With WordPress 2.2 comes the introduction of the post preview link to replace the in-line preview that used to appear whenever you saved a post.
To me, being able to preview my posts is an essential part of blogging. This most recent feature seems counter-productive to me because:
Stu’s posted 11 reasons why my blog might suck. I don’t think most apply (I’ll await his review of my blog before responding to the rest), but here’s my response to those that might.
Back in my university days, when Netscape was the latest web browser on the scene and the Pentium MMX was the power user’s processor of choice, UNIX was part of my everyday life. Since graduating, my chosen desktop operating system has been Windows of some variety. This is partly because it was the most readily available consumer desktop operating system and also because it served me well for the most part.
One method of generating revenue from a website that’s fast becoming one of my favourites is through the selling of on-site text links. It’s quick to add new websites into your portfolio and there’s a healthy supply of advertisers if you have what they want.
I was just in middle of listing one of my well-established content websites with TLA when I suddenly realised that there was no ad code for static .html suffixed web pages. I was hoping for a JavaScript solution, but since the code needs to write to the server file system a server-side platform was required.
A less than ideal workaround would have been to rename the relevant files to .php and amend all of the internal links to those pages. Unfortunately, what I wouldn’t be able to do is amend any inbound links from external sources so any links to specific .html pages could end up being broken. What I really needed was to be able to incorporate the TLA code without breaking the current website file structure.
Fortunately, an extra line in the websites .htaccess file allowed me to include PHP code in my static .html files as have them parsed as if they had a .php extension.
So, half an hour later, I’ve added another potential $100 a month income stream thanks to TLA and the following line in my .htaccess file.
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
Technorati Tags: Text Link Ads, TLA, PHP, .htaccess
Hotlinking is when people display your files on their websites by referring to them directly rather than taking a copy and hosting them on their own servers. As if using your files without permission wasn’t bad enough, hotlink thieves actually use your bandwidth too.
Hotlinkers could be stealing your bandwidth right now. Have a look through your servers logs and you might spot them.
Fortunately, there’s action you can take to prevent people from hotlinking to your files and some are more comical than others e.g. you could simply refuse to serve the file to any external websites or you could redirect the file request to another file.
