Herself’s Webtools

I found that lots of people were hunting around the TimesToCome Mobile Blog for posts that weren’t easily findable. You can tell this by looking in your log files. If you see some of your top views are for http://yourblog.com/label/something then people aren’t finding posts. 

Make it easier for them. Add in an archive by subject post and make it easy to find.

I haven’t figured out how to fully automate it but in the meantime, I wrote a couple of PERL scripts, one for Wordpress and one for Blogger that fetch your RSS feed, pull out the links, sort them by subject and stick them in an HTML file. You can open the file in any editor and cut and paste it into a post. You’ll want to re-run it once a month or so and update your archive post.

Blogger archive building tool
Wordpress archive building tool

Directions are in each file, it’s pretty painless. In Wordpress you have to temporarily up your feed count. In both you just have to switch the temp url to your RSS url feed.

See also:
Installing PERL Modules

I’m running six blogs now and between working on them and trying to do new things it is hard to keep up with comments.

So I set up rss comment feeds for my blogs. Now I can check the rss feeds all in one spot and respond to questions and comments much quicker. Some rss tools will even notify you when there is a new item.

For Blogger blogs comment feeds are:
feed://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default/

or if you have your own domain
feed://yourdomain.com/feeds/comments/default/

For Wordpress blogs
feed://yourdomain.com/directoryOfYourBlog/comments/feed/

Find an rss reader you like, I found that GReader doesn’t always update the comments rss regularly. Safari does fine. There are several rss feed readers out there, just pick the one that works for you and put in all your blog comment feeds.

Keeping up with comments is a whole lot simpler this way.

I’ve received several emails asking if I’d like to run an ad on one of my blogs for $30. It set off my warning bells for several reasons. The offers were for blogs that receive very little traffic. The offers did not state if it was $30/day/week/month/year nor did it give any information about the ad format. All of these offers vanished when I requested more information.

Then I ran across a Google blog post on ad containing badware being a problem on Blogger. It didn’t take much digging to turn up a slew of more information.

( From InfoWorld ) Smarttracker.org — the Russian hacker group behind the attacks — is a prime example of the type of outfit carrying out such effective campaigns, Thompson said. In his case the infected PCs got stuck with password-thieving malware, but it could work the same way for botnet programs, adware, or nearly anything else. How Google badware ads work

I strongly recommend that if you are using advertising on your blog you use a trusted source like Google’s Adsense, Commission Junction, or Amazon and check your ads carefully and frequently.

I pulled all my ads except for text link ads. Amazon was supposed to be showing a book cover only. When I checked my site I found an animated ad for Amazon that only sometimes showed the book cover. I also pulled all but text Adsense ads after finding animated ads running on sites where I had allowed for image ads. Now I don’t let any but text ads on my sites since I can’t trust my advertisers not to animate the ads. I hate animated ads personally and avoid sites with them. I don’t wish my visitors to see them either.

If you use an unknown source be very sure you understand the code and test the ad to see what exactly happens. Trust but verify.

More Information:
Stop Badware
Google Webmaster Blog: Malware reviews via Webmaster Tools
Advertisers using badware: who are they?

I’ve been meaning to cover this for weeks and kept getting detoured. You can add You Tube videos to your Blogger posts, Wordpress posts, or just regular webpages and it is totally painless.

First sign up for a free You Tube account.
Add the video you wish to post to your favorites.
Go to My Account -> My Custom Players -> Create Custom Player
Answer the questions about how you want your personal You Tube Player to appear
Add the video
Copy and paste the code right into your post.

* Did you know you can take video on your mobile phone and send it straight to You Tube? How cool is that? I’ll have to go take some videos now.

See also: Blogging Video from your cell phone