Entries Tagged 'Upgrades' ↓

Server Upgrade & Migration:

While our upgrade took a couple hours longer than expected last night, things turned out great! The load times are so much faster than before. If you are participating in our LinkWords program, you’ll notice our ads are loading faster than the pages now!

Our awesome hosting company told me late afternoon that we had already served 7.2 million requests in less than a day!!! Pretty amazing. I think we were missing a lot of requests with our older equipment.

We still have additional upgrades coming that will improve things further, but we will announce each as they arrive.

Office Prank:

After our successful upgrade, we (Matt and I) felt we needed to release some of this built up pressure of the upgrade anticipation. Just so happens, we have about 25 of these huge executive chair boxes that have been sitting around the office. We thought that we would make an office out of a cube with the boxes, so we hit “Bob the Builder” (Robin) since she made a comment about the boxes earlier.

I think she enjoyed it! (click images to see larger view)

        LinkWorth Cleanup Time

Our services will be shut down at 6:00 PM Central Standard Time, today 8.11.09, for approximately one (1) hour. (That is -6:00 GMT)

We’ll be moving datacenters and to much faster equipment with lots of room to grow. This will help with lagging load times for ad feeds and also allow certain parts of our network to go down and not affect the main ad serving machines.

The best way to keep up with everything going on will be through our Twitter feed. We’ll be making constant updates to keep everyone informed during this upgrade and others still to come.

http://www.twitter.com/linkworth

If you’ve been like many other customers, you’ve often wished we had better stats for partner listings. Believe me when I say, it’s been an extremely sore subject with us for quite a while!

With lots of new code and lots of new servers, we’ve managed to get a new process in place that will keep all sites in our inventory equal to or less than 30 days old.

In addition to improving our stats data, we’ve also incorporated ways to purchase and/or add to your wish list(s) straight from the stats page, making the process of campaign building much easier than ever before.

Although we have a new product soon to be introduced (LinkBanners), the majority of our focus has been improving everything we have. We’ll keep everyone in the loop of new changes as they happen.

Follow LinkWorth on twitter to more current updates.

http://twitter.com/linkworth

We have decided to make 2009, the year of upgrading. We know there are many things people would like to see differently, so we’re putting ‘most’ of the new development on the back burner while we make what we have better. I thought it would be good to inform everyone of what to expect in the near future.

Here are a few changes to look for soon:

• REPORTING: – we are about to launch a much needed reporting upgrade. It’s something that has been one of the most requested, and we finally have the manpower to put it into production. We are about to launch our new reporting that will help display the numbers you have always wanted with LinkWorth.
• LinkBB (Billboard Ads): – our LinkBB has been around for a few years and was the first of it’s kind in our market. Almost like a magazine advertorial, but a web version. However, things have changed since we were the first to launch this type of product, so it is time to give it a much needed upgrade. Look for the upgrades you’ve always wanted with our LinkBB product within the next couple of weeks.
• LinkInTxt Upgrade: – our LinkInTxt product is a very hot commodity. It’s something that is becoming more popular by the day. The way we currently discover new keywords or key phrases is outdated. We are working on a more updated way to discover new keywords and key phrases on partner sites/blogs. This means more opportunities for partners and more opportunities for advertisers.
• Banner Ads!: – we announced the upcoming new product a while back but had to put it on hold while we worked on other improvements. The new product is back into production and we’re extremely excited about launching it soon. Banner ads have made a huge comeback, so offering it to our customers makes complete sense.

This is just a small list of upgrades we have on deck. Our goal is to make the Control Center much easier to use and maintain. Since our staff uses it daily, their feedback is usually very similar to much of our customers. If you have suggestions, PLEASE send them to admin **at** linkworth **dot** com.

Just a little heads up, we have locked our system for a short time to add a minor update.

It will be be unlocked shortly.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

******UPDATE*******
We’re back!!

LinkPost Jobs has been well received since the launch. We expected our initial launch would bring many comments and suggestions on what might be needed in order to make it better. The suggestions did pour in and we appreciate everyone who sent them in because it was exactly what we were hoping for.

The two biggest suggestions were the ability to pre-approve blogs for jobs and the option to exclude certain domains. Advertisers felt there needed to be a middle ground between a regular LinkPost and a LinkPost Job. They like the idea of handpicking blogs, but also like the feature of having bloggers come to them. They also wanted the ability to block specific domains if they don’t want a certain blogger type.

Blog Candidates
When creating a new job, you’ll see a new option that says:

• Bloggers will be automatically approved if they meet my job criteria.
• I want to review/approve Blog Candidates.

If you select that you want to ‘review/approve’ candidates, then once a blogger accepts your job listing, the system will notify you that there is a blog candidate to approve/decline. Once clicking the blog candidates, you’ll see all candidates interested in writing the review. At this point you’ll have the option of visiting their blog and making the decision of whether or not it fits your needs.

Exclude Domains
The other new option is the ability for advertisers to disallow domains from accepting your jobs. If you wish to not allow blogspot.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com or any other blog service you deem invaluable, this is where you can block them. When creating a job listing, the ‘exclude’ option will now be part of the job listing process.

We are always looking for more suggestions to make our products better. If you have a suggestion, please email support {at} linkworth {dot} com.

I just thought I’d post a quick update about our telephone woes. They’re fixed!

We had a fancy new phone system installed here last Thursday that hasn’t been routing calls properly. Every incoming call was going to the Auto-Attendant and I know people were having difficulty reaching us. SORRY ABOUT THAT!!!

Like I said, it’s all working correctly now and we apologize for any inconvenience.

For those of you that use WordPress and are up to date with their software, you probably noticed our plugin stopped working properly. We apologize for this and we have two versions of the plugin available. (should be available late tonight or first thing tomorrow morning 5.27.08)

WP 2.3x and under
or
WP 2.5x and over

We’re also excited to have our plugin moved into the widget world. This is definitely the easiest way to display our ad units on blogs and we’ll let you a know launch date when it gets near.

Beyond our current version plugin, we are getting a brand new WP Plugin project underway. Options are good, right? That is all I’ll say to this until I have more.

If you use WordPress and have not upgraded to 2.5.1, I would highly recommend you do so. The 2.5x upgrade is definitely a work of art. Design and usability is great.

Partners, are you tired of waiting around to be chosen for LinkPost deals?

Advertisers, does sorting through our ever-growing inventory to find suitable LinkPost Partner blogs take too much of your valuable time?

Now there’s an easier way! (Will go live tomorrow 4.29.08)

Allow me to introduce LW Jobs – a new way to buy & sell paid blog posts here at LinkWorth.

In the “old days”, Advertisers had to create an outline, search for Partner blogs individually, make a buy request, wait for approval, then wait for the post be written. On the flip side, Partners had to wait patiently for work to come their way.

Now there is a MUCH more efficient way for both Partners and Advertisers. LW Jobs allow Advertisers to simply create a Job listing using a LinkPost outline and let the bloggers find them.

How does it work?
Advertisers select a LinkPost outline to use, determine a set of minimum requirements that Partner blogs must meet, deposit funds, and then the Job is posted for all of our blog Partners to see and accept the Jobs that best suit them!

Partners
As a blog Partner, viewing the available Jobs is a piece of cake. Simply log in to your control center and view your Alerts to see what Jobs are currently on deck!

You can also access the available Jobs by clicking the “my products” tab >> linkpost >> search linkpost jobs.

At a glance you can see what Jobs you’re eligible to accept. If your blog meets the requirements and there are still available funds, the Job listing will appear green…GO FOR IT!! If your blog does not meet the requirements, the Job listing will be red and you won’t be able to accept it.

Advertisers
Log in to your control center and click the “my products” tab >> linkpost >> create Job (you must first have a LinkPost outline created before a LW Job can be created). Fill in a few fields, set your pricing, and sit back while the buzz about you begins! Check out the screenshot below to see how easy it is.