blogging 102

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes In the early days of web design one of the few interactive things you could do with your readers was set up a guest book. At first this was next to impossible because almost anyone and everyone who had a website was operating on free sites like Geocities, Angelfire, or Tripod. There was no cgo access unless you paid for it, so there was no interaction beyond the simple mail form. Eventually most of them had heard the call for interaction and offered up ready made guest books. By that time it was really too late to do anything about it, blogging had been invented and was taking quick hold on sites like LiveJournal and Blogger. The world of interactivity was upon the average website owner, and we went from simple users to publishers. The advent of blogging with threaded post and comments we respond to or at the very least should be responding to left behind the old guest book format. Users could now interact with authors directly over on subject specific... 

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes Something is up at Technorati. For more than a month now I have been having problems with them properly indexing one of my blogs. Despite the fact that it was being updated either manually or automatically with daily digest posts, http://www.bradsotherblog.com was simply not getting its ping through to Technorati. This just isn’t me, either. The first suggestion they made was to manually ping your blog at http://www.technorati.com/ping this works for all of my blogs except The Other Blog. After trying that and a ticket submitted with no answer I finally complained on the post board and the blog was quickly taken care of. They apparently want to take care of people who open their mouths in public a lot faster than they do those who wait patiently for returned emails. Well that one ping they did worked exactly once, the blog updated and jumped from an authority of 8 to 14 when all was said and done. I checked back a week later and nothing since that... 

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes There were several old combinations that worked well together but since WordPress 2.3 came out many of them stopped working properly or stopped working altogether. Fear not there are replacements out there. Unlike many of the regurgitated idiot lists currently out there, everything I list will work in WordPress 2.5 the only version of the blog software you should be running. Ultimate Tag Warrior hasn’t been supported by the author since WordPress 2.3 came out. Many of its features and those of Bunny’s Technorati Tags, Jerome’s Keywords, and other tagging programs are easily replaced in better plugins. The All in One SEO Pack can even be replaced now. The new power plugin combination consists of Headspace2 and Simple Tags. Between these two plugins you can hand every task that you used to require half a dozen plugins and tweaks. convey_source = "English"; Read More →

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes Today’s blogging tip is don’t over extend yourself.  If you don’t have time to commit to your blog(s) then you have probably over extended yourself with either the blogs or your other activities.  Either way trying to do both will make your life suck and no one gives a damn if you blog about your sucky life!  When you start out blogging you need to make some serious time commitments to your blog and not just writing the posts either.   Unless you have the extra cash to throw around at web developers then you really need to spend time learning site design, SEO, your blogging software, and all the latest information about the plugins that will make your blog great.  How do you do it?  You do it by reading a lot of really great blogs or better yet their feeds since you can do that quite a bit faster.  Where Should you start reading?  Here is my short list Pro Blogging Perfect Blogging Pajama Professional That should hold you for... 

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes WordPress 2.5 seems to be more particular than early releases to coding errors.  One possible result is the loss of sidebars and footers.  Elezend asked about this very problem on Lorelle on Wordpress, then again at Brad’s Tiny World.  Elezend’s footer which contains MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog displays just up and disappeared upon upgrading.  Personally I think upgrading on day one of any software upgrade is a bad idea, but that is from years of going WTF and looking at frozen computer screens. This is going to be a multistep fix and some trial and error So lets get started. The first thing I want to try to make sure this is not a general theme problem is to remove the MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog coding convey_source = "English"; Read More →