Author Archives: Stephen Cronin

About Stephen Cronin

Stephen Cronin has worked in the software industry in Australia, UK and USA for 13 years. He has held senior positions including General Manager, Business Manager, International Product Manager and has also worked as web developer, project manager, trainer and support technician.

Seth Godin May Be Costing You Money

| Created: August 25th, 2008
Adsense Smart Pricing 51 Comments

This morning I noticed an entry on Sphinn highlighting GreyWolf’s Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers with Fake Clicks post. It discusses Seth Godin’s Ads are the new online tip jar post, which suggests that readers should click ads to reward bloggers for their writing. To quote Seth:

If you like what you’re reading, click an ad to say thanks.

Continue reading

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta for PHP Developers

| Created: August 18th, 2008
PHP Development 31 Comments

In one of my older posts, on PHP Performance Profiling with APD, there’s a discussion in the comments about which IDE is best to use with PHP. Terence Chang recommends Zend Studio and mentions Eclipse. Dreamweaver’s also discussed and I state that I just use a text editor (with syntax highlighting).

Against that backdrop, I read with interest that the NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta has just been released and that it now caters to PHP developers (article by Lloyd Dunn). Continue reading

The Curse Of The Blogger

| Created: August 8th, 2008
General 47 Comments

I recently left a comment on the blog of my friend Terence Chang, that I feel is worthy of further exploration. It discusses a common phenomenon that seems to be a danger to many bloggers and which I’ve come to call the curse of the blogger.

No, it’s not the syndrome of bloggers running out of steam at the six month mark and giving up, just before their blog starts moving. In fact, it’s the opposite: bloggers diversifing and trying to do too much.

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A Couple Of Productivity Tips For Microsoft Windows

| Created: August 2nd, 2008
General 28 Comments

Okay, so this isn’t directly related to what I normally write about (WordPress, websites and web development), but if you use Microsoft Windows, these tips may increase your productivity, giving you more time for other things. For me, that’s more time for WordPress, websites and web development!

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Plugin News And Theme Update

| Created: July 26th, 2008
WordPress Plugin News 13 Comments

This is a brief update on what I’ve been doing, my plans for the site and my WordPress Plugins. Continue reading

Spammed By A Master (Of Making Money Online)

| Created: July 12th, 2008
Make Money Online 68 Comments

One side-effect of making your blog DoFollow is an increase in traffic. Unfortunately, it also leads to an increase in comment spam – and I’ve recently been spammed by Make Money Online Master. Continue reading

BullGuard Resolves Customer Service Issue

| Created: June 23rd, 2008
General 20 Comments

In a recent post, I talked about poor customer service from BullGuard, the anti-virus software company. A relative of mine paid for their subscription to be renewed, but the money was lost and their protection was disabled.

I’m pleased to say that BullGuard have now resolved the situation satisfactorily and my relative is now happily using BullGuard once again. Continue reading

IFrameWidgets 1.01 Update – Fix For WordPress 2.5

| Created: June 9th, 2008
WordPress Plugin News 23 Comments

I’m finally releasing version 1.01 of the IFrameWidgets WordPress plugin. The only change is that is has been re-written so that it will work with WordPress 2.5, which changed the way widgets worked.

If you are on WordPress 2.5 and above, use Version 1.01 of IFrameWidgets. If you are on an older version of WordPress, use version 1.0 of IFrameWidgets.

IFrameWidgets can stop slow loading JavaScript widgets from breaking your page. Widgets remain hidden until completely loaded, then appear in whole. If they don’t load, they won’t take up any space on your sidebar. If they load slowly, or hang, they won’t stop the rest of your page from loading. Continue reading

BullGuard – What A Load Of Bull!

| Created: June 2nd, 2008
General 23 Comments

In my last post I wrote about comment spam. Today, I’m writing about BullGuard, the anti-virus / spam software. Unfortunately, I’m not writing about BullGuard because of their software – I’m writing about them because one of my relatives lost their money when he tried to renew his subscription. Continue reading

Borderline Spammers Beware – Use KeywordLuv!

| Created: May 29th, 2008
General 115 Comments

This is just a quick post to warn the borderline spammers that leave comments here: If you just leave keywords in the name field, I’ll remove the link! You must use the KeywordLuv syntax: yourname@your keywords. Continue reading