I have tried numerous Google Adsense Plug-ins for WordPress downloaded from WordPress Plugin site and have had limited success. Most of the plug-ins will only display the Google Adsense on the post if the post is the only page loaded, but not on the home page.

Alas, my good friend Damien Riley informed me of the Plug-in he used. It is called “All in One Adsense and YPN” and it works beautifully. First of all it is very easy to setup and allows you to create any size Adsense Banner you want without having to create one on Google Adsense site first. You don’t need to know or copy/paste any of the HTML/Javascript code for an Adsense banner. This Plug-in will do it all for you.

Once you download the Plug-in from the site, unzip it and copy the folder and files to your WordPress / wp-content/plug-ins folder on your web server. Once that is done open up your WP-Admin and click on Plug-Ins. Select the All in One Adsense and YPN Plug-in and enable it.

Then you click on the Settings -> Adsense Link and you will see the Adsense Options Below.
Click on Photo for Larger View

First you enter your Adsense ID (this can be found on Google Adsense Website by clicking on My Account, then looking at the bottom at “Property Information”. You only enter the #, not the “ca-pub-” part.

Second you enter your Adsense Channel (if you are using a specific Channel for your ad). Channels are recommended so you can see which ads bring in revenue and perform better.

Next you select what ad type (I usually do Text and Image) but if you prefer text only, or image only select that.

Next Select your Corner Style, I always liked the “Slightly Rounded Corners” but select whatever you prefer.

Now select your Ad Size. If you don’t know what the pixels translate to onscreen, you can go to Google Ad Formats page to view sizes of ads.

Next set your colors, I always try to match my Google Ads to my color scheme of my website. Nothing is worse than having a black website with a big ugly white box for a Google Ad. Though if you have a White background website, white works fine.

Next you set the # of Ads to show per page. Remember you can only have 3 Google Ad’s on the same page, so if you have Google Ads in your sidebar (I have 2) I can’t have more than 1 additional set per page. If you only use 1 Google Ad in your sidebar, then you can have 2 set here, or if you have none in your sidebar you can have 3 set here.

Now you set the # of Ads to show per post, rarely do you want to show more than 1 ad per individual post, so I would always set this to one.

Ad Positioning is important and this Plug-in gives you much flexibility, Top Centered is preferred in my case, but some people like Bottom Left, or Bottom Center.

Finally you set the Add space between ad and text, this is how much of a gap you set between your post verbiage and the ad. This is another very useful, as you don’t want too little or too much of a space. Experiment to find the gap you like.

Next but not least you have the ability to ad custom code before or after the ad. This could be tag code, other ad code, verbiage or anything else you can think of.

Now you can choose where NOT to display these ads, for those who don’t like an ad on their homepage, you can check mark “homepage” and you won’t have an ad display on your homepage. You can also prevent ads from displaying on your static pages and your archive pages, which is also useful.

The last bit of options are useful as well.
You can check mark “Only let myself see the ads” for testing, so you can see the ads but not let your viewers see them yet.

You can also check mark so that the ads won’t display for you, so that only your viewers will see them. I don’t recommend this because you won’t know if they are working unless you can see what your reader see’s however.

So my fellow bloggers, I encourage everyone who wants to or already uses Google Adsense to give this Plug-in a try if you haven’t already. Let me know what you think.

-Dragon Blogger

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So I open my email and blog this morning to see that Dani from Mumsy [at] little-miss.org nominated Dragon Blogger for an “I Love Your Blog” award. This is like a blog award chain where you recognize your top favorite blogs and let them know with a link. You pass on this award and your nominated blogs should do the same.

There are some rules for this award:

1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the persons you’ve nominated.

I really like the idea of this award and I would like to list my seven friends and inspirations for my blogging below:

Damien Riley – Has helped me so much with my blogging journey, and his blogs all 3 of them are interesting and very well written.
Terry Raun – For running a great literature blog and hosting the WOOF contest which I think is a great idea
Jennifer Scott – For running A wonderful literature and poetry blog and inspiring me to create my own poetry blog.
Aronil – For running one of the most artistic and beautiful blogs I have ever seen.
Andy Bailey – For creating CommentLuv one of the greatest blog plug-ins, and I have been happy to test every version he has released over the past few months.
The Ad Master For running an excellent resource blog with tips and information for bloggers and SEO tips.
Ktolman – For Running one of the best Dungeons and Dragons blogs on the web, I always have a soft spot for DnD and even though I don’t play that much anymore, I still love reading articles, and posting new material.

-Dragon Blogger

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So, I have barely had my blog for three weeks and already I found another blog that copied one of my posts verbatim, but stripped out all links and mention of my site entirely.  This plagiarism was unexpected to me, which shows you how new and ignorant I am to the ways of blogging still.  I consulted my blogger mentor Damien Riley who pointed me to this website by Lorelle “What do you do when someone steals your content” which is an excellent web resource on how to go about trying to contact the thief and some tips you can use to help make your content copyrighted and protected.

This is a must read website in my opinion for all bloggers, and I wish I had found out about this site and been more informed prior to noticing I was violated.

Thank you Damien.

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