There is no way to stop the public from viewing your blog posts unless you set a password for each of them. The privacy settings only allow you to block search engines, but not normal visitors.

But on WordPress, when something is lacking, there is always a plugin to compensate it. For this purpose, you can try using Registered Users Only.

Upon installing, all URLs to your blog will be redirected to the login page. Only registered users are able to log in and view your blog posts. That being said, if you wish to keep your blog posts only to yourself and no one else, you should disable user registration (General Settings > Membership) on your blog.

There are other similar plugins, but I have only tried this one and it works great.

©2010 SheepTech

Making WordPress Blog Private

Visits increased by 7,000, pageviews increased by 8900. Alexa rank SheepTech at 183,775 (3 month), or 151,434 (1 month).

Money Made

Welcome BlogAds and ADSDAQ to SheepTech’s revenue source family.

AdSense: $525.37 (+$114.69)
Infolinks: $58.36 (+$0.48)
BlogAds: $51.80 (+$51.80)
ADSDAQ: $3.49 (+$3.49)
Private ads: $33.33 (+$0)

Total: $672.35 (+$170.46)

Uptime

99.96% uptime for August, well within HostGator’s 99.9% uptime guarantee.

©2010 SheepTech

SheepTech August10 Report Card

Finally, I have a chance to publish this overdue post.

Money Made

AdSense: $410.68 (+$30.26)
Infolinks: $57.88 (-$20.66)
Private ad: $33.33 (+$0)

Total: $501.89 (+$9.49)

Uptime

Uptime is as good as in June at 99.99%. Not bad at all for a $10/month shared hosting by Hostgator. RSS subscribers got a bump from ~300 to ~400, around 100 subscribers increase.

©2010 SheepTech

SheepTech July10 Report Card

Despite of the lack of new content (will write more actively after I have cleared my last examination in August), SheepTech continues to grow, setting yet another new record in June with 43,468 unique visitors. That’s a 19% increase from the previous month. Alexa ranking however declined to 217,000 despite the traffic increase. Hmm?

Money Made

Sold a sidebar widget at $100 for three months, which translate to roughly $33.33 per month. Both AdSense and Infolink see an increase in revenue.

AdSense: $380.42 (+$70.64)
Infolinks: $78.65 (+$30.83)
Private ad: $33.33 (+$33.33)

Total: $492.40 (+$134.80)

Uptime

HostGator did a very good job in June, with 99.99% uptime (just 2 minutes of downtime).

RSS subscribers got a boost from ~200 to ~300, even without any new content being posted. Puzzling yet pleasing.

©2010 SheepTech

SheepTech June10 Report Card

The month of May 2010 had set a new traffic record for SheepTech, with a 23% increase in unique visitors compare to last month’s—from 29,742 to 36,507. Pageviews are at just over 60,000, with Alexa ranking at 201,872.

Money Made

Thanks to the traffic increase, SheepTech’s revenue got a nice bump too. Figures in bracket shows the difference in earnings compared to the month before.

AdSense: $309.78 (+$76.19)
Infolinks: $47.82 (+8.49)

Total: $357.60 (+$84.68)

Uptime

Pingdom is showing 99.71% with 2 h, 10 m downtime. HostGator however claimed that there isn’t any downtime for the month when I emailed them for an uptime check.

I have put minimal work on the blog for the past weeks, busy working on bigger things in life, and I don’t see this ending anytime soon. Perhaps I’d be churning out new contents at a higher rate in another two or three months.

Thanks for reading

©2010 SheepTech

SheepTech May10 Report Card

Traffic

Visits down by 374 compared to last month, but pageviews are up by 1,867. Very minor changes. Alexa ranking at 210,727.

Money Made

I have added AdvertiseSpace as another source of revenue on top of Google AdSense and Infolinks. Figures in bracket shows the difference in earnings compared to the month before.

AdSense: $233.59 (+$18.38)
Infolinks: $39.33 (+$2.62)
AdvertiseSpace: $12.86 (+$12.86)

Total: $285.78 (+$33.86)

Uptime

Nothing to brag about for April’s uptime. There’s a total of 1 hour and 9 minutes of downtime, lowering the uptime percentage to 99.84%, 0.06% short of Hostgator’s 99.9% uptime guarantee.

To see how serious they are on this guarantee, I requested for the month’s refund and this is their response:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Host Gator. I have had an admin check the downtime on the server, and we are seeing the server as having been up for 99.96% of the time this month. 3rd party uptime monitors can not be used towards the uptime guarantee as outlined in the terms of service. However, seeing as how we aren’t even half way through the month yet, I’ve gone ahead and added a credit of $9.95 to your account. This credit will automatically be applied to your next invoice.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

Chances are I might have another month of free hosting from Hostgator in May, with 1 hour and 15 minutes of downtime in a single day (3rd of May), caused by problems in the datacenter. We will see.

But then of course, I’d definitely appreciate uptime more than the refund.

©2010 SheepTech

SheepTech April10 Report Card

If you’re a blogger, then you need to be able to create new content on a daily basis. When you are at home, it isn’t a big deal to run over to the computer every time inspiration strikes you. But what about when you are on the go? Here are a few essential mobile devices to help you become a better blogger.

1. Apple iPhone – The iPhone has many tools that can help you as a blogger. Probably the iPhone’s biggest strength is the vast size of the App Store. Whether you use WordPress or Blogger, you can manage your account right from your phone and quickly jot down important ideas.

2. Apple iPad – The iPad has all the benefits of an iPhone, but it is much easier to type on. You probably wouldn’t want to type more than a few sentences on your iPhone, but you can type out a full blog post on the iPad if you wish.

3. Netbook – A netbook can bring you all the benefits of a full computer in a smaller – and cheaper – package. The downside is that netbooks usually aren’t too capable of running graphic-intensive programs like games, but they are absolutely perfect for blogging. Netbooks are lightweight, so you can carry them everywhere and crack them open when you feel like writing.

4. Google Nexus One – If you aren’t a big fan of Apple products, the Nexus One is a great smart phone from Google that offers a lot of the same functionality. One of the best things about the Google phone is that you can use it on practically any phone carrier – unlike the iPhone, which requires you to use AT&T.

5. LG Android Phones – The Korean manufacturer has been coming out with some really nice Android-based phones recently. One of the best aspects about LG Android phones is that they normally include a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for text input. This can make typing quite a bit easier if you don’t like the new touchscreen devices.

6. Livescribe Pulse Pen – If you have a quick idea you want to remember, but don’t want to go through all the trouble of launching an application on your phone or netbook, the Pulse Pen can be a great solution. This device looks just like a regular pen, but it remembers everything you write with it. If an idea strikes you, just pull out the pen and scribble some invisible notes onto a table or a wall. When you plug the pen into your computer, you’ll be able to see everything you’ve written.

7. Kindle – As a blogger, you’ve got to read a lot, and that is what the Kindle was designed for. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the newer devices, but there are still a couple strong points in its favor. The battery life is superb, and it has an anywhere 3G connection to the Internet via Sprint’s cellular network – with zero monthly charge.

8. Noise Cancellation Microphone – You may be able to quickly record yourself or conduct interviews with the built-in microphone on your phone or netbook, but there is a good chance that the sound quality won’t be that great. For less than $20, you can usually find a good noise-cancelling microphone to hook up to your device. This will allow you to get crystal clear sound bites even in noisy places like coffee shops.

9. WiFi Keychain – The iPhone and Android devices have free apps checking for WiFi hot spots, but they require you to take out your phone, fire up the app, and continuously check for connectivity. Every blogger should have a keychain that will light up when you are in a free WiFi zone. You’ll always know if you’re in a place where you can blog. You can find these for less than $10.

Mobile blogging can be a great way to get more blogging done in less time. If you use some of these tools, you’ll be able to make your job much easier.

James Adams is a blogger who works for a UK based supplier of HP 351 ink and toner. He helps to run their design blog where he posts about gadgets and design.

©2010 SheepTech

9 Mobile Devices That Are Great for Bloggers

Top Commentators plugin on the other hand, as its name suggest, will list the top 5 commentators at the sidebar. As the comment activity on this blog is low, it’s not at all difficult to get on the list. The highest commentator at the point of writing has just 2 comments, the rest being just one.

For the time being, all the links are nofollow. I might consider do-following in the future, depends on how things go.

Alright, start commenting already

©2010 SheepTech

CommentLuv & Top Commentators Enabled

Here’s an example.

Lifehacker’s partial RSS feed, note the “More” link:

Lifehacker’s full RSS feed, using WizardRSS:

There are two method to turn partial RSS feed to full RSS feed using WizardRSS.

On WizardRSS website: Go to WizardRSS, enter the blog’s URL or feed URL and hit the “Create Feed” button.

Without visiting WizardRSS: Simply add the feed URL of your target blog behind this URL: http://www.wizardrss.com/feed/blogrssfeedurl.com/feed.

For example, if you want to subscribe to SheepTech using WizardRSS, just enter this feed URL in your feed reader:

http://www.wizardrss.com/feed/www.sheeptech.com/feed

But then of course it’s definitely unnecessary, SheepTech offers full RSS

WizardRSS is totally free of charge. In return, they will insert two text linkback to their website at the end of every RSS item. No big deal.

©2010 SheepTech

Turn Partial RSS Feed to Full RSS Feed

• Increased clicks – your hidden affiliate link won’t scream “I’m making money out of you” as loud as the default affiliate link, increasing the likelihood of being clicked.
• No leaked commissions – visitors will not go to the product page directly by typing the product page address in their browser. This will ensure that you will get paid for every single customer you refer.
• Better SEO – too many naked affiliate links might result in less trust search engines are willing to place on your blog
• Less ugly – obviously, your custom affiliate link will definitely look less ugly than the default one provided

To hide affiliate links on WordPress, you can either do it manually by creating individual php files for every affiliate links, or use WordPress plugins. I opted for the latter for its convenience and the additional features they are offering. I am using two free WordPress plugins to achieve features similar to the WordPress Link Cloak plugin that cost $77.

Pretty Links – Hide Affiliate Links, and Track Them

What Pretty Links do:

• Create custom links using your domain name to redirect to any target URL. You can use this to hide your affiliate link. (e.g http://sheeptech.com/product > http://product.com/signup/signdown/up/down/affid=12345678)
• Track hits, uniques, clicker’s IP address, referral page, click time, browser, operating system for every single custom link you have created. It’s optional though.
• Group created custom links to organize them. Useful if you have countless of affiliate links on different niches.
• Bookmarklet that can be used to easily create an URL using your blog’s domain that will redirect to the page you are currently viewing. Think bit.ly’s bookmarklet.

With this Pretty Links, you can easily manage your affiliate links all in one place on your WordPress backend. To hide an affiliate link, you just have to do is enter the target URL, enter your preferred slug, and click create! Sounds much easier than creating a php file and uploading it via ftp. Not to mention you don’t get to track clicks that way.

Automatically Insert Affiliate Links to Keywords in Blog Posts

I use SEO Smart Links for this purpose. You won’t want to link relevant keywords in all your existing blog posts to your newly created cloaked affiliate link, one at a time. SEO Smart Links automate this process and all you have to do is let it know what keywords and where to link to.

Say you are an affiliate for HostGator, you can make the plugin to look for keywords like “hostgator, web hosting, blog hosting” in your existing blog posts and have all those keywords automatically link to your HostGator affiliate link.

Besides, SEO Smart Links can also interlink between your existing blog posts, which will boost the number of relevant internal links. I’m unsure how this works though, since I have never see it in action.

How do you hide your affiliate links?

©2010 SheepTech

Hide Affiliate Link: WordPress Plugin