• HP DV6 Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo P7350, 4GB RAM, 16" screen (1366 x 768 pixels), 500GB SATA HDD, BluRay LightScribe DVD drive – specs may be different than the one I reviewed)
• HP Mini 110 Netbook (Intel Atom 270, 1GB RAM, 10.1" display (1024 x 576 pixels), 160GB SATA HDD, 6 cell battery – specs may be different than the one I reviewed)
• Timbuk2 Laptop Bag (the notebook bag may be different than the one I reviewed)
• Syncables Software (for syncing files across multiple computers)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2009 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Here's how to fix the problem:

(1) With a text editor, open "democracy.php" – it's located in the democracy subfolder in the plugin folder.

(2) Locate the line below (around line number 331):

return preg_replace('/{democracy[\w\W\s^}]*?}/', '\n<div>\\0</div>', $content);

(3) Change the last set of single quotes into double quotes:

return preg_replace('/{democracy[\w\W\s^}]*?}/', "\n<div>\\0</div>", $content);

That's it. That should take care of the Democracy Plugin's extra n problem.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2009 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The Adsense link unit works fine when there are relevant ads, but when there are no relevant ads, Google shows an alternate ad I created for a different blog. I'm not sure why. I didn't set it up to do that. To make matters worst, the alternate ad it shows is a 300×250 ad so only part of the ad shows up. Here's the odd part. It displays the alternate ad even though I selected the option to fill the space with a solid color. The same thing happens when I select the option for public service ads.

I emailed Google about the problem last week, but so far they have not been able to duplicate the problem. Has anyone else had this problem or am I just going nuts? In the meantime, I removed the Adsense link unit on Daddy Forever.

<shameless-plug> BTW, feel free to enter my contest for free flowers from ProFlowers. Five winners will be selected. Contest ends Saturday. </shameless-plug>

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2009 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

As I mentioned previously, I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 (from WP 2.2.2) recently using my WordPress upgrade process. After upgrading, all of my plugins worked except for the Crawl Page and Brian's Threaded Comments plugins. One of my readers mentioned that CoolPlayer did not work with WordPress 2.3.1. I can assure you that is not the case. Both CoolPlayer 9.0 and 9.3 worked with WordPress 2.3.1. However, I had to hit the browser reload button after I upgraded from CoolPlayer 9.0 to 9.3 before the plugin worked correctly.

I could never get the Crawl Page 1.00 plugin to work, but I did get Brian's Threaded Comments plugin to work with WordPress 2.3.1. After upgrading to WP 2.3.1, I got a 404 error whenever I tried to leave a comment. The fix for this problem is actually fairly simple. You just need to enter "wp-comments-post.php" in the custom box on the threaded comments admin page (Options => Threaded Comments):

WordPress 2.3.1 breaks a lot of plugins. You should check around to be sure your plugins work before upgrading. At the bottom of this post, I listed plugins that I use that work with WordPress 2.3.1. If you are using an older version of the Google XML Sitemaps plugin (I was using 2.7.1), you should upgrade to the latest version (currently 3.0.2.1). The new version works with WP 2.1+ and has a bunch of new features. It's a big improvement on already nice plugin.

Plugins that work with WordPress 2.3.1:

• Akismet 2.0.2
• Audio player 1.2.3
• Better Feed 1.1
• Brian's Threaded Comments 1.5.12
• Contact Form ][ 2.0.13
• CoolPlayer 9.3 (CoolPlayer 9.0 also works)
• Democracy 2.0.1
• FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3
• Google XML Sitemaps 3.0.2.1
• Head META Description R1.1.2
• Related Posts 2.02
• Similar Posts 2.3.6
• Simple Recent Comments 0.1.2
• Smart Update Pinger 2.0
• Spam Karma 2 2.3 rc3
• Unfancy Quote 2.0
• WordPress Database Backup 2.1.5

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I like the plugin, but it requires more work than the standard WordPress plugin. For one thing, the plugin requires you to replace your existing comments.php file for your theme with the file supplied with the plugin files. Then, unless you are lucky, you have to mess around with the style to get the plugin to format correctly for your theme. I think the plugin was designed to work with the default (Kubrick) WordPress theme. This is the reason why I switched back to the default theme for my blog. I didn't have time to edit the style sheet for my previous theme.

I've also noticed that the threaded comments plugin and the CoolPlayer plugin conflicts with each other, resulting in some of the comments being garbled in IE 6. The plugin seems to work fine in IE 7 and FireFox.

Download Brian's Threaded Comments plugin for WordPress and see if it works out of the box for your theme. If it doesn't, you will need to edit the plugin files (comments.php and briansthreadedcomments.php) and/or your style sheet (style.css) for your theme.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I tested the new import/export feature. It worked as advertised, but it does not save everything. For instance, the options you have already setup and the descriptions of the categories are not included in the exported XML file. When I moved this site to a different web host this past week, I used the new WordPress Database Backup 2.0 plugin to save my posts and configuration. Then I restored the backup on the new host using phpMyAdmin.

The new backup plugin has a very useful feature: automatic backups (Manage –> Backup). As you can see in the screen shot on the right, you can schedule backups to occur hourly, daily, or weekly. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous when I used the automatic backup feature. But it has worked like a charm for over two weeks now. At first, I limited my tests to just this site, but now I also use the automatic backup feature on my other four sites. I find the automatic backup feature very handy because it is a bit of a chore to manually backup five sites.

BTW, the backup files are emailed to you. I actually used one of the automatic backup files to restore the database when I moved to my new web host. My guess is that if you have a massive blog, you might have problems having your backup emailed to you. I think if you leave out your email address in the "Email backup to" box, the backup will be saved on the server (not confirmed). The backup of my largest WordPress site has 2,882 posts and the 3.8M backup file arrived daily via email without any problems.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

You will need to find the following line in the Better Feed plugin (if you have not added a footer or modified the plugin, it's around line #101):

$content .= wp_ozh_betterfeed_detokenize($wp_ozh_betterfeed['footer']);

I'm going to call it the "footer" line. Once you have found the "footer" line, you will need to add a block of code above that line. Something like:

[block of code]
$content .= wp_ozh_betterfeed_detokenize($wp_ozh_betterfeed['footer']);

I have put together three sets of block codes that you can use. Select the one that best suits your needs.

Block 1 – Alternate ads
This code block is for alternating ads in your feed. For instance, post #1 will show "Ad-B", post #2 will show "Ad-A", post #3 will show "Ad-B" again, post #4 will show "Ad-A" again, etc. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

if ($id % 2 == 0 ) {
  $ad = "Ad-A";
} else {
  $ad = "Ad-B";
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 2a – Rotate between four ads
[2007.03.10 note: The random number generator used in this block can cause old posts to show up as "updated" in Bloglines. If you don't want this to happen, use Block 2b instead.]
This code block is for displaying one of four ads in your feed. For instance, post #1 will show either "Ad-C" or "Ad-D", post #2 will show either "Ad-A" or "Ad-B", post #3 will show either "Ad-C" or "Ad-D" again, post #4 will show either "Ad-A" or "Ad-B" again, etc. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

if ($id % 2 == 0) {
  $num = rand(1,2);
  if ($num == 1) {
    $ad = "Ad-A";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-B";
  }
} else {
  $num = rand(1,2);
  if ($num == 1) {
    $ad = "Ad-C";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-D";
  }
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 2b – Rotate between four ads
[Added on 2007.03.10]
This code block is for displaying one of four ads. It's like the block of code above, but it uses the timestamp of the post instead of a random number generator. It shouldn't change an old post to "updated" in Bloglines. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

$num = get_post_time('s');
if ($id % 2 == 0) {
  if ($num < 30) {
    $ad = "Ad-A";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-B";
  }
} else {
  if ($num < 30) {
    $ad = "Ad-C";
  } else {
    $ad = "Ad-D";
  }
}
$content .= $ad;

Block 3 – Display an ad for every 3rd, 6th, and 9th post
I use this code block for my news site. I write over 20 posts a day on that site and it would look too commercial if I ran a RSS ad in every post. This block of code will display an ad for every 3rd, 6th, and 9th post. Here's the block to insert above the "footer" line:

$ad3 = "Ad-A";
$ad6 = "Ad-B";
$ad9 = "Ad-C";
$num = substr ($id, -1);
switch ($num)
{
  case 3:
    $content .= $ad3;
    break;
  case 6:
    $content .= $ad6;
    break;
  case 9:
    $content .= $ad9;
    break;
}

You will need to replace "Ad-A", "Ad-B", "Ad-C", and "Ad-D" with the html code for your ads. Keep in mind that the code is already using double quotes. So, you will either need to use single quotes or omit the quotes in your html code for your ads. For instance:

$ad = "<p align=center><a href=http://www.embeddedstar.com/careers/><img src=http://edageek.com/adimages/jobs468.gif border=0></a></p>";

As you can see, I didn't use any quotes between the double quotes above.

One other note. WordPress assigns post id numbers in the order you saved them. The id numbers can get out of order if you don't publish your posts in the same order you saved them. This may cause the ads to appear to display out of sequence (ie – the same ad displaying two times in a roll). That is not the case.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The results below are based on the first 16 days of January and February. In February, I ran 300×250 ads (top right of content) in place of 468×60 banners (above content in January). So "28%" for the 300×250 stat in the first table means the 300×250 ad resulted in an eCPM increase of 28% compared to the 468×60 ad I ran in January. Keep in mind I'm comparing stats from two different months.

As you can see, the 300×250 ads resulted in an overall increase for two of my sites. However, the medium rectangle ad resulted in a slight decrease for the third site, which happens to be my main site. I'm not going to pull the new ad size yet. I'm going to let it run a little longer to see if being included in Google's custom placement packs program makes a difference.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

If you look at the WordPress upgrade instructions, it'll tell you to delete certain files and don't delete certain files. Seems kinda of messy to me. Below are the steps I took. Keep in mind my situation will be different from your setup, so you will need to modify the steps to suit your needs.

1. Download and extract WP 2.1 to a new directory named wordpress2.1
2. Back up the database by using the WordPress backup plugin or phpMyAdmin
3. I made a change to template-functions-post.php in the old version of WordPress to alter the behavior of the more tag, so I had to make the change in the new version. In WP 2.1, I had to make the change in a new file called post-template.php.
4. Copy the following files from the old WordPress directory to the new directory:
   • wp-config.php (it's in the root wordpress directory)
   • plugins (except Akismet because WP 2.1 comes with a new version of Akismet)
   • theme files
5. Deactivate the plugins (don't forget to write down special codes, like the Akismet api key, in case you need to re-enter them after you re-activate the plugins)
6. Rename the old wordpress directory (ie: wordpress –> wordpress2.07)
7. Rename the new wordpress directory (ie: wordpress2.1 –> wordpress)
8. Run the upgrade script (load …/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php in the browser)
9. Reactive the plugin one by one

Remember, the above steps are for my situation. You will need to look at the WordPress upgrade instructions and modify the above steps for your setup.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

It appears the CoolPlayer 9 plugin may be causing problems with Bloglines. This is the error message I get in Bloglines:

Bloglines has encountered an error trying to fetch the latest version of this feed. Bloglines handles errors automatically, no action is required by you. The error was:

The feed does not appear to exist. This can be caused by the feed URL being incorrect, or it can be caused by a configuration issue with the server hosting the feed. If this error continues, you should check the feed URL and, if it is wrong, subscribe to the correct URL.

The plugin does not seem to affect the other RSS readers, like Google Reader and NetVibes. I'm posting this in case you are using Bloglines and didn't see my previous post on CoolPlayer 9. This is also a test for me. I'm guessing the problem is related to CoolPlayer 9. It could also be related to upgrading to WordPress 2.1 and FeedBurner 2.2 plugin. I'll know in a few minutes if I can see this post in Bloglines. If it's the plugin, hopefully it will only affect the post with the coolplayer tag and not all posts.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Note: It appears your web server needs to support php mbstring and sockets extension in order for the RPC Server to work locally. So if you can't get the RPC Server to work locally, you will have to use the RPC Server in China.

The new version of CoolPlayer supports both the plain text editor and the rich text editor in WordPress. Now you can insert the coolplayer tag directly from the create/edit post page by clicking on the coolplayer button. This version also fixed the auto play problem in FireFox. Now the video doesn't auto start unless you want it to. The audio player also has a new skin:

The embedded player supports these types of files: rm, rmvb, ra, rv, ram, smil, smi, rtsp, rpm, asf, wm, wma, wmv, wax, wvx, ogg, ape, avi, mid, midi, wav, mms, m3u, asx, mov, qt, mqv, m4v, m4a, m4b, mpeg, mpg, m1s, m1v, m1a, m75, m15, mp2, mpm, mpv, mpa, flc, fli, cel, aiff, aif, aifc, cdda, bwf, rts, 3gp, 3gpp, 3g2, 3gp2, au, snd, ulw, smf, kar, qcp, sdv, gsm, amr, caf, amc, mp4, sdp, pdf, fdf, xfdf, xdp, xfd, gif, jpg, jpeg, bmp, png, xpm, dir, dxr, dcr, cst, cct, cxt, w3d, fgd, swa, swf, spl, mp3, flv, rtmp, rbs, xml, rss, xspf, atom.

It also supports YouTube, Ifilm, VSocial, TuDou Video, Evil Chili, Wildko, Yikers Videos & Games, Red Balcony Videos & Games, Live Video, Odeo Audio, Revver, MetaCafe, MySpace, GoEar, Break, Stupid Videos, DailyMotion and Google Video.

The installation is fairly simple. Just download, extract, upload folder to your plugin directory, and activate. I recommend testing the player plugin first before uploading the RPC Server locally. To install the RPC Server: download, extract, upload the files to your coolplayer folder, and activate. Then change the location in the options -> coolplayer menu.

Here's an example of the video player in action:

Read CoolPlayer 9 (481 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I'm not sure when Google added this new feature, but it's a nice feature. One of the problems previously was that you could only see the title of the feed item on your personalized Google home page. You had to click on the link and leave the page to see more about the feed item. Now you can see a preview without leaving the page.

However, I did encounter a glitch once. No matter which plus mark I clicked on, I only got a preview of a blank page. After I hit the browser refresh button, everything worked fine again.

I'm not sure, but I think the date and time stamp might be new too. They could have been there before, but I don't remember them.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

From what I could read, there appears to be four major differences between ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews. First, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, SponsoredReviews is still in beta while ReviewMe is up and running.

A second major difference is that you can negotiate your own rates with advertisers. SponsoredReviews has a system that will make recommendations based on their automated ratings system, but bloggers will be able to choose their own price. The option to set your own rate would be very appealing to me.

The third major difference is that each advertiser has his or her own requirements for length, link info, etc. With ReviewMe, the minimum length for the post is 200 words and there is no requirement for linking that I know of.

The fourth major difference is that SponsoredReviews' payouts are every two weeks instead of monthly like ReviewMe. In addition, SponsoredReviews does not appear to have a minimum payout amount. Here's a blurb from their site:

Every two weeks, accounts with an outstanding balance are paid instantly via PayPal.

SponsoredReviews indicates they will charge less for being the broker, but I could not find any information on what SponsoredReviews will be charging as the middleman. Note: ReviewMe splits the review fee 50-50.

SponsoredReviews appears to be a service of 360 Enterprises, which also sell text links through its Textlinkbrokers site.

And no, I am not being paid to write up this review and I doubt I will sign up based on my limited experience with ReviewMe.

More info: SponsoredReviews »

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

See, no mention of a minimum payout requirement amount. At the bottom of the "Edit Your Account" area, there is a mention of minimum for a check. I don't remember seeing that before. I don't know if it was there when I signed up or if it was added later. If it was there originally, I would have thought the minimum referred to checks. As you can see in the screenshot below, it's listed as "Minimum Check Amount" (my bold).

You can see why I (and probably other people) might think the minimum only applies to checks and not to Paypal. If I had known there was a minimum, I might have used one of my other sites for the review or not reviewed it at all. I certainly would not have mentioned I was being paid for the review, because I didn't actually get paid. Like I said earlier, I am fine with the minimum payout requirement. I just think ReviewMe should have been clearer about it.

I looked at ReviewMe's profile for my site and noticed a problem. The Alexa ranking has not changed since I joined. ReviewMe reports an Alexa ranking of 212,967 even though it's actually 160,188. I thought the data was suppose to be updated monthly. There are also problems with their Technoratic (n/a) and RSS (no star) data. My Technoratic ranking is actually 50,559 and I have 64 RSS subscribers (30-day average).

Just for kicks, I re-added my other sites to see where they stand. My other four sites would now qualify for the $30 payout. I think this is quite interesting because this site (iZachy) is still stuck at $20 even though it ranks higher than EDA Blog and Daddy Forever.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2007 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I was puzzled by the Pageflakes spikes so I added my feeds to Pageflakes. When I reviewed my FeedBurner stats later, I noticed all my feeds spiked up on the day I added them to Pageflakes. However, after the initial spikes, the number of Pageflakes subscribers dropped to zero until I visited my Pageflakes page again. Then once again, my feed count spiked up and then returned back to zero the next day.

Take a look at the table below. I visited my PageFlakes page on December 26th. As you can see, one visit resulted in a relatively big increase in my feed subscription stats. So, by visiting my PageFlakes page daily, I could inflate my feed stats fairly easily (I'm not condoning this; just pointing out it would be easy to do). Someone could go to town on this by creating multiple accounts on PageFlakes. BTW, TechCrunch also has a post about the PageFlakes spikes.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

All consumer RSS reader services to be discontinued on January 5, 2007

All versions of Pluck's RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck's web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck's focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line.

Over the next two months, you will have the opportunity to export your RSS feed subscriptions to other RSS readers of your choosing. Please visit the RSS reader support pages for details on how to export your subscriptions and bookmarks for use in other readers.

You have until 1/5/2007 to export your data, after which our servers will be turned off and your data will be deleted. Note that the Pluck RSS readers are not supported for use on the new releases of IE (version 7) and FireFox (version 2).

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

This past year (and earlier), the blogosphere has become a giant experiment on monetization. As bloggers (including me), we are constantly looking for ways to monetize everything we write, every item we review, every video and podcast we produce, and every photo we take. And every month, a new company forms to help us monetize this, that, and the other thing. Is this what blogging has become?

As for the future, I see more of the same next year. However, I expect more and more companies will focus on monetizing videos (including free video editing tools) and content for wireless devices. Monetization will continue to drive the web in our future. Even though I'm not entirely thrilled with this, I don't think monetization is necessarily a bad thing. Do you?

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

According to Adsense, someone has been targeting my link units from August 10th to November 22nd. I'm assuming it's some sort of glitch because as far as I know, advertisers can't target link units. It's possible I entered the wrong channel code in the Adsense script, but I would expect more than 15 impressions if I miscopied the Adsense code.

And take a look at this ad on my site. It's for the bird flu. What the heck is that ad doing on my site?

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

What's even more interesting about the post is the site that Matt blogged about. The site was hacked in the very same way my dad blog was hacked…with the exact same porn links…on the exact same date. It appears a bunch of sites got hacked that day. Lucky for me, I took care of the problem within a couple of days. Otherwise, Google would have penalized my site as well.

In my last post, I mentioned I could not figure out how the hack occurred; I didn't see any modifications to my WordPress templates and disabling all my plugins had no affect. I have since discovered the hack occurred in the index.php file that sits outside of my WordPress directory. I'm telling you guys this in case you encounter the same hack in the future. I'm not going to list the hacked code here. The last thing I want to do is get ranked or penalized for porn stuff. You can see the hack code on Matt's post if you are curious.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The second reason why things are crappy is because Akismet does not appear to be working on my blogs. Every few minutes, I get an email to approve a comment that has about 100 links in it. This has been going for a few days now. And it is getting reaaaaallllly ANNOYING.

Then there's my daddy blog, which was hacked early Saturday morning. Somehow, a hacker was able to insert a script and a bunch of links above the WordPress template's code. The hacked stuff loads before <!DOCTYPE html section of each web page. I downloaded my templates and I didn't see any modifications to my templates. I deactivated all the plugins and selected the default WordPress theme. It didn't make a difference. I upgraded to WordPress 2.0.5 from 2.0.4 and the hack is still there. I couldn't figure out how to resolve the problem so I submitted a ticket to my web host. Seven and a half hours later, they reply with something like, "We don't support third party applications and perhaps your password has been compromised."

That was really helpful. It's possible my password was compromised, but I didn't see any tampering of any of my files. I really don't understand how the hacker was able to insert the extra code before the html header. Makes me wonder if the web host has some sort of WordPress related virus that was doing it. I created a non-WordPress page and it loaded without any additional code. So, the problem is WordPress related.

The next thing I did was uninstall WordPress. I didn't want to do this, but I didn't see how I had any choice (my content was not viewable). So, after uninstalling, I reinstalled the latest version. Then I restored the database from back-up. Guess what? I got the exact same result with the default theme. I didn't upload my plugins so the only ones enabled were the ones that came with WordPress (Akismet and Database Backup).

At this point, I was wondering if the hack occurred in the database. To test this, I restore the database to another site with a different web host (#2). This time, the hack was gone. The database was fine. Since my blog was now working correctly, I had web host #2 change the domain name to daddyforever.com and then I change the entries for the name servers to point to web host #2. The dns propagation could take up to 48 hours, but I saw the change in less than 24 hours. But it wasn't what I was expecting. I could no longer connect to my site at web host #1 or #2. I didn't want to be Chicken Little, so I waited several hours before asking web host #2 to recheck their work. Sure enough, they discovered they made a mistake in the dns setup on their end.

My daddy blog is now back online after two days. I still have no idea how the hack occurred. The morale of the post? Back-up often.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I've been playing with the Cool Player plugin for WordPress since yesterday. The plugin allows you to play multimedia files in your blog. I've only tested the plugin with mp3 and wmv (Windows Media Video) files, but the plugin is suppose to work with all of these types of files:

Google Video, Youtube Video, vSocial Video, ASF, ASX, WM, WMA, WMV, WAX, WVX, OGG, APE, AVI, MID, MIDI, WAV, SWF, SPL, MP3, FLV, RM, RMVB, RA, RV, RAM, SMIL, PDF, FDF, XFDF, XDP, XFD, MOV, QT, MQV, MPEG, MPG, M1S, M1V, M1A, M75, M15, MP2, MPM, MPV, MPA, FLC, FLI, CEL, RTSP, RTS, 3GP, 3GPP, 3G2, 3GP2, SDV, AMC, MP4, SDP, GIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, XPM

The plugin is suppose to work with IE, Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. I can confirm it does work with IE, Firefox, and Opera.

A nice feature about the Cool Player is being able to specify more than one file at a time (see example below). In addition, a user can can enter a media url to play by double clicking the bottom of the player.

Here's an example of the Cool Player plugin configured with two files.

Read Cool Player Plugin (592 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

YouTube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video are great for sharing your videos. They are also great for reducing the load on your server. The last thing you want is to have a super popular video that crashes your server and consumes all of your bandwidth. But if all you want to do is show a video on your blog (a video that won't be a mega-hit), you might want to consider using the Cool Player plugin for WordPress (see fourth video below). The plugin embeds a video player into your post. The plugin does not work right out of the box so you might want to wait until my next post (later this week) when I go some installation tips for the Cool Player plugin.

As I stated before, my 29 second video clip is almost 56 megs. You guys would kill me if I made you download a file that large. So I reduced the resolution (from 640×480 to 320×240) and size (less than 1.4M) with Microsoft Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker is free but only works with Windows XP. If you are using XP, you might already have it installed on your system. BTW, click on the play button to play the video in the embedded player. If you click on the Captain America link, the video will play on an external player like Microsoft Media Player.

Read YouTube Can Embed Videos (374 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I've sold my soul and signed up for ReviewMe, which is a program where advertisers pay bloggers for writing about them. This post will cost the advertiser (ReviewMe in this case) $40; I get half of that amount (that would be $20 for those of you who are a little slow). The price is based on a web site's content, traffic, number of RSS subscribers, and link popularity. The rate is recalculated monthly. The pricing structure favors blogs over traditional web sites (more on this later).

Unlike another pay-per-post program, the ReviewMe program requires publishers to disclose they are being paid (such as Sponsored Post, Paid Post, or The Advertiser Paid Me to Write This). Your review needs to be at least 200 words, but you don't need to write a favorable review.

I have mixed feelings about pay-per-post programs. On one hand, I don't see a problem with it in general. After all, newspapers have special sections that promote companies and products. The special sections look just like the regular news section, but are actually written by the advertising department. Sometimes, newspapers even have ads that looks like news copy. Then there's the movies and TV shows where companies pay to have their products shown.

On the other hand, as a reader, I want to know if I'm reading something an advertiser paid for. And I don't want to find out at the end of the post. I want to know at the beginning so I can decide if I want to read it or not. I took a look at two other paid reviews and I noticed both of them buried their sponsorship disclosure at the end of the posts. That annoys me as a reader. In my mind, these two sites have less credibility because they didn't disclose this information at the beginning of their post.

As I stated previously, I'm not required to write a favorable review. However, that's not entirely true. Think about it. Do you think an advertiser will want to purchase a review from me after they read this review? I'm not slamming ReviewMe, but I'm not exactly writing a glowing review either. To be fair, I have to say I'm not sure if a potential advertiser will see this review or any other reviews I may write in the future.

Earlier in this post, I mentioned that the pricing structure favors blogs (vs traditional web sites). Take a look at the table below and you will see what I mean. All the sites below are powered by WordPress, except for Embedded Star. Embedded Star is 99% static and 1% WordPress. Embedded Star has seven times the traffic of EDA Geek, yet the payout is $30 for EDA Geek but only $20 for Embedded Star. It looks like the Technorati rank is screwing up the pricing for Embedded Star. BTW, I'm not actually accepting paid reviews for any other site except for this one. I just wanted to see what the rates would be.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I use full feeds on both of my sites. This blog has more RSS readers than my daddy blog. I think that's one of the reason why I have fewer visitors to this site. In addition, the type of readers are very different. On this site, I think my readers want to learn and read new posts when I have them. They (you guys) generally do not leave comments. On the other hand, readers on my daddy blog want to be noticed so they leave comments. Most of these visitors probably won't come back often, if at all. Can't really blame them. As parents, we want to infect as many people as we can with stories and pictures of our kids. Once we have infected someone, we don't feel the need to infect them again.

Regardless of page rank, both sites do not generate much in earnings. My daddy blog actually earns less per click than this blog. I guess parenting related ads don't pay as well as Adsense related ads. Obviously, I would like to earn more from these two blogs, but it's not really that important. I see my daddy blog as a time capsule I can share with my kids 5-10 years from now. As for this site, I'm only keeping it warm until my son takes over the domain name. I purchased a domain for each of my kids. Zachary is only three so I probably have another ten years before he takes over the iZachy domain name.

Lost in the stats below, is the quality of the links pointing to my blogs. My guess is that a big reason why my daddy blog has a higher page rank is because some of the sites that link to my daddy blog have very high trust rank. With Google, all links are not created equal. Some sites have higher trust than other sites and can pass higher page rank to the sites they link to.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

1. Applications to Job Postings
You will be compensated $0.50 for every application that a job seeker sends an employer for a specific job posting. Job seekers can apply online or via email. These two apply options are listed on every job description on CareerBuilder.com. Job seekers can apply to as many jobs as they like, and you will be paid for the total applications received. Applying to jobs is free for the job seeker.

2. Job Posting
You will be compensated 13% for every single online job posting that is purchased and posted on CareerBuilder.com through the online form.

3. Resume Direct
Earn $10 for each ResumeDirect purchase. ResumeDirect enables job seekers to send their resumes to targeted recruiters across the country.

4. Stellar Resume
Earn $20 for each Stellar Resume purchase. With Stellar Resume job seekers can have their resume professionally written.

5. Running Your Own Ads
You can run Adsense or other ads with CareerBuilder content. You get to keep all revenue generated from your own ads.p>

[Update: CareerBuilder has two affiliate programs. The first one is as stated above without the ability to run your own ads (#5 above). The second one is a cobranding partnership, which is the one I am on. Other than the option to run Adsense ads and have the content appear to be part of your site, I'm not sure what the differences are between the two programs. My contract is on a back-up CD somewhere. As far as I know, the cobranding program is by invitation only.]

I signed up for the program because I get a lot of resumes each week. I don't have any openings so I direct job seekers to my careers section, which is powered by CareerBuilder. I figure I could make money on people looking for a job. That has not been the case. The main reason is because I don't promote my jobs section. I've noticed from my Adsense channel that the ads have a low click-through rate and the pay per click is very low. As a result, I only link to my jobs section in the form of an alternate ad when Google has no ads to show on my main site.

If I spend more time on this program, I could earn more. I just don't have enough time and the program isn't high on my todo list. But if you are looking for another revenue stream, check out the CareerBuilder affiliate program.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Rob has also created three new plugins which use the same infrastructure: Random Posts, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments. The random posts plugin displays a list of posts chosen at random from your blog. The recent posts plugin displays a list of your blog’s most recent posts. The recent comments plugin displays a list of your blog’s most recently commented posts. Like the similar posts plugin, Rob's new plugins give you more options (such as excluding certain categories) than what WordPress provides out of the box.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Yes, I know you can already insert links with FeedFlares. The difference is that FeedFlares are actually images that link to FeedBurner before they are redirected to your URL. Better Feed links are text links that point directly to your site. So if your site is syndicated elsewhere, you will have real links pointing to your site. Links that can pass PageRank juice to your site.

With this plugin, I can also insert images (ad banners) in my feed. I was even able to get phpAdsNew ad server to serve ads into my feed. I could see two different ad banners in my FeedBurner feed (the one at: feeds.feedburner.com/myfeed). However, the ads are implemented via Javascript, which don't seem to work in RSS readers like Bloglines, Google RSS Reader, and Newsgator.

I love the plugin, but if you don't like playing with HTML code, the plugin isn't for you. There is no admin interface. You have to edit the plugin file itself. It isn't hard. For instance, I added the HTML code below to the plugin file for my RSS feed footer:


<hr noshade style="margin:0;height:1px" />
<p align="center">Permalink: <a href="http://izachy.com/2006/10/26/better-feed-wordpress-plugin/">Better Feed WordPress Plugin</a><br />Links:  <a href="http://izachy.com/">iZachy</a> : : <a href="http://daddyforever.com/">Daddy Forever</a> : : <a href="http://www.embeddedstar.com/">Embedded Star</a> : : <a href="http://edageek.com/">EDA Geek</a> : : <a href="http://edablog.com/">EDA Blog</a><br />© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : <a href="http://izachy.com">iZachy</a> is a trademark of Online Destiny</p>


Go to the Better Feed WordPress plugin page for more info.

[Update: The extra stuff you insert into the feed will not be displayed unless you are using full feed. However, you can limit how much of your post is displayed in the feed via the <!–more–> quicktag.]

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I am happy with my new page rank, but I think it's strange it went from zero to six. What happened to one through five? It seems like my page rank should have been one after the first month, then two, then three, and so on to six. Why does it go directly from zero to six?

The answer is that my page rank didn't actually go directly from zero to six. The PageRank value you see in your Google toolbar is only a snap shot of the actual value. Google only updates their toolbar every few months. Internally, PageRank is computed continuously. Not only is the value computed continously, the value isn't limited to integers. For instance, my PageRank of 6 could actually be 5.64, 5.90, 6.12, or 6.4164.

If you want to read more about PageRank, take a look at Matt Cutts' blog.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Here's an example of a Searchfeed dynamic feed ad unit:

Searchfeed has six programs for generating revenue:

• Search – works just like Google search, except all the results are ppc ads
• Dynamic feed – ppc ads based on keywords you select (see graphics above)
• Category chaser – works just like an Adsense link unit, but you get to specify the keywords
• 404 error page – Adsense doesn't allow you to put ads on 404 error pages, but Searchfeed encourages it
• Advertiser referral – you earn 5% to 7% depending on traffic
• Web publisher referral – you earn 2% to 5% depending on traffic

What I like about Searchfeed:

• You can make money on 404 error pages
• You can make the ads look just like your content
• It's non-contextual so you can still run Adsense ads
• Few restrictions on ad placement
• Only need to earn $25 before they can issue you a check

What I don't like about Searchfeed:

• 35-50% revenue split (depends on traffic) — most programs offer 50-70% split
• No tracking channels
• They don't give impressions numbers in their stats

Conclusions
The ad blending with the content is nice, but you have to be careful with this. If one of your goal is credibility, then blending the ads with your content will most likely hurt your credibility. On the other hand, if you make the ads look like ads, it will lower your click-throughs.

I only tested the dynamic feed ads and the results were not impressive for me. In addition, Searchfeed only had one advertiser for three keywords I would use for my main site. Keep in mind that my main site is essentially a niche within a niche. It's very specialized and advertisers probably would not use Searchfeed to reach my audience. If your site is more main stream, your results will most likely be different.

I can see Searchfeed being very useful if you don't have a lot of content. For instance, if your domain is a misspelling of another domain, you could capitalize on it by using Searchfeed as your content. You could also use Searchfeed on a new site or a low performing one. Remember, with Adsense, a poor performing site will affect your well performing sites. I can also see their 404 program being handy if you purchased a domain that no longer has content.

Here's their URL if you want to check out Searchfeed for yourself.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

1. No links in titles
The Google News crawler can't handle links in titles. Run your titles in h tags and include a permalink on the page that the Google News bot can use.

Holy jumping up and down Martha, that can't be right. Can it? After all, on most WordPress themes, the title of each post is a link to itself. I thought for sure Brian, the author of the post, must be wrong so I checked on the Google News site and this is what I found:

…each article must link to a page dedicated solely to that article. When the headline on this page is an active link, however, we may have difficulty displaying it correctly. Making headlines regular text, not links, will increase the likelihood that our crawler will extract the correct headlines.

Good golly Miss Molly, Brian does know what he's writing about. This brings me full circle with a question I had when I first started using a blog platform (I have been using a blog platform for less than a year). One of the things I noticed after installing WordPress was that the title of each post links to itself. I thought it was very odd so I did some research. What I found out was that the title links to itself because it was convenient for the developer to copy the same code over and over. Otherwise, the developer would have to spend more time editing out the links on some pages/templates.

I didn't want the title linking to itself so I removed the link. Then I noticed that just about every blogger had titles linking to the same page. Doubt crept into my mind. I was thinking, "I'm a web 1.0 dinosaur, maybe these web 2.0 bloggers know something I don't know. Maybe having the title linking to itself was great for SEO." So, I went back and reinserted the links into the titles. Now, I have to go back and remove the title link on my newsy site. The chances of getting my news site included in Google News is very, very, very, very slim. But why make it more difficult?

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Here's the catch. The magazines are very specialized (ie – engineering, pharmaceuticals, information technology, etc). Go to my free magazines site to see for yourself. The magazines doesn't have mass appeal and you have to have the right web audience to make this work. In addition, I should stress that you only get paid for qualified subscriptions. Each magazine publisher has their own qualification criteria. For instance, if you groom dogs for a living, you will not qualify for a free engineering journal. Based on my experience, about half of the people who apply for a free magazine are rejected.

I'm not sure if I am allow to say how much the payout is, so I will speak in generality. Each subscription pays better than what most people earn for an Adsense click. However, it's less than the commission for a typical Amazon book purchased from your site. Partners are paid monthly, but there's a two month lag. One month to audit (like I said before, about 50% are rejected) and another month before they send the check. I think you need to accumulate at least $50 before they issue you a check. I don't earn a lot from this program, but every little bit helps. Here are some more pro's and con's about the TradePub partner program.

Pro's

• The ads are not contextual so there's no conflict with Adsense and YPN
• You get to give your readers something useful for free
• TradePub does not have any restrictions on ad placement
• TradePub ads are great for Adsense alternative ads (instead of PSA ads)
• There are a lot of banners to choose from (the ad above is one of their banners)

[Update: TradePub now offers real-time stats]

Con's

• Hosted off of your site
• No tracking channels
• No real-time stats (you get weekly email updates and a monthly audit report)
• No referral program
• You're competing with TradePub once readers apply for a free magazine
• You have to code the links yourself (can be simple)

[Update: Today, I noticed FeedBruner is running TradePub ads in ProBlogger's feed.]

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

But Rob didn't just stop there, he improved my hacks by placing the "exclude pages and categories" options in the admin menu. No more messing with the code. I was actually planning on doing the same thing, just not sure when. Now I don't have to write my own plugin. Rob already did it.

Another nice feature of the Similar Posts plugin is that you can tweak the similar keywords for each post when you are writing the post. This gives you the ability to fine-tune the keywords to your liking. In addition, if you have previously used the Related Posts plugin to assign keywords to posts you can now import them all from the Options page. I didn't even know you could assign keywords with the Related Posts plugin.

Here's my little comparison of the two:

The plugin is great, but I would suggest changing the "no similar posts" result when there's no related posts. Instead, it would be nice if the plugin could display a set of user-defined posts when the plugin can't find a related post. I have not seen "no related posts" on my site recently, but it will eventually show up again when I write an oddball post.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

A high price doesn't necessarily mean the web host is immune to outages. One company I worked at had its site hosted with a company that owns part of the Internet backbone (a lot of hosting companies use their backbone to connect to the Internet). I think the company was paying $100 a month for a shared hosting plan (too much in my opinion). Guess what? Once, our site was down for almost two days! My current host charges less $6 a month and my sites have never been down for more than a couple of hours. However, when they do go down, it is very annoying.

I have realized something though. I may have too many eggs in one basket. I really shouldn't have six sites hosted with one company. I really should spread them around to other web hosting companies. That way if one host has a problem, they don't bring down all of my sites. However, it is a major hassle to move so I'm not quite ready to move any of them yet. But I thought I should update a list of web hosts I compiled last year. It's located below. Keep in mind for the hosts that have "no" under WordPress, that doesn't mean they don't have WordPress installed. It just means I couldn't find any info about it on their site. Even if they don't have WordPress, that doesn't mean you can't download it yourself and install it.

Note: The monthly rate is for annual plans. Also, most hosts don't charge a setup fee for annual plan, except for One World ($15).

Read Too Many Sites in One Basket (384 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

(lyrics here)

You can customize the colors of the player, pre/post appended clips (ie – "a word from our sponsor"), and configure it for podcasting. There are also options to determine what is included in the RSS feed. The plugin isn't suppose to place a player instance in the feed. Instead, you are suppose to choose what the plugin inserts into the feed. However, I noticed that even though the plugin defaults to "nothing" (meaning the feed shouldn't contain any reference to the audio file), there's a working player in both Bloglines and the new Google Reader. In Newsgator, there's no player but it does show a link to the mp3 file at the bottom of the post. Google Reader also has a link to the mp3 file. I like having the player in the feed, I'm just not sure how that is happening.

I did encounter two problems during the installation. First, after extracting the plugin, there's an audio-player folder and a file (audio-player.php) that sits outside of the audio-player folder. The first time I tried installing the plugin, I didn't see the file outside of the audio-player folder so I didn't ftp it over to the plugin directory. So, if you don't see the audio player in your plugin menu, you need to ftp "audio-player.php" to your plugin directory.

The second problem had to do with the code syntax (I left out the brackets):

audio:reasonforliving.mp3

Even though the mp3 file is located in the default "audio" directory, the file would not play. However, when I used the URL instead, the file plays (I left out the brackets):

audio:http://izachy.com/audio/reasonforliving.mp3

I'm happy with the plugin and would recommend it to anyone who wants to embed some audio files into their posts.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Read FeedFlares for RSS Text Ads (370 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Read Feedvertising vs phpAdsNew Ad Server (389 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The other problem I have with the fancy quotes is that some of the WordPress plugins choke on the fancy quotes. This usually happens when you are on a site (like this one) that explains how to do something by copying and pasting some code from their site. If the code involves quotes, WordPress turns them into fancy quotes. So, when you copy a quote from a WordPress site and paste it into a text editor like Homesite, you don't actually get a quote. Instead, you get a special character that looks like a quote, but doesn't behave like one. As a result, a plugin like the Landing Sites Plugin crashes.

I finally got around to installing the Unfancy Quote Plugin for WordPress. The plugin replaces the fancy quotes inserted by WordPress with simple quotes. I've been testing the plugin on my test site and it works as advertised. The plugin was simple to install and you don't have to insert any special code into your templates. All you have to do is activate the plugin in the admin menu.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Read Showing Posts When There's No Related Posts (396 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The ads on the right and the ads in the left column are served by phpAdsNew. The server randomly displays ads from Google and Yahoo in the left column and Amazon ads to the right of the content. Like Adsense and YPN, all you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of code. However, if all you want to do is rotate Google and Yahoo ads, then phpAdsNew is over-kill. You can get by with a simple Javascript/php script or a simple ad rotator plugin. However, phpAdsNew does more than just rotate ads, it's a full blown ad server with a bunch of bells and whistles. With phpAdsNew, you have the option of serving ads that you sell yourself.

Read phAdsNew Ad Server Review (493 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

However, when readers click on the more link, they are shown the post starting from the cut-off point on down. That means they don't see the top part of the post unless they scroll up. It makes sense from a reader's point of view. Why see something you already read? However, from my point of view, it would be better to show the reader the page starting from the top. Keep in mind that I normally set the cut-off between the first and second paragraph. So I'm not forcing readers to re-read half the post. Just the first paragraph.

So what do I gain from all of this? Well, potentially more money. By showing the page from the top, readers can see my top Adsense ad. My top ads pay better than my bottom ads. When WordPress shows the post from the cut-off point down, readers don't see the top ad unless they scroll back up.

Now the tricky part, how do we get WordPress to display the page from the top on down? I looked around the WordPress Codex, but I could not find any parameters for the <!–more–> or the_content tags that would do the trick. So I had to hack one of the WordPress function (it's a simple hack). Follow the steps below if you want to change the behavior of WordPress.

Locate the file "template-functions-post.php" and make a back-up copy of the file. It's located in the "wp-includes" sub-folder where your WordPress files are installed.

Locate this line (it should be line 92 – the line wrap below is not intentional):

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\">$more_link_text</a>";

[Note: In WordPress 2.1, you will need to modify line #102 in a file called post-template.php]

$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "\">$more_link_text</a>";

That's it. WordPress will now show the page starting with the top.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Read Excluding Categories from the Related Posts Plugin (760 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Read Blogging to Web 2.0 and Beyond (346 words)

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

The new feature was not hard to implement. However, I noticed two problems. First, the width of the results page is set at 650. For some sites, especially sites that have side columns, the 650 width is too wide and messes up the layout of the page. I was tempted to change the width, but that would have violated Google's terms about not changing their code.

The other problem I encountered was with WordPress. The Javascript provided by Google works just fine on non-WordPress pages, but do not seem to work on WordPress-powered sites. On the results page, the search box is displayed but there are no search results. At the bottom of the page is an icon indicating a Javascript error. The error message, as usual, was of no help. If you are using WordPress, my recommendation is to test it during a slow period or on a test page your visitors will not see.

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd

I have a back-up plan when I know I can't work on a certain day, but no plans for unexpected work outages. This is a big problem for me because my main site (not this one) is a newsy site and it is the site that allows me to work at home instead of a soul-sucking corporation. Not having any news on a business day is like a newspaper not having any news. Its looks very unprofessional.

I need to put together an emergency back-up plan. What about you? Do you have an emergency back-up plan?

Free Magazines : : Find a Job : : iZachy : : Daddy Forever : : Embedded Star : : EDA Geek : : EDA Blog : : FPGA Blog
© 2006 Online Destiny Ltd : : iZachy is a trademark of Online Destiny Ltd