The Associate Reference

My Blog Needed This Revamp

For a long time, I have been wanting to give a face lift to my The Associate Reference blog. But, as usual, I was giving some excuse and postponing the task.

Finally, I was forced to act as my current web host has decided to close down their hosting operations as they want to concentrate on Web 2.0 training which is their core competence. Yes, I am talking about Authority Site Center. They have given us time till 31-Jul-2008 to shift all our websites to another web hosting company.

After lot of consultations and discussions with various web publishing friends, I decided to go with HostGator. I had already hosted one of my sites there and I was quite happy with them.

I had planned on the following tasks along with the shifting of my blog:

1. Shift the blog from ASC to HostGator.
2. Wordpress upgrade from version 2.3.3 to version 2.5.1
3. Change the wordpress theme as I had got bored with the Cutline even though they are the most popular. I finally settled on the BlogOhBlog theme by Bob.
4. Improve the look, feel and appeal of my blog for the visitors.

BlogOhBlog has some very cool and highly professional premium themes. I was tempted to use one of those themes. But, then I figured this should be a separate project and decided to postpone it by around six months.

Also as a cost cutting measure, I decided to perform the entire task myself and not engage a tech guy.

OK, what was the result of this exercise?

1. I have successfully shifted the blog from ASC to HostGator.
2. Carried out wordpress upgrade from version 2.3.3 to version 2.5.1
3. Changed the wordpress theme to BlogOhBlog.
4. Hopefully improved the look, feel and appeal of my blog for the visitors.

But, there were certain problems while carrying out these tasks. There were some compatibility issues while importing SQL tables to the new host. It was not because of HostGator but because of MySQL version compatibility issues. Because of which, I could not do an upgrade but I had to do a fresh wordpress installation at the new host and then import the posts, pages and categories using wordpress import feature.

This did not pose any major problems. But, since I did not have any tagging feature enabled earlier, none of the tags have got populated. So, I have to manually create these tags which is going to be a time consuming task.

But, I have released my blog from the maintenance mode as any further tweaking need not keep my blog locked.

I would really appreciate if you could take a few minutes to comment about my new look blog. Any comment including constructive criticism is most welcome. At the same time, any suggestions for improvement are also welcome.

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The Associate Reference

The Associate Reference will be a unique experience for you and, of course, for me.

For you, because, I foresee a time, in the very near future, when this website will prove to be a one-stop reference site for everything related to Affiliate Marketing.

For me, because, I have seen that till date a site like this does not exist. And, it is truly going to be a challenge for me to create this website.

You may ask me, What is so special about “The Associate Reference” website?

OK, let me list out some of the features that will be available in this website.

• This website will be in Blog format, hence, it will be fully interactive. We are using the world famous WordPress Blog Software.
• We will be featuring several high quality Articles on Affiliate Marketing and other related subjects.
• We will have Reviews on various products and services.
• Top 10 Reviews of Products / Services in different categories alongwith Comparison Chart.
• A seperate Blog Category “Feature Requests” has been created. You may post comments on new Affiliate Product reviews, [tag]website content[/tag] and other features that you would like to see in this website. The site will be constantly upgraded based on these comments.
• We plan to have a comprehensive Affiliate Programs Directory of Products and Services under various product categories.
• We are setting up a Forum for Affiliates which will help members to interact with fellow affiliates and acquire lot of knowledge from each other. There will be several “Super Affiliates” as members who will give you invaluable tips about their successes.

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