Feed copyrights as protection against sploggers

1202476_peacekeeping_soldiersI’ve talked before about plugins that are supposed to prevent people splogging your WordPress blog, as this one has been splogged oh so many times. But the very best weapon remains setting your feed to excerpts only. Then sploggers can only conveniently grab the excerpt, and sploggers are notoriously lazy, so they just move on in search of an easier target. The problem is that visitors don’t like summary feeds. And ... READ MORE

The web developer’s toolbox

1024773_commercial_internet_databaseOver the years, I’ve collected quite a few online tools for web development. This is the monster list. I’ll be adding to it as I write new stuff that belongs on it. Really basic & newbie tools Check your site’s overall health from an SEO perspective. I refer to this site frequently – no tool is 100% complete, but this one is really helpful every time. Monitor your website for downtime, free – ... READ MORE

Make a leaderboard load after the content in WordPress

1160561_digital_dreamsIt’s ideal to have your content as close to the top of the source code as possible – maybe even crucial. I’ve run the same site both ways, run two sites simultaneously both ways, and every time the theme with the content closer to the top enjoys a boost from the SERPs. SE bots have short attention spans. You’ve got to grab them fast. The main problem with most themes is ... READ MORE

How to make Project Wonderful work for you

1269975_coins_in_handI posted a while back that Project Wonderful was pretty cool. I was using it on B2 Bomber, which is notoriously hard to monetize, and it was doing better than most ad networks I’ve tried. Then B2′s traffic tripled inside a month, and the PW earnings did not. People weren’t bidding each other up, like you’d expect. They were just enjoying the high amounts of traffic at ridiculously low prices. And ... READ MORE

5 years of web development tutorials

1105358_internetCan you believe Blue Mushrooms is five years old? It’s true. To celebrate, I’ve put together a list of tutorials I’ve found over the years which I still consider useful and valuable. As I write more stuff, I’ll add whatever’s worthy onto this list. The basics: Learn basic HTML, even though you don’t have to if you’re starting a site using a CMS. A basic grounding in HTML will make it so ... READ MORE

MorningFalls just isn’t serious

495025_dumb_waiterRecently, I tried to reopen my old account with MorningFalls, a CPM network. It didn’t work, so I emailed them. Nothing. I called them – no one was home, no way to leave a message. Then I called them again and finally spoke to someone who assured me they would port my old account to the new thingumbob by the end of the day. Nothing. Called again the next week and spoke ... READ MORE

Why I’m dumping AdBrite

Until recently, I had AdBrite running on a couple of my sites and was pleased with the results. Then I set up a new AdBrite slot on two of the sites – a leaderboard. I put the code into my website, and my website broke. Why? Because AdBrite sticks a 14px graphic at the end of the leaderboard that says “Your Ad Here.” This caused the main body of the ... READ MORE

WordPress 2.9 “missed schedule” future posts error

As always, the new version of WordPress works great on most servers, but not on some others. One common issue is scheduled posts failing to post. If you look in your Edit screen, they’ll say in orange “Missed Schedule.” You may be able to fix them on the fly by using Quick Edit (not regular edit – it doesn’t work!) and changing the status of the post to published. That ... READ MORE

How to merge blogs together

Maybe you will never, ever decide to merge the posts from one of your WordPress blogs into another. But if you do, as I once did, you might find this list of instructions helpful. Terminology check: “merging” blog refers to the blog that’s going to have all its posts moved into another one, and the one that’s receiving those posts is called the “merged” blog. Backup AT LEAST your databases. Nothing ... READ MORE

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