I’ve been holding off releasing my latest product… partly because I’m not so sure I want to continue using Paydotcom for handling payments.

It seems to be down frequently, support is virtually non-existant, and it really didn’t bring the affiliates in as well as Clickbank.

That said, I’m not so hot on Clickbank either.

And while I have a separate affiliate software for Conversionary, I’m thinking about getting a new domain and running all my payments and affiliate programs through one link running iDevAffiliate.

I’ll make sure the PDC links still work for PD Explorer affiliates, so if the referring url is paydotcom.com, PDC will be the main processor and everyone gets their cut… but I’ll be working to transition everything over soon.

The straw that broke the camel’s back? The expired security certificate, followed by more down time, and no response via the support forum or help desk.

This only a week or two after someone emailed me because they were unable to join as an affiliate because of a malprogrammed captcha on their site, and a week before that were emails that the payment link didn’t work because PDC was down.

While my own domain might not be perfect, at least I’ll feel like I’ve got some control over problems like that… and I know who to blame and who to yell at when things go wrong.

And, as a bonus, I’ll be able to use a merchant account as well as Paypal for receiving payments.

I fully intended to blog yesterday, but before I did, I thought it might be fun to install the Alexa toolbar.

I was wrong.

For some reason, the toolbar clashed with something else I was running on IE (maybe the Google Toolbar, or Instant Buzz) and all hell broke loose on my computer.

IE still works — sort of — but refuses to show any javascript, and doesn’t show pages the way they’re supposed to look.

So, I used the uninstaller to get rid of Alexa.

But it didn’t. The DLLs are still there, and so is the problem.

So, I Googled and found out what registry entries I was supposed to remove, and which DLLs I could get rid of, and did that.

Still no luck.

So, I thought, maybe it’s a spyware problem. I ran AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and Windows Defender. No problems found other than Alexa cookies. I removed those, but it didn’t make a difference.

I also tried reinstalling IE, with no effect.

As it stands now, I still am having problems with IE. It’s working a little better, but Javascript still doesn’t display (I have it set to display, but it gives a javascript error for every script — including Adsense). This wouldn’t bother me if it only affected IE, since I’m a Firefox user anyway, but EVERY windows app that uses the Windows Explorer library fudges up now… and you’d be amazed at how many apps are involved. Even my HP Scanner software makes me click on error messages before it starts running.

I, thankfully, have a ghosted hard drive without Alexa that I can replace, but I’d rather just fix this and save the ghost for a REAL emergency. However, I’m beginning to doubt that it can be fixed. I’ll try removing ALL the toolbars from IE, then reinstalling IE again, and maybe do some more registry fiddling.

But for now, I’m going to just stick with my Linux computer for a while. It’s a steady ol’ beast, and hasn’t been rebooted since sometime last year. I can’t tell you how comforting that is right now.

Edited June19/06 to remove Wordpress Themepark and change it to the Wordpress Theme Browser, which the former owner of Themepark is now administrating.
I recently created my very first Wordpress theme that I wanted to offer for free to the world. After uploading it to my blog, and tagging it with Technorati, and adding a screenshot with tags to Flickr, and adding some social bookmarks. I thought I had better do some research to find out where else I could submit my themes for the widest distribution.

1) The Wordpress Codex is the best place to start. All you need to do is register for an account, then edit the appropriate category in the wiki format to add your theme. The result is an instant PR7 link to your site.

2) Wordpress-Themes.org has a flashed-based file upload utility that is kind of cool. It’s a small list right now, but it looks like it has a lot of potential. Theme page currently a PR2

3) Leave a comment on How to Blog’s list of 875+ free themes for Wordpress and you’ll get some traffic from the comment section right away. And hopefully you’ll get added to the next update of the list. The list is PR5, and the comment section doesn’t appear to use the nofollow tag.

4) BloxFlux Theme Directory requires registration and a screenshot that’s 640×480, but if you jump through the hoops, your theme is added instantly. The theme page is a PR7, but your link will be on a unique page for your theme. Based on the directory structure, that page is likely to get a PR4 or 5 when Google updates again.

5) Wordpress Theme Browser (PR7)takes an uploaded zip file of your theme from your hard drive as a submission, automatically creates a screenshot and grabs the theme info from the style.css file. Very slick, and instant. Be sure to link to your site from the style.css for best effect. Now that this site is up and running, the Wordpress Themepark is offline… I think that leaves an opening for another site to come in and start with some new innovations.
6) The Open Directory Project seems to be listing only those sites that have multiple themes, but if you can make one, you can make two… and the ODP gets replicated at Google as well as other high-traffic sites.

7) Smaller link directories like the one found here

WordpressTheme dot com (PR5) seems to be down for the count, but it might be worthwhile submitting your theme via the contact form

9) Not yet fully functional, it seems, is wp-themes.org (PR6), where you can host your theme, and have it displayed wiki-style, like wp-plugins but for themes. Keep your eye on this site.

Anything I missed? Add a comment.

After playing with WPThemerator for way too long, I’ve now got more themes than I know what to do with, so I thought I would see how much traffic and how many incoming links free Wordpress themes would bring me.

Here’s the link to the first one: Flying Squirrel Theme

I’ve changed Wordpress themes six times so far today. John Delavera’s Wordpress Themerator is eating up my weekend in a most unproductive way. But man, is it ever fun.

I hope in future updates he allows for three column layouts, and some tighter control over the header, link, and text font colors, but for a version 1.0, I can’t believe how easy it is to use.

EDIT

WOW! I just noticed that you can drag and drop the menu contents categories to change the order to suit your needs. That’s even cooler!