Archive for September, 2007

I blogged earlier about mygadgetinfo and the ad problem i had on it.. that was unacceptable and i have to hold my hands up and admit it was down to my lack of attention/sharpness… at the same time, i didn’t do anything wrong with regards targetting on Adbrite, but i still blame myself for not seeing the ads before anyone else..

I also said i don’t look after/add much content to the site…

I’ve decided to change all that.. the old format was handpicking videos and adding them as posts… that was easy for me, but not good for SEO or content or traffic…

So i figured i’ll change it into a more text based blog like this one, even if it means less updates as it will benefit the site down the line.. I’m also looking at the change in advertising on blogs and on many networks, it’s a requirement that all posts are text based or at least the majority of them.. so sponsored reviews are definitely something i have in mind for this blog, maybe 6 months down the line.

So i basically wiped everything off the domain… theme, content, database etc.. and re-installed wordpress from scratch. A fresh start.

It was less hassle than upgrading, believe me (spent about 2 hours trying to upgrade and fix databases).. i have backups of the old content, but i’ll probably not even bother uploading them now as i want to start from the start

So i’ll settle on a nice theme, get some ideas for posts and then blog about twice a week on the latest tech talk. A lot of people ask me about how to start a blog or what tips/tricks i use etc… so i’ll blog about MyGadgetInfo as I go along and what plugins/tricks i use to gain traffic/link love.

While browsing about (as i do) on various blogs i stumbled upon an article from ‘barry hand‘, basically saying there were porn ads showing on mygadgetinfo (one of my sites)…

My immediate reaction was WTF? Had it been hacked, had i somehow added porn ads from a network To be honest i don’t focus on the site too much and add one or two videos once or twice a week, so i don’t know how long these new ads had been on for..

I was pretty pissed to say the least when i found out the ads were in fact there.. in the sidebar. Ads through adbrite, no less.

Anyway, i immediately pull the ads. I later log on to adbrite and find out exactly what category/set up i’d placed the ads under..

Barry suggests the ads were mis-configured by myself.. not the case imo. Check out the screenshot below in which i’ve clearly selected ‘technology’ and listed technology related keywords I had selected ‘general’ as a second option, but i’d assumed that was ‘general’ technology as it would appear that way, not general as in all categories

I had the ads set to auto approve, which basically means adbrite or their robots decide what ads are suitable.. big mistake..

anyway, that’s the end of my relationship with adbrite

Ok, you know the deal by now, every week i add up all the A4 pages i receive at college…

• Pages this week: 37
• Average per day: 7.4

Total pages received to date: 112

So 3 weeks in and there’s no sign of the paper handouts drying up

112 pages would keep a fire going for about 5 minutes and that will keep me warm, so at least some good will come of them