I can’t stand it anymore! Every time I log into Wordpress I am reminded once again that I need to update to Wordpress 2.6! Ok, so not a bad thing. Its actually good that they provide that info, because I would probably be to lazy to go out and find it myself.
So whats 2.6 contain? What is different from 2.5, which was a complete overhauling. Well, There is a video available that explains it all. Check it out.
This actually ties directly into another topic I wanted to cover. Backing up your blog. One good plugin that I have found that provides a direct connection to your database from the WP-Admin Panel, is WP-phpMyAdmin. It is extremely important to backup your blog often. If you have never had a site crash on you before, believe me when I say its the worst feeling ever. Especially one that is a few years old. BACK UP YOUR BLOGS TODAY!!!
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
So as I am running through my Entrecard drops deciding weather or not I should approve certain sites I run accross WhatAboutBlog.com and it reminded me of something. Something Joel Comm mentions in one of his books “The Adsense Code”, is about how important the area “above the fold” is.
Let me explain what “above the fold” is. So as you are reading this, with the page scrolled all the way up, everything you see is “above the fold”. As soon as you start scrolling down the page you beging dropping below the fold. Most readers determine wheather or not they are going to continue reading by viewing the information “above the fold”. You may do this without even realizing it. If you use Google Analytics with your blog, you can check the average time a reader spends on your site and this will give you a good idea about how far they are truly going.
So back to what I ran across. No doubtly, most bloggers have heard of or are using the Entrecard program. Well the author of WhatAboutBlog.com mentioned in a recent post, the importance of posting your Entrecard “above the fold”. This makes sense for the same reason Joel Comm told us to post your adsense code there. More readers will see it, improving your chances of a click.
Blogging, as I have mentioned before, can be a full time job and when you have a full time job it can create a problem for people that are not organized(like me). For those of you that have been tracking along with my blog(s), you will notice that lately I have been unable to post daily or even every other day. Part of this is because of simply being exhausted after 10-12 hour days and part is due to writers block.
So I want to give you some ideas on how to remain consistent with you blog posts. One thing is to stay active in your niche community and that will generate great ideas. Another way is to keep a list near you, in your car, on your desk, etc… for ideas when they pop up. I also mentioned a few posts ago that writing multiple posts and saving them as you go instead of posting them immediately will help. You can generate an inventory of posts to pull from and publish as needed.
What other ideas do you have? What are your blogging habits? How are you posting?
I also want to point out that when you don’t have consistent posts, you better ensure that when you do publish a new post, it is good. Something to keep your readers attention. Quality content is important.
So you have setup your blog and you may have posted a few posts already but you need a way to keep people updated on your new content. How about emailing them every time you post new content? Well an RSS feed will take care of that for you. Also a lot of people use feed readers, like Google Reader to check content of their favorite sites in one central location so they don’t have to jump around from site to site.
What is an RSS feed? RSS, meaning Really Simple Syndication, is a popular technology for notifying users of updates to content in a website, blog, Internet TV channel or even podcasts. You may have already seen the most common image of an RSS feed on blogs. It looks like this:
Now its time to create your feed. Simply go to feedburner.com and register your account. After that, follow along with the video below. At the end of the video you will see code copied. When you get that far with your own feed, the code that you copy is to be placed in your sidebar code or where ever you want the feed to be placed. If you are having trouble finding where to place the code feel free to comment here or email me and I would be glad to help you.
So how many of you can’t decide what is better for you or your business, a website or a blog? Well I did a bit of research and based on google trends, you maybe surprised. Based on results from 2004 until now the importance of blogs have severely overtaken standard websites. Blogs are simply taking over. Look at this image below that I copied from Google Trends. Its pretty self evident.
The blue line represents the search volume for blogs and the red line represents the search volume for websites. So you tell me, which one would you and/or your business benefit more from?
I was browsing around the net recently and happened to stumble across one of the best blogs I have ever visited. Personified.com Why one of the best? Well its simple for me. I found the solution to a problem I was having with my own personal blog. How to create a list of “popular posts” and have them listed in my sidebar. The site also provides many tips that you can use to help take your blog to the next level.
As you can see, I have now added to sections to my sidebar. One titled “Blogging” and the second titled “Blog Design”. The way these are setup, after writing a post, I add it to a specific category in Wordpress. A category that I named. In this case, the two I am using are “Blogging” and “Blog Design”. So now my readers can simply access the five most recent posts in each category.
Now I will be the first to admit that I don’t really know much about PHP, just enough to be able to decipher it here and there. So I enlisted the help of two bloggers on Personified.com to help me. Chris Pearson and Kristarella. They were able to assist me in properly executing the code. Thanks guys. Also, I want to thank Cybercoder from Cybercoder.net for giving me the idea for this. He is doing almost the exact same thing on his blog with different code.
So thank you all once again and I hope to continue to better my blog for all the readers to come.
*Oh and by the way. If you would like to know how to do this, please comment here.
Wordpress is a very easy-to-use and the stock setup that is provided allows for an entire blog to be created and maintained with a professional look and feel. Well how can you take your blog to the next level? The first thing I would suggest is to add some plugins. There are countless plugins available at Wordpress.org that will help you shape your blog to something that works best for you within your niche. I will be reviewing some of these plugins over the next few weeks and provide a dedicated section on the site to refer back if you want to download the reviewed plugins.
Keep checking back for more details around specific plugins that I use and ones that are very useful for most blogs.
So after testing about 10 or so different Wordpress themes, I have finally decided to go with Blog oh Blog V2.0. This is the updated theme to what I used on HardwareBlogPortal.com and I simply love it. I was looking for a simple theme that flowed well with ads and other items I will be using as time goes by. The theme was designed by Jai of blogohblog.com. He has recently released a new premium version of the them titled BoBV3. It will cost you $89.00 but from the looks of it, it is a great looking theme with even more added features.
So the question I have for everyone is; What makes a good WP theme? I’ll keep testing different features of this theme but Im sure I have officially settled. Let me know what you think!
I am TheYoungGuy. I am a PC Tech Supervisor for a major retailer. I have been officially blogging for a little over a year now and have thoroughly enjoyed it. The idea to do my own personal blog has been floating through my head for months now so I decided to go ahead with the project and see what comes out of it. More
