I have added a few plugins and tweaked a bit of the code on WeblogToolsCollection to keep things fresh and new. Here is the list.
WhoSeesAds: I have been meaning to wean out the Google AdSense ads for my regular visitors and Ozh’s plugin was the ticket. If you have not used it yet, you are missing out. It is one of the finest pieces of useful and well thought out code for WordPress bloggers. I have the ads set so they only show for posts older than 30 days or if you are not a regular visitor. I like the lack of distractive AdSense blocks. There is also a distinct benefit that I had not anticipated. The best paying AdSense block on this blog has also been the most obnoxious that regular readers have complained about. I can now display those ads to people that happen to stop by from search engines and on old posts. This has increased my click through rate almost five fold! (though that is not saying much, AdSense is pretty much useless on this blog and the revenue doesn’t even cover half my monthly server fees, let alone anything else). Thanks Ozh!
Easy Gravatars: Dougal released this plugin a few days ago and I was itching to install it. I muddled with his original code a little, played around with my own CSS, tweaked the next plugin to work with Gravatars and viola! Thanks Dougal! PS: If you do not know already, Gravatar is now owned by Automattic and response times for loading the Gravatars is minuscule. After I installed the plugin, I did not even have to check to see if I had a Gravatar. The system had already picked up my profile from WordPress.com. Do you have your own Gravatar yet?
Highlight Author Comment: I have always wanted a plugin that would somehow highlight comments from authors. When this plugin was in the daily list of updates, I knew I had to try it. I think it adds quite a bit to the conversation. I now have to tweak the CSS a little but that can wait (suggestions are welcome).
Well, I will see my avatar here for now 😀
I have no problem with your ads. It’s some money for you.
Btw, it’s seem the comment field is become so small, just about 4 line with IE7 (don’t say switch to Firefox– I have couple of reasons agiant it).
Well, this may sound kind of funny, since I don’t think of myself as a regular reader, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen your AdSense ads show up when I’ve been looking at the site! Not once!
And, in a barely related note, would you mind telling us where you do make decent money on ad revenue? Obviously, you’ve experimented with more than one ad system, so I’d *love* to see a review of the ones you’ve used. If they allow that. 😉
Network Geek: I am in the process of reviewing all the ad networks that I have used. The first one was the review of Project Wonderful. Some more are forthcoming. As a side note, it is difficult to find good and profitable advertising for blogs, period.
I love the plugins you highlight here and my one stop everyday! Although I am not sure if I have ever left a comment before I needed to see what avatar shows up here! 🙂 Keep up the great work!
Mark: Did you notice that with Easy Gravatars, you also get gravatar icons in the admin screen when reviewing comments? Bonus! 😉
nice update Mark. I am loving Gravatar even more after the take over by Automattic
Dougal: I did not notice that plugin but I am not sure I want that bonus. 🙂
Lester: Thanks! Gravatar is pretty cool, I tried MyBlogLog for a while but I like this better.
Mark – did you see my no adverts for friends plugin that does something similar to Ozh’s plugin, but in a more basic fashion. I blogged about it in my post, Friends don’t let friends see adverts. It also works with WP-Cache which was a requirement for my site!
Donncha: I looked at yours after I installed Ozh’s but I am not running Wp-Cache. I do have it ready in case I need it. 🙂
So far, the only ads for money I’ve found that gives decent, but still sporadic, is WidgetBucks. $25 guaranteed, just for signing up, and payout after $45.
I need to get the highlight author comments one 🙂 But the new tweaks look good.
To be honest, I’m contemplating getting rid of my ad blocks altogether. My site would certainly load twice as fast — because AdSense seems to bork that quite a bit. AdSense isn’t yielding anything substantive (if anything) for me as well, which is why I’ll either eliminate the blocks — or find alternatives.
Thank god for the author highlight comment. I have been looking around for something like this for ages. The closest thing to this plugin is adding code that is a couple years old to your blog. Awesome find.
One mod you may want to make to the Highlight Author Comments plugin is to use strtolower in the comparison. I ran into that on my blog and doing a case-insensitive comparison fixed the problem. I wrote about this in my post, Highlight Author Comments – WordPress Plugin Review. I also blogged about Easy Gravatars – great plugin – in my post, Easy Gravatars.
There have been some terrific plugins posted lately. Thanks for bringing many of them to light.
David
Easy Gravatars is fantastic. I have implemented it on my blog after failing to test other gravatar plugins. Great, this is great plugin.
The Highlight Author Comment plugin looks great, it should make reading long comment lists much easier.