So far – this is what I have noticed “HALF-WAY” into my upgrades ..

* 2 blogs post new articles – but, when you “PUBLISH” .. you get the white screen. I’ve learned that if I just go into another tab or window .. the post is there. If I hit REFRESH .. the post will double post.

* 3 blogs will not accept new categories either in the write section itself, or under the categories in the Manage section

>> ALL FIVE BLOGS WERE UPGRADED 2.0.4 version blogs … prior to the upgrade to wordpress version 2.1

I think that is more than a coincidence and I will have to read up and find a solution. The biggest annoyance is that one of the white screen posts is my PetLvr blog – which has a lot of postings. All the other blogs do not have much new postings, but whatever. It’s broken – and I have to fix that today.

I did notice one other thing that was bugging me – but I have determined what plugin was causing the wierdness and once I deactivated it – it started to work fine. Goes to show that it takes a while to test these newly upgraded blogs!

>> And Speaking of Categories .. (well, I am now)

It’s pissing me off that there is no more defaulted category. In most cases, I post under a specific category for each blog and have set that as the default in my options. It’s not that I can’t go back in and edit the “uncategorized” post to a specific category. It’s that I have been adding the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to all new installations .. and now I have to go to options and reclassify the uncategorized tag (which may contain many different desired categories) .. and move into another category. It’s annoying. I think I saw a plugin somewhere that might fix? I’m not sure though ..// if anybody knows how to stop this.. please! Let me know! // Thanks.

HART

* The-Singers.com Interview Page

I have uploaded a 15-question “Self-Interview” document that can be downloaded over at The-Singers.com.

Anybody that prepares this and returns it back to me will be published in both The-Singers.com blog and the blog over at the MySpace.com/1800hart blog.

If that interests you .. download the document, complete the interview .. and email it back to me at .. hart (at) The-Singers (dot) com … or even copy/paste into a contact form such as this one:

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 1.5.2 to wordpress version 2.1

The upgrade of HARTandYVONNE.com/blog/ is now complete. This had the oldest plugins of all my sites, being it on version 1.5.2 and hardly being used, except for personal postings.

There was a problem converting the feed, thanks to old feedburner plugin version 1.0 versus plugin version 2.2 and, like another one of my blogs, had to use the .. /URL/blog/wp-rss2.php as the feed source, instead of /URL/blog/feed/ … but it’s working.

The Rumwall doesn’t work anymore.

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 2.0.5 to wordpress version 2.1

I have successfully upgraded 1800HART.com/blog/ to the latest 2.1 version of wordpress .. and it went well, without incident.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DIDN’T KNOW …

Despite having your wordpress or Feedburner settings to have Full Feed .. if you use the MORE button, your RSS Feed gets summarized. This is stupid .. really stupid to me. That’s because I have the EVERMORE plugin usually summarizing the front page for me automatically to make it more readable (in my mind) for those actually visiting my pages. However, that should not be the same for those NOT visiting my sites and accessing my feed via RSS.

Luckily .. there’s a wordpress plugin called .. FULL TEXT FEED .. it stops that bad behavior of WordPress 2.1 and kicks out the full feed of your text.

Highly recommended! HART-Approved!

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 2.0.4 to wordpress version 2.1

I have successfully updated the PetLvr.com/blog/ last night to the latest version of WordPress. There were some issues, because prior to installation I had 58 activated plugins. I was hoping to reduce it down to about 20-25 activated plugins, but I’ve noticed that it was just easier to re-activate the ones that I wasn’t sure about – than remove the code from the templates.

So .. there are still 41 activated plugins .. but, I intend to remove them one by one over time as I go along. I first want to be sure that there is nothing wrong with the existing lot of activated plugins.

Of all the blogs that I have .. this was the one with the biggest worry. You see, PetLvr is my “mega” site as I call it and have many sub-domains and domain aliases into play. When I first started blogging back in May 2005 .. rather than create new MySQL databases .. I just created new tables for the newly created blogs. As such .. a complete backup of this MySQL database is 320MB in size. It’s too large for email or the automated Cron jobs. And, I have never tried to restore the database.

Yet – I do have almost 2200 posts and combine those two = WORRY before I did the upgrade.

Of the previous plugins that did not work .. my biggest lost was the Drop Down Categories. Until I removed the code from the template and deactivate the plugin .. it practically ate my blog for breakfast!

Of my other plugins that I deliberately did NOT reactivate .. was wp-cache plugin. I hated the delay it was creating and didn’t want to be relying on a plugin for the cache and speeding up the action. Isn’t that one of the new benefits of this version 2.1? I also deactivated all the stats – which, I never look at because it takes too long to load up in my Dashboard anyway … not to mention that one of my tables in MySQL database that’s the biggest – is the search history ones. I intend to delete it in the short term incoming weeks.

I did add a few new plugins, that I have been using around the other upgraded blogs .. to see how they affect this blog. Once all the blogs are upgraded, I hope to standardize all of the plugins and remove the ones that I do not want. Currently – they still sit there, but not activated.

Overall, with these 2.1 upgrades .. I really hate what WordPress has done with the categories, linking, and blogroll functions .. I don’t care what anybody else says .. I do not believe it is for the “better”.

Another thing that I hate is that suddenly, all of my default Categories are never clicked anymore. That’s annoying to me. I have to go into the Options and reset it with the bookmarks.

I will say that I am still disappointed with the integrated Image control inside the new 2.1 version of wordpress .. but thankfully, IIMAGE BROWSER 1.5.1 exists and someone from WordPress should take note.

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 2.0.4 to wordpress version 2.1

I have now upgraded the HART-Oscope.com blog to the latest wordpress 2.1 version.

There were no bugs or discrepancies involved, as this was one of my “light” blogs with respect to the sheer number of activated plugins. All this blog is basically doing is aggregating horoscopes on a daily basis during the week.

If you are interested in seeing that in your Bloglines.com .. here’s the Feed for HART-Oscope

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 1.5.2 to wordpress version 2.1

I have successfully upgraded THIS http://HART-Empire.com blog from wordpress version 1.5.2 directly to the latest version 2.1 wordpress. When I say “successfully” .. I should qualify that I meant that I did not mistakenly destroy my database and all the posts appear to be intact!

Because this was one of the oldest blogs .. on version 1.5.2 .. there STILL EXISTS issues that I will clear up over the weekend or, determine if it really is a problem or not. These would include:

* I was using PHP-EXEC plugin and the ‘old’ formats for having PHP code on a few of the pages. Now, it’s upgraded to the EXEC-PHP plugin. Basically, with the latter plugin, the PHP code works. With former code, you had to add PHPCODE before and /PHPCODE after to make it work.

* For some reason, my Feedburner plugin was using the old format redirecting everything through a filename such as .. http://URL/feedburner_XXXXX . When I edited the feed in my http://Feedburner.com account .. I ran into a snag – I used http://HART-Empire.com/feed/ as the URL for the network feeds from member sites. What was unusual, is that I couldn’t rename it to http://HART-Empire.com/network-feeds/ and ended up having to delete it. Then, to make matters worse .. it seemed (not 100% sure on this) that my database was locking up the use of the http://HART-Empire.com/feed/ reference. I know this, because I safety copied the all of the code and after it wouldn’t work renaming the slug filename, I just deleted and tried to recreate.

Ultimately .. I am redirecting all my feed into the feedburner plugin via http://www.hart-empire.com/wp-rss2.php instead. I don’t use that file on any other sites. This could be an .htaccess issue – I’m not sure, but using that filename was the only way I could get any RSS Feed to work.

* The Code Auto Escape plugin definitely does not work with WP2.1 .. as such, the display and copy/paste ability of the code on our network code page is not working either. In fact, it’s not showing the code detail – it’s showing the end result of what the code creates!

>> All minor issues in my own mind, but important enough to fix and get this working to its all-glory-glory. But, I’ll just be doing some of that in the background and not posting anything after I fix one thing or another.

And Speaking of My FeedBurner Account

While I am in my feedburner account .. I’ve been going along over the 40 or so blogs that I have and deactivating the Summary Burn option to give Full Feed.

As you might have noticed in your Bloglines or RSS feed readers .. there are some feed issues with the new version 2.1 feeds. The [–more–] code seems to stop the feed. I don’t use the more quicktag, but have activated the EVERMORE plugin – which globally sets the more on every post. This way, the front page view isn’t forever long and people don’t have to scroll much.

But, the reading options in my wordpress is set to full feeds .. and now the feedburner will ALL show full feeds .. but every feed seems to be dropping off at the “Read More” section on the 2.1 upgraded blogs. I might have to deactivate this if I can’t figure out something – but, I am not alone out there. There already might be a solution in my Bloglines, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet!

And Speaking of Strange

I woke up today – and 1800HART.com/blog/ and 62-151.com/ blogs’ presentation themes were switched back to the default Kubrick theme. I have no idea how that happened, because I did not switch it back! I mean .. why would I? There’s too much code and goodies and blog stuff in the sidebars and footers.

If any of you reading this DID that .. *clap,clap,clap* but .. please tell me why?

I am now in the process of backing up this blog and its database and proceeding with a full upgrade to the latest wordpress version 2.1

Please note .. this blog is currently on 1.5.2 and special issues are involved with this blog – so, it might take a while ..

I apologize in advance for any inconvenience.

HART

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 2.0.4 to wordpress version 2.1

The upgrade of 62-151.com blog is now complete, and everything went without a hitch. I even remembered to deactivate the plugins first!

I am still accessing my cPanel and deleting the folders outright ../wp-admin/ and ../wp-includes/ but just overwriting the root files.

It just hit me (D’oh!) that I will have to go back later to all my blogs and find out if I’m deleting any “added” files in my /wp-includes/ or /wp-admin/ folders. For instance .. my wp-print plugin uses that… I think .. Hmmm what else?

Good think I make great backups before I upgrade! That’s 100% that I am sure I do without deviation.

* alternative title … CLOSE .. BUT NO CIGAR

I’ve been busy these last 2 weeks and have not been paying attention to my Google Adsense Ad earnings. Although, I should note that I did notice on a few occassions, when I felt guilty about not posting for a few days .. that I logged into my google adsense account and noticed that I was earning MORE per day than when I was posting a lot. Go Figure!

I was browsing my Bloglines in the wee hours last Monday morning when I read the term “Made For Adsense” .. as referred by some jerk named Robert Conway‘s post over at Ryan’s College-Startup blog. Now, if you don’t have that blog in your Bloglines, I suggest you add it right now – because, that blog is NOT one of those “Made For Adsense” sites!

Most of the “Made For Adsense” sites seem to be scraper sites, and Wikipedia describes them..

Made for AdSense

Some scraper sites are created for monetizing the site using advertising programs such as Google AdSense. In such case, they are called Made for AdSense sites or MFA. This is also a derogatory term used to refer to websites that have no redeeming value except to get web visitors to the website for the sole purpose of clicking on advertisements.

The problem with Made for AdSense sites is they are considered sites that are spamming search engines and diluting the search results by providing surfers with less than satisfactory search results. The scraped content is considered redundant to that which would be shown by the search engine under normal circumstances had no MFA website been found in the listings.

These types of websites are being eliminated in various search engines and sometimes show up as supplemental results instead of being displayed in the initial search results.

Legality

Because scraper sites take content from other sites without the permission of the original creators, they frequently violate copyright law. It is illegal to republish copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission. This applies regardless of whether the material was originally published on a blog, a mailing list, or any other less-formal medium, just as much as if it were commercially published…

I’ve always enjoyed watching the infrequent postings of the Fighting Splog blog as someone (who ever he is) tries to help Google catch all of the Sploggers out there! Just on the last post .. there was a google adsense account with 13692 splogs alone! Now, that’s splogging!

Now – let me be clear – ALL of my sites are being monetized, in some ways .. with google adsense, some other advertising, links to amazon etc. Currently, it’s not a business and just a hobby and I do hope to cover my costs in blogging and maintaining all of my sites and online access. And, I also hope that by Christmas I can afford to take my wife on a decent vacation from it. And, I also won’t lie .. I do secretly hope that somehow – I luck out and can do this full time or, at least earn revenues as IF I am working full time, but really working part time.

But – I am not a “Made For Adsense” scraper. Most of my sites that are actually earning me any sort of earnings right now it the PetLvr series of blogs. I’ve got almost 2500 posts in the archives! I hope that my site has everything that a reader will want to find in my sites .. but let’s face it, I can’t have everything. That’s one of the reasons I do include Google Ads on my site. If people are searching for a topic .. I like that contextually related ads can appear on my site and if they find what they are looking for .. great! And, if they can’t .. well I can get a FINDERS FEE for referring them to a site that perhaps can help them get the information that they are looking at.

So? Am I Making Money With Google Adsense?

It’s no secret that I felt that I got shafted by Technorati a year ago .. and I have been slowly recovering – traffic wise and google earnings wise. I think I was making headway back then.

Currently, if make over $100 per month .. Google will wire me money directly into my bank account. That is something that I hope will happen. It was a slow start, taking about 3 years to earn $10.00 but when I started blogging I have made progress. In the recent months, it’s been taking about 2 months of earnings before I can cross over that threshold $100 limit and expect a payment around the 23rd of the following month. Of course, that’s not on one site – that’s on 30 sites in the HART-Empire Network. It’s not that great of an accomplishment.

But – I came sooooooo close to being the first time ever breaking the $100 mark in one month – for January 2007. I earned $99.50 USD .. Awww.. I guess no more payment until March 23rd again. oh well!

I do keep stats of all my earnings from all my affiliates and sites, because (1) I am an accountant and (2) I need to report all of the earnings on my Income Tax Return and of course (3) I’m anal like that. So, I recapped it on excel and made it into a little graph to show you how I’ve been doing. BELIEVE ME .. this is not a bragging thing, or ego thing . because I know it’s laughable .. but, then again – I remember seeing others post information about their earnings that showed where they were at, and similar to where I’m at now .. and it was nice to know that I have learned two things:

* Yes – it takes a long time, but don’t worry because eventually your efforts will pay off over time
* Don’t go crazy trying to monetize but, if you don’t – you will miss opportunities by not monetizing

If I had my DRUTHERS .. I wish that google would pay me directly into my Paypal account, instead of wiring it into my bank account. At least, the money would be available to me. When the money goes into my bank account, it gets eaten alive by my mortgage payments, utility payments, common element payments, and other reckless abandonment of my finances. I guess I should probably check out that Google Checkout option they are promoting .. maybe because Paypal is a competitor is the reason they don’t do that now.

Here are the graphics

Final Thoughts

Just talking out loud .. you know .. creating MORE archives and keeping the wheel spinning 😀

Actually .. to earn $100 per month, I need to earn $3.33 or so per day. I can tell you (although, if you are still reading this and have your own fascination with potential google adsense earnings) that for some strange reason I get great joys in watching the days that I earn close to $5.00 per day. I think that the highest daily earning that I ever made was back in Feb/2006 and it was something like $9.80 .. I remember actually clicking REFRESH up until 2am that morning wondering if I were to hit that elusive $10 per day. You see .. this was the magic number that I was hoping to be able to earn in 2006 and use that $3,650 to take my wife on a great vacation! Naturally, I had to revise that wish to be that I would like to have SAVED EARNINGS in 2007 about $3,650 after my online expenses .. so ..

HART’s WORK IS NEVER DONE! First Ze Internet .. Zen Ze vorld!