I came up with the idea while reading through the IRS documentation about the Hope Credit, Lifetime Learning Credit, and Tuition and Fees Deduction.

I just started graduate school, and next year I’ll be taking advantage of one of these tax benefits. While reading the IRS page, I thought it’d be nice if there was a simplified version that explained the important details without getting hung up on all the legalese.

I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I learned a lot about the tax credits while working on it!

In addition to summarizing the IRS documentation, I created a simple calculator to estimate how much each tax credit/deduction would net you on your tax return. It works nice, and I like the styling of it. If I get around to it, though, I want to make it work via AJAX (currently it posts to a php file and then redirects back to the page).

I also plan on posting a series of quick “Question of the Days” about the tax credits and deductions.

I don’t plan on spending a lot of time on the site - maybe an hour or two each week adding QotDs, and a few hours promoting/linking throughout the web - and I’m curious to see how well it’ll do in SERPs and, more importantly, PR. Cause, you know, PR can equal cash.

Something about teaching, two advisorships (including the yearbook), home ownership, and two graduate classes just sucks the energy out of me. When I make it home, if I don’t have work to do for school or around the house, I just don’t have the energy to sit down and write. For a while, I was doing some short pieces about Fallout 3 in the Nerds at Play category, but I couldn’t muster enough oomph to dive into any deep articles about education or web design.

Although I love blogging, and I really hoped that combining all of these sites into one site would help me keep up with it, it doesn’t fit into my life at the moment. Too much going on.

However, I’m still not ready to just drop the whole web dev bug altogether. Which means it’s time for a new direction.

One problem I’ve found with a blog is that there’s a push to post regularly. What good is subscribing to a blog if there are no posts for weeks at a time? I know I’ve unsubscribed from other people’s sites because of weeks of downtime.

Instead of blogging - at least as a main venture - I’ve decided to shift to smaller, one-off sites. Theses mini-sites will probably be 5-20 pages in size, and they probably won’t include a blog/weekly articles section.

Why Shift from a Blog to Static Sites?

First, I’m not pressured to work regularly. When I have a lull from my other responsibilities, I can sit down and work on a site. If I’m busy, I can wait a week or two. There’s no pressure to have it done right now.

Second, it’ll let me work on my web development skills. Since creating this site, I haven’t done a lot of fiddling with designs and programming. Creating new sites every month or two will give me an excuse to break out some of those design skills and sharpen them.

Third, I can create some revenue through text links like TNX. I’ve ear-marked online revenue for electronics and supplies that I use in the classroom, so I’d like to continue to make some extra pocket cash this year. I think this mini-site model will yield more profit per time invested.

So No Blogging… At All?

I wouldn’t say that. It’s just not going to be my main project.

I definitely want to create a sustainable education blog. As I get started on this doctoral program, I know that I need to get out there and get my name and my work recognized by a larger audience than my Rutgers professors. I’m unsure if it’ll be here or located somewhere else, but in the next year or so I definitely plan on working on that.

I’ll probably also create a minimalistic personal blog to track all of my projects. I may re-vamp this site over the summer to fulfill that role. I’ll write quick updates about new projects going up, share lessons learned about web dev, and ponder about new project topics. It’ll more or less be a place for self-reflection about the whole process.

So… don’t expect to see a lot around here in the near future. I may stop in from time to time, but the days of posting something on a daily basis are unfortunately gone. They were fun, but short lived.

There are a number of things I like, but there is one thing that everyone can use: Google’s hosted Javascript libraries.

Last year, Google launched a project to host a handful of popular Javascript libraries. Among the initial offerings is jQuery - the Javascript library that I use on this site. They also have some other widely used options - like prototype and MooTools.

Basically, Google hosts the most recent (and some legacy versions) of the library on its server. You can then link the remote copy of the JS library to your site instead of hosting it yourself.

Why Should I Use Google Hosted Javascript Libraries?

Because it could be faster.

If two sites use the same Javascript library but host it locally, the user has to reload and recache the library for each site. jQuery.js on life-of-brian.com is different from jQuery.js on css-tricks.com - even if the file is exactly the same.

By pointing the user’s browser to the Google server, it will recognize that .js file in the cache and not download it a second time. So if life-of-brian.com and css-tricks.com both used the jQuery library on Google’s servers, the user would have to cache it once - and it would be preloaded when he or she visited the second site.

A secondary benefit (of concern only to large sites) is that it doesn’t put a strain on your bandwidth. This shouldn’t be a big deal for most people, but some high volume sites may find this comforting.

How Do I Load Google’s Hosted Javascript Libraries?

You could use the fancy load() function of Google’s AJAX API, or you could simply add a <script> element using the remote address on Google’s server.

I chose to go the second route with this site. I wanted to load both the jquery library and the jquery ui library (mainly for the tabs in the sidebar), so I included the following two lines in my header:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.5.3/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

You can find a list of all the URLs on the AJAX API documentation page.

Why Not Do This?

I don’t see a lot of potential for harm, but there could be some drawbacks.

No version control. Presumably Google is going to keep hosting important legacy versions of each library, but this takes version control somewhat out of your hands. It also means you can’t use the development releases - only the stable releases are hosted on Google’s server.

No hacking the library. You won’t be able to introduce custom hacks into the library if its hosted on Google’s server. I don’t know how many people do that anyway. I’ve never jumped into to hack a compressed library file - I just use it as is and add any custom code to another .js file.

Google could sabotage your site. Unlikely, but I suppose it’s possible. If you’re paranoid, steer clear.

Check It Out

I’ve been using it for a week or so, and I haven’t noticed any problems. In theory, it’s a great idea, but it’ll only work if a large number of sites (especially highly trafficked sites in a variety of niches) opt to use it.

I’m going to do my part and point my users to Google’s servers. Why don’t you?

If you’re lucky enough to still be in college, you may have gobs of time to waste. Those of us that have moved on to the real world don’t have that luxury. Blogging and publishing on the ‘net needs to fit into an already busy schedule.

With that in mind, it’s definitely worthwhile to take stock of your blogging habits and make sure you’re working efficiently. If you don’t budget your time effectively, you’ll either burn out quickly or fail to meet your goals.

I found some tips for budgeting your blogging time in a recent post on Problogger. It’s got some great tips, but there’s one I’d like to point out in particular: don’t waste your time on social networking sites.

But Don’t Social Networking Sites Bring Traffic?

Yes and no.

Digg and StumbleUpon can definitely bring in big numbers, but that’s not going to happen just because you submit your article. If you submit the article, it won’t be very long before it drops off the page of recent entries - and it’ll be lost in oblivion forever.

In order for your article to get rated well, move up the rankings a bit, and draw some real traffic, you’re going to need other people to submit your post and/or review it. That probably means that people are coming to your post by another means (search engine traffic, RSS subscribers, links) and then Digging or Stumbling your article.

In other words, write a good article and wait for other people to Digg it. If you spend a lot of time Digging and Stumbling your own articles you’ll probably end up at best wasting your time and at worst being labeled a spammer.

What About Making Networks on Social Networking Sites?

You might be thinking, “What if I make a deep network on a social networking site? Won’t that help drive a lot of traffic when I submit an article?”

If you can rise to be one of the top users of the site, then sure. But be prepared to spend a lot of time Digging, Stumbling, Redit-ing, or whatever. Chances are you don’t have that much time (if you still want to blog, wake up for your real job, and keep your family), so focus on the things that are realistically attainable.

There’s a nice quote in the ProBlogger post that sums this up:

A better use of your time is to write a Digg-worthy post, or a post that will spread like wildfire on StumbleUpon or Delicious — not because you’re friends with lots of the users, but because it’s insanely useful, interesting, controversial, or what have you.

Use Social Networking Sites Passively

My advice would be to use social networking sites passively.

Write great articles and then include a bookmarking bar under the title and at the end. If people think it’s Digg-worthy, they’ll Digg. If they don’t, it won’t matter if you Digg it.

Digg seems to me to be a tool for content consumers, and as a blogger you fill the role of a content producer. There’s just no efficient, feasible way for you to manipulate a social networking site into sending you traffic - you need to rely on the consumers to promote it for you.

I can’t say I’m disappointed with the money. I quit updating the site that ran TNX ads on in April, and I kind of assumed that the site was going nowhere. I was surprised when I happened to log into my account in November and find that I had over earned $400 over the course of the summer. Payment was quickly made to my PayPal account - so no complaints in that department.

However, I have become suspicious of something a lot of other people have been suggesting - that TNX could kill your Google Page Rank. Some people have reported starting to sell TNX links, and within weeks their PR dropped to zero and/or their Google traffic was drastically cut.

I started offering TNX links in March, and I saw no negative impacts on my Google rankings over the next two months (until I stopped working on the site). I didn’t see any evidence of retaliation by Google.

Now that I look at my traffic statistics, I’m beginning to think differently.

Recent Traffic to the Site

 For a benchmark comparison, let’s look at the recent traffic to the site. It’s not a lot - I haven’t updated it since April, and some of the well performing articles have been ported over to the archives here.

As you can see in the Analytics screenshot, there is a slow but steady stream of traffic - maybe 50 visitors a day, besides that spike from an itty-bitty reddit frenzy. When I started working on Nerds at Work, I checked in on the old site a few times. I assumed this was a trickle of Google traffic.

My first clue that something was wrong was when I checked the page rank for the old site. In the TNX control panel, it was listed as a mix of 2 and 3 for some pages, but a Page Rank checker after the most recent updated showed it at Zero. Hmm… 

Then I went back to look specifically at the traffic I was getting from Google. It was near zero. The pages were still indexed, but for the most part they ranked as low as possible. I’m surprised anyone got the site from Google.

I looked back at the history, and there was a quite clear drop-off point. In early May, I went from a steady 2-300 visitors per day from Google to almost nothing. Aside from a fluke day in December with 130 visits, it’s been pretty much the same from May until today.

I didn’t notice at the time, since I stopped updating and monitoring the site in April. However, this was about three months after I started selling TNX links.

An Alternative Cause

There is an alternative possibility.

In May, the site was hacked and subjected to an iframe injection. A whole slew of invisible spam links were embedded into the page through an iframe, and I didn’t find out for a couple weeks.

That attack took place at the exact same time as the dropoff in Google traffic. The infected files carried a timestamp of May 16. The last peak of traffic was May 15. May 16 and 17 showed drop offs - although nothing too out of the ordinary. By May 18, Google traffic had all but stopped.

I was later informed (in mid June) that the site was removed from the index due to these links. I quickly fixed the problem and applied to be re-admitted to the index. I was, and I didn’t think too much about it after that.

I suppose it’s possible that the iframe injection flagged the site in Google’s index, leading to it being blacklisted. However, it seems strange that traffic would stop three or four weeks before I was contacted by Google and the site was removed from the index. If the traffic dropoff is due to the iframe injection, wouldn’t the dropoff and the notification from Google have come at the same time?

Bit Weary of TNX - Looking for Verification

At this point, I’m a bit weary to install TNX links on this site. I don’t want to take the chance of tanking this project - especially since I’ve still got a vested interest here. I’m not really concerned about the fate of the old site - I was done with it.

I’ve decided to do a bit of an experiment with another defunct site to see what happens. I’ve applied for my old gaming site (Rolling Horde) to be included in the TNX system. I then plan on loading it up with links and seeing what happens.

If indeed Google detects these links and hammers sites that sell them, Rolling Horde should drop in the rankings to near non-existance within a few months. If May or June roll around and it hasn’t been impacted, then maybe I was just over-reacting - and something else caused the other site to get the boot.

Well, according to Blogger’s ToS, you do. But, if you’re feeling brave, it’s incredibly simple to hide it.

It’s not very easy to physically remove it, but hiding it accomplishes the same goal. Your users will never see it, and it won’t interfere with any custom layouts you’ve designed.

Editing Your Blogger HTML Template 

In order to hide the navbar, you’ll need to edit your Blogger site’s HTML template.

To do so, go to your Blogger dashboard as if you were going to write a post. Then click on the “Layout” tab and choose “Edit HTML.”

This should bring up a giant box of text that you can edit (see the screenshot to the right).

If you are using the the classic template, you will either have to “Upgrade Your Template” (using the instructions that follow) or use slightly different code at the end.

Click on the “Layout Tab.” Then, choose “Customize Design.” Click the “Upgrade Your Template” button and choose the template you want.

Now, click on Layout -> Edit HTML.

Adding the New Code

In order to make the Navbar hidden, you’ll only need to add one line of code.

The beginning of the text in the textbox (your HTML template) deals with styling information. You want to scroll to the end of that. Scroll down until you see the following line:

]]></b:skin>

Just before that line, add the following line of code:

#navbar { display: none; }

Then click the Save Template button, reload your blog, and your navbar should be gone!

If you are using the classic template, you’ll need to do things only slightly different. In your template, search for this line:

</style>

Then, add the following line of code before that line:

#navbar-iframe { display: none; }

Why the difference? Blogger uses a slightly different mechanism for the navbar in the classic template. It’s launched in an iframe, which is styled by the id #navbar-iframe. In the customized templates, the navbar is within the main page, so you can hide it directly without having to hide the iframe.

That’s It?

Umm… yeah.

I’ve seen some examples online where people included a bit more styling information (zero-ing out the margins and padding, for example). I haven’t found this to be necessary.

I used the code above and tested it (example here) in Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer and they all seemed to work fine.

Like I mentioned before, this is technically against the Blogger T.O.S., so you’re following this advice at your own risk. I doubt Google would notice, though, and if your site is popular enough to draw Google’s attention you should probably have moved onto a self-hosted blog anyway.

Some things are well known. We all know keyword density is important so that Google’s crawler knows what your site is about. Titles are important. Text needs to be discoverable.

This is another reason that I like writing things at Associated Content - and one reason it is in some ways better than a blog.

How Do You Know What Works?

Trial and error.

Sure, you can read about keyword density and search engine optimization all day. You’ll never know if it works until you try it. And you’ll never know it was your optimization that worked until compare a handful of articles on the same topic with different styles.

Think of it as an experiment of sorts. By writing about a single topic with three or four different angles, you can see what works and what doesn’t. You might pick up some trailing phrases that you didn’t think of just by writing the same piece with a slightly different angle and some alternate word choices.

Do Your Readers Want to Read Five Articles About the Same Thing?

Probably not. If you’re trying to build a regular readership for your blog, you don’t want to come out with five slightly different articles about how NCAA football needs a playoff.

Ahh, but are you worried about subscribers at Associated Content? Well, some people are. I’m not. I see it as a playground to write things that are destined just for the search engine minefield.  My writings at AC vary across so many topics that it doesn’t really make sense for people to subscribe to it.

That makes it the perfect place to test out writing techniques. For example, today I wrote up two pieces about Fallout 3 - How Do I Finish Chapter 6 of Fallout 3 Without Killing Everyone and How to Complete Chapter 6 “Tranquility Lane” Without Losing Karma.

Each article says substantively the same thing - it tells the reader how to complete the quest in a certain way. They do so in different ways, though, from the title right down to the conclusion.

Oh, and Get Your Backlinks While You’re At It

Like I’ve written before, Associated Content is also a great place to create some links back to your own content on your blog.

In this case, I’m writing a lengthier, illustrated walkthrough on Chapter 6 in Fallout 3 on this site. The Associated Content articles tackle the same topic in a more concise way, and they include a few well crafted links back to my content here. A reader that finds the AC articles could want more information and click on the links back here - earning me more traffic.

I wouldn’t say that Associated Content is better than a blog or that it has more earning potential in the long run. It is, however, a good supplement to a blog - allowing you to hone your SEO practices and improve your site at the same time.

Why don’t you go flex your SEO muscles at Associated Content? It’s a great place to test out all those theories without boring your regular readers.

Are blogrolls a good idea? Do they instill confidence in your readers, or do they just bleed search engine juice from your site?

The Positives: An Informed Author is a Trusted Author

There certainly is something to be said for a blogroll of sorts. When a new user finds your site, he may want to poke around and see who you are.

One place to look is the About page. This should give the reader some information. Another place to look is the blog roll. If you’re supposed to be an authority on the topic, who else do you read?

You can’t possibly keep up with the times if you work in a vacuum, so it’s of interest to the reader how you keep up with things.

A blogroll can also be useful for someone looking for more information.

For example, I’m always looking for more education blogs to follow. I’ve found a ton of tech-related blogs (duh), but very few that are written by Social Studies teachers. Whenever I stumble on a new education blog, I browse through the blogroll looking for something written by a Socials Studies teacher.

The Negatives: Sitewide Links Are Bad for SEO

There are definitely some downsides to blogrolls, though. Some people might not care so much, but if you worry about SEO then you should be worried about that giant list of sitewide links.

You see, sitewide links are like a giant drain on your search engine juice. Each page contains a certain amount of page rank worthiness, and each link on that page spreads the page rank love around.

Sitewide links within your site are great, because they help redistribute that link love. Since every one of your pages links back to the front page, it’ll have a higher pagerank than the individual pages in your site. Likewise, pages like category indexes - linked to by many of your individual pages - will have greater search engine visibility.

Sitewide links going out of your site aren’t so good, though. Each one is a trickle of pagerank going down the drain. One or two sitewide links aren’t going to kill you - but what if you have a dozen pages in your blogroll? Consider how many pages of content you have (hundreds, thousands even?) and multiply that by the number of links in your blogroll.

Even a short list of links - six or seven - could easily work out to thousands of outbound links. Yowza.

To authors who are blogging for a smaller audience and aren’t concerned with search engine traffic, this isn’t a big deal. If you’re in the market to monetize your blog, though, that should concern you a great deal.

I also think that sidebars can easily get over-crowded. With other necessary items (recent posts, categories, archive links, ads, etc) there just isn’t a lot of real estate to give up for that a list of links.

What to Do? Compromise.

I’ve decided to go with a compromise of sorts.

For the sake of my readers, I want to have a blogroll available. I want people to know what I read, and I want to reward those sites that I read regularly with some link love.

However, I don’t want to have a dozen or so sitewide links bleeding my search engine juice. I’d like to keep some of that for myself, so people actually find the site!

Instead, I decided to create a separate blogroll page. In actuality, it’s just another post in my index, but you could consider it a static page of sorts.

On the blogroll page, I include a link to a handful of sites that I regularly read. This is likely to change over time as I change my subscriptions, but I’d say that on any given day you’ll find 6-12 sites that I read. This also gives me a chance to add a comment (a sentence or two) about each site, so the reader knows what to expect.

Then, to make sure that readers can easily find it, I put a prominent link to the blogroll page in my header. Along with the About page, I think this provides some good information about me and my site without hurting my search engine placement.

What do you do think? Are you concerned about all those outbound links, or do you just include a blogroll anyway?

Well, there are some compelling reasons why that is a bad idea. I’d try to make you feel guilty about that decision, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been too lazy up until now to do it myself. Oops.

For those of you that are impatient, I’ll deal with the technical stuff first. Then, we’ll take a look at why you shouldn’t be using the ‘www’ subdomain.

How to Use .htaccess to Remove the ‘www’ From Inbound URLs

This can be accomplished with a simple .htaccess mod_rewrite redirect.

First, let’s take a look at the code as it appears in my .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
 
#redirect from www.life-of-brian.com to life-of-brian.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.life-of-brian.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://life-of-brian.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The first line turns on the mod_rewrite engine. You’ll need this at the beginning of your .htaccess file if you plan to use any rewrites.

The “RewriteCond” line tells the server what to look out for. In this case, the simple regex [^www.life-of-brian.com$] grabs any expression that starts with www.life-of-brian.com. The remainder of the expression - such as the trailing part of the URL - is stored in the variable $1.

The “RewriteRule” line tells the server where it should send the user. It rewrites the entire URL, starting with the domain without the www [http://life-of-brian.com] and then it appends the trailing portion of the URL [$1].

How do you adapt this for your own site? Simple.

In the RewriteCond, change www.life-of-brian.com to your own domain (including the www). Then, in the RewriteRule line, replace http://life-of-brian.com wth your own domain.

It’s also a good idea to wrap the whole snippet with the tags <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> and </IfModule>.

Here’s the entire .htaccess file rewritten for the domain mydomain.com.

RewriteEngine On
 
#redirect from www.mydomain.com to mydomain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mydomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you’re using this with an existing .htaccess file, put this snippet at the very beginning. For example, I use .htaccess to create pretty URLs for my Wordpress posts. I placed this snippet before the snippet that was automatically generated by Wordpress.

Ok. So Why Remove the ‘www’?

Let’s focus on two main reasons why you shouldn’t use - and why should encourage your users not to use - the www subdomain. The first reason has to do with form and semantics, while the second one might have benefits in terms of SEO and SERP.

The Semantics Argument. If you surf around web design blogs, you’ll see a lot of talk about coding semantically correct and standards meeting sites. There’s a belief that doing things the right way is inherently good - even if there may not be a lot of hard evidence that you benefit from it.

Likewise, there’s an argument to be made for the disuse of the ‘www’ subdomain. It is no longer needed, it is depracated, and it should therefore go by the wayside. I stumbled on the site no-www today, and found a great quote to summarize this position:

Succinctly, use of the www subdomain is redundant and time consuming to communicate. The internet, media, and society are all better off without it.

In most cases, there is no need to use the www subdomain. Your browser and the web server assume that you’re looking for web content - so they serve it up automatically. Including the ‘www’ is therefore redundant.

Since the ‘www’ is no longer necessary, it just seems like the right thing to do to not use it. You should therefore gently suggest to your users that they stop typing in those letters for no reason.

The SEO Argument. If you want visitors to find your website through a search engine, you know at least a bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) placement. You know that things like links to your site help improve your SEO and SERP - and ultimately bring more users to your site.

So what happens if the search engine thinks that www.mydomain.com/landing-page.html is different from mydomain.com/landing-page.html? If the inbound links to your site are split between these two domains, the search engine might miscalculate the number of links coming to your page - thus negatively impacting your SEO and SERP.

The htaccess mod_rewrite redirect that we used above automatically sends the search engine spider to one page - no matter URL the inbound link provided. There’s no chance that the search engine will get confused and consider the two URLs to be separate pages.

Considering it takes only a couple minutes to create an appropriate .htaccess file, I think it’s time well spent if it has even the slightest impact on your SEO and SERP.

Yet you don’t want that advertising to be so obtrusive as to detract from your content. If you can’t find the words for the ads, chances are you’ll bounce right off a site.

Of course, if your ads are too well integrated or hidden, you’ll have low click through rates - leading to lower value for your advertising potential.

Let’s take a look at some examples of extremely obstrusive, annoying, and user-angering advertising.

Screen Blocking Flash Ads

It used to be that pop-up ads were the web’s most wanted nuisance. Those days are long gone, thanks to smart browsers that block pop up advertising.

This week, I found something more annoying than a pop-up - a flash advertisement that blocks the content until you close it.  Take a look at around IMDB and you’re likely to find one.

As soon as the page loads, the flash movie opens in the center of the screen. There is a “close” button at the bottom, but due (I guess) to some javascript errors, this button is moved off the bottom of my screen in Google Chrome. I therefore have no choice but to sit there for 20 seconds or so, until the advertisement closes by default.

This is hideous. This is evil. If IMDB weren’t the greatest repository of movie information on the internet, I’d never go back. As it is, I’m going to start looking elsewhere - for a site that’s informative and respects my user experience.

While this certainly gets the user’s attention, this type of advetisement goes way too far in pulling your attention to the ad. It certainly detracts from the content, and for the average site it would likely lead to a reduced number of repeat visitors.

If content is king, your advertising should never hide your content.

Expanding/Opening Flash Advertisements

Only slightly less annoying than the screen-blocking advertisement is the expanding flash advertisement.

These ads are typically skyscrapers or banners along the edge of the page. When the cursor is hovered over the ad, it expands to two or three times it’s usual size. They could also be designed to open automatically (like the advertisements at imdb), until they are closed.

I found an example this weekend while surfing around CoolMiniOrNot.

This is not quite as aggravating as an advertisement that blocks the main content. I can still read the page and look around.

However, the positioning of the ad makes it so that it usually opens up over the navigation portion of the site. It covers up links I would use to browse around your site.

My typical response? Stop navigating.

If you make it hard for me to get around your site and find content that I find relevant or interesting, I’ll look somewhere else.  After content, navigation is probably the most important part of a site - and blocking your navigation with advertising is a bad idea.

It seems like CMON has stopped using that advertisement, or I’m just getting lucky. I couldn’t find it again to take a screenshot. I did, however, run up against it a dozen times over the weekend while I was posting some of my work to the site.

A Good Example of Where to Put Ads

I despise the type of advertising seen above. It is likely to make me turn around and leave your site right away.

There are, however, perfectly acceptable forms of advertising that are not likely to impede my web surfing experience.  The general principal: keep advertisements on the periphery and don’t let them cover up any important portions of your web site.

A favorite spot within the design community is towards the top of the sidebar on the right side of the screen. The screenshot of CSS-Tricks is a good example.

The very top of the sidebar includes the most important links - RSS feeds and searching. Beneath that, the sidebar is dominated by a series of 125×125 advertisements. The number of advertisements (10) seems a bit much, but in general they don’t get in the way of you consuming the content.

The design of the site also makes it easy to plop a small banner into the header. This is prime real estate in advertising land. If it sits next to the header image and fits nicely, then it’s probably not a bad idea. If you take up a lot of horizontal space to place an ad all by itself - then you might be going too far.

At the moment, my site (Nerds at Work) is another example of minimalist advertising. You’ll notice two main ads - a 250 x 300 block in the sidebar and a banner just above the footer. If anything, I’m too far on the minimalist side - and CTR and revenue will suffer.

However, this is also a relatively new site. When starting out, I think it’s a good idea to trim back on the advertising and maybe make it a bit more prominent over time. In a year or two, I may consider going to a format similar to CSS-Tricks.