Long promised updates are here
Well, the long promised updates for Verse-O-Matic and WP-Members are finally here. This brings both of these plugins up to date for use with WordPress 2.8.
Also, I am (finally) shifting the plugin hosting to wordpress.org. This will allow users to upgrade directly from their WordPress admin panel. I’ve had the plugins approved and the svn set up for quite a while, but somehow never got around to getting the updates uploaded. So, now they are there and you users can take full advantage.
The download links on the plugin pages have been updated to download the latest version as a .zip directly from wordpress.org, so if you download from this site or from the wordpress.org plugins area, you’ll have the latest version.
Verse-O-Matic 4.0 released
I have (FINALLY) completed an upgrade to the verse-o-matic plugin. This upgrade fixes the installation issues that were experienced from WP 2.5. Any deprecated actions, hooks, or filters have been updated.
I have only tested this on WP 2.8.4 so if you are using a version of WP earlier than 2.8, I suggest you upgrade your WP installation. This would not just for my plugin, but to protect yourself from any recently fixed security issues. WordPress has become quite popular and as a result, it has become a favorite target of hackers. Keeping your WP installation up to date will help protect you from security flaws.
Note: I am always happy to help with support if I can, but unless you are pointing out a bug in the program, I can’t always get to every issue. Paying clients and churches take priority.
Download Verse-O-Matic 4.0.0 here.
Optimizing Adsense
Are you using Google AdSense to monetize your blog only to find that the ads are not relevant to your content? If that is happening on your site, you are going to have a tough time making any money with AdSense. The best returns come when the ads actually fit with your content. But aren’t you at the mercy of the Googlebot to determine what your content is? Well, the answer to that question is both yes and no.
Googlebot will look at your content for relevant keywords and determine what ads should be served on your site. However, you can help the bot along with what content is relative and what content to ignore.
First, think about your content. You might need to modify your writing style a little bit to utilize keywords, and to avoid pronouns. The use of the word “it” really means nothing to Googlebot and other bots because they don’t know the “it” to which you are refering. Try to avoid pronouns.
Also, consider how much “extra” content is on your page beyond the post. Do you have a jam-packed sidebar with links and links and more links (coupled with a widget or three)? Do you have a lot of extraneous items on the page? These can throw off the bot as well since they are not necessarily relevant content.
And now, here is the trick you have all been waiting for: you can help Googlebot along to determine what content to consider for Google AdSense with a slight modification to your page markup. I am going to assume that you are a WordPress user, but this technique can be modified for other software, and is a complete snap if you are using straight-up HTML.
Google provides some markup (an HTML comment to be exact) that will tell the Googlebot where to look for content and where to stop looking. My suggestion is to put this markup into your WordPress template wrapping “The Loop.”
<!-- google_ad_section_start -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
Use that for any other key sections of content as well (although, I think for most applications, wrapping the Loop should cover the main content for the page). If you have some material that you want to make sure Googlebot ignores completely, you can wrap that with
<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
It may take some time for you to begin seeing changes (Googlebot will need to revisit), but this implementation should help you improve the relevancy of ads shown on your site and, hopefully, more clicks.
Good Luck!
Time to Rebuild
With so many things going on in my life for the past year, this particular site has suffered. I’ve tried to come back to update plugins and get things rolling again, but there were a number of obstacles in the way.
First, WordPress made some significant upgrades/changes. It seemed that every time I turned around, there was an update. Some of these changes definitely impacted my plugins.
Then there was work. I had a number of contracted projects that had to be completed. When people are paying for results, everything else has to get put to the back burner. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough cashflow from donations for plugins to drive that to the top of the list. (But, hey, I don’t blame people for that. When the plugins don’t work as advertised, as they didn’t due to changes in WP, then why would someone pay for that? But I digress.)
Lastly, my personal life, which I will not detail here, was in some upheval as well. But all of these things are now behind me and I am coming back with some renewed vigor. Part of this is driven by the fact that the neglect of this site has allowed by Google Pagerank to drop – it was as high as 5, which for a little personal project blog, I consider that to be pretty darn good. I need to rebuild the traffic on this site to what it once was.
In the coming days and weeks, you should see some clear changes. First, I’ll be updating all three of the plugins available here. I’ll be reorganizing content and at the same time, attempting to do that in such a way that we get appropriate forwards from previous links. I hate dead links so that will be addressed. I would like to also get any unrelated content moved to a more personal blog, so that will follow. Lastly, if I’m not dead at that point, I want to update the look/feel of the theme.
Since I also intend to expand the consulting end of the business, I will be including a section on how you can hire me to work on your project. I’ve had enough to keep me busy in the past, but I think I would like to expand on that.
Rebuilding my plugins
I will be rebuilding the Verse-O-Matic and the Affiliate Cloak (ClickBank) plugins. Around WP version 2.5 some changes were made that caused the installation of these plugins to not work correctly. Long story short, it centers around the installation of a database table that each of them use.
I will probably utilize the wp_options table rather than put in a new table. With that, I probably will include an option to completely uninstall the plugin, including emptying the values from the wp_options table. (Don’t you just hate it when plugins leave huge amounts of data in your database even after you’ve uninstalled them? I know I do.)
Anyway, this has been bugging me for some time, but I just have not had the time to work on the project. But I really want to get it fixed so these are useable plugins. Then I’ll get them moved over to WordPress.org.
![[Valid RSS]](/wp-images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
