What you give with one hand you take away with another

If you are giving away all your Google Juice from your sidebar, then you get less juice for

• Your own pages
• The links to sites in your content
• The links from your comments

This isn’t just a problem with Top Commenters, it is also the same with blogrolls, and I have discussed that in the past as well.

There is some WordPress Logic you can use for all page elements depending on whether you are using widgets or not.

If you are using widgets, you would probably have to use a variant of the text entry box that allows PHP – I don’t monitor developments with WordPress widgets too much, but in the past I have found the way they are implemented in most themes to be too much hard work to customize where things appear, and on which pages. I don’t know of a version of widgets that allows drag-and-drop and total control over the placement of widgets on specific pages.

If you are using normal sidebar.php code, then you can use something like the following code.

There are a number of Top Commenters plugins, I have just grabbed the code insert from one example.

<?php if ( is_home() ) { ?>

< ?php
if(function_exists('fp_get_topcommenters')) {
echo fp_get_topcommenters();
}
?>

<?php } ?>

If you wanted the Top Commenters to appear on both your homepage and your single pages (the ones that permalinks point to), then you would use something like this:-

<?php if ( is_home() || is_single() ) { ?>
< ?php
if(function_exists('fp_get_topcommenters')) {
echo fp_get_topcommenters();
}
?>
<?php } ?>

There are lots of conditional flags that can be used within WordPress in this manner. Here are some others but it might not be an exhaustive list.

is_home()
is_paged()
is_search()
is_attachment()
is_single()
is_category()
is_author()
is_archive()
is_404()

There is also a function with Ultimate Tag Warrior, but you should ensure that UTW is installed in the same statement just in case you switch it off.

<?php if ( function_exists('is_tag') and is_tag() ) : ?>

Most themes already use similar code for various elements for the sidebar and in the headers.

Watch out for multiple occurrences of the logic in various files such as

sidebar.php
home.php
index.php
tags.php
single.php
page.php
archives.php

Some themes just include the sidebar.php on all pages. In this case you might have to use lots of nested logic to achieve the level of control you require.
Other themes only use sidebar.php on pages that use index.php, and have custom code for single.php – this allows you to use slightly less logic, but means you have to edit code in multiple places.

The LinkedIn Fast Generator I created is proving to be one of the most successful “features” of this site, and is bringing me into contact with lots of extremely smart networkers in the LinkedIn community, and my contact list and network is growing rapidly.

• Growth is happening almost on auto-pilot, though I always have the choice of which invites I accept based on the industry someone comes from.
• I always accept invites from my blog readers if I recognise them, and the remainder I accept on a fairly adhoc basis depending on the related industry, and whether that connection will be useful sometime down the road.
• The majority of invites I receive are actually very appropriate – that would actually surprise most people because the obvious temptation when people first visit the site to see the generator is to test it out on someone, and I am the obvious target.

Most of the invites I receive are:-

• Cancelled within seconds – some people just test it out and then cancel the invite – no major harm done as clicking through from the email notifications I receive only takes me 5 seconds
• Internet Marketing Related – I have been picking up quite a few internet marketing related invites which are great – it is good to see people in internet marketing using LinkedIn
• General Marketing – I love to receive invites from various marketing professionals – marketing is very much a contacts game
• Information Technology – Probably the largest sector, I now have contacts within a multitude of web development companies and startups. I expect that list to grow rapidly
• Search Engine Optimization – I have been picking up a few invites within the SEO field
• VCs / Investment – A slow mover, but I would like to grow my contacts in this sector
• Local Connections – I really appreciate gaining local connections, you would be amazed at how useful some connection become in the not so distant future

I haven’t received any invites that I would regard as spam. Those users who were just testing and didn’t mean to invite me deleted their invite (I had 2 like that while writing this post).

LinkedIn FAST Unofficially Approved?

I have mentioned in the past that LinkedIn staff were aware of the generator and didn’t see any major problems with using it, though that was by private email. Recently that was confirmed on a LinkedIn Answers thread.

Code Improvements

Over the last few days I have been tweaking the script to generate other useful versions of the same invite code, based largely on the feedback I have received from users.

• Improved SEO – The generated links that point to a LinkedIn form now contain the rel=”nofollow” command for slightly improved SEO

Just Click to Connect

Get your own LinkedIn Fast

• HTML Text Version – The form now creates a HTML text link version which might be more suitable for some designs

LinkedIn FAST
Just Click to Connect

• Ugly Raw URL – The form now automatically generates a URL that you can use with services like TinyURL.com – This is a much better option than trying to edit a URL manually. I should note that I own a similar script to tinyURL, and could create a service similar that in some way represents what the link is for. I don’t particularly want to build up a database of 100,000 LinkedIn users, plus there are trademark issues.

http://www.linkedin.com/inviteMany?firstName.0=Andy&lastName.0=Beard&emailAddress.0=list.andy%40gmail.com&subject=Join+Me+Now!&salutation=NAME&greeting=Invite+for+you&invite=Send+Invitation%28s%29&inviteeID.0=&isMessageOptional=false&default_cell_count=1&contentTemplateID=std_inv_2e

• Custom Redirect – I have created what I feel is better for most LinkedIn users who have access to their server by FTP, which is a custom redirect. The generator now creates the code for this as well.

<html><head><meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"><meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.linkedin.com/inviteMany?firstName.0=Andy&lastName.0=Beard&emailAddress.0=list.andy%40gmail.com&subject=Join+Me+Now!&salutation=NAME&greeting=Invite+for+you&invite=Send+Invitation%28s%29&inviteeID.0=&isMessageOptional=false&default_cell_count=1&contentTemplateID=std_inv_2e"> </head> <body> </body> </html>
In emails you can thus use a link that will look like this http://andybeard.eu/linkedin/
The same link could also be used for press releases, article marketing, inside Word or PDF documents, or in a signature on discussion forums.

Hopefully you find my LinkedIn Widget Generator easy to use.

If you have any suggestions, or require any help in implementing this code, feel free to leave a comment and don’t forget to share this with your friends and contacts.

Do you worry about the danger of giving a 3rd party service control over the most important part of your blogging business – your subscribers?

Up until today there were only 2 realistic alternatives to retain some control over your RSS subscribers while using Feedburner for collecting stats.

• Redirect Plugins – Such as the Feedburner Redirect Plugin from Ordered List

– this isn’t a perfect solution because the autodiscovery seems to always resolve before the feed is actually added, which results in a proportion of your sunscribers still subscribed to the Feedburner URL

• Feedburner MyBrand – This is a “pro” feature of Feedburner, and allows you to have Feedburner feeds on a subdomain, such as feeds.yourdomain.com

– this is also not perfect, because that is a subdomain – I haven’t seen a site do anything to create an additional redirect to the subdomain to truly keep it on the same domain, but I am sure something should be possible – it also isn’t free – great for profitable blogs, not so great for lots of niche sites

Now there is an alternative, and it is pretty damn smart…

Feedburner Feeds Stats Hack

Mark has come up with an ingenious little hack to use Feedburner stats on his own feeds with a small patch to one of the WordPress core files.

I haven’t personally tested it yet, but I think Mark shows sufficient proof that it does work.

I am not sure how this works with click tracking, feed flares etc, or the best way to use this for email subscriptions. Also the feedburner feed is still there, and that is desirable for anyone migrating from one method to another. On a fresh site maybe you could make the Feedburner feed private so that you are the only one that accesses it.
You would also have to make sure that Feedburner is fetching a feed that is different to the one that is provided to your subscribers, otherwise you end up with a closed loop.

One major benefit of using Feedburner is that their uptime is very impressive, and they are using their bandwidth to serve your RSS. For many publishers that is quite a significant bandwidth saving.

Hopefully Mark will turn this into a plugin to make it easier to use, especially with the more frequent updates to WordPress these days

Why Nofollow Shoemoney.com?

Here is what is written in the Google webmaster guidelines:-

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Shoemoney recently has been been creating lots of controversial link baiting and hackbaiting content. This includes how to hack MyBlogLog, and encouraging other people to try it out for themselves.
Whilst the Google Webmaster Guidelines don’t mention hacking sites as being a bad neighbourhood, their Adsense guidelines certainly do not allow Adsense to be displayed on sites containing hacking content.

Taken from the Google Adsense Policy:-

Sites displaying Google ads may not include:
* Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
[snip]
* Hacking/cracking content
* Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank
[snip]
* Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others

I tend to look on the criteria for sites eligible to display Adsense as a good indication of what a “good neighbourhood” is as the webmaster guidelines are not very specific, and leave this up to the judgement of the webmaster.

I should also note that hacking material also contravenes Yahoos policies as well as I mentioned in my previous MyBlogLog post, so there is very little room for doubt.

My personal opinion (from a business standpoint, and not based upon differences in opinion) is that Shoemoney.com now contains objectionable content including information on how to hack and manipulate the data on 3rd party websites. In some ways what he has also been promoting could have been looked on as identity theft.

As such Shoemoney.com has become a “bad neighbourhood” to which I personally don’t want to link, and so I modified a plugin to save me time in deleting links from previous content and comments.

As I have the plugin, I though others should have the option of using it as well.

Plugin Name: Shoemoney nofollow
Plugin URI: http://andybeard.eu/2007/02/shoemoney-nofollow/
Description: Searches for links to shoemoney.com, and adds a rel=”nofollow” tag if necessary (based on Wikipedia Nofollow by Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson and Identify External Links by Mark Jaquith)
Author: Andy Beard
Version: 1.0
Author URI: http://andybeard.eu/
License: GPL

Download Shoemoney Nofollow for WordPress

I should note this plugin has nothing to do with disagreements with Shoemoney in the past and his invitation tactics as previously discussed. Previously I had left all links intact from my domain to his, but as he is now encouraging hacking on an almost daily basis, I had to take action.

This seems to be a growing trend, and so many bloggers are falling for the linkbait, poorly researched content, and unethical marketing practices.

Reactionary development of computer products and services can prove to be a disaster both for development cycles and the feature set of a product. An extremely careful balance has to be achieved between supporting the wishes of hardcore supporters of a product, and achieving core goals and maintaining a development schedule.

I have experienced this first hand in the computer games industry being the middleman both between publisher <> development team, and consumer <> development team. I know that I have significantly disrupted development of products in the past, and at times I even ignored or delayed passing information from a publisher or customer on to a development team simply because of the disruption it could cause. Sometimes I used a middleman, passing information onto my only superior, the company MD, and allowing him to decide whether the feedback should be passed on to the development manager or development team members.
I was also in charge of sales and marketing internationally, and even though we had a relatively small organisation, channels of communication existed to prevent disruption to the development schedules. Here is a good article on the subject.

If someone is attempting to hack your website, steal your content, or damage your business, the expected reaction shouldn’t be to pat them on the back, thank them for their help and offer them all kinds of bonuses and credibility.

In a web environment, the logical first step to people abusing your site is to block their IP – this is what various spam control systems do. How many bloggers have a terms of service stating that if you spam them with comments they will block your IP address?

It shouldn’t matter how influential a blogger thinks they are, the tail shouldn’t wag the dog.

The first sign Shoemoney received that he had been banned from MyBlogLog was a 403 Error. From the w3.org site:-

10.4.4 403 Forbidden

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated. If the request method was not HEAD and the server wishes to make public why the request has not been fulfilled, it SHOULD describe the reason for the refusal in the entity. If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 404 (Not Found) can be used instead.

If someone was spamming me, scraping me, or hacking me, and I could pinpoint it down to a single IP address, that is exactly what message I would give them. It doesn’t matter who the hell it is.

I doubt Shoemoney was sending signals such as:-

Hey this is Shoemoney, I am hacking your site for hackbait to get links and subscribers, but it is all harmless and not really intended to damage your business

Now on one point yesterday I was wrong, it seems that whilst an email was claimed to have been sent a month ago regarding the cookies problem with MyBlogLog (but from the French site), it might have got lost in various technical and logistics problems.

Another insight, Shoemoney had been asked specifically by the MyBlogLog team to give them a heads up before posting any more hacking MBL information.
Here is what Eric posted in a comment on Li Evans post:-

Li –

Here’s the thing. We *did* have reach out to Shoe. Every time he posted a hack we thanked him in his comments for pointing out a vulnerability.

Then a couple days before this was posted, Scott Rafer emailed him and said, basically, “dude, I understand you’re pissed at Jeremey Zawodny and so be it. But keep in mind that he’s not part of the team and it still just us five guys bangin away. We’ve had a good relationship with you and we would just appreciate a heads up before you post your next exploit.”

And then he posted this.

(I had previously omitted the previous info because I was unable to get in touch with Rafer last night to request permission to discuss his email exchange.)

OMG A Tracking Service is Tracking Clicks

Today I have read yet another piece of Hackbait on Shoemoney’s site, though admittedly by his partner in crime DDN.

He has come up with the absolute revelation that tracking programs track clicks on adverts.

He thinks it is a scandal that a Yahoo owned company can track clicks on Google adverts.

Something Stinks & It is Not MyBlogLog

Google Analytics can be used to track Yahoo clicks in exactly the same way as MyBlogLog can be used to track Adsense clicks, and people have been doing it for a long time.
Aaron Wall posted code to do this in November 2005, and it was also discussed on Digital Inspiration in December 2005.

I keep a reasonable eye on discussions regarding analytics. I have never seen anyone claim that Google shouldn’t be allowed to have tracking information on Yahoo clicks or for that matter any other monetization links.

In many ways MyBlogLog having this tracking information as part of Yahoo is a good thing.

1. Defending on Clickfraud – A Yahoo owned tracking service would be looked on as a more credible source of data than a self hosted script.
2. Personal Data – MyBlogLog probably have enough data not just to isolate the IP address, but possibly who clicked the advert – for defence of your Adsense account, surely that is an ideal scenario

You should always have some form of tracking for advertising – both Google Analytics and MyBlogLog (Yahoo) fall short in this capacity, and I hope they improve in the future making this more accessible for average users to improve their advertising returns. Microsoft are also entering this field, and I doubt very much they will prevent tracking of clicks on Yahoo or Google adverts. That would actually make their tracking system useless.

Tracking systems should track advertising… period

In many ways anyone looking to earn revenue from their blog should demand more tracking and interoperability and not less.

MyBlogLog could easily become a universal tracker for the masses, it is so easy to switch between different sites to check stats, and Google Analytics for an average user is a little confusing.

I am not in a position to prove whether Yahoo ads can be tracked with Google Analytics.

With Adsense the code can be placed on any site, so I could just stick some Adsense on this site for people to test, either with my own publisher ID or… someone elses.
I am not sure whether that works with Yahoo, they might lock advertising code to a particular domain in their beta testing, but I am not going to use someone elses Yahoo code just to prove a point.

The Danger Of Controversy

Now if your content is deliberately controversial, and especially regarding hacking, you are not just placing your MyBlogLog account in danger.

Yahoo YPN Terms

Here is a small excerpt from the YPN FAQ

We will not show results on pages that contain problematic content, including but not limited to:
[snip]
# Propaganda, potentially offensive or controversial content
# Defamatory, libelous, threatening or other material that advocates against any individual or group
[snip]
# Political, religious or charitable organizations, issues or causes
[snip]
# Hacking, surveillance, interception or de-scrambling equipment

Google Adsense Terms

Taken from the Google Adsense Policy:-

Sites displaying Google ads may not include:

* Violent content, racial intolerance, or advocacy against any individual, group, or organization
[snip]
* Hacking/cracking content
* Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site’s search engine ranking, e.g., your site’s PageRank
[snip]
* Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity, or infringes on the legal rights of others

The wrong kind of linkbaiting is seriously playing with fire, though some people it seems are meant to have asbestos suits.
Whlist I don’t have YPN or Adsense on this site, I have been very careful not to link to anything that has hacking related content, and as far as I am concerned, Shoemoney is now effectively “grey boxed”, a bad neighbourhood to link to containing hacking information.

If someone wants a link condom plugin so they can make all links to Shoemoney nofollow just let me know, it would be easy to modify the Wikipedia nofollow plugin. Hmm I think Matt Cutts might even have linked to Shoemoney in the past, it wouldn’t be good to link to a hacking site.

Today for the first time I am actually ashamed of Techcrunch, Michael Gray, Lisa Barone, and Duncan Riley.

For some true reflections on MyBlogLog, which I actually feel are unbiased despite being a sister company, try a co-founder from Flickr.
I can even claim a gripe against Flickr having a 2 month old support case on commercial usage that I really should “bump” again, but that is in all honestly my own fault. If I haven’t had a response, and I still have a problem after a few weeks, I should chase it up.
Sometimes honest communication does get lost – I have at least 2 issues with Google that haven’t been responded to, one regarding use of Google CSE with Toolbar Buttons, and for some reason no response to submission of toolbar buttons I have created.

MyblogLog have responded to the adverts tracking feature.

Unfortunately Eric has succumbed to the Wolfpack of lies, and just made Shoemoney, the guy who started his MyBlogLog recruitment campaign by carefully selecting and inviting 8000 contacts as “featured user” in the MyBlogLog panel. I am sickened. Shoemoney hasn’t removed any of the previous posts. Was he threatening to expose more?

Update:

Pamela Heywood puts some nice perspective on the tracking situation after examining the Google terms of service.
I would like to point out to Tony Hung that he doesn’t have a comments policy on the Blog Herald or on Deep Jive Interests. You really shouldn’t block people from comment spamming you without some kind of ToS or policy. I wonder if he realises that it is almost impossible to use any tracking service without some conflict of interest or insecurity, and he will need something if he is going to monetize his blog. In fact I don’t personally know of any tracking service or script that doesn’t represent some risk or conflict.
Mathew Ingram has made a fairly balanced post, but I think he like others might not be aware that Shoemoney was specifically asked not to post another exploit without giving a heads up.
I would love to know what Thomas Hawk would do if someone was attacking his servers with a denial of service attack… maybe block their IP? What happens if someone was trying to hack into private data? Block their IP?
Would he send them an email first asking them to kindly notify him before revealing whatever exploit the hackers discovered.
I wonder how much it would cost to pay an East European programmer to come up with some Zooomer hacks and exploits, or maybe Indian would be slightly cheaper. It seems that as long as you are not looking to change the data on Zooomr, then any hacking is allowed, and providing information on how to change data or tools would also be within the ToS.

Unauthorized attempts to infiltrate the Web Site electronically for the purposes of changing some part of the service are actively monitored and are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, ‘cross-site scripting,’ ‘worms,’ ‘viruses,’ and ‘trojan horses.’

Then again maybe you don’t really need a ToS (though MBL do have one now) to prevent someone hacking you or causing disruption for your clients.

Actually, if you read the ToS from Yahoo, it looks like it is a blanket ToS that covers all Yahoo services. Obviously as most people at one time or another have established a Yahoo account, everyone has read the Yahoo ToS at least once, and would know that it covers all Yahoo services, including any new services introduced.
Thus the Yahoo ToS has been in effect since the day MBL was acquired by Yahoo. Yes I am sure they forgot to link to it, and maybe they should get you to agree to it again when you next log into MyBlogLog, just to avoid any confusion. I am sure everyone would have read the ToS if it had been linked to from the MBL page.

Realistically, no one reads terms of service completely, but most people are aware of what is looked upon as good conduct. Hacking isn’t looked on as being socially acceptable unless you are a 14 year old script kiddie.

Update 2

There seems to be some confusion regarding how visible the advertising tracking might be, and the confusion is predominately among high traffic blogs who have so many external clicks that any Adsense clicks would be right at the bottom of the list.
You have to remember that the majority of MyBlog users that everyone seems to be so worried about, and encouraging to abandon MyBlogLog are lucky to have 100 unique visitors per day, and don’t get as many external clicks. They are much more likely to see the advert clicks and rather than be worried about it, they are going to be happy, and rush off to discover they made $0.20 in their Adsense account – yes, if you are only receving one click per day you can get fairly granular about how much it was worth.

Here is a screenshot I have taken from an account that is not upgraded, and clearly displays some Adsense clicks. Just a thumbnail you can click for the full size as I wanted it to be very clear that this was a basic free account.

I did modify the image to remove data that could be used to determine CTR for the short period of time these stats were for this morning.

Update 3

Here is a write up on MyBlogLog I missed over the weekend by Rex Dixon, and he doesn’t mince his words.

Technically Speaking, Shoe screwed Shoe. If he was really concerned about security, he could have reported it to the MBL crew asap via proper channels. What is that? He could have messaged Rafer, Eric or anyone else at the MBL staff. He chose to make more money for Shoe, and for that Shoe, you got booted. Please don’t come off as the innocent and hurt entrepreneur to the world. When I worked in the IT realm, YOUR type was the most scary to deal with.

Conclusion

This is my last update on this post, but nothing is really concluded. The hacking information is still being displayed along with Digg buttons. The poorly researched tracking story is still there as well.

Lots of bloggers jumped on this hackbaiting train, with poorly researched material, and even possible conflicts of interest or lack of disclosure.

I have seen people suggest that MyBlogLog banned Shoemoney for the exposure – what a badly thought out statement. They don’t need to rush promotion or increase support or PR time. They are still working on migration to new servers, hiring a community manager, probably looking for other staff to help with the problems of a growing demanding user base.

Then there are the “unknowns” like Measuremap that Google recently purchased. I have no idea what data that service tracked regarding advertising, possibly not just Google Adsense. Measuremap has been in private beta for as long as I can remember, though Michael Arrington still uses it on Techcrunch for more than a year.

I am sure there is going to be more on Techmeme all weekend.

MyBlogLog Spam

Lots of people are aware that there was a problem over the weekend with co-author requests being sent out, and some forced adding as authors to communities.

It was a long weekend in the US, but it seems the MyBlogLog team have already fixed it, rolled back any changes, and hopefully it won’t happen again.

I think this might have affected the larger communities more than the lesser ones. I only received a single community request and it wasn’t a forced inclusion

They have also posted a long description of their plans to control spam going forward. (via Darren).

I welcome the changes, and feel that placing “adding” restrictions will help significantly. We will see how the new messaging system works.

Widget Performance

I have seen quite a few complaints about MyBlogLog widget performance

This is normally on:-

• Blogs with a poor layout – If you load your sidebar first it affects your readership, and probably your search engine performance as well. Choose a theme where the content is displayed first, or shoot your designer
• High Traffic Blogs – I don’t think this actually has an effect on the speed, but owners of high traffic blogs tend to notice this more, and are more vocal about it

For those with a poor template design, whilst it might be a painful choice to make, the problem isn’t just the MyBlogLog widget – you really should have your content appearing first, and a good designer should be able to create almost any layout you desire placing the content first.

For the higher traffic blogs, there is probably a solution that could be adopted. In a recent comment on Jeremy Zawodny’s blog, Mark mentioned the following:-

Jeremy,
Just do what I do; a cron job that runs curl on the widget address every so often, saves the output, and just uses an include to display the content. I use a jsp include, but I’m sure you could do it in php as well. No relying upon third parties for your page display time performance, no annoying dns round trip times, everything just works.

Later in the comments I suggested that someone creating some kind of plugin that does this for WordPress users or maybe just a simple PHP include so anyone can use it is likely going to receive a fair amount of link love, and fix their performance issues with MyBlogLog and a host of other widgets.

LinkedIn Fast

1. Dig up someone’s email address
2. Add First Name
3. Add Last Name
4. Enter Email
5. Change Message
6. Submit
7. Enter Username and Password

How do I fix that… FAST?

So I had a look at the submission form and wondered if I could hack a one click invite button.

The form uses the POST method, thus nothing appears in the URL bar – POST is actually the correct method because submitting the form changes data.

However that doesn’t necessarily mean that GET wouldn’t work, it just needs converting.

First of all here is a handy little bookmarklet I picked up some time ago. What you do is fill in a form that uses POST, click this bookmarklet to convert the page to GET, and then submit the forum.
in the URL box you will then see a GET instruction URL that can be played with.

I made the emails extremely short – I will know the invites came from my button

I then removed excess data, because I didn’t need this for someone to invite 5 people, I just wanted it so people could invite me quickly if they wanted to.

I tested it inviting myself, and it seems to work, because I received an error message stating that you can’t invite yourself. :)

LinkedIn Fast

I created a nice button

Just Click to Connect

<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/inviteMany?firstName.0=YOURFIRSTNAME&lastName.0=YOURLASTNAME&emailAddress.0=EMAILUSERNAME%40EMAILDOMAINNAME&subject=Join+Me+Now!&salutation=NAME&greeting=invite+for+you&invite=Send+Invitation%28s%29&inviteeID.0=&isMessageOptional=false&default_cell_count=1&contentTemplateID=std_inv_2e"><img src='http://cdn5.andybeard.name/wp-content/uploads/linkedin-fast-160x33.png' alt='LinkedIn Fast' /></a><br /><small>Just Click to Connect</small>

Things to Change:-

• YOURFIRSTNAME
• YOURLASTNAME
• EMAILUSERNAME
• EMAILDOMAINNAME

Your mileage may vary, but this seems to work. Licensed under GPL

If there is enough demand, I might make a small code generator for this so it creates the code for you.

Note this doesn’t break the system in any way, but you might get more invites :)

Update: I just received my first LinkedIn Connection using the button, so it certainly works