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

I have successfully updated The-Furniture-Site.com to the semi-latest version of wordpress 2.1

I say “semi-latest” because I did not bother to upgrade to past the 2.1 version that I have been upgrading all of the previous 27 of 40’ish blogs. I don’t see any point to convert to version 2.1.1 (which was hacked) or version 2.1.2 (that fixed the hack) … and any other interim upgrades to at leat the 2.2 version.

This is the first blog to completely have all the plugins loaded and activated as indicated on my previous post. I just nuked the old plugin folder and put in the new folder. I forgot, that some had certain permissions attached, but I easily learned that as I went along and was checking things a bit. I had to redo a few things, like the archives (I’m using a different plugin for that now), but all and all it went smoothly and without incident.

By the way .. I will be shifting the direction of this young blog from Furniture Sales and Products .. to Furniture Manufacturing and Woodworking .. as well as some Home Renovation and Interior Decorating articles.

Here are the plugins that I will be including in every one of my 40’ish blogs. I’ve gone through the lot and decided that these are the plugins that I can’t live without, and will be activating in every blog. All other plugins still located in my plugin folder will be deleted. I have taken the liberty of sorting them into sections that are useful to me, instead of alphabetical order or something like that .. and have added the latest versions that I am using. If you are using these plugins, you may want to check to see if you have the latest version!

SPAM CONTROL (4)

* Akismet 2.0
* Bad Behavior 2.0.10
* Spam Karma 2, 2.2 r3
* WP-Ban 1.10

FUNCTIONALITY AND ADMIN (4)

* EXEC-Php 3.0
* Iimage Browser 1.5.1
* WordPress Database Backup 2.0
* WP-Admin 2, 2.4 (I modified the Write Link)

OPERATIONAL, USEABILITY AND READABILITY (4)

* Audio Player 1.2.3
* Auto Hyperlink URLs 2.01
* Evermore 2.2
* WP-Print 2.10

COMMENTING AND CONTACT (3)

* Live Comment Preview 1.7
* PXS Mail Contact Form, modified with Akismet 2.6.1
* Subscribe To Comments 2.1

PROMOTIONAL AND S.E.O. RELATED (11)

* Autometa 0.8
* Auto Social Poster 1.8
* Digg This 1.0.2
* Frame Buster 1.0.4
* MoreMoney (AKA Buhonejo) 1.01
* Related Entries 2.12
* Related Entries For Feeds 2.12
* Related Searches 2.12
* Related Tags 2.12
* Share This 1.4
* Time Capsule 1.0.3

RSS AND FEED RELATED (4)

* Feedburner Feed Replacement 2.2
* FeedWordPress 1.981
* Full Text Feed 1.0.3
* WP-Cron 1.3

SITEMAPS, ARCHIVING, TAGGING (5)

* Dagon Design Sitemap Generator 2.72
* Google XML Sitemaps 3.0b6
* Google Sitemaps – UTW Tag Addon 1.0
* Smart Archives 1.6
* Ultimate Tag Warrior 3.14159265

STATISTICAL AND ANALYSIS (2)

* FireStats 1.1.5-stable
* Tantan WordPress Reports 0.71

ACTIVATED, BUT NOT IN ALL BLOGS (9)

* Ad Rotator 1.0
* Democracy 2.0.1
* Lazy Gallery 0.4
* Simple Forum 1.7
* Text-Link-Ads 2.0 for Feedvertising, if eligible, by specific blog
* Translator 1.1
* VideoPop 1.3.1
* WP-Amazon 2.0 beta 1.1
* Zap New Window 1.1

LOOKING AT THESE PLUGINS – BUT UNDECIDED AT THE MOMENT

* Recent Comments
* Recent Posts
* Top Posts
* Number of posts and comments in sidebar
* Admin Theme Preview
* Spell Checker / Word Count
* Under Construction / Temporarily unavailable
* Always watching for something new!

I have been experimenting with PHP includes

Currently, the network code in the sidebar is a javascript code. What that means, is that I have one data file on this server, and I can update it once and instantly all sidebars throughout the network is updated instantly as well. This is a huge savings in time – versus actually adding each site into the blogrolls of every site – because when I have to shuffle sites around the channels, or add new sites or remove old sites or change names to certain sites .. it can become tedious to do that in each individual site.

There is a downside though. I really do NOT get any link love from myself and all of my sites from each other. It annoys me to death at times, but .. it’s a slow death – because I keep forgetting to do anything about that!

If you view source, you would just see the javascript code. You don’t actually see the individual sites in the sidebar.

What I want is to have a PHP INCLUDE statement so it retrieves all of the same information and the real links appear in both the View Source, and for real in the search engines etc. There’s a problem though, for amateur PHP’obbyists and oblivious people like me .. because generally PHP programming and most servers will not allow PHP scripts to run scripts on other servers. Well, that’s how I understand it anyway.

I’ve created a base template file that contains only the network sites. I would like to create a way to GET THAT SCRIPT from some central location so I can update itself if there is a change. I have yet to figure it out, or get that working. I felt hopeful .. when I actually recalled Ryan of College-Startup casually suggesting an intriguing PHP statement in the comments that was very intriguing that I plan to investigate further.

Even if I couldn’t make that work .. it probably is possible! At least to the professional PHP programmers, and I could hire out to code something. But, in the meantime – I have created a central folder on my computer for all include statements and templates, and when there is an update – (and I’ve done this before) .. with my WS_FTP_LE program .. I load up every one of the 32 domains that I currently house blogs in and just browse to the folder on my hard drive and upload it to the template file, already defaulted in the program. That whole procedure takes me about 20 minutes working fast! I’ve even deleted all those other crappy FTP login sites and default sites in WS_FTP just so my domains show up and I just go down the list. So .. even if I don’t get it to actually update itself – (for now) – that is not a big deal.

So – Effective March 1, 2007 (so I thought) .. “I would work on getting this to work”!

Now .. all I needed to do was figure out the CSS and make it look cool, or not ugly anyway .. and not take up too enormously amount of valuable sidebar space .. plus somehow be able to fit in all types of templates around the network – or at least in my own sites. And I twiddled .. and I tweaked .. and I twaddled .. and tweaked some more .. and came into a perfect looking sidebar network code!

And then – I put them in a few sites… Each one is different…

Here is my existing code

This is the existing code I have been using, that is javascript. I like the the Larger Font Green over the text but wish the text was smaller.

Here is the best that I can come up with

I was first experimenting with a yellowish background that makes it highlighted, but I thought I would try to have a lighter yellow background and maybe some lines over the top and bottom of each channel to make it look good. Thanks to Mandarin Designs Cool Text Trips (yes .. my secret to CSS is out) .. I managed to find something comparable .. and similar to the following:

The new code is now active in this sidebar ..

Here is the code that creates that mess


/*
HART-Empire Network .. just playing
*/

These Are NOT Uniform

http://PapillonLvr.com/blog/
http://AndYouRetire.com
http://62-151.com
http://Battling-Addiction.com
And – http://HART-Empire.com >> over in sidebar!

See how they are all different? I don’t suppose anybody would want to help me standardize this code to look identical on every possible template out there? In each case and blog .. there are always overriding Style.css template commands melding with my codes and making the above look … *blahhh*

What do I think is wrong with this first working draft

* the outline is entire width of column
* too much white space before / after each section
* not sure about the hover or visited site colors
* I can’t seem to get Navy Blue site link colors
* I’d like really really small letters so there is no site names that takes up 2 lines. But, I’m able to shrink the font size .. but it’s not readable. There has to be a readable font that’s small, and not annoying.

In the meantime, I’ll leave the code and start adding it to a few more sites because I want to see if the linking really does make a difference.

* February 2007 is the first time I have broken $100.00 Google Adsense Earnings in one month

Last month, January 2007 .. I came close – and received $99.50 earnings.

So is this a good thing? // I think so! Because if I can maintain that level of earnings, at least there will be some payment coming in from Google (direct deposit) into my bank account around the 24th of each month. Most of my automatic debit payments occur in the last week and 1st of the month .. so, that helps a little.

BUT – keep in mind the following:

1) I’ve been blogging since May 31, 2005 with adsense on my blogs
2) I currently have over 30 domains with blogs mostly all having adsense on my blogs

You see, it’s not really a BIG success based on the above knowledge .. but I always keep in mind: I remember back in 2005 in the first 6 months – you know, when everybody who WAS making money would saying .. “Don’t worry .. It takes at least 6 months to make money” – and when I would be earning something like $10.00 per month OR LESS and was still as WooHoo! happy as I am today.