So it’s a new year…have you forgotten anything?

Here’s a hint:

Ever see a site with a copyright statement 6 months out of date? Even big-shot corporate blogs make this mistake. But on a young, growing blog, it looks particularly bad.

Or perhaps you don’t have a copyright statement at all? Tsk tsk.

Why don’t we automate this, so we’ll never, ever have to think about it again? Here’s how to do it in WordPress:

1. Log in to WordPress, and go to Theme Editor.
2. Choose “footer.php”.
3. Delete your current copyright statement (if it exists), and insert the following code:&copy; 2008 – <?php echo date(Y); ?>…replacing “2008″ with the date you started your blog.
4. If you wish, put your name adjacent to the copyright, being sure not to disturb the php date tag. See mine below for an example.
5. Done.

Happy New Year! Anyone got a good detox recipe?

Another problem is Google’s “smart pricing.” Being smart priced means that your click-through rate (CTR) is low and the money you earn per click is divided by between 2 and 10. For example, if a click would normally earn you $1.00, with smart pricing it could earn you as little as $0.10. Painful, isn’t it? Happily, this solution displays your AdSense ads to search engine visitors only, which means more clicks and a higher CTR.

The solution.

1. Open the functions.php file in your theme.
2. Paste the following code in it:

   function scratch99_fromasearchengine(){
     $ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
     $SE = array('/search?', 'images.google.', 'web.info.com', 'search.', 'del.icio.us/search', 'soso.com', '/search/', '.yahoo.');
     foreach ($SE as $source) {
       if (strpos($ref,$source)!==false) return true;
     }
     return false;
   }

3. Once done, paste the following code anywhere in your template where you want your AdSense ads to appear. They’ll be displayed only to visitors coming from search engine results:

   if (function_exists('scratch99_fromasearchengine')) {
     if (scratch99_fromasearchengine()) {
       INSERT YOUR CODE HERE
     }
   }

Code explanation. This hack starts with the creation of a function called scratch99_fromasearchengine(). This function contains a $SE array variable in which you can specify search engines. You can easily add new search engines by adding new elements to the array.

The scratch99_fromasearchengine() then returns true if the visitor comes from one of the search engines containing the $SE array variable.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

If you’ve been here before, you’ll notice a major change in the look of this site. Yes, this blog has reached puberty.

After about a month of writing this and looking at it every day, I decided I had outgrown the old theme, Split Personality by Wordpress Diva. I still think she did a wonderful job on it, and I love the concept of a theme that’s split right down the middle. However, the limited screen real estate for the actual content became limiting, and felt a bit claustrophobic.

And so, after trying on about 15 other themes for size, we move on to Clean Home by Bryan Helmig of Mid Mo Web Design. I’ve made a few changes to his typography, substituting the oh-so-trendy Helvetica where he used the more classic-looking Georgia. Just to be even more trendy, I’ve reduced the letter-spacing, to give the headers that squeezed-together look. However, Bryan’s layout is intact, and I think it will serve this site well.

Thanks very much to Bryan for the theme, and I look forward to hearing your suggestions and/or feedback, positive or otherwise.

The reasoning behind this is that visitors could spam popular sites with comments just to get links back and improve their search engine rankings. Especially troublesome were people who would sign their comments with names that were obviously just Google keywords, such as “New Jersey air conditioning repair” or “Best mortgage rates”. Since most comment systems link the commenters name to their site, it was a cheap way for spammers to get some link juice for their sites. Usually the comments would be cut-and-paste jobs that added no value to the conversation (“Great job! Awesome post.”) and the culprits would leave them on hundreds of sites. The sole purpose was to gain backlinks, not to contribute anything.

And so the “nofollow” attribute was added as the default in blogging software. This attribute tells search engine spiders not to follow and index the link, thus removing the incentive to spam. And indeed it has worked. No incentive to spam = no spam. The free market does its job. Hooray!

However, some bloggers feel that if someone takes the time to contribute something of value, they deserve at least a “dofollow” link back. (Side note: technically there is no “dofollow” attribute. When you see references to “dofollow” or “yes-follow” links, it simply refers to the absence of the “nofollow” attribute).

The “dofollow” movement has been spreading around the blog world for a couple of years now. There are popular plug-ins which tell blogging software not to add the “nofollow” attribute to comments/trackbacks, and even search engines which specifically list only “dofollow” blogs. It’s all a great communal, open-source, happy joy-fest…except that the spammers are back. The cost of wanting to spread a little link love to your commenters? Loads of bogus comments to sift through and delete.

So what’s the middle way? Enter “dofollow trackbacks”. This plug-in for WordPress removes “nofollow” from trackbacks, but not from comments. Thus when someone cites your post in their blog, they receive a link back, but commenters still get “nofollow” links. There’s still no incentive to go around leaving worthless comments, but people who link to you automatically get something back.

I’m instituting it on this site as of now. It looks promising, but we’ll see how it goes, and I’ll report on the results at a later date. For now, count me with on the “You Trackback, I Follow” movement, and let the games begin.