help

WP_Posts database crashed – HELP!

If you see this post a few times it’s because I really need help and I’m posting it on three of my blogs – sorry for the repeat, but if you can help, please do!

I need some help fixing my husbands blog – Guitar Licks. Today when he visited the site (while I was still sleeping) the blog had error messages stating that the WP_posts database had crashed.

When you visit his site it loads with the WP theme and sidebars, but there’s error messages at the top and a “post cannot be found” message where current posts should be listed on the index page.

Some of the errors state:

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_title` ( `post_title`)

ALTER TABLE wp_posts ADD FULLTEXT `yarpp_content` ( `post_content`)

So I’m assuming this error has something to do with the Yet another related post plugin that I’m using on most of my blogs. This blog is using the plugin version 2.16 and is using WP 2.62.

In the Yet another related posts plugin admin area there was a message that said:

YARPP’s “consider titles” and “consider bodies” relatedness criteria require your wp_posts table to use the MyISAM storage engine, but the table seems to be using the engine. These two options have been disabled.
To restore these features, please update your wp_posts table by executing the following SQL directive: ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ENGINE = MyISAM; . No data will be erased by altering the table’s engine, although there are performance implications.
If, despite this check, you are sure that wp_posts is using the MyISAM engine, press this magic button:

I clicked on the “magic button” as the plugin seems to be working just fine in all of my other blogs and I ended up with even more errors!

Help!

I’ve looked at the WP database for this blog and the WP_posts table says “in use” and I can’t browse it. I also can’t use the backup plugin in Guitar licks – it’s there and functioning but just hung when I tried to do a back up.

I’ve backed up the whole database using PHPmyAdmin so I have a copy in case something goes terribly wrong. Now I just need to know how to fix it.

Should I just place a check mark on WP_posts and then click the repair function at the bottom of the structure screen in PHPmyAdmin and see if that repairs the problem?

I’m nervous about attempting to fix this as I’ve never had to try to repair a database error before. Any help would be appreciated.

Adsense tips – Adsense section targeting

by Tricia

Are you dissatisfied with how your Adsense ads are performing on your site?

Well one way to safely view the ads on your site the way people from other areas and countries might be seeing them is to use the Adsense Preview Tool. On the Adsense site you’ll be able to find the tool for Internet Explorer. You can also download this aAdsense preview tool for Firefox if that’s your preferred browser.

If you decide that you don’t like the ads that are being served to your pages you could go into your Google adsense account and block certain advertisers if you’d like, but there might be a better way to get ads that truly fit your sites content.

Try using Adsense Section Targeting.

When you use Adsense Section Targeting you can tell adsense to only draw ads from the contents in your posts. Plus you can use the adsense targeting code to block out your sidebars and or your sites header.

I’ve blocked the sidebars on all of my sites because there are so many things that say blog in the sidebars that for a while it seemed that all the ads had something to do with blog or blogging no matter which site I had them on or what was being discussed in the posts.

If you want to try it out for yourself go to the Adsense help pages and visit the Adsense section targeting information.

If that link doesn’t work for you try:

Look in the adsense help section when you’re signed in – help -> working with my ads -> improving performance -> Using features wisely -> Emphasize important content with section targeting -> click the link in the description in that page that says “The Full Instructions” to learn how to add some code to your template to target certain sections for ads or how to block other sections of your site or page.

If Adsense section targeting doesn’t give you enough control over your ads try using Adsense referrals as well. You can have ads that display Google products and or products from 100’s of other companies and services. You can even pick each product.

Make sure your site is easy to navigate

by Tricia

I run a number of blogrolls and as I visit the sites that have requested that they be added to my various blogrolls – the do follow list, Green Thumb Sunday, I am Canadian Blogroll and the Toronto Bloggers blogroll just to name a few – I get a chance to examine the design and structure of a lot of blogs.

I must say, I get most frustrated when I’m looking at some of the sites that want to join the do follow blogroll because of course I have to check to see if their comments follow or not.

Here are a few things that make my job of checking sites a little more difficult:

A lot of links or ads where the comment link is located:

It’s very hard to find the comment link when it’s buried within a number of links requesting that visitors social bookmark the post.

If people can’t find the link to leave you a comment it’s no wonder that you have very few comments. Just think if the comment link was at the top of the post, or on it’s own line below the post how many more comments you’d get?

People that have their comments closed to registered members:

Well for one – if you want to be on the do follow blogroll you need to open your comments up so that your visitors can get a link that follows when they leave a comment.

A lot of people just wont sign up to leave a comment. Believe me, you’ll get a lot more comments if they are open to all.

Sites that have a few or several posts on the main page but no way of traveling through the site to see older posts:

Get some navigation on your site! If I like your site or if I’m searching for elusive comments so that I can clear your site for the do follow blogroll I want to be able to travel through your site easily.

If you have archives set up by date your visitors will have to click on a number of links just to read a few posts if you don’t post multiple times each day.

Give me a way to get to the single post page:

Some sites are set up so that you can click the title of the blog post and that will take you to the single page for that post where you can comment on the post. That’s great. I love sites that are set up that way.

My problem is with sites where you can only get into the post to leave a comment by clicking on the permanent link, if you can find it see my first point, or comment link.

On blogger sites sometimes clicking on the comment link takes you to the blogger comment form. I don’t always want that. It’s much nicer to read comments on your blog than on the blogger comment page. Especially if the comment form is a pop up that’s too small to show the whole comment. I’ve run into several of those lately and you can’t adjust the size so you can’t read the full comment.

My suggestion to all is for you to take a look at a few other blogs and compare the features on other blogs to the features on your own.

Is your site easy to navigate in a number of ways?

Are important things such as the ability to get to the comment area clearly visible so that your visitors can find them quickly and easily in order to tell you how much they love your post?

If your site doesn’t have some of the features that I’ve mentioned and you want them, but don’t know how to add them on your own do a Google search with the name of your blogging platform in the search term as well as what you want to learn how to do.

for example:

add navigation links to blogger blog?

I actually just used that search term and it brought up a lot of helpful results.

I believe that the easier your site is to navigate the longer a visitor might stay and the more likely it will be that they will take the time to leave a comment if your content is good. Test my theory, try it for yourself.

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