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Archive for August, 2008
WP Plugin: Next of Kin
Last year I wrote a post titled “What will happen to your blog, if you die?“. Today someone posted a comment giving a link to the wp plugin called next of kin. I thought I should post about this plugin since it’s a pretty good solution for the above mentioned topic.
What the plugin does?
It’s a configurable plugin that monitors your own visits to your wordpress system, and will send you a warning email after a number of weeks (or whatever interval you put in) you didn’t login to your blog. If you fail to login to your blog even after that, the system will send a pre-configured email that was written by you beforehand with all the login details to your blog and other important information (e.g login to your adsense, advertiser details…etc) to whichever email you choose. Isn’t that something?!
First of all, God forbid that such thing happen to anyone. But if it does happen, especially to someone who is making quite a lot of money from blogging, and if he didn’t tell all the necessary information to his family — then that would be a very unfortunate thing! It would be a pity for his family to be left in the darkness, knowing nothing about what to do next.
So it’s better to be prepared. For we know for sure that the death will come, God says in the Quran “Everyone will taste death, then to Us you will be ultimately returned.” [Quran 29:57]. The only thing we do not know is, when it will come? And that is the point of this plugin — to be ready for this unexpected reality.
Plugin URL: http://tzafrir.net/nextofkin/
google maps
house on fire captured in google maps view here
Flowgram.com – making (ppt) presentation from live websites
Let’s say you want to have your own website. You tell freelance webdesigner to design a nice looking website, and you give him some websites as references.
Usually you would just pass him the URLs and tell him that you like this part of this particular website and that part of another website etc.
Better way is with Flowgram
So how Flowgram.com can improve this process? With flowgram you can add live pages to your presentation, make comments on the surface of those live websites, add photos, add powerpoints and even add RSS feeds. Once you are done with your presentation, you can just send him a link that looks something like this http://beta.flowgram.com/p/f4xhdtkgp7usnv
You can also use it to bookmark sites, like what I did on the above link. I have put together a list of wordpress related websites.
Flowgram is in Beta
Flowgram is still in beta, so you need to apply to get an invitation. I do have 10 invitations though, I can give them to the first 10 commenters for this post. I had subscribed a while ago, but it too many usability issues to mention it on the blog. Now it looks quite stable.
URL: beta.flowgram.com
Google and Olympics
Searched Google for Olympics, and this is what I got for a result (see screenshot below). And actually I was looking for the exact result — the latest medal count. Isn’t that the most interesting part of Olympics? ;) Google is quite smart…
Here is the Overall Medal Standings: http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml
nice keyboard
logitech’s dinovo wireless keyboard is now available for apple machines click here (windows version here)
Solution to hotlinking
Is there a real solution for hotlinking? If anyone knows the solution, please share with us all. Why I say “real” solution? Because there are some solutions which partially solve the problem of hotlinking but at the same time it causes other problems. But before we proceed further:
What is hotlinking
Hotlinking is a process of linking directly to someone else image/pictures (on their server), thus consuming their bandwidth. If you are the victim, it’s impact is minimal on your bandwidth if there is only few hotlinkinks to your images, however if there are hundreds of hotlinks then you will see that your bandwidth is being eaten by other websites.
Another problem is, sometimes you do not want others to display your images on their blog without your consent. So, in this case, hotlinking equals to stealing.
How do you stop Hotlinking?
There is a way to stop hotlinking through .htaccess. Htaccess code for blocking hotlinkers will look something like this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?adesblog.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|js)$ /images/nohotlink.png [NC,R,L]
Why the above code doesn’t solve the problem? It does, but it also blocks all the other legitimate readers of your blog from viewing your images. Since RSS readers (like google reader) aggregate your posts into their interface, the above htaccess code will think RSS readers are hotlinkers too, therefore they all will be blocked from displaying your images.
So, if you put the above code, then your readers will be reading only texts of your posts. As for the images, they will be replaced by one image that you specify, in the above case it’s “nohotlink.png“. So all the images of your blog will be replaced by “nohotlink.png” in the RSS readers. That’s not good. So, the ultimate question:
How to solve this problem of hotlinking? While blocking all hotlinkers and allowing all RSS readers?
If you know the answer / have the solution for this problem, do enlighten us! We all will be grateful.
Link (for generating htaccess code for hotlink protection):
http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/
how to hack feedburner
there is a way to inflate your feedburner rss counts, have a look at this video.
delicious 2.0
Seems like http://delicious.com had redesigned their site, looking good (see screenshot).
Delicious is my favorite bookmark site, been using it for years. If you are not using it yet, give it a try. I am sure you will like it.
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Free WP Theme: Branford Magazine Theme
Nice looking magazine theme for free (see screenshot to the left), view demo here. You can download the theme here.
I have put it on my shared folder as well, under WordPress Themes. In case the source goes offline, you can always download from my folder.
More: For a list of other great free and premium wp themes go to http://www.flowgram.com/p/f4xhdtkgp7usnv
Top Commenters: July 2008
Thank you to the top commenters (is it commenters or commentators?) for the month of July, they were: Rajaie AlKorani, Eva White, Blog for Beginners, Internet TV, PPC, Rice Blogger, SEOrious Results, Tech blog, Fawaz, Marketing Man and paulette.
Thanks guys for being part of AdesBlog community!
P.S Regarding the commenters vs commentators, i prefer commenters because it sounds more like a person who says his part on a particular post. But commentator gives me the impression that he/she is sitting there and giving comments all day long on every possible post ;) (just like the sports commentators. they comment on the whole match as well as on each individual player)
What you say? I don’t think there is a word commenter though. (But we can always create new word right?)
Utilizing your empty slots effectively
It’s pretty often that you see blogs displaying empty 125×125 ads with “advertise here” text on them. There is no problem displaying such ads, but there is a problem when you display the same banner on all 6 or 8 blocks. Why?
Well, the answer is two-fold: 
- It affects your branding strategies
It sends wrong message to your potential advertisers. Advertisers will think, if no one is advertising, why should I? There must be something wrong with the blog… since no one is interested to advertise in this blog.
- It affects your profitability
I don’t understand why you have to put “advertise here” banner on all 6 slots? For me it’s not even acceptable to put more than one. Putting on single spot is ok, because by doing that you are communicating to your potential advertisers “hey, your banner could be here!”. But putting the same “advertise here” ad on more than one spot is already “not good”.
Because you could have put some other ad on that same spot and make money! Why not put some affiliate banners instead? Why lose the money, at the same time send negative message to your potential advertisers?
Making Money with Affiliate Programs
When I do not have people advertising on my blog, I just put some affiliate banners that can bring me money. For example, the Revolution WordPress Theme banner on the right column brought me $174.95 for the month of July (see screenshot below).
So, does it make sense to have empty slots (even worse having more than one empty slots) on my blog? It doesn’t make any sense! Because I can make money by placing related ads on my blog. Yes related is the keyword. Don’t just put any ads, put something that is related to what you already blog about.
$174.95 is more than what I charge for the slot, I charge $150/month, so this particular ad from Revolution Theme is making pretty good money for me.
You also have to think in this manner: “If someone is willing to pay $150 a month for this spot to advertise on my blog, why I should have it empty? Empty means “zero”. This spot doesn’t deserve a zero money!“.
So, are you using your empty slots effectively? What are the other ways that you make money with your available spots?
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