Blogging Tips From Easton Ellsworth

I recently won a prize at David Airey’s prize giveaway. Although winning an actual physical item can be fun, this prize is more valuable because my blog will benefit from it. When my blog benefits, I benefit. And, hopefully all of you will benefit as well.

I received some very useful tips from Easton Ellsworth, and so far I have tried a few of them out. One suggestion was moving content in the sidebar up by removing the large e-mail subscription box. I placed the e-mail subscription form between the menu and RSS feed link above. Thank you for the suggestion, Easton. I actually like how it looks after seeing the change for a day! Maybe I will start to see more e-mail subscribers because it is higher on the page?

Another suggestion was regarding the large search box at the top right corner. I could utilize that space for advertisements, but I’m not sure where to put the search box. Maybe at the top of the sidebar? Below the image ad? I have previously considered replacing it with ad space, but I want to allow visitors to find the search box. Anyone have suggestions?

Because I don’t make a lot from Google Adsense, I would like to eventually replace it. Not necessarily the Google Ads below the menu in the header. I am trying out WidgetBucks, which replaced a 300×250 Google Image Ad. If it doesn’t work out, I can always try something else. Down the road, I eventually want to deal with advertisers directly, rather than going through a middleman who will take a percentage.

After talking with Easton on the phone, I am satisfied with how it went. I will be trying several of his tips which you, the readers, may start noticing in the coming weeks. Please let me know what you like, don’t like or any suggestions you may have. I know that I can’t keep everyone happy, but I do value your opinions!

Technorati Incoming Links Plugin

There is now an even easier fix than the one that I wrote about before, for the Incoming Links in WordPress. This is a plugin that is supposed to allow you to see the links from Technorati again.

I tested this out, but it didn’t work. I still see the same links as before. I’ve noticed a couple other 2.3 compatible plugins that don’t work with 2.3. At least they don’t appear to work for me. One would be the Recommended Tags.

With the database issues I’ve seen with WordPress because of the upgrade to 2.3, I’m tempted to do a clean install, because it seems as if the upgrade wasn’t very successful.

Anyway, if you want your Incoming Links fixed, download the plugin and hope it works!

Sometime in the near future I will do a clean install of WordPress 2.3.

My Desktop Computer Is Wasting My Time

If you have noticed the lack of blog entries from me, you can blame my computer.

I don’t know about anyone else, but my desktop computer wastes a lot of my time. Something goes wrong with the hardware and I have to figure out what is wrong. Is it the hard drive, the RAM, the cable, the motherboard?

On Friday, my computer crashed in the middle of working. I use my laptop and Remote Desktop Connection to access my desktop computer. My laptop can’t handle a lot of software running due to the lack of available memory, so I use RDC to use my desktop computer’s resources instead, with the convenience of sitting wherever I want to. While on the laptop, I noticed read/write errors just popping up and then the Internet disappeared (I use my Nintendo DS WiFi Dongle).

Anyway, there were a lot of read/write errors and Windows wouldn’t start up again, just show blue screens after trying to load. And I couldn’t read the blue screens because they would flash and the computer would restart. Trying to repair the hard drive didn’t work either. Nothing would work. I even tried installing Windows on another hard drive, but there were read/write errors with it. One try even had the setup telling me that there wasn’t enough space on the 80GB (empty) hard drive. That had to be a joke! It said I needed to remove some things from installing, because it required 2211958.7 MB! What!? (I have a picture to prove it.)

Just yesterday I tried removing RAM to see if any of the memory sticks were bad. I have 2.5 GB, and my computer has always been very picky about how they are put in there. Now I cannot even get all three of them to be happy in their original spots. My computer just beeps. So far, only the 512 MB one will go in just fine without me hearing beeps! If I want only 512 MB I will use the laptop!

I have even looked at the book for my motherboard for correct placement of the RAM, but the computer still doesn’t like it. I think when I had upgraded the RAM, everything had to be taken out (video card, etc) before it would take the RAM. How annoying huh?

My computer appears to work okay right now with just the 512 MB in there. But I’m not giving up. If I can only have 512 MB, my computer is dead to me! Over the weekend, I will probably try again.

Anyone else have more problems with desktops than with laptops?

Google Ads In the Header

I’m sure many of you will notice the different Google ads in the header. I decided to go with Google’s link unit instead of the larger text ads, because I wanted to move the content up.

The larger ads didn’t look that great there anyway. I usually don’t receive that many clicks in the header. So, I’m using the link unit as a test to see if maybe visitors are more likely to click on keywords related to content here, rather than a full ad.

If any of you think it looks worse than the larger ads or even better, please let me know by leaving a comment. Also, if you have any suggestions for making the link unit more appealing to visitors, that would be great!

Emergency Maintenance on the Server Tonight

My web host has sent an e-mail announcing that they will be performing an emergency maintenance on the server. This will occur between 9:30 p.m. EST and 11:00 p.m. EST, today.

Web/HTTP service may be affected and this maintenance will not affect your email.

Just thought I would notify you all about this.