TechnoCloud

As regular readers will know I’ve been running an ad trial on the site to learn more about ad placement with a view to sharing the knowledge on here and with colleagues.

Having completed a short test of Google Adsense Link Units vs Ad Units, I’m going to follow up with one of the questions I raised about unit type over positioning.

As a result, there are two ad units between the post and the comments to see if the higher click through rates of the link units in that position would result in higher overall revenue using ad units.

I’ll admit that these two ads are more obtrusive than I would like, so I’ll look to change them once I’ve gathered enough data to share.

If you have your own experiences to share, please do so in the comments.

Wordpress plugin Askimet does a great job of catching spam catching over fifteen thousand comments since I installed it.

It allows me to keep comments open to all, saves me the time of administering the spam and spares my blushes from x-rated comments that many spammers use.

However, it’s not perfect. I’ve noticed a wave of what I’m calling ‘vanity spam’ - seemingly complimentary comments, such as ‘Wow… true insight. I didn’t know that… thank you for that.’ At first glance, these seem harmless, if a little naive, and worthy additions to the page.

On closer inspection these usually include a spam url in the website field for comments, despite the ‘no follow’ tag. The thinking is that if you automate these in their millions, then statistically enough people will click through and all at no real cost to the spammer. A familiar problem.

And if they are praising the blogger and the post, then there’s more of a chance that bloggers (an activity which may involve a touch of, ahem, vanity), will leave them in.

Askimet is doing a better job at catching these, but the problem is that these have started building up (I’ve left them on this post on wii cricket as an example) and I now have to spend time each day clearing these out.

As I’ve said before spam will find a way, and maybe blogging is getting the vanity spam it occasionally deserves!

Back in November, I started an experiment to improve the bounce rate on the blog through the related-posts plugin in Wordpress. As below, this typically displays three related posts based on tag, category, body and title.

I’ve been monitoring the changes in the bounce rate each month since the plugin was activated with encouraging results. This has seen the following improvement on a monthly basis over the initial level:

- November: improvement of 7%
- December: improvement of 10%
- January: improvement of 11%

Not huge, but a c.10% improvement in bounce rate for the addition of a simple free plugin is not to be sniffed at and shows the value of presenting contextual next steps to encourage users to delve more deeply into the content you have available.

In an attempt to improve the bounce rate on the blog, I’ve finally added a related posts plugin which exactly what it says on the tin. After some experimentation with the Wordpress plugins, I settled on the amusingly named ‘Yet another Related Posts Plugin‘ which is anything but yet another plugin.

With a simple install and a very handy options menu accessible via settings, it now displays up to five related posts at the bottom of individual posts (although unfortunately not by default on the category, monthly or homepage aggregation of posts).

It judges a related post by title, body, tag and category and you can even adjust the sensitivity through the ‘match threshold’ (I settled on 3).

If you can’t see it (see above brackets), then click on the post name. I’ll report back if the bounce rate improves.

Something strange is happening on one of my archived posts, Pimp my blog.

The majority of non-spam comments that I get on the site are relevant and informative, but for reasons unexplained that post has now attracted a request for help with SQL, a test message, a joke, a business article and even a comment on the randomness itself.

Given it doesn’t contain spam links I can only assume it’s developed into someone’s test page, but for what I’m less sure.

Theories and more random comments below please…

As explained in the previous post, I was considering moving back from a hosted version of Wordpress to the free version. This blog is not-for-profit (ad trial is a technology test) and I’ve had more hassle resolving hosting issues, than benefits with the flexibility hosting your own blog brings.

There is surprisingly little information on how to move back from hosted to free Wordpress on Google, so hopefully this will provide some guidance for those of us who are less technical.

Having gone through the process, ads on Wordpress.com were just too obtrusive to continue, but hopefully the experience will serve others well considering the same path.

Pros summary

- It’s free
- Wordpress’ reliable hosting to manage traffic spikes (thorn in my side on a cheap hosting deal)
- Many of the more popular widgets are still available (many aren’t…)
- Widgets are easier to setup on certain themes. Just use the edit box and drag and drop.
- Less hassle, just focus on the content

Cons summary

- You can’t include advertising. In fact, Wordpress reserve the right to include ads on your own content. After switching back and then changing PCs and IP addresses I was able to see what the adds look like. Although Wordpress claim they are infrequent, they were horribly obtrusive Google Adwords both at the top and the bottom of the article. Given part of my reason for moving back was having no need for advertising apart from a nice-to-have ad trial, this was unacceptable.
- Reduced number of extensions for those of us who like to test. The default stats in particular are basic.
- Reduced number of themes
- Reduced control of code
- Wordpress have the final say over your blog

Moving back to Wordpress.com summary

- Register with Wordpress.com (if you didn’t originally)
- Check that you have a recent version of the Wordpress software. Older versions do not include an ‘export’ option under manage. Instructions on this are here. Make sure you backup properly!
- Follow the instructions at ‘Manage’; ‘Export’
- Log into Wordpress.com and follow instructions at ‘Manage’; ‘Import’.
- Go to ‘Upgrades’; ‘Domains’. Either purchase your domain or follow instructions to map it to Wordpress.
- One common problem is confusion over how you purchase credits for the domain mapping. That’s because you can’t purchase credits, UNTIL you’ve mapped your domain. You are then prompted to purchase the 10 credits. Could be explained much more clearly. I was presented with the option to purchase the credits almost immediately after mapping my domain.
- Wait for the domain to propagate.
- The only problem was that I had to re-upload images.

Summary

On balance, the Wordpress advertising was just not acceptable for me - for others the lack of hosting charge may outweight this. I would have considered paying a modest opt-out charge for avoiding ads on my blog, but Wordpress have yet to make this available. At least the whole experience has got me to upgrade to the latest and much improved version of Wordpress with working trackbacks and search…

Disclaimer: this is my personal experience and may not work for you. Do your research and always backup.

After several hosting hiccups in the last few months, I have been considering moving back to the free version of Wordpress available at Wordpress.com.

(The hosting service will remain nameless for now as they have been responsive in fixing the problems, if only they’d prevent them happening…).

As you’ll see on the sidebar, I have been carrying out an advertising experiment first using Pubmatic and now just with Google Adsense which means that for the first time this blog features a strip of (hopefully discreet) ads. I’d like to keep the experiment going on the free Wordpress.com service, but reading the Wordpress.com FAQs it seems that Google Adsense/Adwords are not permitted.

That’s not entirely true, as those using the VIP service are allowed to include ads. They do of course pay $500/month for the privilege and only if they are deemed famous enough to be accepted into the VIP club. Wordpress themselves do also occassionally use their own Google Adsense on your blog.

My advice would be to those looking to make money via Wordpress blogging is to build up your audience using the free Wordpress blog, while forking out the c.$15 a year for the domain and $10 a year for the domain mapping service. Once your blog reaches sufficient scale to justify using an Adsense or equivalent service, then upgrade to a hosting package. The cheaper hosting packages do run the risk of going down should your blog get Slashdotted or Dugg, so it pays to do your research into your bandwidth allocations.

As you may notice, I recently added a Flickr feed to the sidebar of TechnoCloud. In part this was to experiment further with Wordpress plugins on a hosted blog, but it was also to give a wider audience to some of my Flickr photos after the original burst of activity died down.

To get a simple feed of thumbnail images to appear on the blog, I experimented with several of the Flickr plugins available on the Wordpress Plugin Directory, but was frustrated that either my version of Wordpress was not compatible, the plugin resulted in a code error or it wasn’t the functionality that I wanted. I won’t name names of the plugins, but needless to say it was a very frustrating evening messing around with code…

Equally frustrating was not spotting the Flickr badge tool buried in the Flickr site nav. Setting it up through the simple wizard was quick and intuitive and mercifully it worked first time.

If only I’d read a blog post like this, I could have saved myself a considerable amount of time…

MTV parent Viacom is allowing web users to embed videos from a number of MTV sites, including Pimp My Ride, into their web spaces. This comes at a time when Viacom requested the removal of 100k+ clips from YouTube.

While this move shows Viacom’s desire to control the source of their content on the web, they are prepared to let users consume it at least partly on their own terms, whether embedded on a blog or in their social networking space. With the content contained in their player, they can potentially place advertising around the player or within the content to monetise their content in this space.

Check out our example below to see it in action.

The lively TechCrunch UK and Ireland has been put ‘on hold’ with its equally lively editor Sam Sethi removed from his post, as TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington explains.

The gory details have been widely reported and centre around mixed feedback on social media conference Le Web 3, with organiser Loïc Le Meur objecting to Sam’s conference review, which spiralled into the subsequent fallout.

I hope that TechCrunch UK and Ireland can make a comeback as it was a valuable resource on start-ups and technology in the region.

Ironically enough, last night I attented the Mashup event, among whose sponsors were of course TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I certainly didn’t spot Sam at the event. Of concern is that TechCrunch UK and Ireland is scheduled to get involved in the organising of the Mashup events from next year, so I hope a solution can be found.

As “Oscar Wilde 2.0″ might have said, to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.