The following review of the web hosting unleashed was conducted between March 5 and 8th, 2007. It is written in a semi-stream of consciousness kind of way.

Upon doing any review or critique, one must ask a simple question: what is the purpose of whatever it is to be reviewed. In this case, it is a website that is about web hosting: Web Hosting Unleashed “Research your hosting choice”. I may be biased (and I certainly don’t follow my own rules all the time) but, if you are selling a product or a service, or trying to attract visitors, I would think you would want whatever it is ‘you are about’ to be front and centre. » Read the rest of the entry..

This post was written to support the ‘Adsense Target‘ WordPress Plugin

Introduction:

This article provides a very brief overview of how contextual advertising works and then illustrates how a webmaster using section targeting can have more control over the advertisements served by Google Adsense. Specific recommendations for bloggers are made on how best to use ad section targeting code to maximize profit. » Read the rest of the entry..

If you’ve ever tried to use the popular image manager plugin or the digital fingerprint plugin at the same time as the immensely popular Adsense Deluxe plugin then you’ll have probably run across a perplexing problem: some buttons won’t show up in the post and page editor. Seemingly, Adsense Deluxe doesn’t play nice with the ButtonSnap Class Library created by Owen Winkler. ButtonSnap makes it relatively easy for plugin authors to insert customized buttons into the WordPress post and page editor regardless of the users editor preference (WYSIWYG vs rich editor). For an example of how this works see the Sawchuk Buttons plugin and the corresponding Tutorial on how to write your own button functions using ButtonSnap.

With hundreds of plugin writers and authors contributing to the WordPress community there is bound to be some conflicts between plugins. The method that the Adsense Deluxe plugin uses to create it’s button in the WordPress post and page editor stops any plugin which uses the ButtonSnap class library from producing it’s own button in the editor. The two just don’t work together.

In order to get around this, I suggest a simple workaround to the Adsense Deluxe plugin until a more suitable solution can be found: disable the part of Adsense deluxe plugin that produces the button in the post editor. Its easy: » Read the rest of the entry..

When I created the Sawchuk scheme for K2, I wanted a clean minimal theme that emphasized the content that I wrote. I wasn’t concerned with bells and whistles, I just wanted people to easily be able to read this website. WebDesignFromScratch has some great tips for emphasizing readability in webdesign. Those tips combined with a little common sense and style created the current look of Sawchuk.

However, the big problem with having different text styles available for use when writing posts is that you have to manually type out the class designations. For example, WordPress offers a blockquote button which theme authors can style using CSS. Sawchuk employs three different styles of blockquote each with their own background colour. In order to use these three different styles, the full class must be typed out like so: <blockquote class=”red”> Some text </blockquote>. The blockquote button alone isn’t enough to define the style (class=”red”) of the blockquote wanted.

This is where Owen’s ButtonSnap Class Library comes in. Using it, buttons can be added to the post editing screen for any class / span / element that a theme author / designer can imagine. Here is how its done: » Read the rest of the entry..

The ad below ran in Tennessee advocating the election of Republican not voting for the Democratic Candidate Ford. Watch the ad if you haven’t yet seen it.

A lot of Americans have problems with this ad because of ‘racist’ overtones. A lot of Canadians have a problem with this ad because it belittles our role in the international community. I have a problem with this ad because it belittles the role of our armed forces (and diplomatic forces) around the world. » Read the rest of the entry..

All bloggers detest spam and splogs. Spammers attempt to co-op your website into advertising for them while stealing your bandwidth, and splogs cut right to the chase by stealing your words and reposting them with their own ads. We’ve got plugins like Akismet, Spam-Karma that stop comment spam while other plugins like AntiLeech and Digital Fingerprint help you fight the rebologging splogs.

All these plugins are great at helping to defend your website from the nefarious types, but the greatest tools in the fight against splogs and spam are elbow grease and a discerning mind.

One thing I know most webmasters (including myself) don’t do enough of is sift through our weblogs. Website logs collected at the server level can tell us a myriad of things but most importantly, they can help us pinpoint who is stealing our bandwidth (via out of control robots and comment spammers) and who is stealing our content. A tiny bit of hard work, the ability to follow directions, some familiarity with excel, and a keen eye for the out of place is all you need to figure out who is stealing from you by looking at your logs. Let me show you. » Read the rest of the entry..

Today’s Globe and Mail article on the ouster of renegade MP Garth Turner got me a little PO’d. I don’t really care about Mr Turner’s ejection from the Conservative party (the official reason for his being fired from the current Government is that his personal website “violates caucus confidentiality”) — any party can do as they please.

What did cause me to ‘get to thinking’ was the actions of the Prime Ministers Office with respect to the media. According to the Globe and Mail, the Office of the Prime Minister refuses to talk to the media on Parliament Hill (where the federal Government sits in Canada) and orders elected representatives (MP’s) to not answer questions by the media or by constituents in their riding regarding certain specific topics. From the article, Toubles grip Tories (front page of the online edition) Thusday October 19, 2006: » Read the rest of the entry..

I have been running my recently released plugin, digital fingerprint, here at MaxPower for about 3 weeks. By week three, I discovered that my content is being ripped off (via the rss feed) and reposted on another site in a semi-abbreviated format complete with all the tags I have used. In effect, the splog is stealing all the keywords and SEO of every article I write. No doubt, this post will probably show up there too. » Read the rest of the entry..