Hello.  I have been having this problem for several days now and have
read every help section and combed the forums looking for answers to
no avail.  My site diagnostics says my URL is "not found".  I created
the robots.txt file and put it where I think the root directory is, on
my GPC page where it has a file area there.  The bots crawled again
last night and still say URL not found.  I really need help with this,
have no clue what to do now.  I appreciate any help you can give me.
Thanks.

barbara.durrance.googlepages.com

Initial I answered as follow:

Some links on your pages may be wrong link. May be you are missing the
http:// portion of external link. That's very normal cause for
abnormal 404 not found.

Robots.txt won't help against this error. If it does, it only block
the path to the invalid URL, which is not good because you need Google
to scrawl your pages to put into the search result page.

Your best choice now is to copy the exact invalid URL here and we can
type that on the address bar to see if it really return an error.

After that, I went a head and check the links from your site. And here are the results of 404 pages:

1) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fhome&_gwt_nav=T%7C.1.0.0.&source=pagecreator&
;amp;gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fhome&_gwt_nav=T%7C.1.0.0.&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:22

2) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Faboutme&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Faboutme&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:22

3) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fwolfdog%27spackphotos&source=pagecreator&gsessio
nid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fwolfdog%27spackphotos&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:22

4) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fstrawberryandbananagreensmoothie&source=pagecreator&
amp;gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fstrawberryandbananagreensmoothie&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:22

5) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2FCORNUCOPIA.jpg%2FCORNUCOPIA-full%3Binit%3A.jpg&source=pa
gecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2FCORNUCOPIA.jpg%2FCORNUCOPIA-full%3Binit%3A.jpg&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:22

6) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tkqlhce.com%2Fc
lick-2239496-10415095&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tkqlhce.com%2Fclick-2239496-10415095&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:23

7) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=javascript%3Avoid%280%29%3B%3F_R
W_%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%252Fhome%7Conclick%7CW1
W0W0I0&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU&sig=ALE
brzk_N0H4K7_MlcU7a8fwsrGLEldB6A

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=javascript%3Avoid%280%29%3B%3F_RW_%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%252Fhome%7Conclick%7CW1W0W0I0&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU&sig=ALEbrzk_N0H4K7_MlcU7a8fwsrGLEldB6A

400 Status returned: 400 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:26

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=javascript%3Avoid%280%29%3B%3F_R
W_%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%252Fhome%7Conclick%7CW1
W0W0I1&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU&sig=ALE
brzmA9q88MO9hPtQbIezc2rcOjy-PZA

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=javascript%3Avoid%280%29%3B%3F_RW_%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%252Fhome%7Conclick%7CW1W0W0I1&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU&sig=ALEbrzmA9q88MO9hPtQbIezc2rcOjy-PZA

400 Status returned: 400 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:23

9) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fzytu.com%2Fgadgets_
adshare.php&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fzytu.com%2Fgadgets_adshare.php&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:23

10) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fzytu.com%2Fgadgets_
adshare.php&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fzytu.com%2Fgadgets_adshare.php&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:23

11) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zytu.org%2F&
;amp;source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zytu.org%2F&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:24

12) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Frecipes&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Frecipes&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:25

13) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fdisclaimer3&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fdisclaimer3&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:25

14) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/mailto:barbara.durrance@gmail.com

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/mailto:barbara.durrance@gmail.com

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:25

15) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fprivacystatement&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l
0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fprivacystatement&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:26

16) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcounter.com

&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statcounter.com&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:26

17) http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.go
oglepages.com%2Fhome&_gwt_noimg=1&source=pagecreator&gse
ssionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

http://barbara.durrance.googlepages.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarbara.durrance.googlepages.com%2Fhome&_gwt_noimg=1&source=pagecreator&gsessionid=l0Jkcw8PUHU

404 Status returned: 404 Checker at: 2008-05-08 17:50:26

Source: http://www.404checker.com/link-checker

I hope the website owner can base on this report to repair his site.

I hope you understand what Google is trying to say. I myself can't find the Adsense's Video Unit link in my account page because I'm not American living in United State of America speaking American English.

Let's wait to see when Google open the door for us non-Americans. Let's promise to that we will forgive them for forgetting the fact that publisher locacation shouldn't be the concern, but the visitors where about is.

This post is an answer to a recent AdSense Help request. The original question is:

How do i link my adsense account with youtube account
it says head for the AdSense Setup tab. Click the video units link and you'll be on your way to setting up your first video unit.
( There is no Video unit link table atall in my account)
tknmurthy.blogspot.com

The strange thing that caught my attention is that PunBB is a very simple PHP-powered bulletin board. Why such a big company like Facebook didn't make their own forum CMS or use a commercial one such as vBulletin, or the free and famous one phpBB, or bbPress. Why PunBB?

I went ahead to PunBB and register for an account for their forum. I tested it and here are some findings.

PunBB features

PunBB claims to have the following features:

• is fast.
• has simple layout and design.
• is easy to administrate and moderate.
• doesn't output huge, non-valid, (X)HTML pages.
• has source code you could read and understand.

What I like about PunBB

1. The forum seem to be pretty simple and fast as they claimed it to be.
2. It's light weight.
3. Active support community.
4. Used by famous companies like Facebook.
5. (due to unexpected reason, this part is missing).

What I don't like

There are something I don't like though.

1. The system redirect the URL for almost every action related to the database. That's something very strange, and ofcourse it slightly increase the lag and wait time between operations.
2. The PunBB forum, just like other forums and unlike bbPress, doesn't have friendly URL. At this time I still don't know if there are plugins that provide friendly URL feature for this. If not, this will be a major drawback for the system and might be the cause for me not using it.

What's next?

I'm considering this to be the solution for my own help forum in replacement for the help page. I hate complexity in the interface and back-end system. Something like Joomla just isn't right for me.

If you are interseted in this system, please go ahead and visit their website PunBB and test out their PunBB Forums. And of course, you should check out how face book use it on their Facebook Platform Developers Forum. And (another and) don't forget to come back here and tell me how you feel.

1. This blog is being redesigned.
2. New sub domains or domains are coming up.
3. The URL structure is not finalized.

If you are kind-hearted, knowledgeable and give me suggestions, I will have rewards for you too. Don't worry, the minimum I could give you are some good keyword back links to your site from my PR3 blog. I'm not rich now so my pocket money is limited. I can make some nice award if what you give change my life.

1. This blog is being redesigned

Everyone who read my blog should know by now that this blog is under re-construction. The design work is totally delegated to Brain Purkiss from PlainBeta.com . For some reasons Brian has not responded to my email for a week already. Brian, if you are reading this I hope that's because you have commitment with college, not because you gave up on my hard requirements .

Brian gave me a sketch 9 days ago. I asked him if I could write a blog post and publish it. He said no. I respect his choice so until his Photoshop file is available I won't publish his progress. What I can say for now is that I like what it look in the sketch.

I hope Brian can code that before this end of month otherwise I will be in big trouble. I don't want to promote my blog only to see people visit it once and run away because it's ugly.

2. New sub domains or domains are coming up

Yes, I might have to buy new domains for each blog. I have a few passions and I want to make separate blog for each. Here I discuss about them.

1. Photos
2. Blogging
3. Web development
4. Computers
5. My life

2.1 Photos

I have too many photos waiting for upload. I have like over 10,000 photos for 2007 and few hundred for the past. I may keep it at photos.binh.name. However I might buy a new domain for that because that's a huge amount of photos and I need proper gallery software. Who would be kind enough to suggest me a perfect photo host and a perfect photo CMS?

Can anyone tell me their favorite photo hosting site? Flickr.com is out of my reach because apparently my ISP blocks it.

2.2 Blogging

I realized that not everyone is a pro blogger. And I realize not a single blog provide everything from A-Z to blogging. And I'm willing to take the challenge to make a blogging site/blog that help people from A-Z. If you want to contribute to my site than I will buy a new domain just for that. Otherwise I keep it at blogging.binh.name . the topics will range from high-technical approach for developers to money making.

2.3 Web development

Another word is Web Design but that's totally incorrect. I'm not a web designer, because that only involve in graphic and layout. I'm a developer from code to layout so I will talk about bottom to top. Especially I'm a SEO oriented developer so my service should be of somewhat unique.

I stumbled a lot of web design company who only provide you with beautiful website but absolutely no visitors at all. I admit I hate that and I would call them b..stards. For instant, I recently visit this of a new Facebook friend's work website Bella Sewing. The design company who did the site surely is some newbie who tried to make big some of money. Web design job for local companies always pay high. Look at that site and I wanted to vomit. He made at least 4 SEO mistakes that I will need to talk about in a separate post.

Brian suggested me to use web.binh.name for this blog and I think that might work. What is your own opinion on this?

While I will write a lot about stuffs like Webpage layout, website structure, ad placement, etc., etc. I might focus more on web programming aspect. I will keep it for broader adience by making use of least technical terms possible.

Does anyone suggest me to write those type of article in another web development site instead? Which is already well established and have many developers as audience and contributers? Like the codeproject.com?

2.5 Computers

I think so far only my Australian friends and my ex-bosses know and accept the fact that I'm a computer expert. I use the term expert and got a few very critism from fellows on Google AdSense Group. Which lead me to think ... what the heck, if I'm not an expert than are you? No, I'm not claiming I'm a better at computers than those guys.

Enough chatter about this topic. I want to emphasize it here because during the period of 7 years studying IT in Australia I was working part time as computer service technician. The term if you don't understand than let me explain, I repaired computers. People who suffer from hard-disk breakdown, graphic card not working, virus, too-slow, dead computer, software error, etc. etc. I have dealt with thousands of those cases. Sometimes I get things done in just 5 minutes, sometimes it take a day and cause me big headache.

Working as a technician was very fun experience and perhaps one of the most useful experience any IT student could get. I can tweak my computer at ease. I use the most useful software. I'm expert in detecting virus without any software.

Of course I won't write about what I did in the past. Instead I will confine them into useful articles and public on my website. My experience can't be described in this one blog post and if you seriously want to learn those real work experiences, you should subscribe to my computers feed as soon as it is out. For now here are some sample: computers tips.

Do you think computers.binh.name or computing.binh.name are good addresses? Should I choose a shorter address. I think I might make a separate domain for this purpose too? What do you recommend?

2.5 My life

Last but not least, I need to write about my personal life, too. I found out I'm very eager in writing about my love life, my travel, my everything so that I can make new friends online and keep my old friends and family members updated.

Who on Facebook would want to read my blog if the first time he visits he sees I'm talking about how to measure webpage's size? Wouldn't they be more interested in knowing what I did since I was a kid to find out our comment interest? Wouldn't they want to see my nice photos, cute dogs, scary snakes, big bears and sometimes my secrets?

What do you think? If what I think is true I definitely need to keep this www.binh.name my personal blog because that's what the domain says. Brian suggest me to put life.binh.name as the subdomain. What do you think about this? If that's the case I thinks diary.binh.name or memories.binh.name might work but they seem to bee too long to type. Of course I'm not going to buy a new domain for my personal blog, that's out of question.

3. The URL structure is not finalized

Uh! I'm feeling ashamed of myself for talking about this URL decision again.

Many bloggers have stripped of the yyyy/mm/dd prefix format for their posts. That works very well because the post look unrelated to time and shorter. I didn't use that because I thought my posts will be blog post and time dependent.

For my personal blog I might keep that date. But for my other 4 professional blogs I think I will strip that out. On the professional blogs I want to write articles not posts. Then that consideration make me think, why not make websites instead of blogs then?

In a comment on Why you should be using a framework, I said WordPress is giving me hard time and I'm considering getting rid of it. The current Category structure makes me feel too limited. I want to write some nice words to describe my categories, not just "Archive for "whatever' category". There are many more issues and I will write another post in relation to this later on.

What's next?

If you are new here, than I guess here is what you should read to learn about my Major Blog Building Considerations. That should give you some extra info about why I am writing this post.

I know this post is rather long. If you read it till this point please also give me some opinions. I will really appreciate your help because this stage is like the bridge to my new level of blogging.

Also... I didn't have enough time to fix my grammer and spelling. If you spot out any mistake please inform me with a comment and I will fix it. Thanks.

1. Manually check the size;
2. Using calculation tools; and
3. The negative effect on visitors

1. Manually check the size

Here is how you can manually check the weight of webpage:

1. Press Ctrl+S for short. Or on Firefox click File > Save Page As..., on Internet Explorer click File > Save As...

2. On the Save As dialog, select the folder where you want to save the page to, and remember it.

Make sure in the Save As Type, you check the Web Page, complete option so that all images, scripts, css files, everything is downloaded. Internet Explorer makes things much easier by giving the option to save as type: Web Archive, single file (*.mht).

3. Open the folder where you save the files, select the file and folder downloaded from step 2.

4. Right click to activate context menu, then click Properties.

5. Read the file size from the dialog box, it should look similar to this:

2. Using calculation tools

OK, you just learned how to check the file size manually. Now come the question, why do such time consuming work by yourself? Well, the answer is more accurate in size. But what about the analysis? Here is a tool that allow you to analyse your web page and estimate the load time.

The tool is Web Page Speed Report. Give it a try and applause the maker for giving away such wonderful tool for free. My warning is that this report doesn't include IFRAME pages from Google Ads and the images loaded by external javascript.

Here is the ... very disappointing fact about my home page, which acording to the tool the size is only 160595 bytes but the speed result are:

3. The negative effect on visitors

I thought about writing the effect of page weight on the visitor waiting time, but I found this perfect article about it. I don't think it's wise to re-invent the wheel so I would like to use that article as a reference. You can start reading Page Weight Tested to get some insight about page weight and its importance.

The page load time will sure depend on the server processing time, too. It depends on how many and what type of plugins you use as well. That's another story to tell. Here is what you need to know before you make a mistake with your over weight pages:

As you can see, I'm not very happy with my blog homepage weight because it's over 200KB. According to the research found on Page Weight Tested that's over 26s load time on a dial-up browser and that's driving 95% of dialup visitors away from my homepage.

Fortunately with the minimal design and minimal sidebar usage my homepage is still smaller than the vast of other blogs. With the weight in mind I made my blog post less than 100KB.

What's next?

Do you still remember my opinion about Major Issues With common Blog Layout? If you haven't read that post then it's a good time to do so now. This post is one of the the first series of 10 upcoming posts. I will try my best to complete all those in the list shortly after the new design is out.

Now you know how to check the Web page weight, it's time for you to take actions. If you are here, I would love to see you leave a comment to say about your own test results?

Update 19/01/2007: The blogosphere seems to be interesting. I found a few posts related to web page size today:

• Does your page load size suck? Mine does
• The Neverending Saga of Bad Webpage Decisions… Ad Placement and Impressions

Recently Google AdSense has updated its Manage Ads page and published a post Manage Ads gives you more ad functionality. Click on the following image for the full version:

How to Show AdSense Units

Now, you can clearly see that there are 2 checkboxes on the left hand side:

View your active AdSense units below. You can also import your old AdSense code to create saved AdSense units. Learn more...

[ ] Show inactive AdSense units [?]
[ ] Show hidden AdSense units [?]

Those check boxes allow you to view the inactive or hidden AdSense units.

How to Hide AdSense Units

Of course, it would be silly if you can show the hidden units but can't hide it. Google is smart enough to recognize the need and hence make the function for you. Previously you have to follow How to Delete AdSense unit in order to hide an ad unit. Now you don't have to.

How? You can see on the right hand side that there is a Hide link, which allow you to hide the AdSense unit on that row without actually deleting it. This is to prevent the code on some page you "might" have from breaking the AdSense system for showing unavailable ad units.

Original post:

Russo is authoring Used Cars Under $1000 and is experiencing some problems with AdSense on his Website. Russo contacted me from the AdSense Help page to ask for basic helps on AdSense. I broke the message down into blocks and answer each of them accordingly:

1. Deleting ad unit
2. Removing Ad blocking software
3. Using synonyms
4. Getting indexed by Google
5. Managing ad unit
6. Putting AdSense on blog

Congratulation, Russo, finally you have your AdSense units to show up on your computer. Your friend sure is over protected and cause you some difficult time there.

1. Deleting ad unit

Question: Yey! I haven't been successful with the actual ads yet. I have posted so many ad codes on my pages that haven't showed up that now I have no idea what is what in my ad manager page. How can we delete them so we can figure out what is what? Answer: How to delete AdSense Ad unit

2. Removing ad blocking software

Question: I also would like to know if there are any other programs that might be on my computer that may be blocking or preventing the ads from showing up.

Answer:

It's a little hard to know what program your computer has. Generally those software have very understandable title with keywords like "Ad", "Block", "Internet Security", etc. related to blocking ads. Norton Internet Security is an example. It's easier to ask your friend to remove all those ad-block software he installed.

Ad-block software are unnecessary if you use Firefox web browser. Firefox is world's most secure Internet browser. It's also run faster and consume less memory compare to other browsers. In term of security, Firefox blocks all kind of pop up (and ad if you want). You can download Firefox here:

After installing Firefox you will want to download some useful extensions here: FireFox add-ons I recommend you install FasterFox extension for faster browsing.

3. Using synonyms

Russo: I read about the amount of content thing, and I'm pretty sure I'm OK with that because I have been trying to think of different words to use so I don't use the same ones all the time. I don't want to sound monotonous.

Binh: I guess this is about the synonym you use for the main keywords. Yes, using more variety word with the same meaning is recommended by Google. This help your page get searched with more keyword.

4. Getting indexed by Google

Question: I think I have only had my AdSense account for maybe 3 weeks. Is it too young?

Answer: The 3 weeks age, can be too young, can be not. I myself can get my site indexed by Google in just 2 days.

Question: Do they know I'm here?

Answer: I check your site and found out you are using Google Pages. I did test Google Pages by myself, and I don't recommend you to use it. Google Pages is a product of Google, yet their use is very limited and without a doubt, becoming very weak in term of search engine indexing.

No, I checked site:usedcarsunder1000dollars.googlepages.com and found no pages indexed by Google, so it doesn't know you are here. However, the people may know about your site, like me, because you talk about it somewhere.

Question: Do I just need to wait a little longer to be crawled?

Answer: If you use Blogger then you won't have to wait. Your current site got no page indexed by Google for 3 weeks passed already. If you use Blogger and have your address look like "http://1000dollarcars.blogspost.com" then it should be indexed in one (1) day.

If you decide to stick with Google Pages, then you will need to promote your site. If you do not promote your site, then you can keep waiting forever and never see Google index it. As long as Google see a back link to your site from another site on the Web, it will start indexing your pages. You can promote your site using variety of methods:

• submitting your site to web directories;
• bookmark your pages on social bookmark sites;
• ask your friends to link to your site from their Website.

For the time being it's not going to help if I talk too much. Slowly I will posts more on my own blog and teach step by step from the basic. This require serious reading. For a start up, I help you with a link from the top of this post, and so you should expect to see your homepage appearing on Google search result within 2 days.

5. Managing ad unit

Question: I was also having issues with copying and pasting, but I am pretty sure I have that figured out. I think once the ads actually show up then I can strategically place them. It doesn't seem like we can actually edit each ad in the manage ad page. It won't let you change the size/shape or type. What's with that?

Answer: Yes, you are right about the Manage Ads page. Oddly, it doesn't let us modify the ad size. It does let us modify colors, corner style, and channels, though. Of course, it doesn't let you modify the arrangement of the ad on your page. Logically, you can only modify the arrangement and layout inside your web page's HTML code.

Once again, Google Pages is not a system that let you edit your HTML code easily, Blogger is. If you use Blogger you can easily add AdSense unit on your blog with so much ease. It provide you with Graphical User Interface for arrange the Ad Units and modify the settings, without going to Manage Ads page.

6. Putting AdSense on blog

Question: I know these are probably a lot of questions, but I have spent hours trying to find the answers, and couldn't. I also started a blog just to see if it would be any different to work with than the web site. I understand that even less. I tried to paste as code but I couldn't figure out where to put it. Does it have to go into a particular block in the layout?

Answer: Is it Blogger.com your blog host? For blogger.com blog you can follow the following steps:

1. Open the Layout page. The link to this page is on the dashboard. Or you can navigate to it through Template then Page Elements.
2. Click on Add a Page Element link in the area you want to place an ad unit.
3. Locate: "AdSense: Earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on your blog." and click on ADD TO BLOG
4. Choose your desired settings then click SAVE CHANGES.

If it's free WordPress.com account then you can't put AdSense on it. However, If it's paid, you can insert the ad using Text widget, similar to what I put on my blog. Or you can insert into the template file (advanced level, require PHP knowledge), also see my blog as an example.

Question: I tried to put a banner under my header but above the title. The ad didn't show first of all, but when I previewed it, the blank space was below the title of the post. I couldn't get the post to move down so I could paste it above it.

Answer: Is it something related to blog? If yes, please send me the URL for your blog so I could check it up. If this is for Blogger.com blog, then you could follow the steps I mentioned about on how to add an AdSense unit.

1. This time, if it doesn't have Add a Page Element link where you want, you can just click on any Add a Page Element link on the page, then follow the steps as above.
2. After you save it, drag it from the temporary location and drop it into your desired location. In this case the desired location is before the "Blog posts" area. Obviously you can't put it into the header, so don't worry, it will be below the header and above the post title.

You can have a look at my example here: Binh's Reviews.

Remark

Blog is a better way compare to website to start your AdSense business, because it will have everything ready for you to build your pages the easy way. These are few comparisons:

I hope this article answer to all your questions and help you to move on. If not, please feel free to leave a comment on this page and I will attend to it as soon as I can. If you need more help please feel free to contact me again.

Update on 28/07/2008:

Russel has changed her website to Used Car Buying Guide. She also listened to my suggestion and created a blog Dummies Guide To Car Stuff

Here is another place you can buy cars under 1000: Used Cars Under $1000

• How do I delete AdSense Ad Unit from the Manage Ads page?
• How do I remove AdSense unit from my web page?

How do I delete AdSense Ad Unit from the Manage Ads page?

It's written in this Official Google help page How do I delete an AdSense unit? that you can NOT delete the ad units from your Manage Ads page, but hide it. You can hide ad unit by following 2 steps:

1. Remove the unwanted ad unit's code from all your web pages to stop it from gaining impressions.
2. Wait 7 days for the ad unit to disappear from your Ad Manager.

How do I remove AdSense unit from my web page?

Answer:

The process is easy if you remember where you place the code. Otherwise you will need to find it. Follow these steps:

1. Open the file for the web page you placed the code in.
2. Locate the AdSense JavaScript code that you pasted into the page earlier. It look like this:

   <script type="text/javascript"><!--
   google_ad_client = "pub-01234567890123456";
   //120x240, vertical homepage
   google_ad_slot = "0123456789";
   google_ad_width = 120;
   google_ad_height = 240;
   //--></script>

   <script src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" type="text/javascript">
   </script>

3. Remove the above code from your web page.

Update on 22 Dec 2007: Now you can actively Hide and Show AdSense Units.

Yesterday I checked my blog and was too surprise about something... the actual weight in term of Kilobytes. By saying that I mean, our blogs are not just heavy, they are too heavy.

Shocking Findings

I checked my own blog and here are some shocking results:

• Over 512KB for the home page and
• Over 380KB for single post.

Currently most blogs have too heavy home page, extra heavy category pages, and heavy single post page. A very good example is John Chow dot Com. His home page cost over 1MB of disk-space and bandwidth.

Avatar:

• Each normal avatar is about 2-3KB, some abnormal avatar is 30KB.
• Too many avatars add up too much weight on the page.

Advertisements:

• Curved AdSense and Image ad normally is > 25KB each unit (bad).
• AdSense plain text ad, simplest design < 5KB each unit (good).
• Square image ad or banner image ad also > 25KB each unit (very bad).

Widgets:

• Each widget need to get a request to the server and download JavaScript code
• Each widget have their own theme design elements, especially heavy graphic.

Solutions

After finding out it's too heavy I decided to fix it right away, and here are the steps:

• The widgets from MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog was cleaned out into a single page called "Community".
• Remove all Image Ad
• Remove curved AdSense for Content. Replaced by the most simple one possible
• Replace widget by using tracking code only.

Unfortunately the BlogCatalog doesn't have tracking code, so the use of a widget is a must. However, I tried to reduce it to the minimum.

Outcome

After all the elements are rearranged as mentioned above, here is the outcome:

• Homepage: 213KB
• Single post: 119KB

After implementing the "Christmas Theme" and enabled the Post Teaser plugin, here are the results:

• Homepage: 198KB
• Single post: 123KB

The different is abvious:

• Homepage: from 518KB to 198KB, save 320KB, 2.6 times faster loading time
• Single post: from 380KB to 123KB, save 257KB, 3 times faster loading time

Just one small bias, this mainly concern the first hit. Consequential hits don't have that much saving because the images are not reloaded.

What's next?

This is only the result of analysis and some quick solution. If you would like to know more about how to conduct the testing and the reason behind doing all this, then I will post another entry soon. There is no Poll at the moment, so please leave a comment on this page to let me know you.

I will be open to help anyone in checking their blog against this problem. I'm willing to help you improve your blog too, just send me a request.

Finally I finish the 8 hour overnight work on modifying my blog layout using the Christmas Days theme. Last night I when I logged in to the WordPress control panel I did I quick check on the latest news about WordPress. Out of which was the 20 Nov releases of WordPress theme and plugins.

The New Themes

I found nothing special about the new plugins but found very interesting new themes.

After spending 1 hour testing the demo and on my own blog, I left a comment on that page like this:

• Christmas Days theme is fitting it at absolutely the right time. Cheers everyone. Merry Christmas and see it run on my blog.
• Curved 3-Columns content too small for a 468×60 banner ad.
• FluidFlower is not bad either, unfortunately I’m not a girl
• Genesis is too dark for the eyes.
• Paperback is too simple for a blog.
• PortraitPress is worth a try.
• Skyscraper should not be called a theme.
• WPDesigner is neat and nice.

Agree with me, not? You are always welcomed to leave a comment on my blog

Improvements

So, I really did make the promise come true, I spent the last 8 hours editing this theme to suit my needs. You can notice the following difference than the original theme:

1. The content pane padding has been reduced, allowing the content to span 480px, which can fit a 468x60 banner ad.
2. There is a square 180x150 AdSense block on the sidebar, which look really attractive.
3. There is a 468x60 AdSense text-only banner ad at the bottom of each page, except homepage.
4. The post title has been re-leveled from h2 to h1 (SEO reason)
5. Unnecessary words are removed from the title of archive page (SEO reason).
6. The copyright notice has been fixed to dynamically display the actual blog name from the database, not "BlogName"
7. Many more small fixes but I can't list all here.

What's next?

I thought about making my edition available for downloading right here, but I feel too lame if no one bother taking it. So if you like it, drop a message here request for a download package and I will post it up a.s.a.p.

I started posting my blog entries with WordPress because I felt that's a necessary initiative. However, I strongly need to consider few things.

Website structure

The biggest issue I'm having is the website structure. I'm still wondering whether

1. putting niche topics on separate subdomains, and so using WordPress MU to power my site,
2. or just a single blog like right now with categories as niches.

Technically speaking, WordPress MU is capable of helping me separate the niches pretty well. SEO point of views, the 2nd option is much better, though require some serious initial design.

As for the niches, I have a few expertises and a few hobbies.

My expertises include:

• Software development
• Web development
• Software reviews
• Website reviews
• Reporting

My hobbies include:

• Photography - armature level, mostly common things and discoveries
• Giving opinions - just about anything I my find interested in having a say
• Learning - that's strange, but yes, I like to learn new things, and write about it.

Theme Design

The design is not finalized, yet. The design is a very important factor in retaining readers and building brand image. Hence, I need some serious time off writing and reading to do redesign the theme I chose, which is JustSimple.

URL structure

As you can see, my URL is still in ugly form. Earlier I wrote about the good URL structure choices, but since then haven't got good replies yet. I may need to visit some forum and invite people over for some feedback. Mean while, I still need to keep it like this.

WordPress Plug-ins

I installed and tested many WordPress plugins. So far I am very pleased with those:

• AdSense Manager
• All in One SEO Pack
• Google Analytics
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Inline Posts
• Permalink Redirect
• Post Teaser
• Subscribe To Comments
• wp-cache

The list for all plug-ins are long. Hence, I will keep it for another post summarizing those plug-ins and tell what worth using. The above plug-ins are nice to use, but new ones come out pretty often so they not yet for my permanent usage. For example recently WP Super Cache comes out and claim to take over 10,000 hits without a trouble.

Blog Directories

Yes, I have found out about those blog communities and was so surprise they existed and they really help. Recently as I go along learning, I stumbled on and signed up for the following:

• MyBlogLog.com
• BlogCatalog.com
• BlogFlux.com
• Technorati.com

I'm looking toward signing up on more directories. I will write review about each of them while I go along.

What's Next?

I planned to post about 10 articles a day. But due to those burdens I am delaying the writing. Struggling to start-up something does give much learning experience. I will be sharing my experience as I go along. Stay tuned for my progress on growing this baby "Binh dot Name" which ought to be a giant.

What about your blog? What do you plan with it? How will you achieve your goals?