This was a bit of a surprise as that code hadn’t changed in years. Turns out, it was the browsers that had changed.

I had moved the theme browser from my site (to reduce server load) to my hosting account at Joyent a long time ago, and set it up on the domain managedtasks.com. The frameset page and the top frame were hosted on alexking.org, while the bottom frame - the theme viewer - was on managedtasks.com.

This combination stopped working because the browsers changed their cookie security settings. If you have your cookies set to “only accept cookies from sites I visit”, then your browser was rejecting the cookie from managedtasks.com (because the URL in your browser was alexking.org).

If this cookie wasn’t set, the proper theme was not displayed; hence the theme browser being broken .

I’ve moved it all onto managedtasks.com now, and everything appears to work again.

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I turned off things I thought would be too annoying: Audio Ads, False Message Ads, Shaky/Flashing Ads and Windows Dialog Ads. Nice that they offer this option.

I like the premise of Rubicon - seems quite interesting. I’ll leave the switch in place for a little while, then compare the results.

Please let me know if you see anything in the ads that bother you. So far I’m mostly just seeing Google AdSense being served by Rubicon.

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year in review

• January - I begin offering premium support and TechStars is announced. I start helping RedMonk in their site update efforts, PHP Tag Engine reaches 1.0, I release a variety of WordPress plugin updates and we upgrade the Use Tasks service.
• February - I get to release a plugin to the public that was built for a client (yay!), share some thoughts on comments and blog posts, continue talking about the alexking.org redesign and start talking about browser tab usage. I also was interviewed and decided I like Code Igniter.
• March - A quick weekend jaunt to Phoenix for some golf, then I take the plunge on an EVDO card. I start a tumblog and release a bunch more plugin updates (including a new one). Thought it hadn’t been announced yet, I also started working on AllThingsD.
• April - I start using GrandCentral (and now wonder how I did without it) and open the curtain a little about how I make policy decisions. AllThingsD launches and I start getting the itch for a new work set-up. FeedLounge decides to shut down.
• May - I further embrace my tumblog and restructure my SVN repositories. In perhaps the most significant move of the year, I hire Eric Miller to come on board with me.
• June - Finally haven found the right name, King Design becomes Crowd Favorite. I debate domain names then buy the .com, making the entire thing moot. I start giving Adobe a hard time (I’m not done yet) and decide to move from the Hive. I met with the ShareThis team for the first time.
• July - I cave to curiosity and get an iPhone and attend the first Startup Weekend. This site moved to a new server and while I mention briefly I was busy, the tell-tale sign of this is the low number of posts for the month.
• August - Crowd Favorite continues to grow as Mike Hostetler joins the team. I get a new phone and a new keyboard, both of which I am still satisfied with. Another month of light posting due to busy-ness.
• September - I manage to release a new WordPress plugin and talk a little about prioritizing with a small team. The news about ShareThis is finally public and I make another trip out to work with the team in Ohio.
• October - The Rockies go crazy and make it to the World Series, the iPhone’s influences spreads and I decide I still can’t make the switch to it. A much-needed vacation in Hawaii.
• November - Crowd Favorite takes a big step when Peter Gornell joins the team as a project manager. This frees a great deal of my time back up for more development work. I conclude a year of trying to eat healthier with good results then discover that Jack in the Box has arrived in Colorado.
• December - I have some crazy buzy days while Dougal is out interviewing with us, and he agrees to join the team. Several projects we were working on go live and Mike and Julie have a daughter.

For you statheads out there, I’ve continued the blog/site stats.¹ I guess I’ll need a table for this next year for it to remain ledgible.

• 404 blog posts (139 link blog posts), way down from the 556 blog posts (32 link blog posts) in 2007, 457 in 2005 and 538 in 2004
• 3,613 comments (276 mine), up from 2,919 comments (442 mine) in 2006, 2436 (437 mine) in 2005 and 2159 (486 mine) in 2004
• Avg post length 1,478 characters (1,709 excluding link blog posts), down from 1,679 characters (2,025 if you exclude link blog posts) in 2006, a 1,457 character average post length in 2005 and 1210 in 2004
• Total post length 597,200 characters, way down from 935,392 in 2006, 665,849 characters in 2005 and 650,980 in 2004

Like 2007, this was a very interesting year. Once again it was filled with enjoyable successes and interesting learning experiences. I look forward to the new challenges that are sure to come in 2008.

1. Run yours using these SQL queries - maybe I should make this a plugin. [back]

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It’s annoying to have to delete several pingbacks on every legitimate comment, but the really nasty side effect is that they behave as comment SPAM multipliers. When I get a single SPAM comment, I end up having to also delete 3-4 pingbacks from SPLOGS that harvested the SPAM comment (along with the original SPAM comment). :sigh:

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I got a comment today from someone bitching about them, which reminded me I had them on and made me realize the bad impression was not worth the few bucks a month they generated.

Done.

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Aloha.

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Yo-ho-ho!

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It's really rather simple, there are just a couple of places to make changes. Note: you must be using nice permalinks with an Apache web server for this to work as described below.

.htaccess File

Add this mod_rewrite rule in your .htaccess file:

UPDATE: Mark informs me that this has actually been built in to WP since 1.5 (meaning this step is not necessary) - who knew? Not me apparently.

Theme

Add an onsubmit handler to the form tag in the search form in your theme:

Then... you're done. Kinda anti-climactic, but it's a pretty simple little change.

One thing I've found handy about this is the ability to simply type:

to search my site.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, suggestions and improvements to this are welcome in the comments.

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They’ve created an “Alex King” psuedo-branded site for you to use at:

alexking.tradepub.com

From the information they sent me:

Complimentary one-year subscriptions to dozens of leading industry publications. No purchase is necessary. Publications are entirely FREE to those who qualify!

Browse from the extensive list of more than 500 titles currently offered, and be sure to check back often, as new titles are continually added to the site. No coupons, credit cards, or special codes are necessary.

So if you could use some free magazines, head on over and check it out. I get a nominal fee when someone signs up.

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I’ll update this post when the migration is complete.

UPDATE: This is the new server. Please let me know if anything doesn’t look right.

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Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

UPDATE 4:25pm MDT: alexking.org is done, please let me know if anything doesn’t seem right.

UPDATE 4:50pm MDT: crowdfavorite.net is done, please let me know if anything doesn’t seem right.

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Things that used to turn into short blog posts are often being distilled down to a couple sentences and sent to Twitter instead.

Of course, this results in fewer blog posts and more Twitter updates.

The posts that do find their way to the blog are either more in-depth pieces or things I specifically want to receive comments on (like this post).

Any other Twitterers out there experiencing/noticing the same thing?

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When I first launched alexking.org back in 2002, I didn’t plan to make any money from it or do any advertising on it. I remember friends telling me I should put up ads when I was slashdotted and I had little interest in doing so.

Much has changed since then, primarily the fact I no longer have a “day job” and this is no longer “stuff I do in my spare time”. Instead, this is “stuff I turn down paying work to do”. I have no expectations of getting fully compensated for the content, software and plugins I make freely available here, but if I can bring in a couple of bucks through ads and donations it helps me justify the time I spend on these projects.

I’ve tried a number of monetization approaches over the last 5 years, with varying degrees of success. I’ve basically viewed this as an experiment, and the results are quite interesting to me. Especially the response to the changes I’ve made recently in asking for donations. I’ve got details on this, including a spreadsheet of donations later in this post.

Google AdSense / Yahoo! Publisher Network

I’ve tried both Google AdSense and the Yahoo! Publisher Network for contextual ads. I even experimented for a while loading each half the time. Neither one was a major payday for me, but the basic results I’ve seen are:

• Yahoo! pays a little more.
• Google’s ads are more relevant.

I pretty much only use Google’s AdSense now because I prefer the relevance to the extra couple bucks.

I’ve mostly kept these ads in the sidebar where they aren’t too annoying, however a couple of months ago I started trying something new. I’ve started inserting a couple of ad blocks in blog the content itself if the visitor is using IE. This decision is based on the research that shows that IE users click on more ads than Firefox users. Also, since I never browse in IE, these inline ads don’t bother me.

Text Link Ads

I started selling text links through Text Link Ads¹ a little over a year ago. I like the service and have had good results with it. I generally make more per month from Text Link Ads than I do from all the other ad services combined.

Kontera In-Text Ads

I installed Kontera’s in-text ads at the end of last year and the response was pretty much a universal “we hate these”. I was really surprised at the reaction because I see these ads on lots of sites and they’d never bothered me.

I’ve since turned them off except for pages rendered from search engine hits. Basically, if you search for something and click a link to my site, you see these ads on the initial page you clicked through to. Subsequent page loads have these ads turned off.

I haven’t gotten any more complaints since I changed to this implementation. I still haven’t fully decided to keep these or not - I might turn them off at some point.

Amazon Sponsored Shopping

I added this to the sidebar during the holiday shopping season, and I don’t think anyone has ever used it. Or maybe it isn’t even configured right. I don’t really know why I’ve kept it on the page.

Text Links

While I use Text Link Ads to sell links on prominent pages on this site, I also offer text links on all other pages using my own system. These are fairly expensive and I haven’t sold many (perhaps I’ll drop the price a little), but it’s nice to be able refer link exchange requests to my link purchasing page.

Sponsorships

The Text Link Ads folks offered to sponsor alexking.org for a couple of months earlier this year, and for the first time I placed banner ads in the content areas of the pages themselves. I accepted this because I use their product myself and felt comfortable recommending it on my site.

I’m glad I experimented with this, but I’m also kind of glad to have the banners removed and the ads back in the sidebar.

I like the sponsorship idea if there is a good fit, so I might try this again in the future.

Donations

I’ve always accepted donations for the free software I make available here. My experience is that people generally don’t donate, especially when you take an understated approach to asking for the donation (a small button, text in a README, etc.).

A few months ago, I decided to try a little experiment. Whenever someone clicks a download link on the site, I show them a little donation form and ask that they consider donating $1 (or more if they like).

So far this has been working wonderfully. The average amount of each donation has predictably plummeted, but that has been more than offset by the increased frequency of donations. Haivng the donation request be more prominent seems to result in more donations.

I also get the occasional purchase from my wish list - most recently I received iWoz, which I quite look forward to reading.

Because I love it when other folks share information you aren’t normally privy to, I’ve created a public Google Spreadsheet with all of the donations I’ve received since launching the alexking.org back in 2002. Have fun with it.

Ad Location and Standards

While I may not like the way it looks, “in your face” advertising definitely seems to work much better than tucking the ads away in a sidebar. Putting the ads at the top of the page seems to work a little better than in a sidebar as well, but I don’t like the way it pushes the content down.

However, this is my personal web site, so I can choose to keep the ads somewhat out of the way instead of trying to squeeze every dime I can out of the site.

I also recently turned down sponsored posts and an opportunity to put a flash banner ad on my home page. Sure it probably would have made a few bucks, but I felt it would really detract from the overall site experience. There’s definitely a “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” side of how you choose to implement advertising on your site.

Conclusion

Very few people, especially self-employed people, have the luxury to spend their time on things that don’t generate any income. By finding ways to monetize my site, I’m able to spend more time working on it and on the projects I make available here. That results in more freely available stuff for you guys. I see it as a win-win.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Building alexking.org 2.0 series. I’ve enjoyed the feedback and discussion (both in the comments and via e-mail) it has sparked, and I hope that some of the information here has been useful to folks considering similar endeavors.

1. That link has a referrer ID in it, if you sign up I get a nice kickback. [back]

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I’ve covered a lot of the benefits to having your entire site in a single CMS earlier in this series, but let me quickly highlight them again here.

Flexibility

With the content completely separated from the presentation, you can easily make sweeping site-wide changes like updating your site design, adding/changing a link in the menu, etc., etc. You can also make sweeping changes to your data directly in the database.

Before this I was somewhat paralyzed by the sheer amount of content I had to convert in order to make these kind of changes. Now it’s not such a big deal.

Search

With all your content in a database, search becomes quite easy. As the content on your site grows, search becomes more and more important. You know, for the minority of people that actually try to look for something on their own.

Leverage Other’s Work and Give Back

I’ve build a slew of WordPress plugins while working on this site, most of which have been released already (and a few more need to be). I’ve used some plugins written by other folks as well. Everyone benefits from this.

Updating Content

Having your content easily editable through a browser is awesome. It doesn’t seem like SFTP would be a real barrier to site updates, but in reality it was for me. It’s a lot easier for me to keep my pages up to date now that they are all powered by WordPress.

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