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..

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..

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..

The Undersigned asked people to complete his short blogging survey. I decided to do it because 1) unlike most surveys, most of the questions made sense, and 2) I wanted to see how other people answered. So in the spirit of sharing, here is my answered survey: » Read the rest of the entry..

Lorelle challenged the blogging community recently. The goal: a treasure hunt for 100 WordPress-related topics. The rules were simple, find the best resource related to WordPress and the 100 topics listed below without linking to your own stuff, and trying not to use ‘official’ WordPress sources (e.g. codex, support forums, wiki, etc) [plus, don't use the same thing twice]. This took a lot of time, but its worth it. I learned a lot and now have a wonderful library of links to turn to. Enjoy!

1. 404 — Create a custom 404 for when your DB goes down
2. accessibility — a critique
3. ajax — Better than live ajax search
4. Akismet — one knock

» Read the rest of the entry..

Entrap: To lure into performing a previously or otherwise uncontemplated illegal act.

With the recent release of AntiLeech, an anti splog plugin for WordPress by Owen Winkler, there finally exists a real method of fighting back against content scraping thieves. AntiLeech is a plugin for WordPress that attempts to serve up fake content to known splogs. The plugin identifies splogs by either their User-Agents or IP address (user supplied). From the plugin page:

What does AntiLeech do? AntiLeech does not prevent the splogger bots from accessing your site. No, it does better than that. It produces a fake set of content especially for them that includes links back to your site (and mine, too, ok?) and sends it only to them.

AntiLeech also offer up the option of creating custom content to serve up only to splog bots. This option is how I now wildly progistcate on how to entrap would be splogers. By using AntiLeech, a splog will publish on their site a fake piece of content that you or I write. This content can be anything…. » Read the rest of the entry..