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 

Computer Tips Site & Newsletter

October 16, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Be sure to visit my Terry’s Computer Tips web site.

In addition to all the good tip articles on the site, I publish my Terry’s Computer Tips Online Newsletter there.

Of course, if you subscribe to my Terry’s Computer Tips Email Newsletter, you’ll get announcements when the new online newsletters are posted, get additional content in the regular weekly email newsletter and even get Special Edition newsletters, too.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under Monetizing Your Site, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience 

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 

The Power of (Mis-)Spelling

October 9, 2006 | Leave a Comment

In our early days at school, we were taught to spell words correctly. In the good old days, we “sounded out” the syllables of writen words in order to figure out the sound of the word. Then, we studied and were quizzed on the correct spelling of the words we learned.

Now, you’re older. What happens when you misspell a word in something you write?

Your friends may roll their eyes (or may not even notice). Your business associates may roll their eyes and you slide down a notch in their esteem. Your business competitors smile with glee.

And, you may have a runaway hit in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world!

I found one of those little gems on one of my web pages a few months ago. My first thought, when I saw the search term come up in my web stats, was to fix it quickly.

Read more

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience 

Testing an image posting in WordPress

October 8, 2006 | 1 Comment

Well-worn fence

This was a fun shot in the back yard early last year. This section of older fence spent the mornings in the shade of a large oak tree and only got direct sun for two or three hours a day.

Eye of the Storm

This is one of a photo series that is posted on my general topics and photo blog The Next Window. The 22 photos displayed are all sky and light, from a single storm on April 1, 2005, from 7:05pm-7:25pm. Take a look at them — you’ll be amazed — no Photoshopping, no filters, just resizing of the photos for posting in the blog.

The Photography category includes links to other photo sites as well as some of my own photos.

The relationship to web design is simply that this is a test of actually putting a photo into a WordPress blog — and I found that 512×384 images could cause lineup problems in IE (they threw the navigation bar to the bottom of the long window - in one Theme that i tried) and could cause a bad-aspect-ratio display (again, in a specific Template) of the photos in Firefox and Opera.

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under 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 

« Previous Page — Next Page »