Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

Back In The Seat

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Regular readers will have noticed that posts have been pretty sparse over the last couple of months. For those wondering about the reason, we recently moved from China to Australia. This has been a big move for us and has meant that I’ve had almost no time for blogging.

(more…)

New WordPress Plugin - LocalCurrency

Monday, February 25th, 2008

I’ve been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks, mainly due to offline endeavours. However, I did find time to finish off a new WordPress plugin called LocalCurrency, that allows you to show currency values to your readers in their local currency.

For example: If a post contains 10 yuan, a user from Australia will see 10 yuan (AUD$1.53), while a US user will see 10 yuan (USD$1.39). (more…)

Chinese New Year - Introducing My New China Blog

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Happy Chinese New Year! The arrival of the Chinese New Year seems like a good time to announce my new blog at jobsinchina.com. Primarily a blog, for now, JobsInChina will cover issues related to living and working in China. (more…)

Australia Day, Aussie Bloggers Site And Darren Rowse

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Today is Australia Day, a national holiday celebrating our fine country, and an appropriate time for me to talk about a new community for Australian bloggers: Aussie Bloggers. (more…)

Shylock Adsense Plugin - Hack To Avoid Smart Pricing

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

In my last post, I talked about Adsense Smart Pricing and how blogs can avoid it by only showing ads to search engine visitors.

One option for WordPress is the Who Sees Ads plugin, which has the ability to do this. I prefer the Shylock Adsense plugin for the reasons given in my last post: automatic placement of ads; no need to enter placeholder in each post; easy to move ads from, say, top right to top left, etc.

The problem with Shylock Adsense is that although it can show ads on old posts only (mostly search engine traffic), there is no option to show ads only to search engine traffic. I really wanted this functionality, so I added a few lines of code to the plugin to enable it. In this post I explain how to do it. (more…)

How To Avoid Adsense Smart Pricing On Blogs

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

In my last post, I mentioned the danger Adsense Smart Pricing poses to blogs. Blogs are particularly vulnerable because most blogs don’t work well with Adsense. In this post, I examine the issue further and look at a couple of potential solutions for WordPress users - but there’s a twist in the tale. (more…)

The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Adsense - some love it, some hate it. It doesn’t work for all sites, but there’s no denying that on the right site, it can make a lot of money.

Most beginners don’t understand what type of site it works well on. They slap Adsense on their blog and expect the cash to come rolling in. Of course, it doesn’t. Why? Because Adsense doesn’t work well on their type of site.

In this article, I explain the underlying principle of Adsense and look at the attributes of sites that are successful with Adsense. (more…)

Free Ebook - How to Start a Business Blog

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

I’ve just read Michael Martine’s free ebook, How to Start a Business Blog.

I don’t buy ebooks. I normally don’t even read free ones. Mostly that’s because I don’t have much time. Its also because while most ebooks are decent, very few are great and some are just a waste of space.

How to Start a Business Blog is one of the few really worth reading. (more…)

UnMeme - The Controversial Marketer’s Blog Meme

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

Dane Morgan recently tagged me with the The Controversial Marketer’s Blog Meme, started by Sam Freedom’s Controversy Meme post. As Dane correctly predicted, I’m going to write an UnMeme instead of participating, as I have very limited time at the moment. (more…)

Top 100 Australian Blogs (50 With A Bullet)

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

I recently applied to have More Than Scratch The Surface considered for the Top 100 Australian Blogs Index. I was pleasantly surprised when it entered the index at position 50! (more…)

This is just a link to a project for my students. Please ignore.

WordPress Plugins by Stephen Cronin
DualFeeds: Offer both full text & summary feeds. Let your readers choose!
IFrameWidgets: Stop slow javascript widgets breaking your page layout!
FeedEntryHeader: Add a copyright statement to the TOP of your feed!
LocalCurrency: Show currency values to readers in their own currency!
KeywordLuv: Reward your commentators with keyword rich anchor text!