Blog Software - Moving from Serendipity to WordPress

October 24, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I made up my mind. I like to tinker with the pages too much to use Serendipity as my blog software package.

Drawing on the Web has been a WordPress blog since the beginning. But, I have several other blogs running Serendipity. The “Smarty Templates” for all user-interaction displays may be neat from a developer perspective, but it is a royal pain for someone who wants to make a quick and easy tweak to their system.

I liked Serendipity and may continue one of my blogs in it. But, deciphering what’s happening is a real challenge.

So, I just moved the 300+ posts of my Terry’s Computer Tips blog into a new format in WordPress. Installation of WordPress was easy, but you have to download, unzip, add and then upload any additional plugins and templates you want to use.

Once you’ve got one blog, though, just copy the package to a different directory, tweak the config.ini file and upload to a new directory at your web host. Point your new domain or new sub-domain to the new directory. And, point your browser there…

You can read more about the changes to my Terry’s Computer Tips blog in that blog.

Drawing on the Web and my Terry’s Computer Tips blog are hosted in the same Powweb account that has all my other blogs and my Terry’s Computer Tips site. Powweb currently has a $5.77/month sale for 1- and 2-year hosting purchases — this sale expires October 31st.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Blogs, Usability, Visitor Experience, Web Hosting

Why blog?

October 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

There are a number of reasons that people create blogs.

They may want to share information. They may want to rant and rave in public. They may want to help others. They may like the ease of setting up blogs instead of more traditional web sites. They may use them as commercial tools to sell products. They may use them to make money from Adsense or some other pay-per-click advertising system. And, they may use blogs as a way of driving traffic to other web sites.

That last one is the most interesting at the moments. Bloggers, people who write blogs, often link to other blogs and to web site articles as a way to share information that they have located.

What happens when they do this? Their readers often visit the site to which they linked. That site, then, has an opportunity to share its information and to utiliitize its advertising and affiliate programs to make money.

And, search engines recognize and follow the links to the referred site! Not only that, the links usually go to focused information that otherwise is hidden deeply within the site — and, now, Google, Yahoo and the other search engines recognize and assign more value to that page.

So, what happens when you blog about your own sites?

Exactly the same things!

Start your blog today. I have a free WordPress blog at wordpress.com. I also have multiple WordPress blogs and Serendipity blogs in a single web hosting package at Powweb, who has a $5.77/month (25% off) October Special for new customers. Get a year’s web hosting for only $69.24.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Blogs, Internet Marketing, Monetizing Your Site, SEO, Traffic & Linking, Web Hosting

Powweb’s $5.77/month October 25% off Special

October 13, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Looking for web hosting?

Powweb’s One Plan offers 13+ GB traffic per day, 20 GB space, wizard to install software packages, 650 email accounts (webmail, POP3 and SMTP!), unlimited email forwarding, spam filters, 5 MySQL databases, Perl, PHP, FrontPage Extensions, daily backups, toll-free support and a lot more…
Regularly, it’s only $7.77 per month.

Right now, Powweb has an October 25% Off Special for New Subscribers

Get Your Package for Only $5.77 Per Month!

That’s right - only $69.24 per year for this great package!
Special expires October 31st. Get it Now!

This blog, like all my other sites, is hosted at Powweb.
Wish I’d gotten that price…

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Apache Web Server, Blogs, CSS, HTML, PHP Scripting, Server Side Includes, Web Hosting

Giving Away the Empire!

October 10, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Today was the launch of Joel Comm’s new Instant Adsense Templates VRE Empire package. http://terryscomputertips.com/IAT

VRE is short for Virtual Real Estate — a.k.a. web sites for making money on the web.

So, I went to look at it out of curiosity. I bought the earlier release of IAT and was happy, and I just knew that I didn’t need this one…

Boy, was I surprised. This guy just kept piling on the features and more features, and then started adding bonuses, too! He’s setting a new “high” in quality and content and a “low” in prices for a package like this.
http://terryscomputertips.com/IAT

150 Niche Topics — HTML templates, WordPress templates, XSitePro templates, HyperVRE templates and phpBB forum templates for them all. Adsense integrated into all of them!

Plus 50 pre-built niche web sites. Oh, yeah — and private label content, too, so you don’t have to have author bio blocks with links leading off your site!

Plus, the graphics files in JPG and Photoshop formats. Plus 400 Private Label Articles, already formatted in three formats: plain text, HTML file and HyperVRE format.

Ebooks. List building information and 10 squeeze pages! 10 private lable reports that you can use, give away or sell — with matching graphics.

Who needs web traffic? The package includes three books on how to get more traffic to your site. Not enough? How about another 2 as a bonus?

Software — the CB Text Ads Generator package so you can embed Clickbank affiliate ads in your articles with ease. And, several more packages, too.

15 Tutorial videos!

When I saw what was in the package — and what I’d get as bonuses, too — I gave in pretty quickly. This deal was too good to miss…

http://terryscomputertips.com/IAT

Couldn’t find a reason not to buy, especially at that price.

And, that brings up a very important point — this is a limited quantity offer — and the price is going up $25 per day. Look quick and get it quick. If you’re interested in a web-based income, this can be a huge opportunity for you.

And, a bunch of other bonuses, including a copy of Joel’s “What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense.” I’ve bought the 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions of it — it’s been that good and improved that much with each edition. And, it’s included as a package bonus.

http://terryscomputertips.com/IAT

Enough of that — the price goes up $25 per day for the next few days.

ON THE OTHER HAND, when the limit is reached, it comes off the market.

His earlier Instant Adsense Templates package sold out in only 36 Hours!
Check it out now… I did … I thought I didn’t want it — but I did, when I saw it. The package was just too good and the price couldn’t be beat.

http://terryscomputertips.com/IAT

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Blogs, HTML, Internet Marketing, Monetizing Your Site, SEO, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience

Recent Changes to Google’s Adsense

October 2, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Google has been working hard to make its Adwords program more effective for advertisers. First, it offered them a choice of whether to put their ads on search results, on related web pages, or both.

Advertisers also got the option (turned off by default) to bid different maximum amounts for clicks on search results than clicks on web sites.

Recently, Google put a couple more nails in the coffin of the “Adsense site.”

First, they’ve been working diligently to identify the sites that it doesn’t believe are appropriate for its search results — by examining both electronically and personal examination, especially sites with high-income key words. Another thing for which they are looking are sites that display different results to the search engines than they do to visitors.

When Google finds what it considers to be junk, that is, sites that are there for income generation rather than providing real information to visitors, Google has a tendency to de-index the site. It does the same thing with sites that use “black hat” techniques like displaying different results to search engines than real visitors. Google justs remove the site and all its pages from their indexes. And the site owner’s income plumets.

Recently, they applied a couple of slaps against Internet marketers of different types.

The most prominent of these, at least the one that has been mentioned the most, has been the use of Google’s evaluation of the ad’s landing page in order to set the minimum bids for the ads. This means that, if you submit an Adwords ad, Google will look at the target web page — and use it to decide what minimum you’ll have to pay to have it show in search results.

The second was related. If the target page was a squeeze page, the price skyrocketed. What’s a squeeze page? It’s one of the latest marketing techniques — you have to give your email address in order to get to the real content. Then, the marketer can use it for emails to you.

The change that has been almost ignored was another major hit to many of their Adwords customers. These customers paid for ads to send visitors to web sites that sold products.

In this case, these customers were “affiliate marketers” — that is, they would receive a commission on the sale, if one occurred. Google now requires that advertisers have their own landing page. Google prohibited the use of redirected URLs in Adwords advertising.

Before this step, you didn’t even have to have your own web site to make money with Google ads. Now, your ad has to feed the visitor to your landing page, and then you hope they’ll click on the link to go to the retail site. Of course, this was combined with the examination of the landing page for price purposes.

This last hit, this real hit against affiliate marketing, is a problem for both small adverrtisers and small businesses who exist through having affiliates pay to market their products. After all, the small businesses get free advertising (paid by the affiliates) and only have to pay a commission for actual sales.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Blogs, Internet Marketing, Monetizing Your Site, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience

Serendipity vs WordPress, day 1

September 15, 2006 | 3 Comments

All my other blogs are running the blog software Serendipity, rather than WordPress, which Drawing on the Web uses.

Both Serendipity and WordPress are free for use.

WordPress is released under the GPL. Serendipity has its own custom license, which also allows free use and redistribution.

As I started configuring and posting to Drawing on the Web, I immediately noticed the some differences between Serendipity and WordPress.

Themes

Serendipity is distributed with about 20 different themes (layouts), while more are easily downloaded and added from within Serendipity. WordPress, on the other hand, is distributed with only two themes.

With WordPress, you download themes via your browser, unzip the files, move them into the WordPress themes folder and then upload them to the web site.

Advantage: Serendipity

Interface

WordPress has a much smoother, more powerful interface than Serendipity. WordPress makes it easier to do the things it can do.

Advantage: WordPress.

Capabilities

Serendipity has a lot more functions built into it.

With WordPress, I’m still searching for plug-ins by visiting web sites and blogs — and don’t know if they exist or not.

Advantage: Serendipity

Distribution

WordPress is far more widely used. Many more people are developing plug-ins for WordPress and there are many more sites to use as examples.

Advantage: WordPress

Search Engine Optimization

WordPress uses a SEO-poor URL stucture for individual blog entries, for example, http://www.drawingontheweb.com/?p=5 .� Fortunately, although this is the default, it can easily be changed to one using the date and entry title as keys in the Permalink.
Serendipity uses Search Engine-friendly URLs like http://blog.terryscomputertips.com/index.php?/archives/334-My-new-PC-security-blog.html that include the title of the blog entry.

Advantage: Serendipity

Customization capabililies

If you can do HTML and CSS, modifying WordPress’ web pages is easy. Serendipity is more of a challenge, as it has been structured in a more obfusticated manner.

WordPress uses .php files. Serendipity uses .php files for programming and .tpl template files for all display functions. Unfortunately, .tpl pages can not include PHP scripting, just static HTML code.

However, Serendipity has a plug-in for SMARTY markup in templates, which will allow calls from the .tpl pages or from blog entries to PHP scripts in a special template file.

The Final Answer:

Advantage, ease of use: WordPress
Advantage, power: Serendipity

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