Today, I updated the BT Active Discussions to version 1.1.1. If you are using my plugin please update as soon as you can. Summary of Changes The following are changes made since the previous version: The SQL query is now faster -- One thing I noticed about the first version is that it works slowly on my personal finance blog which only has about 3,900 comments. This is unacceptable because it wouldn't be very functional on ...

Over the weekend, I just created my first WordPress plugin, called BT Active Discussions. It is a recent comments plugin that displays customizable number of blog posts with recently updated comment. The output is very similar to phpBB's View Active Topics and vBulletin's Today's Posts functions. You can see a demo at Moolanomy Personal Finance Blog. I'd appreciate any feedback you can provide below.

One key concern about having advertisement on my blog is the fear of alienating my readers; especially regular readers who come to the blog daily and leave comments. Unfortunately, some of the best monetization opportunities call for disruptive ad placement. For example, one of the best performing AdSense ad is the large rectangular block placed inside the content itself. So, how can a blogger strike a balance between maintaining an appealing blog while maximizing ...