Actually some what old news, but thought I would post it anyway.

Feb 27, 2008 Adult affiliate program, Mayors Money announced that it has been acquired by DeeCash. I don’t know if any one has been watching but DeeCash has been slowly buying up affiliate programs, last I remember was Jason and Alex, though there have been a number of other programs they added to their line up. Either they know what they are doing, have huge pockets or a credit line longer than John Holmes dick. From what I’ve seen, little changes with programs they snap up, but makes you wonder if there is a grand plan in the background. At the very least, they could have one central hub, pushing porn surfers into one big funnel from many different spouts. Not a bad position to be in.

In other news, Lion Dollars has closed it’s affiliate sign-up page. One reason they state is because they are revamping their program and moving to another system. Their new stance will be “invitation only”. Pretty bold move if you ask me, then again, as they state, it could help reduce fraud, maintain the programs integrity and I think in other words, lose less than desirable webmasters. I can’t really blame them. I would be curious though, how tough it will be to get in the program, how they will pick and choose. Or is it more a bluff?

The only drawback so far for Lion Dollars is that old link codes will only be good for six weeks after the new launch. I don’t know about you, but I think it sucks when programs change their link codes! Sadly it’s the webmaster that loses when they don’t change their codes.

Many folks would argue, saying it’s the content, not the layout that matters. While they are pretty much right, I am still a firm believer that how your website looks can make a big difference of how surfers perceive your business and in turn if they choose to come back, re-visit or make a purchase from your site.

Think about it for a minute. In the real world. Ya it’s still out there. Take two different stores. Store A is beautiful, decorated perfectly, clean and professional looking. Store B is drab, dimmly light and looks like it was decorated back in the 1970’s. With content (merchandise) and prices the same, which store would you be more likely to do business with?

Why should it be any different with a website?

I’ve been really getting into Wordpress lately, probably because it’s such an incredible blogging platform. I’m know it’s not the best available, but I’m just slinging porn, not building an corporate empire, well maybe a porn empire..:)

What I’ve come to learn is that messing with your Wordpress is not that hard. If you look at the code, it really just many php snippets, or php script calls. I am currently working on a new blog and I didn’t like how the Tag Cloud looked in the Tag cloud widget, because of the template of course.

So instead of trying to change all kinds of CSS code with all kinds of trial and error, I found the code to call the tag cloud itself. It’s as easy as going to Wordpress.org and searching. Found it in the second post. It’s as simple as this:

<?php if ( function_exists('wp_tag_cloud') ) : ?>

<?php wp_tag_cloud('smallest=8&largest=22'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

You can see it in action here: Blowjobs and Handjob The site might still be in the process.

My template had a little intro paragraph at the top of the sidebar. I just pasted that code in to my theme page for that paragraph and there is was, my tag cloud looking much better and actually in a better position. Of course I had to add a couple <br>’s to get it spaced right, though I could have done it with CSS, I was being lazy.:)

Another example. Say on your index page you want your post tags to show under each post, some theme’s are not set up for that, usually you can just paste the php tag code and your set.

Naturally you can not just paste code any where, some times it won’t work with the theme your using, or format right. It takes a little trial and error.

In reality, if you were good at CSS you could make your own templates, totally unique, just by pasting the proper php code. Look at the pages for your blog, there really is not a ton of code there, it’s all in the backend of Wordpress.

I still remember when Google was nothing more than a college kid project. When they were nothing than a small blip on the radar. Amazing how far they have come, though it’s not surprising really. They did it right and they’ve done it well.

I believe one of the reasons they have jumped past th competition is the fact that they embraced everyone, including advertisers and webmasters. Look at Yahoo, they pretty much blew off webmasters when they started charging for adding sites, not to mention there was no guarantee you’d be listed. The fact that charged $600 a site for adult sites was just plain stupid. I still can’t believe they didn’t get sued. My opinion is that it left a bad taste in the mouth of a good segment of surfers, webmasters are surfers too.  Surfers who might be happy to recommend a new but friendly search engine.

How many tools do the other ad networks provide for their advertisors? What about better pricing? Better pricing that brings in a larger number of the little guys.

Not only does Google offer great advertising tools for their webmasters, they also are happy and willing to help your business do even better with Anaylitics and Website Optimizer. Have you use either? Shame on you! To sweeten the pot, they give it all away for free! What better way to get folks using your services then to give them away?

Every step they seemed to go and offer more than the competition. Funny how the other e-mails services are now offering much larger e-mail boxes, only AFTER Google did it first.

Much can be learned from how Google rose to power. What will you learn?

Have a question or problem with wordpress? You could use Google to try and find your answer, or you could do one better, ask the source! The Wordpress.org site is a mountain of everything Wordpress. It surprises me how many people don’t use it or even think about it. I can’t think of anything I needed that I didn’t find on the site. Most likely some one has already asked the same question, or had the same problem as you. It’s community run, by volunteers, so give some time for an answer.

Over the years I read and posted on quite a few message boards, though I’ve really narrowed it down lately, as they can be real time demons.

One thing that amazes me is how many people talk as though they are experts and sadly giving out bad advice. Some might see me as to passionaite at times though I hope they don’t think i am some know-it-all or the likes, but what I post from from my experience, usually from trial and error. It comes from almost 10 years of being an adult webmaster. I don’t know everything and never will, nor do I want to.

Point of my post, be careful who you listen to. Hell, don’t listen to me if you don’t want to, not going to bother me. I just see so much bad advice given out and I know these people don’t know what the hell they are talking about, but I play nice. On the other hand there are so many webmasters that know what they are talking about and do give out some great advice. Just be careful. Look to the veterans that have something to show for their knowledge.

I see a number of people complain about comment spam on their wordpress blogs and it doesn’t need to be. With just a few plug-ins you can stop it completely, at least as of this writing and what’s worked for me. Of course it’s not 100% fool proof, but seems to be doing a good job so far.

Akismet - Outstanding spam protection plug-in. It’s come with Wordpress by default for some time, so you probably already have it. If not, go get it now! If you do have it, make sure it’s active.

Math Comment Spam Protection - this one I really like. It’s a plug-in for Wordpress that basically makes the comment, human or not, answer a math question, such as, “What is 3 + 5?”. So far it seems the bots haven’t caught on, plus you can change the question at any time. There is talk that bots can bypass it’, but it takes some human intervention before the bot is smart enough. Actually Ihad a blog that was starting to get some comment spam, Akismet was catching it, but I can be anal sometimes, I didn’t want to see any! Well, after installing the plug-in, I haven’t seen one spam. I doubt they just stopped. I’ll be honest this one takes a little work, you do need to paste some code into your theme comment file, but it’s not that hard. This blog is using the plug-in, check out a single post to see it in action.

Hope it helps…

Found this link some time back and thought I’d share it. It lists 100 free “quality” Wordpress themes. No reason to have an ugly blog these days. Check it out. Smashing Magazine Wordpress Theme List.

There are a few other links at the bottom of the post (which is long!), linking to some other great lists.

Enjoy..:)

I originally started this blog with Movable Type, which I have switched away from, long story.

I just noticed though, seems the post import from MT to WP did not work all to well, some posts are not complete. I have no idea why and no time to go back and see about fixing them all. So, gleam what you can, if you have a question, let me know.

I just realized I haven’t posted on this blog in over a year! Well no one was reading it anyways, least I don’t think so. Plus it was a MT blog before, which I am not crazy about any more. WP has so much more to offer, least in the way of plug-ins and themes. It amazes me when I search for themes, there are so many out there!

I never did promote this blog anyway, so wasn’t losing any readership.

Anyways…  it got me to thinking, where did the time go? For me, it seems to be flying by, way to fast. Part of it is the family and they are quite active, the rest is working to much, which I am going to change very soon. It’s in the progress..:)

So, I will be making a big effort to post her as often as possible. Will be a good place to rant and publish things I might not post on a board. Gotta play nice right? Although I am not one to kiss butt, some times it’s not that bad and business is business.