Adsense users you have snail mail!

January 31, 2008 | 5 Responses

And expect a phone call? Google Adsense now requires phone verification and users must enter a pin number sent to them by good old fashioned snail mail. I just got off the phone with who I can only assume was Mrs. Google and she sounded quite pleased to hear the beeps of my dialing pad when I entered my verification number. Now all that is left is to wait for the pin number to come in the mail. It kind of makes me wonder what’s next, but as long as this gets my payments off of hold, I’m not one to complain.

This is said to be another way that Google can improve service and support for Adsense users. I also read recently that a domain must now be over 5 days old before it qualifies to make money from Adsense. This is Google’s attempt to weed out those who register domains for a five day grace period (offered by some registrars) to test out how profitable the domain can be and then dumping it if they don’t make enough. Read more about it in Bob Ritchie’s post about domain tasting.

Statistics updates and what they are good for

November 12, 2007 | 2 Responses

Analyzing stats isn’t something I’ve put a lot of consideration into. Mostly because I always always pleased with what I saw when I would check them. I’ve often checked my stats and said ‘Hey, thats neat’ when I should have been saying ‘Hey, thats neat. Now, how can I improve this?’

What is statistics tracking?

A traffic statistics update is a post made on a site or a blog that lists things like unique visitors pageviews, RSS subscription rates, bounce rates, and the like.

Furthermore, statistics like referrals, repeat visitors, hit counting and much more are made available through most major website traffic statistics trackers. Trackers will produce a report based on your visitors and what they are doing at your site. This report generally includes a lot of graphs and charts to visually demonstrate your stats. They are available on a monthly, weekly, daily and sometimes hourly basis, although the last three are only useful to sites with extremely high volumes of traffic.

Some of the more popular statistics analysis tools are:

• Mint - Mint is one of the most praised statistics analyzer around. Personally, I have had no experience with it, but a simple Google blog search will show you just how acclaimed this software is.
• Google Analytics - Google produces some very impressive reports with the trademark Google slickness. There are free and paid services available. It works by installing a small tracker code within your site’s source.
• Extreme Tracking - Extreme tracking is a much more bare bones analysis tool. Not as graphically pleasing as Mint or Google’s tools but definitely worth a look. Don’t let the website’s simplistic look fool you. It actually produces a quite robust analysis. Sign up to a free account on Extremetracking, install the ad code and go.

Many rely upon the statistics produced by cPanel. There are a few different options within cPanel and it is often bundled with the popular AwesomeStats tracker.Sites that statistics updates would work for:

• web/tech related sites
• personal blogs
• portfolio sites
• user driven/social media relative
• make money online sites
• dating sites

Sites that statistical updates wouldn’t work for:

In almost all of these cases there are some extents of statistical reporting that would be beneficial. Such as a Company site displaying their client base prominently on the front page. It communicates trust and reliability. People just generally don’t want to read about it regularly in your articles or blog posts.

• Niche sites
• Company sites
• News sites
• Entertainment/Media sites

Whether you plan to inform your readers how your traffic statistics are coming along or not, everyone can benefit from studying their website traffic. The best way to get more visitors is to look at the ones you have and what they are doing when they visit. Please choose one of the trackers listed here or find and share your own.

How to keep your coding skills from getting rusty

October 3, 2007 | 7 Responses

How many HTML elements can you name in five minutes?

Alright so it wasn’t my first try but I didn’t realize the timer started right away at first. I’m pretty ok with how I did. You really should try this HTML quiz. The answer might surprise you. I’m an old hand at HTML. I learned it, practiced and memorized elements for years, never even knowing about the other scripting languages (besides javascript) that were popping up everywhere.

On that note, I thought it was time for a post about keeping your coding skills sharp. This is especially important for us Wordpress users because we often don’t get into our code for months at a time.

• Hanging around tech support/tutorial forums is a great way to keep your coding skills from getting rusty. As people are generally going there to ask for help with their code that isn’t working. Not only do you get regular practice with troubleshooting codes, but you are making new friends and contacts who will likely visit your site (always link your site in profiles/sigs:)
• Handcode in notepad every once in a while. GUI coding software is fantastic. Especially when you are pressed for time. Having the editor finish your tags for you is always good for your sanity, but coding with this kind of software is like an open book test. Sure you still have to do the work, but you aren’t really honing your skills. Every now and then (if not always) put the blinders on and code out some stuff in notepad.
• Peak at the source code of other blogs you visit. This is mostly just for fun. But when you see something you like, right click and hit “view source” and see how it was done. Even if you think you’re sure. You may be surprised.

The irony of Flash

October 1, 2007 | 3 Responses

Flash animation began as a convenient and quick loading way of putting rich content into your site. In its’ glory days, many a band websites could be found in entirely flash versions that loaded slick, moving graphics and lots of cool slides, fades and other transitions.

Recently, Flash has become the topic of scrutiny for many web development experts. Some still say it is useful when done tastefully, others just plain hate it. Flash animations, especially lengthy loading intros, are fast becoming recognized as a visitor turn off. Especially with things like AJAX taking over in the department of page flashiness i.e. - dynamic animations without reloading the page. But since the advent of megasites like YouTube and other sites utilizing .FLA or .FLV players, many developers have taken a second look.

Flash is easily one of the best ways to deliver movies and music without offering direct download. The old fashioned way was to embed with Media Player or Quicktime, or even link direct to the files themselves, which would cause quicktime to fill the entire browser window. Now website owners can embed a player of their own design right into the pages of their site, with a relatively certain idea of what the end-user is going to see.

The video gallery right here at Needless Productions uses a flash player that loads movies quickly and easily. The funny thing about Flash is that what began as something that over saturated the web with entire flash websites that took days to load for some, seems to have found a home in the world of Audio Visual delivery online.

A great example of how accessible this technology has become is the Riva encoder and player. Riva encodes your video files to the FLV format, and comes with a player that you can embed on your site. I chose to store the Riva player singularly and dynamically embed each video as it is called by the browser using PHP, but it is primarily available as a stand alone player, or to be individually embedded into HTML pages.

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