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2009 - how I come around in a full circle

Exactly 3 years ago this blog was started to explore the possibility of earning an income online. A few blogs was started and the exercise went into motion for more than half a year. At the peak of the exercise, the income generated was close to $400. Not enough to feed a family and definitely peanut compared to these guys.

Then other business beckoned and attention was distracted. The business didn’t went well but it happens that a startup found me and I joined them. The sites never led me to financial indepencence as hoped. Nevertheless they were just left running together with the ads. It was not too bad for pocket money. The income fluctuates a lot, some months it was below $50 and others close to $200.

Occasionally as time permits, I did a bit of updating here and there, upgraded the Wordpress software that runs this site and my theme. The feeling was nice to have extra revenue stream coming in without doing much. It doesn’t cost much to maintain a site either. A $5 a month hosting, paid 2 years in advance, and domain registration of $7/year kept it going and going…

Now here I am, without a job since the startup crashed with the global financial crisis, looking at 2009 before me. Once again I’m back here in a full circle to get the online revenue stream flowing.

That was the update. Let’s get on with the year and business.

Sneak preview of AdAdvantage R8.0

This blog is running the latest update to AdAdvantage. It is probably the most exciting update so far with many ideas that I long wanted to do accomplished.

Among the new additions:

  1. The span-block on the right has now a tab that can switches between blocks of information. Since WordPress now uses jquery, the necessary js files are already on the system. Many such ui features can be added.
    span-block
  2. The 3 columns footer finally made its appearance. The code had been hiding there for a long time. It was moved inside the #page container and renamed column (for the 33% width). This way you can even move it to the top if you want.
    column33-block
  3. The sitebar block right at the top can now be really close by click on the x. For a long time it was just a dummy.
    sitebar-block
  4. If you use Google custom search for Adsense, the search result can now be directed to a full-width no sidebar page. Before the result was squeezed into the content column which was too narrow, narrower than Google’s minimum width.
    To do this just create a page and set the page template to Wide Page (No Sidebars).
    Try the search below to see what I mean.
    search-page
  5. A few other css ugliness was also fixed. Notably the rollingarchive, the sidebars’ spacing and block spacing.

This is a big release (compared to before) and I’m really pleased with it. I had successfully added some jquery components and looking forward to add more js magic in the future.

I’m cleaning up the code and will upload the package soon.

Meanwhile,  let me know any suggestions, improvements, critics, bugs you have.

Playing with Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect allows a website to quickly add social features with any coding. It is really easy to put up the little gadget you see on the right - just copy 2 files and a piece of code to where it should appears.
If you have an OpenID, why not join up? There is nothing to use really. But it would be nice to put some names to the visitors after running this blog for 2 years.
The member gadget fits nicely into the 2-column spanning block of AdAdvantage. There are some ideas to revamp this block to better use the space. Will see how it goes.

WordPress 2.7, K2 and AdAdvantage update

I had updated this blog to WordPress 2.7 and the latest K2 nightly. While overall looks fine (the WordPress and K2 developers did a great job of backward compatibility), there are still seems to be some minor problem in K2, so I’m waiting for more upstream update before releasing a new package of AdAdvantage.

If you are intrepid, check out the code from the svn.

AdAdvantage R7.0 released

While upgrading my blogs to WordPress 2.5, I took the chance to sync the AdAdvantage scheme to the latest K2 svn version.

This version works fine with WordPress 2.5 (Please report any problem in the Issues page).

Go to the Google Code project page to download.

If you have problem with the Live Search or Rolling Archive giving the error message ‘No input file specified.’, look at this thread on the K2 forum.

This is what fixed it for me (not sure if this has any long term problem):

Go to Settings > Permalinks

If your setting is something like

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

remove the last / in the Custom Structure to look like this:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%

Some simple tests show that things are working, including the ajax search and rolling archive. Old links also are working.

Try if this works for you.



Column 1

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Column 2

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

Column 3

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.