blogging 102

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes The purpose of this post is twofold in terms of blogging.  First I wanted to introduce to you two plugins you might not have ever seen.  Secondly I wanted to talk about professionalism for designers. Plugin One is an affiliate publishers best friend.  Adrotate is every bit as good as Max Blog Press’s Ninja Affiliate.  Not only will the last several versions of this plugin provide you with quick affiliate masking slash redirect through your own site, it keeps track of your banner impressions and click throughs.  Version 2.4 even has a feature to block banners when they reach a certain number of impressions or clicks. Unlike Ninja Affiliate version 2.3.1 of AdRotate works quite well in WorPress Mu.  There are things to be aware of though.  If you use the banner wizard you can not later make the link an auto redirect link, you will have to stop rotating the banner and make a new entry.  Secondly in version 2.4 he automatically sticks a link back... 

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes Localizing images on your wordpress blog often times is a tedious task, but something you need to do if you want to avoid hotlinking images in your blog.  I hate hotlinking to images for several reasons.  The first and foremost reason is it is bad form and impolite if you don’t have permission.  The second thing is you have no idea when, if or how that file might change.  This is less of a problem these days since disk space is cheap and people are often using image hosting services such as flickr.  In the old days though it was not uncommon for perverse webmasters to put up pornographic pictures using the same title that was being hotlinked too.  I remember seeing several business meetings go awry from this and learned quickly just how bad this practice can be. Do I still hotlink even knowing the potential dangers?  The answer is yes and no.  I often times grab an image on the fly when I am posting, especially if I’m using Scribefire... 

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes In my quest to provide an every better experience for all my readers I have added a new feature in the way of the WP Link Directory. This handy plugin allows site owners to make use of the constant flow of internet traffic. Whether you are actively promoting your wordpress based site or not, this plugin also comes with some handy searchable identifiers. Like CommentLuv, NoFollow Free and KeywordLuv blogs using the WP Link Directory can seach out blogs using it by searching for “Powered by WP Link Directory“. If you don’t want potential spammers finding you that way their is the option of removing the text link. There is also the option of requiring a reciprocal link for sites of a designated page rank to increase your own backlinks and a nofollow option. Post Origin: Local News and Newspapers Click this link to get your own syndication code. Update:  Be advised Wordpress 2.7 beta 2 has problems displaying this plugin.  It works but the display... 

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes I was going through my Woopra stats not so long back when i noticed something very exciting and very unexpected.  My political blog, Brad’s Tiny World, was receiving a lot of traffic from CNN and within a few days of watching that incoming traffic I started noticing them coming from The Wall Street Journal.  When tracking down this traffic I found it had come in the form of a sweet little plugin I had accidentally left on when I was testing what did and didn’t work with the new theme tools and WordPress  2.6.  I had long known Sphere Related Content plugin existed, in fact the version I had in the plugin directory was a few versions out of date, but I never really expected much from it and as such never used it.  What a mistake that was. While the traffic generated was small, it was all relevant traffic and directed at specific stories.   To get those links I was citing and linking to stories on the major sites.  This was usually an... 

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes There were several old combinations that worked well together but since WordPress 2.3 came out many of them stopped working properly or stopped working altogether. Fear not there are replacements out there. Unlike many of the regurgitated idiot lists currently out there, everything I list will work in WordPress 2.5 the only version of the blog software you should be running. Ultimate Tag Warrior hasn’t been supported by the author since WordPress 2.3 came out. Many of its features and those of Bunny’s Technorati Tags, Jerome’s Keywords, and other tagging programs are easily replaced in better plugins. The All in One SEO Pack can even be replaced now. The new power plugin combination consists of Headspace2 and Simple Tags. Between these two plugins you can hand every task that you used to require half a dozen plugins and tweaks.  Read More →