I was using one of the popular Adsense modules to populate my sites with Adsense adverts and it struck me that many of my sites just were not making ANY money (I know, I should have picked it up earlier).

Now, the past few days I went a-vestigating to try and figure out why - and this is what I found.

When Adsense changes to the ad units in addition to the channels I continued to use my Adsense module, which worked well with the old channels, and everything seemed fine; the advert still showed on my sites and people could click through and all that.

But!

At the Warrior Forum, an Internet marketing forum I'm member of, one of the members wanted to restrict part of her Joomla! membership site content to registered users only, specifically the intro section of an article must be "public" but the rest restricted to paying members.

So I went searching and came across the Joomihide plugin in Joomla Extentions which seems to do just that (I didn't restrict access to the rest):

We expanded our hosting services for Joomla! web sites!

Apart from our Joomla! hosting on servers in Germany and South Africa we now also provide hosting on servers in the USA and Australia

• Joomla Hosting Germany & South Africa
• Joomla Hosting USA & Australia

 This move allows us to bring hosting closer to your clients, which in itself reduces the risk potential problems such as slower connects and breaks.

Allowing users/visitors to comment on your articles and/or other content helps make your Joomla! 1.5 web site interactive giving them a more satisfying experience.

!JoomlaComment 3.26 is available in Legacy mode for Joomla! 1.5. I installed it here (but only made it available to registered users) to give you a feel for this tool.

It installed easy enough, however

The past day or so has been hectic after the hack attack on Joomla! 1.5 web sites.

If you haven't been hacked but are still running Joomla! 1.5.0 to Joomla! 1.5.5 you need to download and upgrade with the security release 1.5.6 as soon as possible.

I must say that this attack has made me appreciate using a system that is well supported - the fix was out very quickly and simple to install. If your site had been hacked,it was a bit more tricky to get everything up and running again, but not too difficult.

This brings me to the point of web site security;  many of us install Joomla without really thinking about securityand leave ourselves wide open.

Take some time to read the Joomla! Administrators Security Checklist as well as the Top 10 Stupidest Administrator Tricks.

I am guilty; how about you?