Ya can’t.

Well, OK, you can force it by using ‘.php5′ as the extension for all the PHP files. This works if you’re writing all your own shit but not much cop if you’re installing scads of downloaded ‘.php’ files.

What bollocks. Dreamhost makes it easy in the web panel - you simply select whether you want PHP5 or PHP4 as default for a particular domain. (Current options being PHP 4.4.7 or PHP 5.2.2)

And while I’m on the subject of figuring out why my DOMDocument wasn’t working, 1&1’s documentation blows compared to Dreamhost’s combination of support Wiki and forums.

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Google launched mobile Adwords yesterday - and they aren’t charging for click-throughs until November 19th.  In other words - free trial for the next week!

 http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=72226

 Landing pages need to be mobile optimised.

Shareasale was closed today in memory of the innocent lives lost on 9-11 and in honor of the heroes that day.  Affiliates and merchants could still log in and tracking continued.  Shareasale offices close each year in rememberance.

A moment of silence.

Many of us were stunned and shocked that day.  America changed and the world outside came into much closer focus.  Take a moment.

 Thanks.

One of the quickest ways to kill your search ranking (page rank) with Google is to have duplicate content posted at two domains.  For example, exactly the same pages posted at www.site1.com and www.site2.com.  Unfortunately Google treats subdomains as separate domains - so if www.site1.com and flop.site1.com have the same content they are treated by Google as duplicate content on two domains.  Goodbye pagerank and goodbye search visitors.  And Google does not normally treat www. as a special subdomain.  So again, content at www.site1.com and site1.com appear to Google as separate domains and hence can create the duplicate content rank killer.

The problem is easy to fix but fix it before it’s a problem!!  You can wait weeks for Google to re-index to the point where your search ranking returns.  On a cash earning site which relies on search visitors that’s instant death and there is nothing you can do but wait.

0) Decide!

No matter which tools you use, the single most important thing to do first is to decide whether you want “www.” or not.  Then don’t change it.  Trust me, it hurts.

1) Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools allow you to select whether www.site1.com or site1.com appears in it’s index.  Again, never ever change this once it’s set - this can cause Google to double index as it re-indexes your site, hence creating the duplicate content problem!

2) 301 redirects

There are numerous tools and scripts (including WordPress plugins) which you can use to perform a 301 redirect from the prefix you don’t want to the prefix you do want.  Doing this ensures that Google knows which is the permanent page and therefore which one to include in it’s index.

3) Use your host

Both 1&1 and dreamhost allow you to set the 301 redirect automatically.  Dreamhost’s redirect control panel options are mind-numbingly easy to use:

In summary, pick one and stay with it.  As you grow incoming links, you also want them coming in to the correct prefix.  So pick early, fix the problem before it happens and enjoy the income without that horrible sinking feeling that you screwed your pagerank.

I have Adsense email me daily reports broken down by web site.

To do this I:

1. Set up URL channels for each of my web sites
2. Set up the report:
   • Go to Advanced Reports
   • Select Yesterday (don’t select Today - see below)
   • Click “Channel data” and select all channels.  Then group by channel.
   • Click display report.
3. Save the report and set it up to email you
   • Under “save as custom report” type “channel data for the day” or something similar and save.
   • Then click over to the Report Manager and set the frequency to daily and select the appropriate email address for the report to be delivered to.

Reports are sent just after midnight - so selecting the report for “today” only captures up to an hour of clicks at the time of generation.  But selecting “yesterday” captures the whole previous day.

You’ve gotta credit it to them.  Dreamhost actually tells you when they screwed up. 

In fact, they tell the whole world on their blog.  So even if you never noticed a server went tits-up, there it is for all to see.  Let’s face it, all hosts have glitches.  Dreamhost is one of the few who open up and admit their mistakes.

Honesty is a rare thing these days.  And I figure if they are so blatant about the glitches, outages and screw-ups then I’m never going to be in the dark wondering if they have kept something from me (or worse, many small outages) which I will never know for sure but will always be there eating up my margins.

AffiliatesOnFire is hosted on Dreamhost.  Thanks Dreamhost.