A couple days back, BlogRush released their “Phase 2″. It is now active and can be seen on your dashboard now. There are new statistical information which they have added. Now you can see which post has been highly click by others from the BlogRush widget. On the category side, there are now more specific categories instead of just having a couple main category. You can edit your blog category under “My Blogs”. Besides that, if your sidebar is slim, you can opt for the slimmer BlogRush widget as well. I prefer the wider widget as I can see the blog post title much better. What do you think of the new BlogRush Phase 2. Has it been worth for all the wait?

Have you seen your PayPal account lately? I’m sure most of us know that PayPal has a new layout. This new layout is quite impressive. With the release of this new design layout, they are no longer in its beta stages. All their pages loads up much quickly than it was previously. Other new features which was released earlier was the ability to make withdrawal through credit and debit cards.

Many countries which were unable to make withdrawal from PayPal is now very pleased with their move. I still haven’t tested their debit card yet and still reconsidering the fees in overall. Each withdrawal to the credit or debit card is limited to an amount of $500. If I were to withdraw $1,500 I have to pay fees accumulating up to $15. For bank withdrawals, there will be no charges from PayPal at all. Well, it all up to each individual. They have laid out the options for us and only we can decide how we want to withdraw our money.

BlogRush is a project pioneered by the internet marketing legend John Reese. It is a new traffic exchange program content syndication network. You can see it on action on the right side of my blog. BlogRush has been the talk of many in just matters of days since their launch. They have just recently had a major change over and it is now at the BlogRush “Phase 2″ period. A lot of changes had been done and it really look nice compare to its previous layout and design.

The concept of BlogRush is simple where you place a piece of code on your site/blog. The code will display a widget where it grabs 5 RSS feeds from a category that you have specified. You will earn credits each time your site/blog shows the BlogRush widget. With the credits that you earn, your site post will be shown on other widgets. BlogRush will keep track of the last 12 post which you can track from your BlogRush dashboard. Invite or refer friends to join BlogRush and you can earn extra credits when your referral shows their widget. Sign up with BlogRush and feel the traffic rushing in to your site/blog.

A new version of WordPress is available now. This version is released with a over twenty bugs that was in version 2.30. There have been some security issue found in the previous version and it is advisable that user of version 2.30 upgrade their WordPress to version 2.3.1. For a full list of changes made, check out the Trac.

For self hosted WordPress blog:

1. Download the latest WordPress version.
2. Backup critical files such as your themes and plugins.
3. Extract and upload all content of the downloaded WordPress file to your host. Overwrite everything. You can use FTP for easier upload.
4. Login to http://your-domain/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php (this is an example) to upgrade your current Wordpress and follow the instruction to finish the upgrade process (You can skip this if you are upgrading from 2.3 to 2.3.1)

The WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin is a very cool WordPress plugin. It allows a WordPress user to automatically upgrade their WordPress installation to the latest version one provided by Wordpress.org. It just takes 5 steps to complete the WordPress installation using the plugin.

Just follow the following steps to complete your WordPress installation.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

Another cool feature of the plugin is that it can also be run in a automated mode where you do not need to click on any links to get to the next step. I prefer to use the step by step though. One thing to note that if you did any changes to the WordPress core files, you will need to update it back manually. It doesn’t copy your changes over but overwrites it. I had my tinyMCE changes all overwritten and need to replace it manually.

Having high traffic? Turn those traffic into cash. XBanners.biz is paying $7.00 for every 10,000 unique views. All you need to do is just paste one single line of code on to your website or blog and you can start to earn money. They have made some adjustments since their start up. The current minimum for payout is $3.00 as compare to previous $1.00. Payments will be made by E-Gold and PayPal. PayPal is their latest payment option. All payments request can be made daily.

You can also earn 10% referral earnings from each person you refer to XBanners.biz. Members from all countries are welcome to join the program but only limited to one account per person. All cheaters will be deleted without warning. So please don’t try to cheat. Well, what are you waiting for? Sign up with XBanners.biz now.

The owner of Text Link Ads and AuctionAds have launched another new ad service, ShoppingAds. ShoppingAds is just like Chitika’s and WidgetBucks where it display products from major shopping comparison sites. The only difference between AuctionAds and ShoppingAds is AuctionAds is based on Pay-Per-Action while ShoppingAds is based on Pay-Per-Click. I’ll talk about AuctionAds in another post and my experience with it.

If you are wondering whether you can place ShoppingAds together with Google Adsense, feel free to do so. ShoppingAds isn’t a contextual based ads therefore it has no conflict with Adsense or other text based ad system. All payments are paid on the first of every month thru PayPal for ShoppingAds. The minimum payout will be placed at $50. As for myself, I would prefer to place a Pay-Per-Click ads than a Pay-Per-Action ads. The chances of generating revenue from Pay-Per-Click is much higher.

For those who are planning to making money or even buying stuffs online, I would suggest using PayPal. I have been using PayPal to accept payments as well as buying items from eBay for quite a while now. Most companies have multiple choices for making payments such as checks, bank transfers and online payment processor.

I would prefer using online payment processor as I hate waiting for the one month period for the check to be clear. There is also the high fees to process overseas checks as well. Since it is so easier and faster to setup a PayPal account, I do recommend it if you are planning to do make some money online.

After you have sign up, make the necessary confirmation of your email, bank accounts and credit cards, you may use your PayPal to receive and send payment with it. Do take your time and browse through your account to learn what you can do and can’t with your PayPal account.

In the most recent news with PayPal, they have now allow more than 26 countries which previous have difficulty in withdrawing money from their account. This is a good news to them as they have been waiting for PayPal to allow them to do so for a very long time.

Those in the listed countries can now withdraw to their credit or debit cards instead of withdrawing to a bank account. Many have written regarding this good news and some even tested out various credit and debit cards to see which ones are allowed to be used with PayPal. With this move, I’m sure more people will sign up with PayPal and use their service.

I was searching on the internet today when i came across a new WordPress Theme Design Competition organized by DesignVitality. If you are a web designer, now is a chance to show the rest of the world how good you are with your design. The cash and prizes for this competition amounts is over $1,5000.

There will be three winners and they will get as below.

1. Grand Prize Winner will receive $1,000 in PayPal money.
2. The First Runner Up will receive a New 4GB Apple iPhone OR Nintendo Wii
3. The Second Runner Up will receive 2 years of Free Web Hosting.

For the rules and how to enter for the competition, please refer to DesignVitality.com website.

This blog currently uses the latest WordPress 2.3 version, named “Dexter”. There are many cool stuffs added this time as well as some things being removed. I am using the WYSIWYG editor for all my posting. The new visual editor has some changes, both good and bad. I believe there used to be a video and flash icon on the editor where we can add videos and flash. Now these two icons are gone from the visual editor. However, they have included the button to toggle the Advanced Toolbar which is located at the end of the visual editor. I have made my own modifications and added emotions in as well to the visual editor. I’m still thinking of whether to add in creating tables capability to the visual editor. Perhaps when I need it, I’ll add it during that time.

If you wish to edit your visual editor, you may do so yourself. It is quite easy to mod it and remove unwanted stuffs from the visual editor.

Steps

1. Go to “../wp-includes/js/tinymce/”.
2. Located the file “tiny_mce_config.php”
3. At line 28, add in “emotions”

before : $plugins = array(’inlinepopups’, ‘autosave’, ’spellchecker’, ‘paste’, ‘wordpress’);
after : $plugins = array(’inlinepopups’, ‘autosave’, ’spellchecker’, ‘paste’, ‘wordpress’, ‘emotions’);

4. At line 32, search for ‘wp_help’, ’separator’. Added in ‘emotions’ with the quotes after ’separator’.
5. Save the file.
6. Now go to TinyMCE website and download the TinyMCE release.
7. Unzip the content and go to “../tinymce\jscripts\tiny_mce\plugins\emotions”.
8. Copy the whole “emotions” folder to “../wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins”.
9. Reload your visual editor and you should see the emotions appear on your visual editor.