I just updated the blog I maintain for my son over at www.jdwong.com . And I took some screenshots to create a short tutorial for you.

This tutorial will you how to add a customized “Adsense for Search” block on your WordPress Blog to add another channel where you can earn income.

What this means is that when someone uses the search box on your Wordpress blog, the results will be a Google search results and has Google Ads on the site. For example if someone searches for “baby” on the blog…

…the result is this..

Notice the results appear within a page in my blog with all the theme and styling elements that is consistent with the site.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:

Step 1: In your Adsense account, create a new “Adsense for Search”

Read more »

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Common Craft videos are becoming the standard way to bridge the gap between new Internet users and the seasoned professionals.

Since you’re at my blog, I think it’s appropriate to show you what blogging is all about with Common Crafts’s “Blogging in Plain English”.

So if you like this blog, subscribe!

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If you ever wondered what plugins I use on my WordPress blog, here are my top recommendations:

1. Akismet - Comes with the standard installation of WordPress for eliminating comment spam! A real must.
2. All In One SEO - allows you to create custom tags and permalink titles
3. Audio Player - allows you to add audio to your blog posts.
4. AYB Javascript in Posts - A plugin that allows javacript to be used in your Wordpress post.
5. Executable PHP Widget - A widget that allows PHP code to work in your sidebar.
6. Google XML Sitemaps - automatically creates and submits your blog sitemap to Google.
7. LightBox 2 - creates a lightbox effect on any linked images in your posts.
8. Recent Comments - a widget that displays a list of your most recent comments added on your blog
9. Recent Posts - a widget that displays a list of your most recent posts.
10. Related Posts - displays a list of related posts at the end of each blog post
11. SEO Friendly Images - automatically adds relevant tags or keywords to the “alt” tag of your blog images.
12. Sociable - allows your reader to quickly submit your post to major social bookmarking sites and social media sites.
13. Subscribe Remind - adds a reminder at the end of every posts to subscribe to your blog.
14. Subscribe to Comments - allows your blog commentators to leave an email so that they can be notified of new comments.
15. Top Commentators - A widget that displays a list of your top commentators.
16. Ultimate Google Analytics - inserts your Google Analytics tracking code in your entire blog. A real time saver.
17. Viper Video Quicktags - allow you to use a simple video tag to add YouTube videos to your posts instead of having to use the embed code. Also compatible with other popular video hosting/ sharing sites.
18. Wordpress.com Stats - provides detailed analytics of your blog
19. WordPress.com Popular Posts - Displays a list of your most popular Wordpress posts based on the statistics gathered from the Wordpress.com Stats plugin.
20. WP-Table - allows you to create a table in your posts. Additionally, the tables are editable, sortable and you can even create hyperlinks in you tale data.

I am always on the look out for cool plugins. If you have some cool plugins to recommend, please post a comment and tell us about it!

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I keep falling for it. Each time there is a Wordpress version update, I cannot resist upgrading. Mostly because I hate seeing the message that “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” message. It makes me feel as though my version is old.

However, each time I upgrade I end up spending an hour trying to fix the bugs that make Wordpress work EXACTLY the way I wanted it to work BEFORE I upgraded! Hmmmm! Something is wrong with this equation! I upgrade so I can spend an hour making my blog look exactly the way it was before I upgrade.

Anyway, if you have upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.1 do check that your RSS feeds working properly! What I discovered was that my RSS feed was completely empty even though I have been publishing posts. This was very troubling because I use FeedSmith to redirect all my feeds to Feedburner. If you go to my original feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php you will see that the feed reports ZERO posts on my blog despite all my posts!

The fix?

Well I discovered that my feed at www.brianwong.com/blog/feed still works. So this is what I had to do to get back online:

1. Disable the FeedSmith plugin
2. Edit my RSS source in Feedburner from www.brianwong.com/blog/rss2.php to www.brianwong.com/blog/feed

So the next time Wordpress comes up with the message ” “there’s a new version of Wordpress, please update!” will I upgrade??

Sigh! I guess I am a sucker for punishment, I think I would still do it.

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I publish my blog’s RSS feed through Feedburner. What this means is that Feedburner will reformat my generic RSS feed out of WordPress and make it more attractive and compatible with most RSS Readers. But instead of using Feedburner’s email subscribe function to allow my blog readers to have my posts delivered via email, I use Aweber’s Blog Broadcast feature instead.

A lot of people have asked how and why I use Aweber to publish my RSS Feed for my blog. First the “how”. It’s actually quite easy to do. I’ve attached a tutorial video on how to set this up below:

Here are the main reasons why I use Aweber instead of Feedburner’s generic email subscribe function:

1. With Aweber you can build your email mailing list and your blog readership at the same time.
2. You can send an email broadcast to your Aweber list subscribers anytime. You cannot send ad hoc email broadcasts with your Feedburner account.
3. You can customize the look and feel of your email blog broadcast with Aweber. If you are subscribed by email, you will notice that I have a custom header as well as other custom text that I included including custom links.
4. With Aweber, -you can review your email broadcast BEFORE sending to your subscribers. You can choose the day and time to send the email or to send manually or automatically. With Feedburner, you can only set the time to send the email broadcast and sometimes the email is sent if you accidentally publish a post.
5. The main reason for my switch to Awebe Blog Broadcast feature is that Aweber now automatically updates Feedburner’s reader count. So if you display the number of readers of your RSS feed, your Aweber subscribers are included in the count.

If you would like to test out Aweber’s Blog Broadcast feature – click here to sign up for a free trial account. Aweber is the most important marketing tool that I use and I thoroughly recommend it.

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