Web Development Blog

Tonight was the Google Ad Manager Nebraska People Making Money Online meeting presented by Tigh and Jeremy at the new SMG offices here in Lincoln. It ended up being the best meeting that I’ve been to yet because only 5 of us were there (Jeremy, Tigh, Browie, some dude, and me)…it made for a nice small group. I’m not sure if people just couldn’t make it or if they couldn’t find Jeremy’s new digs. I have to admit, it is pretty hard to find if you don’t already know where it is.

Anyway, I learned the ins and outs of how to manage ad campaigns with Google Ad Manager. Really though, the interesting thing was learning how Jeremy and Tigh manage ads for shoemoney.com. They take a simple approach to ad management and offer different ad slots for 30 or 90 days for a flat fee. IMO, CPM or CPC is just too complex for a small operation to manage so it really makes sense for bloggers and small companies to manage their ads this way. The only thing that I really didn’t know how to do yet was to rotate ads in a group you just add the ad slots to the same placement. You could use this technique to rotate different adsense variations or show different ads in the same slot (just add multiple ads to the same slot).

The Ad Manager presentation was great but the best part of the meeting for me when it was was over and we just talked about a bunch of stuff for the next hour or so. We talked about Jeremy’s new project, fighters.com, his old project nextpimp.com and a lot of stuff he’s done between the two. I’m not going to share in detail what I learned because frankly my head still spinning a bit from all of it. I guess the biggest thing I learned was that traffic drives $$$ so if you are in development for the cash you’d better pick something that is going to generate a lot of traffic. That’s not really any kind of secret but it just really hit home for me tonight.

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Category: General | Comment Here (1) » | 315 views | Posted: June 27th 2008 01:03 am

After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.x one of my favorite features has to be the automatic plugin updating. But today, one DEVTRENCH reader alerted me that a certain download wasn’t working. Well, as it turns out, none of the downloads that use the wp-DownloadMonitor plugin were working. Seems like the new automatic upgrading system changes the way that plugins can be made and after doing the auto upgrade of this plugin it ERASES your old download files with no warning! Of course if you read the README file for wp-DownloadMonitor it says it all in there, but you don’t exactly get that information when clicking on upgrade in the Wordpress interface.

From the README file:

= Upgrade instructions from v2.0.6 =

Due to the new wordpress update system, the upload directory can no longer be within the plugin folder; wordpress deletes it. Therefore the plugin directory is now the uploads folder in the wp-content folder. ENSURE YOU MOVE DOWNLOADS HERE BEFORE UPGRADING! The plugin will convert the urls to the new directory on activation.

This is stupid, and I was lucky, because I did a backup before upgrading to WP 2.5.1. And BTW, it does not convert the urls - I had to do that manually in the database.

So, I think I’ll be a little more careful about using the automatic plugin updates from now on and be doing a backup first.

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Category: General | Comment Here (2) » | 421 views | Posted: June 4th 2008 08:38 am

About 6 weeks ago, when my darling little girl was born, I had this grand notion that I would quit drinking Mountain Dew. After all, my 3-or-4-can-a-day habit was getting kind of expensive with the skyrocketing prices of 24 packs and gas. And I figured that I was probably better off not drinking all of the bad stuff that makes Mountain Dew sooooo good (namely BVO, caffeine, and reports of benzene).

Instead of just laying back on the stuff, I decided to quit drinking pop all together. Well, that was a stupid idea. After a few days of bad headaches, I was pretty much ok until I had to get back to work at both my day job and my freelance activities. I mean, I just couldn’t stay up past 11:30pm without dozing off at my computer, and that’s with taking a nap! I just felt totally mellowed out, it was horrible.

I finally got my senses back and bought me a case when it went on sale ($4.98 here in Lincoln), and now I feel back to normal. The first night back to drinking I stayed up until 2:00am no problem, and last night I was up until 3 (bit tired today though, hmm, time to open up a new can). I never realized how much I depend on caffeine to be able to stay awake and just really feel normal, which is kind of weird, but that’s the way it is.

“Hello, my name is James, and I’m addicted to Mountain Dew.”

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Category: General | Comment Here (2) » | 548 views | Posted: May 28th 2008 08:49 am