Get an autoresponder that delivers the confirmation email almost immediately.

Some autoresponders deliver the confirmation email like 20 minutes to 1 hour which is a no, no, for me, especially in the IM arena. Aweber, Getresponse, and the autoresponders running on Parabots software delivers the confirmation emails almost immediately if not instantly.

Get an autoresponder that puts your messages to the recepients Inbox by default, not in their Junk Mail.

Some autoresponders gets the email messages delivered to the recepient’s Junk Mail by default, even if it’s Gmail! One advantage of signing up with “popular” autoresponders like Getresponse or Aweber is that your emails at most times, gets delivered to the recepients Inbox by default. Although I noticed some people’s emails gets delivered to the recepients Junk Mail from the said autoresponders, doesn’t happen as much as the others! It’s not even that often, but I noticed 8). Maybe it’s the message content…

Get an autoresponder that gives you unlimited autoresponders!

Well, kinda given, but just so you know… With unlimited autoresponder you can create one autoresponder for each product, or for each traffic source, etc. I thought 10 was enough, but currently I have more than 10… maybe 20… I think more..

Get an autoresponder that allows you to broadcast by groups or by segments.

For example, you want to send an email to people who answered only “Yes” to a custom question you created with your form. Or you want to send an email to subscribers who purchased from last month to this week.

Not all autoresponders have these feature, and it is one big reason I opened a Getresponse Account.

Get an autoresponder that allows you to filter subscribers by Custom Fields.

Well I thought autresponders have this feature by default. Apparantly not. Some autoresponders are very limited in filtering subscribers when you search.

Say you want to know how many subscribers who answered “Answer 1″ in your custom question, what you do is just specify to include your custom field when you do a subscibers search but most autoresponders only have “Finished, Pending, or Active” search filters. This means you have to click subscribers one by one just to know what their answers are.

It’s a hassle and kinda leaves me in the dark a bit if I don’t know how many people answered a specific question.

Fortunately Getresponse has great search filters!

hmmm… what else…

Although, I have Getresponse, I also suggest you get autoresponders like aweber, or th aweber resellers, or autoresponse plus or elite responder (for self hosted autoresponders) because they have the features I mentioned above and they specialized in the industry. Plus most programs would include integration to these autoresponders in their system. Like DLGuard for example, has an easy integration with Getresponse so that whenever somebody makes a purchase they are automatically added to your list in Getresponse with out signing up again.

Cool!

I notice that other people are looking for email autoresponder solutions and autoresponder services that accepts paypal.

The time when I was searching for an autoresponder service, I tried to find one that accepted paypal since I didn’t hold a credit card yet at that time. I got a Norabots account for it’s price and for the support (my tickets gets answered).

Anyway, once I got hold of my own card (debit card, really) that has a VISA logo on it, I signed up for a Getresponse account. I would have used aweber, but they increased its pricing.

Anyway, while searching for the “best” autoresponder and autoresponders that accepted paypal, I stumbled upon other autoresponders services out there.

So here they are (Note: I can’t vouch on some autoresponders listed below. Just do your own due dilligence first.):

“Big Companies” Autoresponders That Accepts Credit Card:

Aweber Resellers (Credit Card):

Autoresponders that accepts paypal:

*Resellers of Ebizac

I think the following autoresponders are autoresponders using the Parabots software:

Self-Hosted (To be installed on your own server/pc):

Hmm… I’m not very comfortable yet in hosting an autoresponder on my server but I’ve been eyeing on Autoresponse plus and Elite Autoresponder for some time now.

If you’re planning to get an autoresponder, I suggest you get something like Getresponse, or the aweber resellers. They have stronger features and higher email deliverability, and is price friendly for it’s features. Plus, they specialize in the industry.

Well I just transferred this blog(creationspire.com) to a different webhost - Hostgator.

What I wanted to do was to move the blog to different webhost, but maintain the domain and domain structure.

It was not a one-run-transfer, though. I manually did some fixes.

What I did was first was copied the entire blog folder to my local computer, just in case.

Then while on the old blog:

1 - I navigated to Manage>Export, and exported the comments, pages, custom fields, categories, and tags.

2 - It created an xml file which I was to import in the new blog

On the new host:

1 -  I  added a new Addon Domain, which is creationspire.com, inside cpanel.

2 - I then created a new Wordpress installation via Fantastico using the same domain structure.

I encountered an error here which was something about not being able to install the same script on the root domain. Couldn’t remember the exact wordings.

To fix the error, I deleted a file inside .fantasticodata folder called installed_in_root.php and after that, wordpress was installed successfully on the new webhost.

3 - Inside the new blog admin panel, I then Imported the data from the old blog by going to Manage>Import>Wordpress.

No errors encountered here.

Now for the important part that tells the domain name its now sitting on the new host: The Name Servers.

After the above steps, I logged in my domain’s account and changed the nameservers to hostgator’s nameservers.

I then waited ’til the domain propagation was complete and voila! I just transferred my blog to a new host!

Some things to note:

1) Change the permalink settings for the new blog. I used the %postname% settings. I almost forgot to change it. :p

2) Upload the blog’s theme.

3) Re-add the sidebar widgets.

4) Delete the default “Hello World” post and “About” page.

5) Plugins :  plugins are sometimes the main issues on why blog transfers yield errors. Since I wanted to restore some plugin stats, I just uploaded a fresh copy of the plugin to the plugin directory and imported the plugin database via phpmyadmin. I didn’t do this for all plugin installed, though.

I tried copying the entire directory and just pasting it on the new host, and importing the database, but while importing the database, I encountered some errors. So I just opted it to do the blog transfer as posted above.