January 5th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
WordPress 2.9.1 just released, and it fixed some minor bugs from WordPress 2.9. This is just a theory, but I think that the reason my blog posts weren’t being indexed in Google as quick as they usually were was due to a glitch in the WordPress update, causing certain server configurations to fail when attempting to ping the Ping-o-matic service.
So if you’re a blogger and still using WordPress 2.9, check to see if your articles are being properly indexed, because failing to make the upgrade to 2.9.1 can be costly to you. Installing the newest version should solve your problems.
Ever since I installed the update earlier today, things have been running smoothly as ever in terms of Googlebot indexing my site.
On a side note, I apologize for making so many articles regarding this issue, but it was something that needed to be resolved. I hope that anyone else suffering from this WordPress glitch has it fixed ASAP.
Detective Joe was on the case, and it is now officially closed. Have a nice day. 
January 5th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
If you’re a webmaster that is curious to know which of your site’s page have been indexed by Google, simply use the site operator and perform a search query such as:
site:www.joemajewski.com
The results you see upon executing that Google search will be a list of pages that Google has indexed on your site. Although that may not be a complete list of all the pages that Google “knows” about, it is a list of all pages that Google finds relevant enough to list in their results.
Many people believe that the more pages that Google has indexed, the better, but that is not the case at all. It is much more beneficial to you to have 50 pages indexed that are all rich with content than to have 100 pages indexed with low quality content. This is why it is important to update your robots.txt file to ensure that certain pages get ignored by Google’s search engine.
For example, I prevent Google from indexing pages located within the Traffic Stats tab that’s located in the tab list at the top of my blog. The reason being is that Google will find dozens, or maybe even hundreds of pages within that section of the site that are filled with daily statistics, weekly statistics, etcetera, and in general, you only want page’s with relevant content to be listed on Google.
That’s my tip of the day, but don’t expect to find these on a daily basis.
January 5th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
Last night I posted an article about Google’s slow indexing rate for my latest blog posts. Usually my articles get indexed within minutes, but recently it has been taking over 12 hours before Google gets around to adding my posts to their search results.
I did some research and found that others have had that same problem in the past. I still don’t know the exact reason that this was occurring, but rest assured, Google did get around to indexing my articles, albeit it took almost a full day.
For anyone else having similar issues, I would suggest just waiting it out, as maybe Google’s pinging service was queued up heavily during the time of my submission, or possibly they were in the process of updating their search engine. Regardless, I can only assume that things will return back to normal in due time.
If this problem persists, I will escalate my concerns and shoot an email in Google’s direction to find out why. I understand that Google’s crawl rate is composed of many variables, but that should have no affect on their pinging service, which tells Google that new content has been published and alerts them to index the new page.
This situation is out of my hands, as there really isn’t anything that I can do to cause my pages to index quicker, except to legitimately write new content on a regular basis, as always. 
Google has always revolved around the thesis that content is most important regarding getting a high ranking in the search results, so the best thing to do when a problem like this arises is to, you guessed it, write new content rich with information useful to others.
January 4th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
By using Google’s site operator, you can quickly see a list of pages that Google has indexed on any given website, or even directories or subdomains within a website. For example, performing a Google search for site:www.JoeMajewski.com, you will retrieve a full list of all pages that Google has found on my (this) website.
Usually, my new blog posts are indexed within minutes of being posted. Worst case scenario it would take thirty minutes, but never longer than that. The reason this happens is because WordPress pings a service that lets Googlebot know that new content has arrived upon publishing a new article.
Lately, this has changed. It has been 4 days since I posted an article about Google performing their PageRank update, and that submission has yet to be indexed on Google. This may be ironically due to the PageRank update causing it to be lost during the process, but I cannot think of any other reason as to why it still wouldn’t be indexed.
I have also written an article about an hour ago (that is unrelated to most other entries that I write) that is also not yet indexed by Google. I am assuming that the PageRank update is complete, and that things are back to normal (no more Google Dance, as the SEO geeks call it), so that tosses that theory out the window. But perhaps it is not indexed because of the fact that it’s unrelated to most of my other content.
I would be disappointed if Google changed the way that they archive blog posts, as I always enjoyed seeing my latest submissions show up on the search engine minutes after being published. If anyone has an explanation for as to why it is taking so long to get my articles archived, please comment and let me know.
Another reason this baffles me is because I just received PageRank 2, meaning that I should have more priority than I did before, so if anything was to change, I would expect it to be for the better. I will continue to investigate this issue, as I find it important for my content to be archived as soon as possible for best performance.
As always, I’ll keep you updated if I figure anything out. There must be some reason for the slow indexing that I’m receiving, and I’m curious to know if this is happening to others as well. Over and out.
January 4th, 2010 by Joe Majewski
This isn’t a typical blog post like the informative ones that I usually write, but as a programmer and web designer, I have a niche for videogames. In particular, I always like to have an RPG to play, whether it be an offline console game or an online MMO. I would say that I appreciate RPGs because I like numbers, and RPGs tend to rely on them heavily. Playing games also helps me develop ideas of my own for the games that I write myself.
Dragonica Online was launched a few months back in North America by the Publisher THQ*ICE, and it reminds me of a blend between World of Warcraft and Maple Story. Unlike most MMOs, Dragonica has a storyline that doesn’t put players to sleep. During my experience thus far, I have seen over a dozen real-time cut-scenes. Although there is no voice-acting, the text isn’t very cumbersome and is also rather humorous at times.
The graphical style is more cartoonish than it is realistic, but the developers really pulled it off. It is unique in that the environments are 3D, but it is also a sidescroller at the same time. You don’t explore the 3D worlds in the way you would traditionally expect to, but instead you move sideways through the areas, while are limited in your capacity to move “up” and “down”; this reminds of the movement styles of hack and slash games like the classic Streets of Rage series from the Sega Genesis.
Your character begins as either an archer, thief, warrior, or mage. Each class has it’s own unique set of skills which can be attained from earning skill points after leveling up. Each class has an associated skill tree which you use to gain your core abilities. This is very similar to World of Warcraft in that respect.
Upon reaching level 20, your character advances to the next job. You also get to choose a new job depending on your class; for example, a thief can choose to become either an assassin or a trickster after the job advancement. With your new job advancement comes a whole new skill tree, and a skill reset item that can be used to empty your skill trees and gain all of your skill points back (which can be very helpful in the event that you misplaced some of your skill points).
Equipment is a huge part of the game; so much so that a character that is level 25 may be able to out-damage a character that’s level 35 by having the right gear. Gear can be enhanced in two critical ways; enchanting and soulcrafting.
Each piece of gear has it’s own unique soul force value. Thus, two pieces of the same equipment may not have the same stats due to their soul force being different. In general, higher soul force means higher stat bonuses. Soulcrafting consumes “souls” in return for a chance to upgrade your gear’s soul force. You attain “soul” by disenchanting your gear, which consumes your gear in return for a variable amount of soul, which is determined by it’s soul force.
When soulcrafting, you place your gear of choice into a slot. Depending upon it’s current soul force, it will cost a certain amount of soul to upgrade the item. If successful, your item becomes stronger; if it fails, you have a small chance that your gear gets destroyed.
Enchanting your gear is similar to soulcrafting, except that instead of using soul to upgrade it’s stats, you use weapon or armor enchantment powder (which can be found in a variety of ways). The amount of powder that you need increases after each successful enchantment.
Moving on to the battle system, which is my favorite aspect of the game. The battle system is very rewarding, where the experience you earn can be boosted by your combo count, which keeps track of how many hits that you have made on enemies in a row (after a few seconds, this combo count gets erased back to zero). The battle system takes a lot more skill than most RPGs that I’ve played, and feels very rewarding to attain large combos.
Questing is also a large part of the game, where there are hero quests and adventure quests. Hero quests are quests that pertain to the storyline of the game. In order to execute your job advancement, you must first complete all hero quests to that point. Adventure quests are entirely option, but reward players with useful items and experience. Hero quests grant much higher rewards but are also generally more difficult or lengthier to accomplish. There are hundreds and hundreds of quests in the game, keeping players from being forced to grind through levels.
Mission maps are instanced environments where players can group up and go through a series of rooms that ultimately lead to a boss fight. Each mission map has five levels of difficulty. The first four (F1, F2, F3, F4) can be repeatable, but F5 can only be completed once per person, unless you are repeating it with someone else who has not done so yet. The boss fights are fantastic, and from my experience thus far, I have been in battles that have taken upwards of 10, or possibly 15 minutes of fighting.
After winning the mission map, you are a given a grade depending on how well your group performed. The higher your grade, the more items that you will be rewarded. Up to four bonus items can be rewarded at the end of a mission map, and this is generally where most of your gear will be found. Besides gear, rewards consist of enchantment powders, bags filled with money, and experience potions, which instantly grant your character experience points depending upon it’s grade (1 to 4 stars).
The experience curve for leveling up is one of my major complaints. Most games are rather linear, where each level will take a bit longer than the previous level. In Dragonica, the amount needed is linear at times, but then out-of-nowhere jumps to astounding levels, which can be very discouraging when you see yourself gaining .08% from a kill to .04% from a kill after gaining a single level. This is largely due to the level cap currently being at 65 for the North American version of the game, so I could only imagine that after more content is released and the cap is increased that this experience curve will be fixed to make leveling up more “fun” for players, rather than a hassle.
The economy is nice, and whenever you find yourself inside of a town, you can instantly access the “Market”, which is basically like an auction house where players can purchase and sell items from and to other players.
The world map is also very linear, which is something I never see in games like this. When viewing the map, there is a series of areas that move from left to right, which means that you almost never encounter players that are many levels higher than you are, due to the higher leveled areas being completely out of reach. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but rather the preference of the player. I can’t really complain about it, as it keeps things simple, where players know exactly where to go and never get lost.
Overall, Dragonica is a fun game that I recommend giving a shot if you are looking for a new and free MMO. It doesn’t take very long to learn how to play, and it’s fun and rewarding. Once again, my only major complaint is the leveling curve, which can be a hassle at times. There is only one server open in the North American version of the game at this time of writing, so if you decide to play, I may very well meet you in-game.
If I had to be a critic, I would give this game an 8.5 out of 10, but I’m not a critic. I just play games, and make them, too.