Widgets, Ads and Candy Colored Buttons Oh My!

Widgets

WordPress has the main post area that this text in is right now. The two columns, called “Sidebars,” are on the right are there because of the Thesis theme template. The information in the two columns is controlled by the use of Widgets.

Widgets can be a calendar, recent posts, categories, links, archives, plain text and several others. I used the plain “Text” Widget which is a container for text including html. In the middle column, I am using two Text Widgets and the Google Custom Search Widget.

Sidebar 1

1. “Text” - Links to other blogs
2. “Text” - Code for Google Adsense
3. “Google Custom Search” - Google search

Sidebar 2

1. “NextGEN Slideshow” - Transitions through pics in Gallery
2. “Text” - Links to Gallery and About Artists
3. “Search” - Searches the site
4. “Recent Posts” - Shows the most recent posts

There will be others in the future, these are what are there now.

Advertisements

I’m initially going to use Google Adsense because I am comfortable with it. In the future, I will be doing some comparative testing with other networks. I have assigned a Google “Channel” to each area that I put an ad. The Top Blue Blog’s header ad has a Channel called “Header Blue.” If someone clicks on an ad in the header, because I have a Channel associated with it, I will know they ad click came from the header on the Top Blue Blog. The Channel tags the ad space with an unique identifier.

Google allows three ad units as well as three link units on a page. Right now I just have one link unit and an ad unit in the header and the body.

Colored Buttons

At the top of the middle column was a great place to but links between the different colored blogs. Instead of text links, buttons would fill the space nicely. These are the pastel colored thus candy looking buttons that I made. I used the background color from each of the blogs.