Relevancy of the Ads (SEO, Keywords, Good Copywriting?)
Ad Placement (A fine art of being “clean but seen.” Too much in the way drives readers away. Not enough exposure, and they won’t get noticed. What’s the ideal answer here?)
Design. Clean and professional. (Either you know good design and how to code it, or you must hire someone or learn it.)
And I can’t seem to get a damn one of them right. Well, that’s not true totally. I’m an artist and a good writer. I think I can produce good content. The other stuff is fun to a point, but then it begins to get on my nerves, and I start pulling my hair out.
I think I need to get something I can live with, then study each day a little of the other things to make them incrementally better, and then of course spend most of my time doing what I love, which is to produce content. I may need to consider hiring a designer. Well, I do need to consider it. It’s just a question of whether I’ll pull the trigger.
What do you think about all this stuff? How do you approach it?
I searched and searched for this, how to put space before a beginning of a paragraph in WordPress, or in other words to skip a line or more before the first paragraph, and I couldn't find anything that worked. It was so nerve wracking that something so simple could be complicated. I was wanting it because I was experimenting with Ads above the content like it says on Google's Heat Map. But whenever I placed those ads the text would wrap, and in this case it was really weird because the text would snake up between the two ads.
But the normal tag for a new paragraph or for a line break don't work in this case. Those only work after some text has been initially written, to cause space. Put those in before any text has been written, and WordPress simply wipes them out. Isn't that crazy? Why should something so basic and simple be this crazy?
Well anyway the only thing I found that worked was this code:
And then remember this. Save it without looking at the visual editor. I've found that if you look at the visual editor before you save it, it'll wipe it out. This will get you one line of space before any text begins. Depending on what your doing, in my case putting two large image ads at top, you may have to use a lot of them. Here is a link to the forum where I found this solution. There's a lot of other solutions in there including using that above code above once, and then using the <p> tag as often as you want, but that didn't do anything for me. Some people said different things worked for them, so you might check it out.
Well, then, and that comes to the ads themselves. I found another charming site that taught me how to put them up there and having them look nice and tight and side by side, and then automatically creating that space for me. I'll write about that in another post, or when I'm less tired.
On my Twitter feed today I saw that a post by Chad Keck, an engineer at Rackspace, (@ckeck on Twitter) titled “What is Cloud Computing” with a link to a post on the Rackspacecloud site that has a great, relatively short explanation of what cloud computing is along with a nice visual. Since I’m re-selling smaller portions of the Rackspace Cloud Site $100 offering for folks interested in its benefits at prices close to that of shared hosting packages (See Here for details), I thought I’d reprint it.
What is Cloud Computing?
We define cloud computing in simplest terms, as follows: A set of pooled computing resources, delivered over the web, powered by software. Cloud computing – not to be confused with grid computing, utility computing, or autonomic computing – is a form of computing that involves the interaction of several virtualized resources, meaning that many servers are connecting and sharing information that can expand and contract across servers depending on the amount of servers needed to manage the amount of traffic on various sites. Cloud computing is often provided “as a service” over the internet, typically in the form of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS). The “cloud” in “cloud computing” stems from the interconnectivity of the computers and computer networks that form the internet because, when these relationships are diagramed, the resulting image looks like a cloud.
One of the major benefits of cloud computing is that cloud customers do not have to raise the capital to purchase, manage, maintain, and scale the physical infrastructure required to handle drastic traffic fluctuations. Instead of having to invest this time and money to keep their sites afloat, which would put them in the position of often having to own, manage, maintain and scale far many more servers than they needed on a regular day, cloud computing customers simply pay for the resources they use as they need them. This particular characteristic of cloud computing allows traffic to increase dramatically as site developers no longer have to manage and predict traffic, but can promote their sites endlessly, knowing that their sites will stay afloat no matter the traffic influx. Furthermore, costs are improved by the cloud computing model which maximizes server usage since cloud computing customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits.
Have questions? Feel free to ring us at 1-877-934-0409, ping us on Live Chat, or just scope us out on Twitter. We are here 24/7/365, and we love to talk cloud. Check out our Cloud Hosting and Cloud Computing products. (*This is to Rackspace itself, if you interested in their full $100 Cloud Site)
*If your interested in being on a smaller chunk of a Rackspace Cloud Site, feel free to ring me, Stephen Pickering, at 1-501-291-1375, email me at [email protected], or scope me out on Twitter too, I’d love to talk . See Here for details of my plans.
Xiaoyan (Little Sparrow), a Sichuan girl originally from Chongqing, now residing and working Guandong Province, cultivating some of the most beautiful orchids one has ever seen, is a friend of mine. We talk about all things culturally related, and especially love to converse on the similarities and differences in Eastern and Western culture and tastes. We love to talk about books, ancient stories, art, history, precious objects, unique places to visit and the histories behind them, and a whole host of cultural topics. Our discussions are quite interesting and stimulating, and often we talk hours without realizing how much time has passed.
Recently the topic of tea was brought up in one of our conversations. It happens to be one of Xiaoyan’s passions, and from the sense I get, a passion of China and the East in general. The West though, sans Great Britain, is Coffee passionate. I know that I am, and so every time before that we spoke about the subject, I always wondered why Coffee wasn’t as appealing to Eastern Culture as it was to ours.
I’ve come to believe that it has to do with the matter of intricacy. I know that many a Brasilian will take issue with this statement but, in general coffee is coffee. Sure you can flavor it, dress it up in all sorts of toppings and such, but basically the bean is the bean. I know that some beans are better than others, depending on the climate, the roasting, and many other factors, but these are varying degrees of differences concerning the same thing, whereas tea, especially Oriental tea, as a plant, like the grape, has a number of different varieties of the plant itself and not just where it’s grown or how its processed.
Note the differences in types of tea and coffee consumption from diffen.com:
Coffee:
Drip Coffee
Espresso
Brewed
Instant
Decaf Brewed
Decaf Instant
Plunger
Filter
Tea:
White Tea
Green Tea
Oolong Tea
Black/Red Tea
Post Fermented Tea
Yellow Tea
Kukicha
Note the coffee consumption differences are based on ways of processing, whereas the teas’ are based on varieties of the plant itself. So with tea, one has a variety of different palettes and experiences based on the herb itself, rather than, basically, the one experience of Coffee: the extreme caffeine high. So this leads to a more genteel sense of the tea culture versus that of the Coffee. This intricacy of experience is symbolic of the Oriental inclination towards finding its bliss in relationships and engagement with life, rather than the end product of relationships, and in all the various textures, colors, and contours found in the many different relationships one finds in daily life. “Being” for them is found through the relationship, engagement with relationships, rather than the benefits gained from them.
Chinese Tea Pot
Well, I won’t go on about philosophy. Let me instead introduce you to some of Xiaoyan’s thoughts and preferences in tea itself. This is a good introduction to start me on my tea adventure, and maybe, if you’ve come upon this interest, a good one for you too. I’ve begun to notice more and more interest in tea in America lately, whether in be in the media, the internet, or friends and family, so this seems to be a timely topic.
Here are the words and Chinese tea preferences of my friend, Xiaoyan, a genteel, refined China Girl:
Do you know Chinese tea ,the tea culture has been took long history in Chinese culture. there are many kinds of tea in each area of China , there are some famous teas in china , such like “Xihu Long Jing”,”HuangShan MaoFeng” “Jun Shan Yin Zhen”,”Tie Guan Yin”……
Generally, tea is classified in to two sorts , red tea and green tea , red tea is fermented tea , green tea is unfermented tea. My favorite tea is Ur long Tea, Which is a kind of tea between unfermented tea and fermented tea , it is half ferment tea .
Ur-Long Tea is light green brown colour on apparent, taste sweet like liquorices, no bitter taste like green tea , no acerbity taste like red tea, its fragrance can keep long time .
I like have a cup of Ur-long tea after my hard work when take break in my yard .or meeting friends when we chat. It is really a good drink for healthy and get energy.
Sounds like a good starting place for me, and a happy one. Also I found from here, that indeed the health benefits of tea are substantiated, while that of coffee are not and may even be, if anything, more harmful than good for the body. “Tea contains Tannin and Catechin have been associated with preventing cancer and heart diseases,” to quote this article from Diffen.com.
So there you have it. I hope you may find this little refined insight from my Chinese friend interesting, intriguing, and possibly valuable, if you have an interest in exploring the benefits, pleasures, and culture surrounding tea. I’ve got my tea press ready. Time to go search for some Oolong Tea today!
Chinese Tea TableWuyi dark roast oolong (Photo Credit: Emily Chang)
