Can’t Get Rich

I noticed that there’s around a billion sites out there that show you your site’s page rank, but I’ve never found one that lets you create a list to show a bunch of sites at once. I also decided that I needed to learn PHP, so I killed two birds with one stone and created this script.

PR At-a-Glance, in addition to being the first thing I’ve ever written in PHP, is a self-hosted script that lets you add and remove domains from a list that shows the domain names and a pretty PR button next to them. That’s about it so far. It’s my first script, shut up.

Anyway, if you have a bunch of domains and want to see all of their PRs on a simple list, then you can download the script here. You can also see a live version here. Username is cgr, password is password.

I plan on adding a few things to this script in the future, like basic security against SQL injection attacks, and maybe a nicer looking theme along with the ability to pull other information like Alexa and Technorati rank. Feel free to suggest any features you’d like to see.

EDIT: To anybody who has already downloaded the script: I found a bug in the code that made it so you couldn’t delete the first site on your list. I have fixed this bug and uploaded the corrected files. Just download the zip file again and then upload the new admin.php file to your server.

More edit: Someone reported an XSS exploit in the script, which I have fixed. New version is available to download (I’m going to put up a dedicated page for this script eventually). Thanks David!

Final edit: PR At-a-Glance now has it’s own page.  Major updates will be announced on the front page, but everything else will be listed on the dedicated page.

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If you happened to be walking around downtown Chicago today, you might have seen me and my cute girlfriend sightseeing.  Of course, you probably were paying attention to other things, like the homeless people dotting the corners.

I’m not going to get into the debate of whether or not they actually need to beg vs get a job.  Instead, I’d like to draw attention to the little signs they carry.  Notice how they usually say “I have no money, please help.”  These poor guys have nothing to their names.  Are you jealous?

Just think about it.  How many ’successful’ people out there are drowning in credit card debt?  I’m guessing quite a few.  That businessman who just walked past the homeless guy probably charged that expensive suit to his Mastercard, borrowed the money for his BMW, and is going home to an expensive apartment furnished with expensive furniture and electronics bought with his two or three other credit cards.  Mr. Businessman may be living the good life, but he’s actually got a negative net worth.  Meanwhile, the homeless guy has exactly 0 net worth, making him technically better off than the successful guy.  It’s a strange economy we live in.

This really made me think about the ‘fake it until you make it’ mentality among bloggers and affiliate marketers.  Impressing other people with big earnings checks may earn you some attention in the short run, but what’s the point if getting that $10,000 check cost you $11,000?  You’re only hurting yourself in the long run.  Unless you’re a magnificient liar, your readers are going to figure you out eventually.

I guess you can get one of two things out of this:  Be honest about what you’re doing, or hope that your readers are complete idiots.  I’m partial to the first one, but I hear the second one can get you thousands of readers in short order.

(That last bit isn’t directed towards any one person.  Shush.)

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Are any of you guys good with PHP?  I’m almost done with PR At-a-Glance , but I’m having some issues with pulling the PR from Google.  I’m using popstats to grab the PR, but it’s not interfacing with my application.  If anybody out there knows their stuff and doesn’t mind answering a few questions, shoot me an email .

After I get that working, I just need to add some graphics and make the whole interface pretty, and then I’ll release it.

EDIT: Yeesh, you guys are great.  I got more responses than I thought I would.  I’m out of town for a few days, but I’ll be sure to get back to each of you once I get back.

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Here’s a few interesting tidbits from the MMO niche you may have missed recently:

• Jon, the founder of Wickedfire, is calling it quits .  Guess he’s sick of all the drama.  Goodnight sweet prince.
• Ubercamp is now free .  Some of you may remember my thoughts on Paul’s project back when he started it.  I’d say that this is a good move, and should hopefully stimulate the growth of his forum.
• Nickycakes’ ads are no longer free .  I just thought this was funny.
• Shoemoney admits to being a former MMORPG addict . I know exactly what Shoe is talking about. My freshman year roommate got hooked on World of Warcraft, and it was like watching a building fall down in slow motion. Before WoW came out, he played a lot of video games, but he still went out to parties, went to class, etc. After WoW, he stopped going out with friends, never went to class (he played from 2 PM til 8 AM. Sleep a bit, repeat), and eventually he only left the room twice a day (to shower and run across the street for Subway). Tuesdays (when the servers were down), he’d just sit in front of his computer refreshing the server list (for hours), waiting for his server to come back up.  It was the most pathetic thing I’d ever seen.  Props to Shoe for overcomming his addiction.
• I lost my ‘PHP and MySQL for Dummies’ book.  PR At-a-Glance is on hold until I find it.

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I’ve acutally got a legitimate SEO tip for you guys today. Do this: In Wordpress, click on your ‘Settings’ tab (or ‘Options’ if you’re running an older version). Click on ‘Writing’, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. See that list of sites? If you’re like me, there’s only one there (probably because you didn’t know what that list was for). Well, that’s a list of update services that your blog pings every time you write a new post. If you want to get your new content indexed faster, it would make sense to alert more services, right? Here’s the new list that I’m using:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

Hopefully I’m the only one out there who was ignorant to the function of that list, but if not, someone should be able to put this to good use.

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