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University of Applied Sciences
INTERNSHIP REPORT
FONTYS UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCE
HBO-ICT: English Stream
Data student:
Family name + first names
Student number:
Internship period:
Data Company:
Name company/institution:
Department:
Location:
Family name + first names
Position of company tutor
Data university tutor:
Pascal Ndayishimiye
2127712
p.ndayishimiye@student.fontys.nl
From February 7, 2011 till July 15, 2011
Stershop B.V.
Internet Marketing
Eindhoven
Mehdi Khaledi.
IT Manager.
Family name + first names
University tutor: Bert van Gestel
Data report:
Title of report:
WordPress Plugins Research &
Development
Date final report has been issued: Monday, July 11, 2011
Approved and signed by the company tutor:
Date: Signature company tutor:
Name company tutor: Mehdi Khaledi.
Table of Contents
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1 Preface
Project background
This report offers the results from five months internship in Research and Development
(R&D) department at Stershop BV Company, Netherlands. It is a part of the third year of the bachelor study Information and Communication Technology at Fontys University of Applied
Sciences. The main goal of this internship is to apply the acquired knowledge during my study into a company’s work project. Further, this report is intended to fulfill one of the university’s requirements for getting admitted to my final year study program.
As aforementioned; the content of this report is based upon an internship project assignment in the second semester of my third study year. This internship project was accomplished in the period from February 2011 till July 2011 at Stershop B.V
1
, Eindhoven, Netherlands. The internship assignment is to research and develop WordPress Plugins and build WordPress blogs where these plugins are implemented.
Stershop BV is day by day increasingly growing as its demands on Internet Marketing continue to go higher. Stershop owns about more than three thousands websites filled with different products from affiliate programs 2 . Also the need to have a community site and user interactive site where most of its promotional products can be gathered increased the need to have more functionality and a good eye candy site. Hence, the need for the company to initiate this project.
Special thanks
There was no way this internship would have been done as well as this final report would have been written without contribution from many people who had given me their support and encouragement. That why I am taking this opportunity to convey my heartfelt thanks to:
1.
Stefan Rooyackers, as Company Supervisor who gave me the opportunity to do my internship at STERSHOP B.V.
2.
Mehdi Khaledi, as my company tutor who constantly guided me during the internship period.
3.
Bert van Gestel, as my university tutor who always gave his support, feedback, and advices on my internship progress and on writing this report.
4.
Jos Boonen from internship Office, who guided me during the processes before starting my internship.
5.
Bert ter Heide, as my leader programmer at Stershop B.V. who always was there helping me when I faced technical problems with programming.
6.
Edmond Nkurunziza, Chensi Yu and Sir Spring, my fellow intern for their shared knowledge, criticism, advice, support and encouragement during my whole internship period and while writing this report.
1 Refer to the Glossary.
2 See Glossary.
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7.
Finally I thank my family, all my friends, and particularly Princess Magda Sophie, my friend, who in a very special way contributes at the realization of this internship by daily putting a smile on my face and constantly giving me the moral support to successfully complete this assignment. In all things, I give thanks to God who has enabled me to see through this phase of my life.
Without all the above mentioned persons, I wouldn’t have the Spirit to write this report, or to do my internship and successfully complete the project assignment.
P ascal Ndayishimiye
R oosendaal, June 2001.
2 Glossary
Affiliate , an affiliate is a person or company which sends visitors to a website in exchange for commissions
3
.
Affiliate program, an affiliate program is an Internet marketing practice that connects businesses selling products online with websites related to those products.
Affiliate marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees to individuals who introduce new clients to a business.
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between an online merchant and affiliate (you), in which the affiliate earns a commission for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant's web site.
3
Allan Gardyne (2005-10-06). "What is an affiliate?” http://www.associateprograms.com/: ASSOCIATE
Programs.com. Retrieved 2011-04-20.
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Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page .
CMS is an abbreviation that stands for content Management System. A content management system is the collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based.
Google AdSense is a free program that empowers online publishers to earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on a wide variety of online content, including:
sites search results
,
websites
, mobile webpages search and apps.
E-Commerce (Electronic commerce) means conducting business on the Internet. It is mostly referred to buying and selling items on line
Internet Marketing is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. It is an act of achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies.
Niche market, a niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs.
PageRank is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage to the search keywords entered.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a document that contains either a summary of content from a web site or the full text of a website.
SEA Search Engine Advertising allows websites to gain high positions in search engines without being highly ranked in natural search engine listings.
SEO is a component (one of the most important) of Internet marketing. The abbreviation SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of improving a site’s content.
SENuke is an SEO software tool. It is a desktop program that a great many advanced internet marketers use to boost their search engine rank.
Stershop B.V. is a Leader in Internet Marketing. It is a private company with limited liability based in Eindhoven. B.V
. is a Dutch annotation that stands for Besloten Vennootschap; the
English equivalent would be Ltd (Limited company).
Social Network is a social structure made up of individuals called “nodes”, which are connected by one or more specific type of interdependency such as friendship, common interest, etc...
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online.
Traffic, referring here to Internet traffic is the flow of data across the Internet.
Tweet , a tweet is a post (text message) or status update on Twitter.
Twitter, found in March 2006 by San Fransisco is a free social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or an application such as
Twitterrific.
URL In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where a known resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.
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Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate interactive systemic biases, interoperability, user-centered design and developing the World Wide Web. A web 2.0 allows users to interact and collaborate in a social network.
WordPress is a free open-source modular CMS (content management system) that is written in php language. It is particularly popular for building online communities, weblog, web shop, etc.
“ wp-url-checker ” name I baptized the plugin I’ve developing during my internship. This is an In-house WordPress Plugin that checks the malicious URLs in a blog’s contents.
Fig.No
Fig.I I 01
Fig.II 02
Fig. III 03
Fig. III 04
Fig. III 05
Fig. III 06
Fig. III 07
Fig. III 08
Fig. III 09
Fig. III 10
Fig. III 11
Fig. III 12
Fig. III 13
Fig. III 14
Fig. III 15
Fig.IX 01
Fig. XI. 01
3 List of figures
Title
Company’s Departments
Stershop BV organizational structure
Agile Methodology’s phases
WordPress Plugin’s header format
Screenshot Googlesafebrowsing Database
Screenshot Google blacklists Database phpGSB database connection
URLs Identification
Checking URL in 3 steps
URL containing a malware
Creating a WordPress blog with Firepow
Firepow Content Blitz page
Firepow Content Blitz result
Firepow RSS promotion
Firepow RSS promotion results
Time line
Blog traffic chart
Page reference
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8
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47
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4 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
4.1
Introduction
WordPress has become one of the most preferred website and blog platforms for business owners, publishers and authors when it comes to building their own slice of cyberspace, or whether when it comes to filling up their pocket by earning their daily bread. This is for small entrepreneurs as well as big entrepreneurs. One of the main reasons WordPress is so popular, is the ease with which you can build and update your website or blog, so that it plays nicely with others without you needing a lot of technical “know how”. WordPress is open source and has a robust plug-in architecture that allows for the inclusion of third-party applications to enhance WordPress user experience.
During my internship period I built and entirely rebuilt few websites for the company, as will be shown further in this report; using the WordPress platform. This enabled me to have a real look under the covers and discover some really interesting plugins that make the whole
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 5 experience much more enjoyable, both on the front end for visitors and also, behind the scenes for the website or blog owner(The company-Stershop).
4.2
Purpose of this report
The main aim of this report is to explain what I did and learned during my internship period at
Stershop BV within the R&D department. This report is also a requirement for the partial fulfillment of ICT Bachelor program at Fontys University of Applied Science internship program. The report primarily focuses on the assignments handled, working environment, successes and short comings that I did encounter when handling various tasks assigned to me by the supervisor.
Since I consider reflecting on my shortcomings, successes, observations and comments during this report, it would be imperative that the recommendations are also given. Therefore the report gives a number of comments and recommendations on the internship program.
Thus, the reader of this report should at the end be able to understand where the project has being conducted, what the exact background of the assignment, and what has been done during the whole internship.
4.3
Document organization
This project’s document is structured in two main parts;
INTERNSHIP REPORT and
APPENDIXES.
Internship report is divided into 4 major chapters. Each chapter starts with an introduction which discusses what that particular chapter is all about. Chapter 2 is based on about understanding the company; its background and its organization. Chapter 3 focuses on my duties and responsibilities during the entire internship program, whereof the methodologies used in achieving this project. Chapter 4 is about my evaluation of the internship and the recommendation reserved for the internship’s project.
5 CHAPTER TWO: THE COMPANY
5.1
Company’s background
Stershop BV is situated at the Strijp-S in the SFJ building, at Torenallee 20, a street not far from the Philips football stadium in Eindhoven. Stershop BV was founded in 1999 and serves as an intermediary. The service package extended significantly in 2001 by the acquisition of the bankrupt company Interplein BV, which was a part of the ING.
Stershop BV has been supplying mortgage leads, loan credit leads, pension leads and different insurance leads to a diversity of financial market operators for 11 years.
Next to it, the creation of websites for clients, consultancy about Internet Marketing and reselling of software to optimize websites also belong to their tasks. It is active in the ecommerce sector and currently working on the conceptualization of its own internet marketing and SEO/SEA tools. SEO/SEA means Search engine optimization and Search engine Advertising.
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5.1.1
Skills
Core Competence
Stershop BV has eleven years of experience in the area of Internet Marketing,
Adwords and search engine optimization.
Stershop BV generates and sells leads from 8 years with adequate profits.
Stershop’s blogs collection is an unique combination of products such E-books, marketing tools, SEA tools and SEO tools from affiliate program and making reviews of these products.
5.1.2
Services
The company Stershop BV currently offers several services, among several names like:
Adwords Experts
Internet Marketing Nederland
StefanRooyackers
Ik word schrijver
Charelle
123 Psychologie
Leadshop
Queen of Ebooks
Interplein
5.1.3
Shared Values
The company Stershop BV has the following vision: “ Helping customers with their Internet
Marketing by providing Internet Marketing solutions
.” The company accomplishes flexible working policies, work-life balance policies and teamwork, which improves the employee’s commitment towards the company.
Lastly, employees have to be accountable to the manager of the company, who is responsible in the end of each decision.
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5.1.4
Structure
Top-down management
The company Stershop BV has a Top-Down management approach, the management makes the decisions.
This approach is spread under their authority to lower levels in the hierarchy, who are bound by them. Positive aspects of top-down approaches include their efficiency and amazing overview of higher levels. On the negative side, if lower levels feel imposed by the management, it can be difficult for lower levels to accept them. This means the manager makes all the important decisions with a small influence of the employees. The employees are closely supervised and controlled. This enables quick decision making and controlling low skilled employees.
5.2
Line organization
The layout of the company is that of a line organization, with this system superiors can express themselves very well. Assignments are passed on to others vocally, but often slightly changed by the time they are received at the management. Each department can do their own part, but working together is hard. The communication is through Skype, emails or just via
Google Docs. There is not a very professional system where the employee can communicate together. There is also a shortage of specialized personnel and the superiors receive a heavy responsibility and a lot of tasks.
5.2.1
Departments
Figure II.01 below shows the main departments of Stershop BV. There within the company nine departments. From the figure we can see that the project originated from the ICT management department. Figure II.02 (company’s organizational structure) further in this document, gives a much more overview on the project localization in the company and the participants.
Head of Departments
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The head of the entire departments is Mr. Stefan Rooyackers. He is the Chief executive officer. He centralizes and manages all the departments within the company.
Set priorities for all departments
Management Team meetings
Check and support departments
Administration
Staff policy
Financial results
General Clients
Assign the project manager, gives tasks (internship assignments) and closely coordinate with the whole team.
5.2.2
Company’s organization
This figure shows a complete overview of the structure of Steshop BV.
Fig. II 02. Stershop BV organizational structure
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6 CHAPTER THREE: INTERNSHIP ASSIGNMENT
6.1
Introduction
The two previous chapters focused on understanding the place where I did my internship and how is the company organized. This chapter 3 is about the internship assignment. The reader of this chapter should get a main idea about what my internship was, which phases I went through in order to accomplish the assignment, the chosen methodology, the goals set to achieve the project (Project goals) as well as how this goals have been achieved.
6.2
Project Justification
The Project Justification is included in the project plan in APPENDIX B.
6.3
My assignment
Role description
My internship project has consisted of 3 assignments. The first assignment which can be called initial assignment I had to develop a WordPress Plug-in, secondly to WordPress blogs and third and last make a research on search engine optimization plugins. The coming paragraphs will give description on each step I went through for accomplishing the mentioned assignments.
Start off, at the beginning of project, it was difficult for me to actually get what my task was and how I will be communicating with my colleagues, until the release of the Project plan that
I was able to figure out my role is. Though my role in the project became more clearly; everything was brought again into difficult after my first 7 weeks of my internship. This is because the company hired a new worker and appointed him as my new project manager from there my project was changed. I was switched from the development department where my assignment was only about developing the WordPress plugin (this is my initial assignment); to research department where my new task became to make research on SEO WordPress plugins and build WordPress blogs in which the researched plugins as well as the developed
(initial assignment) are implemented. Due to the above situation, I had to slightly adjust my project plan (refer APPENDIX B)
6.3.1
Initial assignments
As stated above my main internship assigned was to develop a WordPress plug-in called
“ wp-url-checker
” that will automatically remove all the malicious URLs found the company’s blogs. I have arbitrary chosen to call this plugin: wp-url-checker. This assignment did reach its last phase, meaning it was left unaccomplished. The real reason here is because the company came up with a new project where it gives more priority.
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The following pages will thoroughly describe the internship assignment with expected result.
Notwithstanding, before going through the development of this plugin creation; I will first here mention the goals and the methodology I used for this assignment.
6.3.2
Goals
Assignment goals:
After studying the assignment as described above, I decided to set the goals as follows:
Understand a requirement and identify the important steps for realizing the assignment;
Translate steps into functions;
Write a well-structured plugin.
Personal goals:
At start of the internship, I had insufficient knowledge of web applications and I had to set some goals to meet up with the internship assignment goals as follow:
Get familiar with open source products ( mainly WordPress platform)
Study the basis of web application
Study the correlation between php and WordPress
Successfully complete the project.
6.3.3
Methodology
I have opted for this project to work with the “Agile Methodology” for developing this
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 12 plugin. Agile methodology refers to a disciplined project management process encouraging frequent inspection and adaptation. Agile methodology also encourages teamwork, selforganization, and accountability. Most agile development teams comprise 5-9 employees and a single customer representative that work in a single open office to promote teamwork and cooperation. This means that in my case it fits because Stershop BV is a small company and the whole work is done immediately at the company office, it permits us to work closely with the customer by learning and revising the system without any major issues. Another reason for opting agile is because, agile minimizes feature creep
4
by developing in short intervals resulting in miniature software projects and releasing the product in mini-increments.
Fig. III.03 Agile Methodology’s phases.
6.4
WP-url-checker
Wp-url-checker is the plugin to be developed. To develop this plugin I had to start from scratch as the company had no document or a pre-created project for assignment. The language I used for creating this plugin is PHP. This section will not cover the technical part.
It will only explain the main tasks of the plugin and the process of its creation. The technical part and all the programming can be found in APPENDIX C.
Because the plugin to be developed will be used on WordPress platform, in order to create a well-structured WordPress Plugin; it was required to follow the general norms and guide lines of WordPress about creating your own WordPress plugins. The so called WordPress Coding
Standards. In this perspective any incompatibility can be avoided. For a well preparation on this matter and to get to understand the basics about how WordPress Plugins are written, I did resource myself by reading articles such:
Plugin Submission and Promotion;
Plugin Resources;
And viewed and studied the source code for well written Plugins, such as Hello Dolly distributed with WordPress.
More information about these articles can be found in section 8(References) of this document.
a. Creating the Plugin: wp-url-checker.
This section of the report goes through the steps I needed to follow and all the things to consider for building a well-structure WordPress Plugin.
Names, Files, and Locations
Plugin Name
The first task was to think about the name of the plugin. This step is very important because the name has to be unique. A better was to think about what the plugin will be doing and assign a name that related to its function. This plugin is detecting the URLs in the blogs and check whether they are not referring to some inappropriate websites. This
4 Feature creep (or “creeping featurism”) is the ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product.
Extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and so can result in over-complication.
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 13 was I’ve chosen to baptized this plugin wp-url-checker . To make sure that this name is unique, I needed to check the Plugins and other repositories it refers to. As well as by doing Google search on the proposed name.
Plugin Files
The next step was to create a PHP file with the name derived from the Plugin chosen name. Again this have to be unique name, because we or people who install the plugin will be putting this PHP file into the WordPress Plugin directory in their installation, wpcontent/plugins, so no two Plugins being used can have the same PHP file name. Details about the names and files of this plugin are to be found in the technical part included in
APPENDIX C.
Readme File
The readme file is important when you to host the Plugin in on WordPress website. There was in this case, no need of writing a readme file since the plugin is intended at the first instance to be used locally in the company’s websites.
Home Page
It is also very useful to create a web page to act as the home page for the plugin. Actually, this page should describe how to install the Plugin, what it does, what versions of
WordPress it is compatible with, what has changed from version to version of the plugin, and how to use the Plugin. There is was home page created for this plugin. This is because this plugin development didn’t not reach its end and also because the plugin was not meant to be public.
File Headers
The top of the Plugin’s main PHP file must contain a standard Plugin information header.
This header lets WordPress recognize that the Plugin exists. Thus, when the Plugin has been uploaded into a WordPress blog and added to the Plugin management screen it can be activated and will start working. Loading a Plugin without the header will never be activated and will never run.
Below is the Plugin header format:
Fig. III. 04 WordPress Plugin’s header format.
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The minimum information WordPress needs to recognize the Plugin is the Plugin Name
Line. The rest of the information will be sued to create a table of Plugins on the Plugin management screen.
b. Programming wp-url-checker
After knowing all some of the basis standard principles about creating a WordPress Plugin, it’s time to make the plugin actually do something. This section contains some general ideas about Plugin development, and describes how to accomplish several tasks the plugin (wp-urlchecker) will need to do.
Requirements
To write plugins, any text editor can be helpful. For writing wp-url-checker I’ve been using the following tools and software on the local PC.
Dreamweaver 8 : For user interface design and CSS
phpDesigner 7 : For programming with PHP
WampServer 2.1a: including Apache, php 5, MySQL and PhpMyadmin.
Essential for running the codes on local machine.
RegExc: For regular expression.
Zend: for setting up the cache memory limit.
Modules
I call modules here, the different steps covered for the realization of this part of the internship assignment.
Module 1: Database design
The internet is a vast web of inter-connected servers which may host inappropriate websites for certain people, especially when it comes to Internet Marketing. Stershop has been several times disappointed by seeing its customers run away just because by clicking some of the links found in the blogs where different products are being promotes they were conducted to malicious websites. In this perspective, Stershop BV thought it could be wise that before checking any incoming links to its websites if first all of the company’s websites URLs were first checked whether they are Google blacklisted.
That’s why the first step was to create a database that gathered different URLs, the most from the company websites.
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Module successfully completed by creating a database named: Googlesafebrowsing in
PhpMyadmin on local host. The database contains one table (websites). Below is the screenshot of the database.
Fig.III. 05 Screenshot Googlesafebrowsing Database.
Module 2: Google Blacklist Database
Google has a lengthy list of rules for Web site owners about what is and isn’t acceptable. And
Google makes the consequences clear: “If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or ‘throwaway ’domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index” 5 . This is one of the reasons why it was required in the second module to request the Google blacklist owned by Google. The Google blacklist Database was accessed by registering at Google and get the Google malware blacklist API key of wellknown as Safe Browsing API which is an experimental API that allows client applications to check URLs against Google’s constantly –updated blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages. By the help of this key I was able to download an encrypted table for local use, client-side lookups of URLs and build a database (see screenshot above) on my local machine.
5 Google explains
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Fig. III.06. Screenshot Google blacklists Database.
Module 2: wp-url-checker in action (incomplete)
Connecting to googlesafebrowsing database
The codes realization of this part can be found in APPENDIX C (Technical manual)
Fig. III.07 phpGSB database connection
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Using regular expressions to detect all URLs found in the blog and print them in the browser.
Fig.III. 08 URLs Identification
Providing URL and checking whether the URL is Google blacklisted.
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Fig.III. 10 A URL containing a malware.
This is the stage where this assignment ended. The next steps would be getting the WordPress
API Hooks
6
for plugin developers and create Hooks for this plugin. The next step would to implement the wp-url-checker plugin into a WordPress blog. Hooks are provided by
WordPress to allow the plugin to ‘hook into’ the rest of WordPress; that is, to call functions in the plugin at specific times, and thereby set the plugin in motion. As denoted before, more details about the code management based on this plugin are included in APPENDIX C.
6.5
Web Development
This is another part of my internship assignment. This new assignment was assigned to me after my first six weeks working on the first assignment (initial assignment). On the grounds that the company is eager for making money which is logic since the company’s main activity is making money online by promoting different from affiliate partners; the assignment of developing the wp-url-checker plugin was stopped and I was switched to the research department. My new assignment is now creating WordPress blogs in which affiliate products are being promoted and sold. This is in order to make money for the company by receiving commission each time that a product has been sold from these blogs. At the end make a
6 There are 2 kinds of hooks in WordPress. 1. Actions: are triggered by specific events that take place in
WordPress. 2. Filters: are functions that WordPress passes data through, at certain points in execution.
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 19 research on best WordPress plugins that can be used to bring more traffic to the blogs.
“Traffic equal money”, in Internet Marketing.
6.5.1
Objectives
The following are the objectives that I did set up after studying and understanding the assignment.
For the assignment
Understand the assignment’s requirements
Build WordPress blog that looks more professional and offer more traffic. Traffic plays an important role here. Blogs ’traffic should be weekly verified and report to the project manager.
Use SEO tools provide by the company to promote the blogs, namely Firepow and
SENukeX.
At the end build one common blog that includes all the other blogs (This is the end of project that’s dependent on the good result from the previous objectives.
Personal objectives:
Master WordPress
Study the basics of web application
Study the correlation between PHP and WordPress
Understand affiliate program of well
6.5.2
Web Development
The company, Stershop BV needs few blogs to promote different affiliate products. For this assignment I was given 7 products to promote. That means creating WordPress blogs in which the products are implemented. The products to be promoted and their related blogs are: a.
Comedy’s products
creating a WordPress blog about comedy with a sub-domain promoting products that are related to comedy such as movies or books about comedy.
Blog’s Name: The Best Comedy Line
Blog’s URL: http://www.organiccomedy.com
Sub-domain: The Online Organic Comedy Shop
URL: http://www.onlineshop.organiccomedy.com
b.
Niche Marketing product
creating a WordPress blog promoting Click Bank
Gamers. Click Bank gamer is a collection of instant businesses in a box that allows marketer to easily tap into the games niche and make money from it. Stershop BV affiliated itself to this gaming niche product and hopes to make money from it by promoting it through its website. Click Bank Gamers covers World of Warcraft,
StarCraft 2, Final Fantasy XXIV and Cataclysm (new).
Blog’s Name: Gaming Niche.
Blog’s URL: www.cbgamers.lpaq.com
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SeoPressor
creating a WordPress blog that promotes a WordPress Plugin called
SeoPressor. This WordPress Plugin is a very powerful SEO tools and it’s new on the market and scores high in sell comparing to other Click Bank affiliate products.
SeoPressor Plugin simplifies the process of search engine optimization for WordPress posts and pages and thus helping to improve search engine rankings with its effect.
Blog’s Name: A Mandatory WordPress SEO Plugin.
Blog’s URL: http://www.seo-pressor.lpaq.com
d.
Easy Video Player
creating a WordPress blog where Easy Video Player is being promoted. This is another fantastic tool for internet marketing business. It is more than just a video player. Easy Video Player makes it easier to build a web page, on the fly, to display video without any need for coding, php or html knowledge. Every business owner and marketer wouldn’t hesitate to own this tool.
Blog’s Name: Easy Video Player
Blog’s URL: http://www.easy-videoplayer.lpaq.com
e.
Health & Beauty
creating a WordPress blog that promotes product related to health or beauty topics.
Blog’s Name: Look Younger Today Without Surgery.
Blog’s URL: http://www.look-younger.lpaq.com
f.
Video Games
creating a WordPress blog in which WorldWarcraft video game is being promoted.
Blog’s Name: The World of Warcraft.
Blog’s URL: http://www.world-of-warcraft.lpaq.com
g.
Chris Farrell Membership
building a WordPress blog about Chris Farrel
Membership. Christ Farrell Membership is a click bank product that can generate income for affiliate members. It offers techniques; tactics and strategies to start improve or grow an online business.
Blog’s Name: Christ Farrell Membership.
Blog’s URL: http://www.chris-farrellmembership.lpaq.com
I had some problems with creating these blogs since at this stage I didn’t totally master the
WordPress environment yet good. There are some of blogs which I had to re-build to make them more attractive and kind of candy eye catching for the blog’s visitors. In order to manage with this, the company provides two of its important software tools. There are:
Firepow helps to easily create a WordPress blog;
SENukeX this software tools is very important when it comes to promoting a blog to several social networks. In the following lines, I will give a detailed description on how and what’s Firepow and SeNukeX do to create blogs or/and promote them.
6.5.2.1
Firepow
Firepow is web-based software for creating and managing WordPress’s blogs, creating content and promoting those blogs. Firepow is one of best well known powerful SEO tools for
WordPress. It lets WordPress users to get a fully featured blog up and running in minutes.
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Features
Some of Firepow features are:
Creating and managing blogs: The first thing that you do when you log into Firepow is create a blog. Firepow is based on WordPress. The company bought this software to make it easy to create and manage its blogs. The blog creating is simple and fast once you know all the basics of the software. I had to watch to watch about 40 tutorials videos about this software in order to be able to use it sufficiently.
Steps to follow: enter the software credentials to log into the control panel. Enter some keys information ( blog’s URL, FTL information, blog’s title, and some key words related to the blog to created), pick a theme on choice, check some of Firepow’s built in plugins—by hitting create a new blog is instantly created. It might take hours to set up a blog, download the software for themes and important plugins and get everything up and running (including AdSense
7
) for a new blog. Firepow does this in less than 10 minutes.
This is ultimate in “one click setup” due to the fact that it includes far more than just the initial install of WordPress.
Fig.III. 11 Creating a WordPress blog with Firepow.
Creating Contents: creating a blog is one thing but getting filling a blog with content in order to get traffic is something else. Compiling information on how to create good content that converts visitors to feed subscribers and make them come back repeatedly is a bit of a challenge to many bloggers nowadays. For this issue, Firepow offers remarkable unique and creative solutions.
Firepow will: o automatically republish contents from Article Directories; o get contents from any specified RSS feeds; o Create own blog posts using “cut and paste tools” from various sources.
Create posts right in the Firepow interface without ever logging into the WordPress administration dashboard.
Another important feature of Firepow is the “Content Blitz” function. This function pulls out contents from different sources, based on the keywords you entered and post the contents to
7 Refer to section 2: Glossary.
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 22 your blog. In a nutshell, Content Blitz optimizes the contents for the specified keywords and automatically posts the contents to the WordPress blog. The screenshots below show the
Content Blitz in action.
Fig. III. 12 Firepow Content Blitz page
Fig.III. 13 Firepow Content Blitz result.
Promotion: Ranking in the search engines is the key to drive traffic. Furthermore, backlinks are key to ranking. Firepow does not only allow an automate contents posting on a local WordPress blog, but does offer more. The Firepow premium network includes access to the Firepow blog network. The latter provides backlinks in a way that is similar to article marketing. Firepow helps to promote the blog to different social networks. And that is only in 3 main steps.
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8
for the selected blog is the correct one. In case of doubt leave the default or use a plugin like FeedBurner to find out the blog’s RSS Feed; o When ready, click the submit button to blast site’s RSS Feed off to the list of RSS
Engines to obtain valuable backlinks to the blog.
Figure
14.
Firepow RSS promotion.
III.
Figure III. 15. Firepow RSS promotion results.
6.5.2.2
SENuke X
Many bloggers claim that blogging is writing. After working with WordPress blogs and extending my knowledge in blogging; I certainly agree to a certain extent. After all, blogging is about publishing content to the Web. Until now, the most common online content format is still text, although image, audio and video content are also become popular very quickly. As
8 Detail in section 2: Glossary.
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6.5.2.1) one may get somewhere but not very far, unless you let people know about your work. That requires promotion. Nowadays, it takes more or less the same amount of time than the writing itself to get the words out there about your blog. Some blog’s users are good at getting attention and driving traffic, but their content is not that good. In a narrow way of thinking Stershop BV owns thousands of websites, creating daily contents for these blogs wouldn’t be that easy, even hiring dozen of employees to write and manually submit content to the blogs. SENuke (the earlier version) and SEnuke X the new released version have become more helpful at this point.
SEnuke is of the most of advanced software programs that helps blog’s users to increase their speed in article writing and submitting. It works in conjunction with most other Web 2.0
9 sites and directories. Stershop is experiencing internet marketing success with the help of
SENuke, as it learns how to get its sites ranked high in Google.
In the next paragraphs I’ll be going through the facts on how I have been using SENuke X to achieve optimum benefits. At this stage it is assume that all the blogs have been created. Then
SENuke will take care of so many of the time-consuming tasks required in the process of optimizing the targeted keywords within the major search engines. It will start everything off by:
1.
Making accounts for each one of big articles directories that are out there, as well as different social bookmarking sites and Web 2.0 sites.
2.
Help in article spinning and submitting, thus giving an opportunity to get backlinks from multiples directories. The SENuke article spinner allows to generate a variety of revisions of the same article which it will then go on to submit to places like Goarticles and
Ezinearticles.
3.
Allow automatic submission to the social bookmarking sites including My Yahoo and
Google’s Reader and RSS feeds. This also a great way to make search engine bots visit your blog.
Considering all the facts and features outlined above it’s obvious to conclude that SENuke X once implemented correctly, it is a an effective and powerful SEO software tool that can help internet marketers to achieve massive success in optimizing websites and achieving top rankings with all the current major search engines on the net.
One of the drawbacks I did realize about SENUke is that it takes some time to get used to the features and requires me to spend more time going through some basic training. The user interface isn’t friendly. I constantly had to move inside and outside of windows, copying
URL’s from the URL manager, etc. Additionally, the training videos concerning how to use
SENuke are minimal. What’s more, I had sometimes to leave my notebook running the whole day and night so that the scheduled submission ‘tasks do not abort.
9 See Glossary (section 2 of this document)
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The good thing was that if you start taking advantage of SENuke, you will notice the results almost immediately. In APPENDIX C is a weekly sample example of traffic’s results from the blogs mention in §6.5.2 which I created. Additionally, I have also included in APPENDIX
C a complete schema of screenshots showing all the steps about working with SEnuke.
6.6
Research
6.6.1
WordPress Plugin for SEO
6.6.2
Introduction
Switched from development department to the research department, my new assignment became to make a research on WordPress Plugins that can be access for free or for a minimum price. Because WordPress has got thousands of plugins which would be extremely difficult to make general research; this research has been limited only on the category of plugins that help in optimizing the ranking in searching results for the company’s blogs as this is an important competent of marketing and the company’s promotion plan. Who says ranking, or search either optimizing in internet marketing is only referring to SEO tools.
There would no better of accomplishing this assignment than researching on SEO WordPress
Plugins during this research task.
6.6.3
Understanding SEO
What is SEO?
SEO stands for S earch E ngine O ptimization. So far is the answer to the question to what real
SEO means not satisfied. Below are some of definitions about SEO which I came across with while trying to understand what the real meaning of SEO. I have copied and paste them below. The resources are included in the footnote.
1.
Search Engine Optimization is the process of structuring content so your audience can easily find and use your published information
10
.
2.
SEO is a service you provide your audience and a way for you to measure how well you are serving your audience
11
.
3.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via natural organic search results. In general, the higher in search results on the page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine
12
.
When I came across these 3 definitions about SEO from different sources, I notice that they are all completing each other or somehow giving the same meaning. Nevertheless, I myself do consider the third definition as the best, because the user does not only focus on the result but also on the process, how to reach the result.
10 http://www.internetmarketingproducts.org/common-seo-mistakes/
11 http://www.senukex.com/
12 http://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=4VvOLL4KIesC#v=onepage&q&f=false
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In a nutshell, Search engine optimization is a method of getting website to rank higher in search engines—such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. A search engine optimization campaign pairs on-site optimization with off-site tactics, which means you make changes to your site itself while building a portfolio of natural looking backlinks to increase your physical rankings. When Internet users search for your products or services, your website needs to be the first one they find. SEO helps the search engines recognize relevance to specific keywords that people search for online. The search engine optimization process includes researching keywords, creating content, building links and making sure website is visible in the search engines. A good understanding the phenomena SEO is to keep in mind that SEO isn’t something we do to search engines; but SEO is rather what we do to our content so that the content is accessible and useful for real users.
Abraham Lincoln once said, I quote “
With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.
” By reflecting at these words, I do think that is where profitable sustainable SEO is headed.
Why to do SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is a very important for every single website on the internet – if that website wants to get maximum traffic potential. Of course, It is known to all that how important the traffic is.
There are two main things need to know about search engine traffic:
High quality and related – The traffic from search engines is highly related and quality. These visitors can improve overall rating and effect definitely of websites.
The content uniqueness plays an important role in the SEO . The content in the websites must be original, unique and well-structured. Search engine will detect the content, ranking the URL pivot on the rate of uniqueness in all the content in your site.
Potential
–potentially get thousands of visitors to the website if things to be done right. The maximum potential is unlimited because inclusions are completely free.
To remediate to the aforementioned facts and to deliver a result for this research assignment, I came up with the following SEO plugins for WordPress. Start off, I would like to mention that while doing this research I came across hundreds of SEO WordPress Plugins.
Nonetheless, after reading the reviews, taking part of forums and testing few of them on their features; I have shorten my list by choosing 6 which after 2 to 3 weeks of watching the results
I consider to be the best. One of the questions that may rise up is why do I consider these plugins to be the best. This assertion can be tremendously difficult when dealing with
WordPress plugins since what makes WordPress to work exceptionally well as a content management system rather than many other such as Joomla or Drupal,..it is its richness in plugins. WordPress has got millions of plugins. Unlike it was not difficult for me to rate the following plugins as the best, this is because of the result that I got after using these plugins into the blogs I created. (See APPENDIX C, section C). Undermentioned is the list of the plugins:
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1.
SEO Smart Links – This SEO-friendly plugin can automatically link keywords and phrases to related comments, posts, pages, and categories within a website. This makes less prominent pages or older content more relevant and crawl-able for search engines, and keeps site visitors engaged.
2.
I Love Social Bookmarking – I.L.S.B. is a great way to encourage blog readers to rank the post on popular social media sites. In the past year, sites like Digg, Delicious,
StumbleUpon, and Sphinn have become major resources for driving relevant traffic to quality site content. This plugin inserts an attractive drop-down menu next to the blog post that allows reader to submit or rank the site content on a number of popular media sites, without leaving your blog.
3.
WP to Twitter – Twitter is an ideal space for (viral) content sharing since users are constantly engaged in niche conversations. Now that Google’s Social Search indexes tweets at the top of SERP; more tweets/retweets = more indexing power. WP to twitter is plugin that automatically tweets a tiny URL link to new blog posts or blog edits on your site. Without any additional effort, the blog content is distributed to a relevant, willing audience; this can drive relevant traffic and increase the presence in social search results .
4.
WP-Super-Cache – This plugin contributes to the website speed and it helps the blog to load faster. WP-Super-Cache creates static html pages from the WordPress blog so that the server will present this file instead of the much denser PHP script. This will also help fortify the server when it is receiving a high amount of traffic, which can result from all other great SEO.
5.
Robots Meta – Robots media atomically insert tags on internal site links that are irrelevant to search crawlers; this keep search engines from wasting time indexing unimportant pages like results, login, and admin, instead directing crawlers to index primary site content.
6.
SEO Slug Blog post titles typically get an h1-h3 heading, which makes them very important in terms of keyword optimization.
Conclusion
After implementing the six above mentioned plugins into the blogs, and considering the measured results; I do believe that these plugins are especially relevant and valuable for search engine optimization at the actual time.
7 CHAPTER FOUR: Conclusion, Recommendations and Evaluation
7.1
Conclusion
There is no equivalent way to learn things than learning it practically. Everyone learns from his mistakes, on experience. The practical experience is an entirely different aspect when considered about what we learnt in classroom. This first internship during my 3 rd academic year studying ICT English-Stream at Fontys University of Applied Science would reveal the various learning process. I have learned some of the key things like how to behave in the organization, the difference between school’s life and real work’s life sphere.
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7.1.1
Real project Vs. University projects:
In university projects, we used the formal way of development, while Internship project was based on informal or iterative development.
University’s projects are based on what we have been taught while Internship project is based on user needs or on the project’s formal client preferences.
7.1.2
Achievements
7.1.2.1
Introduction
At the beginning of this project, everything was new to me. I was unable to even install the work platform environment on my Window operating system. Troubleshooting a problem was of the question for me as it was to determine where the problem is coming from, having to do with WordPress, PHP, HTML or JavaScript. At the end, after good documentation and research on internet and some of available documents at the company; I was able to troubleshoot and determine which way a problem is from.
7.1.2.2
Personal Achievements
Thus far, my personal achievements include:
-
Have known a lot about open-source software
-
Understanding the basics of internet marketing
-
Basics of php and MySQL
-
Basics of web application and WordPress core functionality
Know how to develop on API’s provided by third party.
7.1.2.3
Project Achievements
Imagine all of these problems as discussed later in this document (§ 7.3.2), and then going as far as almost completing the project.
-
A project that at start almost looked like mission impossible has been realized and is almost complete.
7.2
Recommendation
All the blogs that I have developed during this project are based on the present information available, and on the products which are scoring high in sell on the actual market situation.
Thus in the future these blogs may need to be extended or update with new products by keeping an eye on the market’s situation. Some of functionalities may need to be modified.
Some of WordPress plugins may need to be updated or completely deactivated and replace by new ones. This is also because the client has not clearly anticipated the future development of the system.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge the fact that I made a lot of mistakes throughout the course of this internship. Thanks to my company tutor who was always there for me each time.
I learned a lot from mistakes and if I were to do this project now, I would have done it in a much better and professional way.
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7.3
Internship Evaluation
7.3.1
Introduction
This section discusses all my challenges that I experienced in this project, the possible solutions or what I did to coupe with these challenges, and also what I have learned throughout the project. Besides carrying out my internship assignment, I was sometimes assigned to do some small tasks. These were namely such as doing a research on a particular software tool or test a particular marketing software tool or a plugin that has been bought in the company. A copy of one of the assignments I did outside the internship has been included in APPENDIX D.
7.3.2
Challenges and solutions adopted a.
Distant to work
Living in Roosendaal and going every day to work to Eindhoven was a very serious issue talk of been at work as early as 08:30 AM meant that I had to get up every day as early as
6:00 AM in the morning to get ready for work. b.
Educational
In my course at University we were given little or no lessons in web applications, and coming to work in a more professional web application. My challenges included;
Insufficient knowledge in web application – didn’t have sufficient knowledge at start for web applications
Multi-platforms languages – project needs here and there basic knowledge on
JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.
Limited knowledge in WORDPRESS. Main platform in company is WordPress.
I didn’t have sufficient knowledge in it.
Solutions adopted
Outlined are some of the ways I did to overcome the educational drawbacks;
Learning while providing work results.
Regularly asking questions to avoid learning unnecessary things or doing things in the wrong (this is especially while developing the blogs in order to make sure everything going on well as stated in the requirements).
Understand a problem very well before approaching. c.
Project constraint
A project with very limited knowledge about what the site should do, a project without any clear budget, a lot was expected from me to do. Here were the major challenges I got:
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No existing document for the project – except the design, there was no other document for the project;
Informal development method – all my project in school have been by the traditional or formal development method;
Uncertain desire – while still developing the project, there is already another ongoing assignment or unexpected changes on the requirements;
No clear allocated budget – difficult to measure the importance of the project since there is no clear allocate budget;
No effective communication plans – At the start there was no define communication network within project member or company’s departments.
Sometimes I have the feeling that the departments do not collaborated or understand each other. This is a point that Stershop should try to improve.
Low level guidance – As university student I was expecting to be receive assistance on university level, however the company has more experience with students from low level program (MBO) 13 this may justify the fact that there was a lack of a real suitable assistance of my level.
Switched from my department – Just a few weeks after signing the contract and start to work on my assignment in development department, my project was stopped and I was asked to join the research department while my project was half-way and I’ve started enjoying programming.
Solutions adopted
Active stakeholder participation – Collaborate with the stakeholder who has the authority and ability to provide information relevant to the system under construction and to make pertinent and timely decisions regarding it.
Embrace change – and stay positive. Since I have learned during my theory period at university that changing requirements are expected and embraced throughout the software lifecycle.
Keep it simple – suspect complicated solutions without justification.
Agile Modeling – communicates and establishes the “good enough” solution model.
13 Middelbare beroep onderwijs (Dutch), meaning Secondary vocational education
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8 References
— Website : Articles about Plugin Resources: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_Resources
— Website : Articles about WordPress plugin Submission and Promotion: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_Submission_and_Promotion
— Website : Google explains: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
— Website : SEnuke deal: http://www.senukedeal.com/the-importance-to-learn-search-engineoptimization-in-online-busines
— Website : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator
— Website : http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offersforum/357098-want-unlimited-quality-backlinks-powerful-automation-plugin-creates-indexenergizes-backlinks.html
—
—
Website : http://backlinksyndicate.com/
Website : http://www.php.net
— Article: October 2006, Affiliate Marketing Networks Buyer's Guide (2006), Page 6, e-
Consultancy.com
, retrieved June 25, 2007
— Book: “The Super Affiliate Handbook” By Rosalind Gardner - Webvista Inc. (2005) -
—
Paperback - 252 pages - ISBN 0973328738.
Book : “The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success”,
By Lon Safko - John Wiley & Sons (2010) - Paperback - 771 pages - ISBN
—
0470623977
Book : “PHP, MySQL & JavaScript” A step by Step Guide to Creating Dynamic
Websites, Robin Nixon, First Edition July 2009 – ISBN : 978-0-596-15713-5
9 Appendix A: Timeline
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INTERNSHIP PROJECT TIMELINE
9-2-2011
START PROJECT
20-2-2011
Project Plan
SEO WP
19-2-2011 - 14-3-2011
Theory Phase
Plugins
Firepow
SENuke X
Marketing Tools
PHP&MySQL
WORDPRESS
7-2-2011
1-4-2011
14-3-2011 - 21-4-2011
Research Phase
11-2-2011 - 18-2-2011
Preparation Phase
February 2011 to July 2011
22-4-2011 - 30-6-2011
Development Phase
Googleblacklist DB
Design local DB
15-7-2011
ROUNDING UP
9-6-2011
First Draft report 19-6-2011
BLOGS
2-7-2011 - 13-7-2011
Reporting
7-5-2011
Blacklist Database
1-7-2011
Wp-url-checker Inhouse plugin
(coding)
Developing and building WP blogs
Blogs Launched.
15-7-2011
11-7-2011
Presentation
Pascal Ndayishimiye
Fig.IX. 01 Time line
10 Appendix B: Project Plan
Document history
Revisions
Version Status Date
0.1 Draft
Changes
25/02/2011 No changes
Reviewed by
Approvals
Version
Date of approval
Name Job title Signature
Management Summary
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Purpose of this document
The goal of this document is:
To define the project,
-
To serve as its management basis and
-
To enable the assessment of the project’s success.
The two main reasons for the use of this document are:
− To ensure a sound project basis before the Project Board is asked to commit itself to the project;
− To serve as an underlying document on the basis of which the Project Board and the
Project Manager can monitor and review progress and changes. It also enables us, during the project, to assess any questions regarding the project’s validity.
1 Introduction
1.1 Purpose of this document
This document is written to capture all the project’s relevant basic information and principles in order to manage it in a right way. Its main goal is to define the project, serve as a basis for its management and to enable the assessment of the project’s success.
The document is used:
To serve as an underlying document on the basis of which the Project Board and the Project
Manager can monitor and review progress and changes. It also enables them, during the project, to assess any questions based on the project’s validity.
1.2 Composition of the document
This Document is divided into two sections as to indicate which parts will be updated and hence will have newer versions as the project proceeds: a static part and a dynamic part:
The static part consists of the following chapters and appendices:
Project Statement (Chapter 2)
Project Phasing (Chapter 3)
Management Plan (Chapter 4)
The dynamic part consists of the Appendices if any.
2 Project Statement
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2.1 Formal client
Ir. S.L.C.M (Stefan) Rooyackers
Stershop B. V. (company’s director)
Contact details:
Tel. number: +31 (0) 645204687
E-mail: info@stershop.nl
Address: Glaslaan 2, 5616 LW Eindhoven
Bert ter Heide
Stershop B. V. (company’s tutor)
Contact details:
Tel. number: +31 (0) 634895027
E-mail:
Address: bert.ter.heide@stershop.nl
Glaslaan 2, 5616 LW Eindhoven
Mehdi Khaledi mehdistershop@gmail.com
2. 2 Project leader
Pascal Ndayishimiye.
ICT student at Fontys Hogeschool Eindhoven
Contact details:
Tel. number:
E-mail 1:
+31 (0) 633776044
p.ndayishimiye@student.fontys.nl
E-mail 2: littlepaschal@hotmail.com
2.3 Senior project leader (School tutor)
Bert van Gestel
Fontys Hogeschool ICT
Contact details:
Tel. number:
E-mail:
Address:
+31 (0)8778 – 71186 eb.vangestel@fontys.nl
Building R1, Room 4.36
Rachelsmolen 1
5612 MA Eindhoven
2. 4 Current situation
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Stershop B.V. is leader in internet marketing. It promotes via all kind of internet social media dozens of websites for its clients. Stershop owns about 400 websites and web blogs. In the rubric forums within these websites as well as in posts left behind by members who visit the websites are always some links. From the company experience it seems that some of those links contain malwares and viruses.
Currently there is a staff member of the company who is making sure that the links to websites in the people’s comments or posts, in forums are safe. This work is done manually.
By copying the link and pasting it in Google search engine to see if the link is not blacklisted.
2. 5 Project justification
Many individuals choose internet marketing in order to earn a little extra money or maybe replace their existing income. But before you opt to take on internet marketing you should ask yourself a couple of questions to find out if an internet marketing venture is even something you should undertake. Stershop BV is constantly active in internet marketing. Initially, internet marketing is actually the process of promoting products on the internet in order to create sales. Lots of people get started with their internet marketing professions by becoming an affiliate marketer. And affiliate marketing is actually promoting another person’s product or service and generating a commission on any sales you generate. Stershop BV owns thousands of websites which generate money for the company through affiliate marketing.
Who says websites says traffic, traffic in internet marketing means equal money. Stershop needs traffic to its websites by getting links from outside. Because Stershop BV promotes other people products it is also very important people write some reviews about the products.
In order to make this possible, Stershop BV organizes forums on its blogs. When people write reviews or leave comments on blogs they also leave links to their websites. These later should be controlled. The company would like to build a system that will automatically recognize and read the entire URL in the blogs, afterwards the system should check whether the URLs are safe or whether they contain malware. My assignment for this internship was to develop a
WordPress Plug-in that will answer to this question.
2. 6 Project deliverables and non-deliverables
These are the deliverables that I will deliver to my client at the end of my internship:
Product name A website
Product description A WordPress blog with implanted plugins.
Product information
Project Plan
Test Plan
Test Result
Since this is an internship project, I will not deliver the following products:
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Service, Maintenance and Support
Manual
Course
Training
2. 7 Project constraints
The development of the WordPress plugin(s) must be done with the server side programming language PHP and the open database application MySQL. The website must be a WordPressbased website.
The duration is 100 working days starting from 07 February 2011.
A workplace with a PC connected to the internet.
The customer must be available at least once a week to have a meeting with him.
2. 8 Project risks
Human risks
Sickness
Level of skills
Strategies to reduce risks
Make sure to work an extra day(s) to reach 100 working days.
Practice PHP programming and ask questions when facing problem(s).
Operational risks
Computer crash
Other possible risks
Strategies to reduce risks
Make back up of all the work beforehand.
Strategies to reduce risks
Technical failure of the program Make sure that the program is finished on time and that there is enough time for analyzing and testing.
3 Project Phasing
3.1 Planning phase
The main goal of this phase is to get familiar with the company and the company’s assignment.
Activities:
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Discuss the project with the company tutor
Write project plan
Sub deliverables: none
Phase document:
Task Estimated time
Write Project Plan
3.2 Research phase
1 week
The main goal of this phase is to make a research on internet in order to find a get the Google blacklist database which will be using in the system in order to check and validate URLs.
Estimated time: 3 weeks
Estimated end date: 14/03/2011
Phase document:
Task Estimated time
Read and listen to video tutorials about WordPress
Getting familiar with PHP and MySQL
Find and generate Google blacklist database
Build a MySQL testing database
3 days
10 days
1 day
2 day
3.3 Development phase
The main objective of this phase is to develop a WordPress blog where the system will be first implemented for testing before being hand in to the company.
Activities:
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Build WordPress blogs.
Discover some of build in WordPress plugins.
Sub deliverables: Few WordPress blogs.
Estimated time: 2 weeks
Estimated end date: 28/03/2011
3.4 Implementation phase
The main objective of this phase is to implement and test the WordPress plugin(s) which have been developed (half-way phase) 14 .
Activities:
Program the plugin
Test the plugin ( no test has been taken place)
Sub deliverables:
Estimated time: 14 weeks
Estimated end date: 15/07/2011
Phase document:
Task
Program the plugin
Test the plugin
4 Management Plan
4.1 Skills
Estimated time
13 weeks
NA
To have the correct skills for the project I need to study PHP and MySQL. A good knowledge of web blogging, namely WordPress is also required.
4.2 Quality
14 This phase was not accomplished, as by the request of the client I was asked to stop with the plugin development.
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Though I may not have the right skills now for the project. I would like to emphasize that Mr.
Mehdi Khaledi, my company’s tutor is an experienced person in IT management.
Additionally, my project technical support (Mr. Bert ter Heide) has got sufficient knowledge in wed development and is quite skillful with programming language such as PHP and
MySQL. At the end, I am myself highly motivated by the challenge to study all that it may take to successfully fulfill this project.
4.3 Information
Project plan Project report Deliverables Test document
Bert R, A R, A ------
Pascal
School Tutor
Legend:
Dr - Draw up
Dr, Di, S, Ar
R, A
Di - Discuss
A - Approve
Dr, Di, S, Ar
R, A
S - Send
R - Receive
Ar-Archive
Dr, Di, S, Ar
R, A
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4.4 Time and Costs
Time
Time aspect will be an approximation considered in working-hours. A detailed description of the spending time on each phase of the project is available in Time Schedule (phasing document). The amount of working hours per week is 32 hours minimum and 40 hours maximum. Further, wage for the project manager.
5. Benefits
5.1 Tangible benefit (measurable)
The financial estimated benefits are all strictly confidential corporate information, so no information can be given about this aspect.
5.2 Intangible benefit (none measurable)
In general the developed plugins will be used in for the internal benefit of the company. The plugins need to be implemented in blogs and websites of the company.
6 Organization
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Executive: The one who gave the project manager the assignment and his going to pay him and check if the project is delivered in time.
Project Manager: The one who is doing the assignment.
Senior Project Manager: Called school tutor, is the shadow of the project manager. He helps the project manager to go to the project management phases in a correct time.
Project support: The Company tutor. He helps with technical support for the realization of the project. He acts as intermediary between the project manager and the executive.
Communication
From
Stefan
Mehdi
Pascal
To
Pascal, Bert
Stefan,
Pascal
Van Gestel
Bert
Information
Project Progress
All sort of questions
Project Progress
All sort of information and question related to the project.
Medium meetings meetings
Email, meetings
Position
Director
Company tutor
School
Tutor
Google docs, Skype, meetings
Project
Manager
Frequency weekly
Not specified
Not specified daily
11 Appendix C: Technical manual
A.
Wp-url-checker
Preparation
Assuming that all the essential tools previously mentioned in this document have been successfully installed.
1. Accessing Googlesafebrowsing database:
<?php
/* phpGSB - PHP Google Safe Browsing Implementation
Version 0.1 (ALPHA) - Not recommended for production use
Released under New BSD License (see LICENSE)
Copyright (c) 2010, Sam Cleaver (Beaver6813, Beaver6813.com)
All rights reserved.
INITIAL INSTALLER - RUN ONCE (or more than once if you're adding a new list!)
*/
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 46 require ("phpgsb.class.php");
$phpgsb = new phpGSB("googleblacklist","root","");
$phpgsb->usinglists = array ('googpub-phish-shavar','goog-malware-shavar');
//Install MySQL tables foreach ($phpgsb->usinglists as $value)
{
//Create ADD tables mysql_query("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `$value-a-hosts` (
`ID` int(255) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`Hostkey` varchar(8) NOT NULL,
`Chunknum` int(255) NOT NULL,
`Count` varchar(2) NOT NULL default '0',
`FullHash` varchar(70) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`ID`)
// etc........
)
}
//Check timeout files writable if (file_put_contents("testfile.dat","TEST PRE-USE PHPGSB ".time())) unlink("testfile.dat"); else echo "<span style='color:red;font-weight:bold;'>ERROR: THIS DIRECTORY IS NOT WRITABLE,
CHMOD to 775 or 777</span>";
2. Use of regular expression to detect URL in the directory and list them
<?php
(…..some more code) if (preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z]+[:\/\/]+[A-Za-z0-9\-_]+\\.+[A-Za-z0-9\.\/%&=\?\-_]+$/i", $_POST ["url"])) {
{ if ($goog->isListed
//open directory
($_POST ["url"])) (…..some more code) if ($handle = opendir( $directory )) {
while ( false !== ($dir = readdir( $handle )))
{
if ( $dir != "." && $dir != "..")
{ if (is_dir( $directory . '/' . $dir )){ foreach ($files as $file){ if (file_exists( $directory . "/" . $dir . "/" . $file)){
$data = file_get_contents($directory. "/" . $dir . "/" . $file); foreach (explode("\n",$data) as $line){ if ( !empty ($line)){
}
?>
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 47 if ( $goog ->isListed($line)) { echo "{$line}is listed". "<br />";
}
(…..some more code)
3. Check whether a determined URL is blacklisted:
<?php ini_set("memory_limit", "256M");
} set_time_limit( 300 ); function __autoload($classname) { require str_replace('_', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $classname) . '.php';
// Setup the Google_Safebrowsing object
$blacklistCache = Zend_Cache::factory('core', 'file', array ('lifetime' => 3600 , 'automatic_serialization'
=> true ));
$malwareCache = Zend_Cache::factory('core', 'file', array ('lifetime' => 3600 , 'automatic_serialization'
=> true ));
$goog = new Google_Safebrowsing($blacklistCache, $malwareCache);
// Update the internal lists every hour per cron! NOT EVERY TIME!
$goog->update('ABQIAAAAE3NC2pMtdjkebNu73W4UmBSRCvQ9GHydXUY1jverotLTHdZ4mQ');
// Do some lookups
//$urlToCheck = 'http://12zodiac.com'; if (preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z]+[:\/\/]+[A-Za-z0-9\-_]+\\.+[A-Za-z0-9\.\/%&=\?\-_]+$/i", $_POST["url"])) { if ($goog->isListed($_POST["url"])) { printf("The specified URL: <strong>%s</strong> is probably blacklisted or is pointing to a malware!", $_POST["url"]);
} else { printf("The specified URL: <strong>%s</strong> seems to be safe( = not pointing to malware)", $_POST["url"]);
}
} else {
<?
die ("You must supply a valid URL."). "<br />";
//echo "Go back and click on the hint button for any help";
Step 2
Step 3
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B.
SEnuke X step by step
Step
1
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Step 4
Step 5
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Step 6
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Step 7
C.
Blogs’ traffic results.
BLOG'S WEEKLY TRAFFIC REPORT
BLOG URL http://www.organiccomedy.com/ http://www.onlineshop.organiccomedy.com/ http://www.seo-pressor.lpaq.com/ http://www.chris-farrellmembership.lpaq.com/ http://www.easy-videoplayer.lpaq.com/ http://www.chris-farrellmembership.lpaq.com/ http://www.cbgamers.lpaq.com/ http://www.world-of-warcraft.lpaq.com
1-5-2011 6-5-2011
2621
268
231
141
105
3125
333
294
269
119
151
269
MAY 2011
13-5-2011 20-5-2011 27-5-2011
4602
460
401
167
5199
585
539
516
5929
820
626
208
135
167
388
JUNE 2011
155
197
516
207
168
208
638
290
BLOG URL http://WWW.organiccomedy.com/
4-6-2011 11-6-2011 21-6-2011
4354 5150 5873
W o r d P r e s s P l u g i n s R e s e a r c h & D e v e l o p m e n t P a g e | 52 http://wwW.onlineshop.organiccomedy.com/ http://WWW.seo-pressor.lpaq.com/ http://WWW.cbgamers.lpaq.com/ http://WWW.world-of-warcraft.lpaq.com/ http://WWW.chris-farrellmembership.lpaq.com/ http://WWW.easy-videoplayer.lpaq.com/ http://www.look-younger-lpaq.com
1057
626
638
452
208
168
1418
701
730
549
320
256
1722
858
863
568
141
134
131
Fig. XI 01 Blog traffic chart
12 Appendix D: Marketing Tools
This section the assignment I did outside my internship assignment. The company needed someone to make in very short time a research on marketing tools. I decide to make myself available for this task. In the next pages is a copy of the result. The original was submitted to the CEO of the company.
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MARKETING
TOOLS
Pascal Ndayishimiye
STERSHOP B.V.
March 16-17, 2011.
1 INTRODUCTION
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This report contains a list of tools found after 2 days work searching on internet.
Relying on what have said on forums and after reading the features of these tools; I have considered these tools to be helpful when it comes to creating a wellresearched and targeted SEO website, promote website as well as spy on competition to see niches which you can carve out for yourself to stay ahead of the curve.
This report will pay particular attention to each tool’s features. Further will try to highlight the major strengthens and weakness of each tool.
2. List of tools
2.1 Keyword country
Keyword country tool is a kind of content building software. As we all know building web content to capture audience, to promote products or get higher rankings on keywords and backlinks; involves targeting right keywords, creating captivating contents and mass publishing. In this perspective, key word country is said to helpful.
It helps to expose content with most searched keywords and phrases and get it more reads. It also publishes content instantly, by easily distributing it across multiple platforms.
2.1.1 Keyword country features
Some of keyword country features are:
Planning Your Website – This aspect of the Keyword Country suite of tools provides in-depth analysis of possible keywords as well as offering a keyword generator. You can “rip” keywords from competitors’ websites to further optimize them on your own site. Here you can also learn about the viability of a number of
“long tail” or longer keyword phrases. This tool in Keyword Country gives you all the information you need to choose the most targeted keywords to use on your website and in your promotional materials.
Spying On the Competition – It cannot be stated strongly enough how important it is to know what your competition is up to. This allows you to find flaws in their strategy, see markets that they are missing, and determine where you can come in to fill that niche. The powerful Spy Tools in Keyword Country allow you to get an idea of your competition’s SEO strategies, backlinks, and page ranks. There is even an option to use reverse engineering to “steal” their keywords, and thus drive that traffic to your site!
Promoting Your Website – These tools give you a variety of options to effectively promote your website. There are tools for options for partner affiliations, social affiliations, and even well-researched, profitable keywords to use in your pay per click marketing structure. Keyword Country provides tools to help you locate the best spots for your ads as well as information on how to further the reach of your website online.
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2.2 Magic Article Rewriter
This is another tool which plays an important role in earning money with online articles. Like other tools, magic article rewrite is a software program which allows you to write numerous articles easily and fast. It is amazing side is that it makes it possible to create unique articles by avoiding duplicate contents. It helps to transform articles into seed articles, which can be used to create as many unique, readable variations in various web2.0 properties.
2.2.1 Magic Article Rewriter features (Alexander Krulik)
Possibility to enrich the thesaurus with your own words, in this way you remain in control of the quality of the thesaurus you build;
As its name says magic article rewriter offers an ability to rewrite words, phrases and sentences;
Nested spinning supported. You can spin words inside phrases and phrases inside sentences;
Ability to use different spinning tokes according to the website you want to submit your articles to.
Etc.
2.2.2 Disadvantages
Several features not offer: like formatting article with html code, no html preview of your spun articles, also no option to remove html tags from plain text versions when it exports them. Doesn’t understand advanced spinning syntax which can be a real pain when someone would like to do some advanced spinning.
There is no automated replacement of words with synonyms from the database; the process is entirely manual and hence time-consuming.
2.3 The Best Spinner (Jonathan Leger)
Like magic article rewriter this tool allows to quickly and easily produce hundreds of quality unique variations of one original article. The high quality articles are then submitted to dozens of websites, to attract a target audience as well as traffic to your website. Unlike magic article rewriter, the best spinner has got an automated mode functionality which magic article doesn’t offer (See 2.2.2, magic article rewriter disadvantages).
2.4 WordFlood 2.0
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This is another articles rewriting tool. It is considered to be a powerful desktop application designed to help article marketers and other creative writing professionals massively increase their article marketing productivity, by allowing them to take existing articles (or their own original articles), and turn them into separate unique articles by rewriting them in a very short laps of time.
2.5 Web2Mayhem Review (Jason Katzenback and Jason Potash)
At first glance, Web 2 Mayhem appears to be very similar to SENuke. As the offers of automatic Account Creation, Social Bookmarking, RSS Feed Submission, etc.
However web2Mayhem seems to offer more features than SENuke.
Some of users of Web 2 Mayhem have noticed that the auto submissions that Web 2
Mayhem does, contain a lot more directories, RSS Sites, Social Bookmarking Sites, etc. Far more than SENuke has available. This means more backlinks, more content on the web, and overall better results in the Search Engines.
2.5.1 Web2Mayhem Review features
Below are some of features of web2Mayhem which seem to differentiate it from
SENuke, as described on the Web 2 Mayhem Website itself.
“Syndicate [Blog Article Poster] is designed as a simple, step-by-step interface for you to post your content into our blog network of over 10,000 niche specific blogs.
Instead of having to surf to each blog and log in individually to make a post, you use our integrated interface to make your posts. With a few easy steps you enter your title, content, select the category of blogs you want your article to post to and you’re done. Sit back while we do the posting for you. Unique to our system is a method where you can spin your titles and content so that each entry into the system is unique, making duplicate content a thing of the past.”
To be more specific, it blasts your blog post (with your Keyword and Link) to 30 niche specific blogs, then trickles the post to 3 blogs per day, until all the posts are completed (up to 120 – depending on your spin uniqueness). It’s pretty amazing and powerful in regards to Natural looking links! This feature itself is worth the monthly fee of this program.
Account Creator – Create all of your accounts with the click of a button
(Decaptcher services are supported).
RSS Announcer – Submit RSS Feeds to 46 (and more constantly added) RSS
Submission Sites.
Social Bookmarker – 33 (and more added all the time) Social Bookmarking
Sites at your disposal.
Video Sharer – Post your Videos with backlinks to 17 (and more to come) video sites.
Article Submitter – Submit your Articles to 55 (more added all the time!)
Article Directory sites, including EzineArticles, and other POWERFUL Article
Websites. Also, Article Spinning and Nested (advanced) Spinning is supported.
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Blog Poster – After creating your own blogs (in the creation step), at networks such as Blogger, Doodlekit, BraveJournal, etc.
Etc.,
2.6 Socialbot V4.1
SocialBot V4.1 is a Windows Program that's easy to use and performs all of the mundane tasks that are involved in Social Bookmarking.
In a nutshell, you enter a domain, SocialBot V4.1 spiders it and builds a list of web pages to bookmark and then it submits them to the Social Bookmarking services you've created accounts with. At the present time, it is supposed to support 88 of the most popular Social Bookmarking Services as well as unlimited Scuttle sites.
2.6.1 Socialbot V4.1 features
Supports 88 Popular Social Bookmarking Services (Digg, Technorati, Google, etc.)
Semi-Automatic Account Creation
Random Title (Anchor Text) And Description Rotation
Ability To Add/Remove Unlimited Scuttle Sites
Built-in Database Migration Tool
Supports Multiple Company And Account Profiles
Import/Export Account Profiles To/From CSV
Improved Submission Reporting
Works On Both 32 and 64 Bit Operating Systems
5th Generation Spidering and Submition Engines
Set Global And Site Specific Filters To Exclude Files And Folders
Generate Link List And XML Sitemaps
Fully Threaded For Maximum Speed
2.7 SXGENSEO
This tool is similar to SENuke. It is an SEO tool for searching engine optimization and Social Media. By using this tool someone can let his blog post all over the net on all the Top blog sites, your Articles will be all over the net. Your content will appear on Micro Blogging Sites and Social Networking Sites. Dozens of bookmarking sites will have your content. Your business name will appear on Hubs,
Wikis and Forums. High quality content may be shared further and book marked by others too. Search Engines will pick your content on many keywords of your market on Top Pages! In short, your own and your business will be there on all conceivable social sites and Search Engines.
2.7.1 SXGENSEO features
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Wizard Styled, easy to use, friendly interface
Automated Email Accounts
Creator
Automated Social Sites
Account/Profile Creator
Automatic Captcha Resolve Tool
Automated Articles Submitter
Automated Blog, Wikis & Hub
Submitter
Automated Micro Blogging &
Social Networking
Powerful Reporting Suite
Automated Video Submitter
Automated Social Book-mark
Submitter
Automated RSS Feeds Submitter
Automated Power Ping
Article/Blog Creator
Article/Blog Spinner
Power Keyword Builder
Competitor Analysis
Article Research Tool
2.7. SXGENSEO traffic building
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3. Conclusion/recommendation
All the tools I came across to, seem to be complementary. There are functionalities found in one which are not in another. I must say that I did find it hard to make a recommendation for a particular tool since I didn’t have opportunity to try any of them.
However, if I had to go for a preference I would have chosen for Xgenseo. Since it has been successfully tested with websites in the most competitive industries and keywords and those websites have zoomed into top 10 in Google.
