Using Adsense with WordPress

I first started using Google Adsense sometime in 2003 or 2004. But using Adsense with WordPress isn’t completely straightforward. So here’s an easy, concise guide to using Adsense with WordPress, including within your content.

I’m not a full-time blogger. I’m a computer security analyst by day, and blog part time. I went to journalism school in the ’90s in hopes of landing a job that doesn’t exist anymore. Some of what I learned about printing magazines applies to modern blogging. Some of it is subtly different. I don’t need to make a ton of money blogging, but I don’t blog to lose money either. There are an awful lot of bad people with bad motives making a lot of money online off sketchy or downright dishonest content. I’m writing this so the good guys can learn what the bad guys know, and make a little money too.

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Remove the dates from WordPress URLs

Remove the dates from WordPress URLs

For months, I had a goal to remove the dates from WordPress URLs (or permalinks) on my site. It seems like everyone is doing this, but nobody explains how to do it simply or easily. So I’m going to share my method. Removing the dates from WordPress URLs is a surprisingly effective way to get more traffic.

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Why someone would hack a WordPress account

I wasn’t surprised people were trying to hack my blog. What surprised me were how many people were trying to hack my blog–there was a time when I probably had more hacking-related traffic than I had reader-related traffic.

If you have a WordPress blog, you’re probably in a similar situation.

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Fixing white screens in WordPress

I got the white screen of death last week, but it was odd—it only happened if I tried to edit posts that were in draft or scheduled status. Already-published content would edit fine. Here’s my experience fixing white screens in WordPress.

Clearing my cache helped temporarily, but the problem would come back as soon as I saved a post. I ended up doing two other things as well, and then the problem went away. I emptied my spam, which also greatly sped up the site, and I also deleted a mobile plugin that I was no longer using but was disabled. Disabled plugins can still affect behavior sometimes. Read more

All-in-One WP Security and Firewall plugin can be spectacular, but be careful

Over the weekend I installed the All-in-One WP Security and Firewall plugin to fix another issue–more on that tomorrow–and I ended up breaking my site. Hopefully I fixed it to a better state than it started in.

The lesson, as with many security tools, is to proceed with caution.

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Tweak your PHP memory settings to fix weird WordPress issues

Over time, I’ve been experiencing weird issues with my blog. Plugins worked, then stopped working. Or they’d just run really slow. Occasionally I’d get error messages saying the plugin ran out of memory, but frequently it would just do nothing.

I found a solution inside wp-config.php. Read more