QuirkBrain.com – Reliable Answers to Common Questions

Do Filter Water Bottles Really Work?

By Ryan McCaffery - May 20, 2013

Do water bottles with filters really work, and are they worth the extra cost involved? Generally speaking, yes, water bottle filters perform quite well at their job of removing sediment and debris from drinking water. They can even remove heavy metals and other toxins from contaminated water. Of course, there are many different types of filters, each with varying quality and benefits. Many bottles use a simple carbon activated filter, which is similar to the carbon filters used on Brita and Pure home water filtration systems. These carbon filters are inexpensive and perform well at removing bacteria, sediment, and odor Read more »

How Long Can Vodka Be Stored in a Plastic Water Bottle?

By Ryan McCaffery - May 20, 2013

It may seem counter-intuitive to think that you can store vodka, whiskey, and other types of hard alcohol in a plastic water bottle. Common sense seems to tell us that the alcohol would melt or burn through the plastic, and that dangerous toxins from plastic bottle would be leached into the alcohol. Although this line of thinking seems logical, it turns out that hard alcohol can be stored for very long periods of time in plastic bottles with no ill effect. In fact, many of the less expensive brands of hard alcohol sell their products in plastic bottles. Canadian Club Read more »

How Much Does a WordPress Domain Cost?

By Ryan McCaffery - May 16, 2013

A domain name for your WordPress blog usually costs in the neighborhood of $9-$10 per year, depending upon which company you register it with, and whether you use a coupon or not. Keep in mind that there is no distinction between a WordPress domain, so to speak, or a domain that uses any other kind of software to power its content. Whether you use WordPress or Joomla! makes no difference with regards to the cost of the domain registration. If you are currently hosting your blog on WordPress.org or another free blog site such as this, I suspect that you Read more »

Does WordPress Automatically Ping Search Engines?

By Ryan McCaffery - May 16, 2013

Yes, WordPress under its default settings will automatically ping update services which will notify search engines every time you publish or edit a new page or post. If you look in the writing settings of the WordPress admin panel, on the bottom of the page you will see the options for update services. When you publish new post, WordPress automatically notifies the update services that you have listed in that box. The default settings for WordPress only have one update service, which is http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. If this box is empty, you should add this link. Some people choose to add many Read more »

Best WordPress URL Structure Includes Keywords

By Ryan McCaffery - May 16, 2013

Most SEO experts advise that the URL structure for WordPress should utilize the keywords that you are trying to rank for, rather than arbitrary digits or numbers. For this reason, one of the first things you should do after installing WordPress is to adjust the permalink settings in the admin panel. The default setting uses the WordPress post number, and this should be quickly changed to a custom setting. Failing to change the permalink structure when you first install WordPress can lead to some problems down the road. If you change it after already publishing some posts, it will cause Read more »