So as many of my readers know, about a week ago I switched Consumerism Commentary from the Movable Type platform to WordPress. There were a number of reasons for the change, including MT’s long rebuild times for example.
Since this migration caused a slight change in the URIs for my entries — namely, the underscore characters became dashes — I had to write a small script to handle the translation so no links from outside would be broken. Even though I was changing software, old link to my blog still needed to work and not produce an error.
Doing the translation wasn’t as easy as doing a “permanent redirect” in .htaccess — I had to write a PHP script that is called from .htaccess whenever underscores are encountered in the URL. The script replaces them with dashes and redirects the browser back to the server, where .htaccess is interpreted again.
Basically, the links weren’t broken, but I lost my Google Pagerank on almost all of my pages.
I saw the effects immediately. My daily AdSense revenue tanked to sometimes less than 50% of what was expected. This has been the case almost all week, but the last few days, it appears as if things are returning to normal. I’ll have to wait another few weeks to determine if there is any more fallout from the change.
The improvements seemed to coincide with when I installed the WordPress plugin that enables a Google Sitemap, so perhaps that was the key.
Today’s earnings are pretty high for a Friday so far.
The Comcast Cable Internet saga continues. First I tried to take advantage of a free 50% speed upgrade and found out I had to buy a new modem. Then I realized I was actually getting an upgrade that more than doubled my download transfer speed for the same price.
Now I’ve received the bill. I expected they’d screw something up, and they didn’t let me down. I’m actually being charged $16 less for internet access now ($30 rather than $46). Combined with my $16 basic cable, I’m saving a good amount of money compared to when I was paying $46 for internet and $70 for television.
Thank you, Comcast!
This has been a good month for my balance sheet, with three paychecks rather than the standard two, some overimte, a bonus, and some side income. I’ll try to have my financial reports posted by the end of the weekend.
.
.
Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
Bloggers: Effect of Changing URIs on AdSense
This article was written by Luke Landes in Administration. 12 comments.
So as many of my readers know, about a week ago I switched Consumerism Commentary from the Movable Type platform to WordPress. There were a number of reasons for the change, including MT’s long rebuild times for example.
Since this migration caused a slight change in the URIs for my entries — namely, the underscore characters became dashes — I had to write a small script to handle the translation so no links from outside would be broken. Even though I was changing software, old link to my blog still needed to work and not produce an error.
Doing the translation wasn’t as easy as doing a “permanent redirect” in .htaccess — I had to write a PHP script that is called from .htaccess whenever underscores are encountered in the URL. The script replaces them with dashes and redirects the browser back to the server, where .htaccess is interpreted again.
Basically, the links weren’t broken, but I lost my Google Pagerank on almost all of my pages.
I saw the effects immediately. My daily AdSense revenue tanked to sometimes less than 50% of what was expected. This has been the case almost all week, but the last few days, it appears as if things are returning to normal. I’ll have to wait another few weeks to determine if there is any more fallout from the change.
The improvements seemed to coincide with when I installed the WordPress plugin that enables a Google Sitemap, so perhaps that was the key.
Today’s earnings are pretty high for a Friday so far.
{ 12 comments }