About 10 months ago I released my first WordPress plugin, Thank Me Later. In the first version, I included an optional (although enabled by default) link back to Making the Web, thinking it would help with my search engine position. Although conscious of "link spam", I grossly under-estimated the number of backlinks I would obtain and decided to not no-follow the links. Read more »
Sponsor Thank Me Later 2
Thank Me Later 2.0 is currently being developed and will hopefully be released in 2-3 months time. The current stable version, as you may have, is 1.5.3.1. From this version, TML takes a giant leap with a complete overhaul in its "internal workings", taking it from a weekend-hacked-together script to something more organised, professional and agile.
Developing a plugin as vast and feature-rich as Thank Me Later can be very demanding. Since not many people have been forthcoming with donations, I though I would try a new tactic (rather than selling the plugin). This idea, if I remember, was mentioned by somebody on wp-hackers digest.
Basically, I am looking for a single person, or a number of people, who will sponsor a single release of the Thank Me Later plugin.
Thank Me Later has so far been downloaded 5,187 times, with the concentration of downloads appearing after a release, and has received great feedback (read some here). Here's what I propose:
- Each sponsor gets a link on the plugin's options page (for the release), back to their website or organisation.
- They will also get a link on the plugin information page at Making the Web (for at least as long as the sponsored release is the latest stable version), and the same at Wordpress Plugins directory (although this is indeterminate, since it not being my page)
- On a separate page for the plugin's administration section, they will be able to display a negotiable advert or description of their services.
Ideally, I'm looking for either one individual sponsor, or up to 10 sponsors. Importantly, the above is my proposal. You are free to propose your own arrangement, particularly if wanting to sponsor the plugin on your own. If you are interested, please email me at thankmelater@making-the-web.com or leave a comment below.
Sponsor amounts do not have to be great. We can come to a suitable arrangement.
TNX-WP

TNX-WP automatically places money-making links from TNX onto your Wordpress blog. It allows you to automatically place links before and after content, comments, in the sidebar and in the footer; or a mixture of all these.
TNX-WP is currently in BETA. Please share you views and suggestions with a comment on this page.
Google Knows Your Friends
I just done a search at Google for: 'related:making-the-web.com', and got these results: Read more »
Mass Browser History Sniffing with Javascript
For a long while, I have known about that feature/flaw in browsers which allows you to sniff a user's history. Any examples I've seen are rather selective about which pages can be detected. It seems great to detect user's feed aggregators and offer them suitable subscription buttons, as Niall Kennedy showed.
However, I have been more interested in finding all websites a user visits. Only then does it become unconstrained by its application. It can now be used to find out what types of websites a user visits and provide targeted advertisements or services, based on a less boolean-logical approach. Read more »
