Google AdSense is a wonderful way to add passive income to your blog. Recently I found a great plugin for WordPress which will insert AdSense ads into your blog posts. It's really slick and has nice options to make it work just the way you want.

http://wordpress-plugins.biggnuts.com/adsense-plugin/  

WordPress recently came out with a new version - it's up to 2.2 now. One of the great new features is Widgets! It allows you to arrange your sidebar items as you like, just drag and drop to sort them. Plus, you can get widgets that do stuff, like I don't know what (I haven't researched it much yet), but here's a widget site. This is one of the best improvements to WordPress, ever!

You must have WordPress 2.0 or above, or it comes with the newest version. Be careful if you want to upgrade to version 2.1 or above - some older web hosting computers may not meet the minimum requirements. We've had a few customers unable to upgrade to the latest and greatest so if you've been on the same web hosting for more than say 2 years, you'll want to check your versions of PHP and MySQL. Here's what the WordPress web site says about it:

WARNING: WordPress Versions 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, and 2.2 require PHP version 4.2 or greater, and MySQL version 4.0 or greater! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO UPGRADE if your server does not meet the minimum requirements!
 

We're happy to help you get widgets going - just contact us!

Time to upgrade again! That's one great thing about WordPress… bugs and security problems are fixed pretty quickly because it has a wonderful support community. The upgrade to 2.0.7 is recommended because it contains important security fixes. Also, they plan on releasing an upgrade to version 2.1 later this month. I would say upgrade to 2.0.7 and then let the little bugs get worked out of 2.1 before upgrading to that version.

Today I discovered a new feature of WordPress.org called Ideas , where you can go suggest improvements to WordPress. What would you like to see added to WordPress? Your dream just might come true.

It's easy to sell books and other products using your Amazon account. Just install one plugin for WordPress and away you go! After installing, I started looking around my office to see which books have been helpful to me. One of my favorites is Getting Things Done, by David Allen. His advice makes a lot of sense.

If you would like this nifty plugin for your copy of WordPress, feel free to contact us for installation.

Today I found a nice plugin for WordPress called wp_quotes. It's really simple to add to your blog, and includes a management page so you can easily add, edit and delete quotes. Very nice! This could be used for rotating testimonials, or any other little messages you would like to share with your visitors.

Today we went from WordPress 1.5.1 to 2.0.2 - the upgrade was very easy and nothing bad happened, so yaaay!! Along with the blog upgrade I installed a subscribers-only plugin, which means I'll be posting the Web Bytes newsletter here as well as sending it along with your backup file. The benefit of posting the newsletter here is that it will be searchable and will include the links to the featured resources. Back issues have been posted and are available for your viewing pleasure. Simply click on "Web Bytes" under Browse by Category.

Current backup customers, get your subscription here. You'll receive an email with your password so be sure to give the correct email address. After verifying your  backup subscription, I'll upgrade your status to Contributor so you can see the past issues of Web Bytes. This also gives you the opportunity to post to our blog - we welcome your  insight on issues of the day.

If you don't have a subscription to our backup service, please consider getting one.  The value of not losing your web site can far outweigh the small cost of getting the software.

Recently I've been working on static web pages and a new WordPress site, and it's made me realize the value of some WordPress features…

1. Plugins - If WordPress doesn't already do something, you can probably find a plugin that will. And if you can't, you can make one yourself, if you're so inclined. A plugin is programmed in PHP, which means you can make your site do just about anything you can imagine.
2. Site Design Template - Templates control the look and feel of your site. The nice part about templates is only having to change one file to update the whole site. No more updating 15 different pages with one little change to the menu. Oh, and if you use WordPress, that's not an issue any more, either!
3. Automatic Menu - You can set up a navigation system which automatically makes the menu based on the Pages in the system. You control the content and the order of the menu.
4. Permalinks - Search engine-friendly links are created automatically, using the title of your post or any text you specify. For example, if I want a page about wordpress, I make a page, title it "Wordpress" and then to access it, the address is websitecleanup.com/blog/wordpress.
5. Automatic Site Map - There are several plugins to make your site map maintenance-free… set it up once and it's always current. Both search engines and human visitors seem to appreciate site maps.
6. Safe Include - This is a plugin which lets you take a normal HTML web page from your site and make it appear in a particular spot within a page or blog posting. I'm sure there are MANY applications for this plugin. All ideas are welcome!

One piece of advice, though… replace the default editor as quickly as you can! The editor that comes with WordPress is not very good. We like EditorMonkey.

One thing you do have to be in WordPress (or any other blog system for that matter) is careful. Once you save a mistake in WordPress, you can't go back unless you have a backup. WordPress does come with a backup system, which you should use regularly to possibly recover from any editing mistakes you might make. Look under Manage, Backup in your WordPress admin.