover web hosting or only did on occasion.

I've changed around a few things but the email is basically intact. I did add the URL though, which I thought was a nice touch. 🙂

My reply to this Link Request was, “Not sure why I would link to the article.” Since the domain name for the website was 4 letters and when I checked the domain history it was clear they had bought it from someone, I casually asked how much they paid for it. Since it's been several days and have not had a reply, I know I am not getting one.

This didn't surprise me actually as “Jimmy” probably didn't send out the email but had a Virtual Assistant (VA) do it. Pretty common for ad laden sites and SEO (search engine optimizers) do farm out these emails. However, if by chance you do get a reply I recommend you reply back. Not only did they make me annoyed sending the email but they've made me pissed even more since they didn't respond. Why would I ever work with them in the future?

Let me make this clear to my readers and anyone who is going to send Link Requests my way. I DO NOT link to sites that are just affiliate link wastelands. If you contact me straight up asking for a link there better be a good fucking reason or you will get an email that will make Satan happy.

Have you ever gotten annoying Link Requests? Do you respond or not respond? Is it good to be nice or make so that these people never want to contact you again?

PHPList Free Email Manager

The other day I was trying out Mailman, a free email manager written in Python. I've also been playing around with another well known email newsletter software known as PHPList.

UPDATE: This post reviews the old version of PHPList. What is pictured here is PHPList version 2 actually. The reason is I installed it is I used a quick installer which doesn't support the newest phpList version 3. It only had the older versions for some reason. The newest version of PHPlist look much cleaner and has a seemingly more well thought out user interface but I think version 2 was actually easier to use. If you are reading this I recommend you use the latest version of phpList so you have the proper security updates and the latest features.

PHPList pegs itself as “The most popular Open Source Newsletter Manager.” This does seem to be the case as they are not that many open source email newsletters programs out there besides Mailman and Dada Mail. At least these are the only 3 that I am aware of that are currently supported by developers and free to install and use on your own server. (Dada Mail requires you to purchase a license fee if you are over 3 lists with 1,000 emails.)

After playing around with PHPList I can see why it has a significant amount of downloads every month and why it's popular. It's not super easy-to-use but at least it has a layout that I think most people can figure out and understand. I had an email list up and running fairly quickly without having to look up too much. I'd say the learning curve is medium but the PHPList forums along with the documentation and a decent amount of video tutorials on the internet should help anybody trying to get started.

As you can see the backend of this email manager isn't going to win any design awards, but it is functional and I can at least understand how to use it. Mailman… not so much and Dada Mail is easy but there are confusing aspects about it as well. It didn't take me too long to send out a test email to see how PHPList works and what you could do. What's nice is that it has an advanced text editor so you can use different fonts, bold words, change colors, etc. and you can attach files. With Mailman you can't attach files which is kind of a big downside.

One big issue with PHPList is that the WordPress plugin that used to be supported for PHPList, WP PHP List, has not been updated for several years. You probably can use another WordPress newsletter plugin to integrate WordPress with PHPlist but I have not tried had time to mess with WP plugins yet to see. It seems like the Newsletter Sign-Up plugin will integrate according to this WP forum post.

What's surprising to me is that PHPList doesn't support an official Worpdress PHPList plugin. Wordpress is the most popular content management system (CMS) and blogging platform on the face of the earth. Matt Mullenweg said at the 2013 State of the Word that 18.9% of websites in the world now run on WordPress. In addition checkout these impressive WordPress stats back when I wrote about the WordPress 10th Anniversary. Bottom line if you want your software to be really successful, you should code a WP plugin for easy integration.

Also there does not seem to be a way to remove the footer image that links to the PHPList site at the bottom of emails. Honestly I don't have a problem with it as it is free and open source software, but I wish I could pay a license fee to remove it. This would be a good money maker for the developers in my opinion. The point of an email newsletter is to promote yourself or your own websites.

Overall I think PHPList is a great way to get an email list started if you are on a tight budget and want greater control over your email lists. You will have to be careful not to send out to many emails and check what your web hosts limits are for sending bulk emails. They will not want to get hit with spam complaints from you sending too many emails and risking getting a blacklisted IP address.

PHPList does have a nice service called PHPList Hosted, which gives you the option to send emails through their email servers. PHPList Hosted currently in beta but the pricing is quite attractive when compared to other email management providers.

For those that want to learn more about this open source email software you can order the book PHPList 2-Email Campaign Manager by David Young. I haven't bought the book but I am it considering it as it is recommend on the PHPList website and includes step-by-step instructions. From what I can tell it will have PHP coding, so you should be aware of that before you buy it.

I will probably post a in-depth review and some tutorials as I get more into using PHPList. Open source is all about sharing your knowledge! 🙂

For more information and to learn more about PHPList visit the official website: http://www.phplist.com/

Ubuntu Forums Hacked

If you are a user of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution in the world, than you might have heard that Ubuntu Forums got Hacked. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, sent out an email to all users of Ubuntu Forums. Here is the entire email in case you are a member of Ubuntu Forums and have not received it yet;

Hello,

You are receiving this message because you have an account registered with this address on ubuntuforums.org.

The Ubuntu forums software was compromised by an external attacker. As a result, the attacker has gained access to read your username, email address and an encrypted copy of your password from the forum database.

If you have used this password and email address to authenticate at any other website, you are urged to reset the password on those accounts immediately as the attacker may be able to use the compromised personal information to access these other accounts. It is important to have a distinct password for different accounts.

The ubuntuforums.org website is currently offline and we are working to restore this service. Please take the time to change your ubuntuforums.org account password when service is restored.

We apologize for any inconvenience to the Ubuntu community, thank you for your understanding.

The Canonical Sysadmins.

If you have an account with Ubuntu Forums and use the same password for the email account associated with Ubuntu Forums, like they said, I would highly recommend changing those. If this hacker team (this is my assumption) was good enough to hack Ubuntu Forums I am fairly certain they are knowledgeable enough to solve the salted hashes. Who knows what they plan to do with all the data anyway.

Currently UbuntuForums.org is still down and Canonical is working on getting it back up. If you visit the domain here you will see this simple HTML page with information of what Canonical knows and a progress report of of what they are doing to get the site back up and fix the security breach.

Ubuntu Forums is down for maintenance

There has been a security breach on the Ubuntu Forums. The Canonical IS team is working hard as we speak to restore normal operations. This page will be updated with progress reports.

What we know

Unfortunately the attackers have gotten every user's local username, password, and email address from the Ubuntu Forums database.

The passwords are not stored in plain text, they are stored as salted hashes. However, if you were using the same password as your Ubuntu Forums one on another service (such as email), you are stronglyencouraged to change the password on the other service ASAP.

Ubuntu One, Launchpad and other Ubuntu/Canonical services are NOT affected by the breach.

No word on when Ubuntu Forums will be back up and running but hopefully it will be up again soon. I assume for any Ubuntu users looking for help to problems this is quite an inconvenience but there are a number of tech and Linux forums you can use in the meantime while Ubuntu Forums is down. You can also use IRC channels for to get help with Ubuntu issues.

I would imagine whatever security measures Canonical has for Ubuntu Forums they must be pretty good. If Ubuntu Forums can get hacked I thinks that means a lot of companies forums could get hacked.