blogging 102

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes If you followed this post over from Blogging For Noobs, then you know this mornings story.  The summation is I found a potential spamback link in my comments at the Celebrity Rumors and decided to follow it with due diligence before allowing it.  it was a spamback, but it had links to a wealth of good sites worthy of showing you.  Here they are. While not the most important thing in a theme, the color scheme is certainly the first thing noticed by a visitor to your blog. This handy little color scheme picker will help you come up with an appropriate scheme quickly and easily. I also found this three part series on usefull css code snippets. Part 1, 2, 3. This is a nice graphically based use of rounded css corners complete with free graphics and code. The size they give you could easily work as a background image for your blog page. This Web 2.0 Generator link page had a lot of great links for theme builders as well as just general bloggers. convey_source... 

Reading time: < 1 minute Sorry about the mess everyone.  I am making some changes around here this weekend and will looking at a few different theme designs to decide what I like and don't.   If the theme changes on you mid read sorry for any disruption. The current theme is the Freemium Theme by Ptah Dunbar.  Feel free to tell us what you think of it. Brad Update: 10-8-2008: We should be bck online here later today.  If you run a site about blogging I encourage you to check out http://www.bloggingfornoobs.com/topsites/ convey_source = "English"; Read More →

Reading time: < 1 minute Every blogger wants a reaction to their posts. Whether or not everyone will admit, this is the whole reason we do what we do it. It is no fun talking out of your ass if everyone ignores you. So ask yourself what are you doing for those people? I have put a lot of thought into this of late. I know how to get a lot of diggs when I want, and a lot of traffic too. What I was missing though were lots of comments. I read what the big guys were saying. Then I realized many of them were just talking out of their asses, because if it were really great advice they would be doing it themselves. convey_source = "English"; Read More →

Reading time: < 1 minute 5) Don’t Advertise On Your Noobie Blog. People who tell you not to advertise don’t usually have your best interest at heart. The first kind of people to give that advice are readers who want something for nothing. Second kind are bloggers who think if you don’t have ads their advertising will get a better click through ratio. 4) Gadets and Widgets are the bomb and you should use all the latest and greatest. The fact is unless it is unobtrusive and either useful to you or your readers it is pointless and slows down your load times. convey_source = "English"; Read More →

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes The question of whether you should make theme adjustments is always a difficult one to answer. It is even be harder to do and not negatively affect your onsite readers. That being said here are my thoughts. Limit major theme changes to no more than once a month. Anymore than once a month clearly defines you as a noob. A complete theme change is sometimes necessary especially as you are learning, but should be done with caution. When building or choosing a new theme make sure that it is easily tweaked later on. Having a CSS class that will allow the quick insertion of more banners or advertising will save you countless hours of work down the road. • Work out all changes before hand on a test blog with actual posts and pages. I prefer to run a local server using Apache, mySql, and php management on my windows PC Make changes when the fewest people are reading your blog and with a very clear head. A pot of coffee by your side while making...