Blogging tips and tricks

Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

2012-01-28T03:40:00.001-08:00

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Dear Google user, We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google. We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.
One policy, one Google experience

Easy to work across Google Our new policy reflects a single product experience that does what you need, when you want it to. Whether you're reading an email that reminds you to schedule a family get-together or finding a favorite video that you want to share, we want to ensure you can move across Gmail, Calendar, Search, YouTube, or whatever your life calls for with ease.	Tailored for you If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We'll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you're searching for and get you those results faster.	Easy to share and collaborate When you post or create a document online, you often want others to see and contribute. By remembering the contact information of the people you want to share with, we make it easy for you to share in any Google product or service with minimal clicks and errors.

Protecting your privacy hasn't changed Our goal is to provide you with as much transparency and choice as possible, through products like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager, alongside other tools. Our privacy principles remain unchanged. And we'll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).	Got questions? We've got answers. Visit our FAQ at http://www.google.com/policies/faq to read more about the changes. (We figured our users might have a question or twenty-two.)

Notice of Change March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Terms will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Please do not reply to this email. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. Also, never enter your Google Account password after following a link in an email or chat to an untrusted site. Instead, go directly to the site, such as mail.google.com or www.google.com/accounts. Google will never email you to ask for your password or other sensitive information.

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2009-11-29T07:10:00.000-08:00

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2009-07-18T06:55:00.001-07:00

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2009-07-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

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5/28 Blogging Tips

2009-05-27T22:17:00.001-07:00

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TwitVid.io Adds Media Context to your Twitter Stream
May 27, 2009 at 12:37 pm

TwitVid.io is the latest site to launch a tool that adds media context to your Twitter stream. What TwitVid.io does is allow you to upload a video and share the link through Twitter. Similar to its photo-centric counterparts such as TwitPic, the Fliggo-powered TwitVid.eo works by uploading video content directly from your computer and enabling you to share your uploaded content via links spread through Twitter.

As a blogger, there are two different ways in which you can take advantage of a site such as TwitVid.eo: add another layer of media to your text-based tweets, and build your brand by driving content to more rich, video content.

If you’re looking to shake things up on your typically textual Twitter updates, sharing links that lead to photos and videos are great ways to go. Since Twitter itself doesn’t offer direct media uploads, we have to rely on third party sites which are integrated with Twitter’s platform in order to incorporate multimedia content.

Why is this beneficial for you? It adds more interesting content to your Twitter stream, and makes you look more involved in the social media scene. As a blogger, it’s important that you share content to other sites you find interesting, as well as semi-personal information about yourself to appear less spammy. The more personable you are, the less likely readers are to think you’re only using Twitter to sell a brand, product or service. Even if you are using Twitter for one of these purposes, engaging users within a community such as Twitter means you’ll have to attempt to be genuine. Personal video content is one way in which to do this.

While the genuine and personal touch can be rather necessary for Twitter branding, you can also use Twitter updates as easy ways to share links and drive traffic to sites where you can further elaborate on your brand, service or product. Upload a video demo, a welcome greeting or an interview you’ve done for your blog, and share it through TwitVid.io. This can be used for direct messages, your public Twitter stream, and replies to other Twitter users. Create a repository of video content that you’d like to reserve specifically for Twitter use, and take advantage of it for promoting your own brand.

There’s not yet any direct mobile integration for TwitVid.io, though emailing in video content from your phone to TwitVid.io does offer some on-the-go capabilities. And unlike similar services such as 12seconds, TwitVid.io is pretty reliant on the Twitter service itself. In this regard, mobile applications would vastly help TwitVid.io’s current feature set, and make video-blogging via Twitter that much easier for users on the go.

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Serving post ratings in your blog
May 27, 2009 at 10:00 am

Certain uses for WordPress, such as a showcase or gallery site might call for a user rating system. You may also want to implement one in your blog just to see how you improve over time and how it affects your user’s experience.

A popular plugin for serving up star ratings to your visitors is WP-Post Ratings. Its easy to display the rating form with a function, and you can customize the rating images in a variety of colours and styles. Also, WP-Ratings allows you to filter the ratings by different groups like by author, category, month, or year. This would typically be the first plugin you would find searching through WP.org for any sort of rating system, but dig a little deeper and you might unearth some of these useful gems.

Vote the post - This is a simple plugin that doesn’t nag at you with a lot of options. It offers a simple, user-friendly rating system with votes like "Below Average", "Needs Work" ,"Average", "Very Good" and "Excellent".

Post Star Rating - This plugin installs quick and easy. It shows the highest rated posted for the month. It also lists the most popular posts at the moment and moves them up and down the list in realtime.

Star Rating for Reviews -

6 Tips to Avoid Blog Abandonment
May 26, 2009 at 6:19 pm

A recent survey by Technorati found that, of the 133 million blogs they had tracked since 2002, only 7.5 million had been updated within the past four months and, of those, only 1.5 million had been updated within the past 7 days.

This means that, of all the blogs Technorati has tracked, only 5.6% are active, even within the last four months, and only 1.1% are active within the past week.

In short, the vast majority of blogs are abandoned.

Blog abandonment can happen for many reasons. Some people have shifts in their personal life that prevent them from finding the time (why I had to abandon my personal blog), others lose interest in their topic, others suffer some form of catastrophic failure while some just move on to something else.

However, if you want your blog to be around for a few years to come, here are some suggestions to make sure you won’t abandon your blog once the going gets rough.

6. Get Paid Hosting

Though there are many wonderful blogs that are hosted on free services such as WordPress.com and Blogspot and many that have been around for a long time, it is still much easier to walk away from something you haven’t invested in.

If you are serious about blogging, you should look at getting your own domain and your own paid Web host. It only costs a few dollars per month for most bloggers and not only adds a great deal of professionalism to your site, but helps you stay focused.

Besides, when you have your own domain, you can make the site more personal to you, which makes you both more personally and financially invested in your site.

5. Blog in Private

Before starting a new blog, especially if you intend to make it a business of some variety, try blogging in private for a while. This has two functions:

Ensures Passion: It ensures that you have enough passion in your topic to survive the first few months, when traffic is likely to be almost non-existant.
Lays the Groundwork: This also works to have a stockpile of articles ready and live when your site goes online. This gives the search engines something to go through and new readers reason to stick around.

How many posts you you want before you go live will depend on your planned blogging. Typically though, you’ll want at least a month’s worth of posts live, more if you are posting infrequently. Just make sure you have enough to ensure your site looks “open” when you actually let the rest of the world in.

4. Blog on a Schedule

Here’s a tip that every blogger should know, put your posts up on a schedule. It doesn’t matter if your posts are daily, weekly or something in between, having your posts go up in a timely manner makes it easier for your readers to follow along and for you to keep writing. It becomes a part of your routine.

How often should you write? At least weekly is best, but one of the best solutions is to figure out how many posts you can do per day/week and then schedule to do only half that. This allots you time for email, research, redesigns and other blog-related projects.

If you find you can write more posts, you can speed up the schedule later. It is much easier to add more posts per week than to scale back.

3. Forward Post When Possible

Most people have to be in a mood to write. As such, it’s a good idea to work with those moods. When you feel like writing, write a lot and forward post it to your site. Not only does this help you make the most of your inspiration, but it also ensures your site will be active even if you don’t want or can’t write.

This helps you avoid missing a post, even when a more serious personal need arises, and it makes it easier to get back into writing for your site when you return. Many find that, once their schedule has been thrown off, it is very difficult to get back on it.

2. Read Up on Your Topic

Writer’s block is the enemy of every writer on a deadline and doubly so for every blogger. Staying on top of your area of interest will help you keep writer’s block to a minimum by feeding you a stream of new ideas.

Subscribe to blogs on a similar subject, subscribe to Technorati Watchlists, Google Blog Search feeds and even Twitter search feeds for your relevant keywords. Read what others are saying and then respond.

This isn’t to say that you should always respond or echo what others are saying, but being part of the conversation means listening. Not only can find news to report on and conversations to join in on, but you can often get great ideas for truly revolutionary stories.

1. Take a Break

For many, burnout is the enemy of blogging. If you feel yourself getting too stressed out about it, take a break from it for a while. If you forward post your articles, your readers may not even know the difference.

Take a weekend away to clear your mind, being sure to leave your laptop behind, and step away from the Web. You have to make sure that blogging is in balance with the rest of your life. If you spend too much time blogging or doing blogging-related activities, you’re going to have to quit to preserve your sanity.

Treat yourself well and don’t let your blog overrun your life. That may be the most important tip to keeping your blog around for the long haul.

Bottom Line

Even if you follow all of these tips, the odds are still stacked against you and your blog. Most blogs close within a few months of opening,

Still, if you take these suggestions, you can at least improve your chances of having a long-running blog and enjoying the audience, personal satisfaction and, possibly, money that comes with it.

Make no mistake, blogging is a lot of work, but if you enjoy it and you make it a routine part of your life, it doesn’t have to feel like a job.

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5/27 Blogging Tips

2009-05-26T22:17:00.001-07:00

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The End of Subject/Verb Agreement: The Final Rules
May 26, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Today we’re going to finish up our series in Subject/Verb agreement. Aren’t you glad? Did anyone remember how many rules there were between subject and verb agreement or had you forgotten like me?

Many of our words in the English language are singular nouns but they have a plural form. Words like civics, gymnastics, mathematics, mumps, and social studies are singular because they refer to a single thing even though the spelling suggests they are plural by having an -s on the end.

When we have words like this we should use a singular verb for subjects that seem plural in form but are actually singular in meaning.

Measles is a very contagious disease.
The evening news is on every night at 10:00.

There are also other groups of words that are plural as their form suggests and another group of words that can be singular or plural.

Plural: data, eyeglasses, media, scissors, slacks, barracks, pants.

Singular/Plural: acoustics, headquarters, ethics, politics.

My eyeglasses were found in the office.
The headquarters for the CIA is located in Washington. (This is singular because it represents an administrative office or center.)
The headquarters were located outside of town. (This is plural because it represents a group of buildings.)

If you’re referring to a pair of something and use the word “pair” in the sentence, the verb is singular and has to agree with the singular noun pair.

The scissors are missing. (Plural)
That pair of scissors is missing. (Singular)

Doesn’t it make sense to use don’t? These words are contractions and to check them for agreement with the subject, you should read or say them as the two original words used to make the contraction. (Does not, do not)

Some contractions are singular and some are plural.

Singular: Doesn’t, hasn’t, isn’t, wasn’t.
Plural: Don’t, haven’t, aren’t, weren’t.

The verb part of the contraction has to agree in number with the subject.

This cold room doesn’t bother me. (Does not)
These rules don’t make sense. (Do not)

That boy doesn’t want to play. (Does not)
Those boys don’t play fair. (Do not)

Sometimes a subject has a linking verb. Linking verbs are commonly the forms of be: be, is, am, are, was, can be, could be, has been, had been, etc.

A predicate nominative is a noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb and identifies, renames or explains the subject. It is considered a subject complement which completes the meaning of the linking verb. If a subject and its predicate nominative don’t have the same number, the verb still has to agree in number with the subject.

An important crop in Florida is oranges. (The singular verb is agrees with the singular subject crop even though the predicate nominative is the plural oranges. ¹

If we turn that sentence around to read: Oranges are an important crop in Florida. The subject is then the plural oranges and the verb should match it and not the singular predicate nominative of crop. ²

Titles are singular and take singular verbs.

“The Langoliers” is a novel by Stephen King.
Glover’s Cloth Goods is having a fabric sale.
“The Grapes of Wrath” is a John Steinbeck novel.

Who is it which does that? Who, which and that are generally relative pronouns and become the subject of a clause. An antecedent is the word the pronoun replaces or refers to. In this case the number of the verb will agree with the pronouns antecedent.

George caught a fish that was 12 inches long. (The antecedent of the word ‘that’ is ‘fish’. Since fish is singular in this sentence the verb was is also singular.)
Find three books that deal with economics. (’Books’ are plural so ‘deal’ must also be plural.)

This concludes the series of subject and verb agreement. If all of this has left you confused, don’t feel too bad, it can be a bit complicated. Just refresh yourself with all these rules on a regular basis and it will eventually seem like second nature.

Resource: ^{1, 2} Heath English

WordPress 2.8 - Widgets, Themes and Tags (oh my!)
May 26, 2009 at 10:00 am

No software version is ever released on time with every requested feature in place - but WordPress 2.8 is looking to have a ton of new features. None of these changes have a dramatic impact on the interface, so the transition should be very easy for most administrators.

WordPress Widgets

One of the best features of WordPress 2.8 is the update to the widgets section. The current widget management often involves these steps: Your theme has two sidebars/widget areas and you want to move your text widget from first to the second sidebar. First, you remove it from the first sidebar and save changes. Then you select the second sidebar from the drop down menu, click “show" and add the widget to the second sidebar.

In version 2.8 all your sidebars are now visible at once and you can drag and drop the required widgets into them. It’s a little bit of time traveling here, as an earlier version of WordPress had the widgets like this and it’s a welcome return! Plus, as soon as you place the widget into a sidebar, it will automatically show the widget's properties which can then be modified as needed.

Another new widget feature is that you can have multiple instances of the same plugin. This long requested feature will allow you to use the widget, most likely with different settings, in different sections of your site.

WordPress Themes

The new features in theme management will make theme hunting as easy as plugin hunting. Essentially everything you can do with plugins you will be able to do with themes. For example, if you go to Appearance > Add New Themes and you will be able to search for a theme by any keyword you want. The search will allow you to apply different filters based on colors, columns, width and subject. Once you find a theme it will also be easier to try out a new theme - no more FTPing! This will be a huge boon to theme makers as many more users will be willing to try out new themes.

In WordPress 2.7x when managing themes, you would have to click on a particular theme's image and then activate or discard them from the preview screen. In version 2.8 all you have to do is click on the activate link and the desired theme gets applied directly without showing you a preview. Additionally, you can also delete any unwanted themes from the same screen by clicking on the delete link. Old themes and plugins and like day old fish - best get rid of them before they smell too much!

WordPress Tags

In this version of WordPress, Tags finally get equal treatment with categories. Considering the role that tags play in search this is a valuable addition. A new sub-section has been added to the Posts section called Post Tags that contains all the tags that you have created for this blog. Similar to categories, you can now change the Tag name, Tag slug and even add a description for your tags (something that Drupal users have been accustomed to). This feature will be most useful for blogs which have multiple authors where the use of tags can quickly gets out of control with “tag, tagging, taggs, tags, WordPress tags” instead of just “WordPress tags.”

Many More New Features

This is just a summary of three areas where there are new features in WordPress 2.8. There are of course many behind-the-scenes updates for WordPress developers - particularly for widget developers. If you want to see ALL the new features, check out the official list of new WordPress 2.8 features. As always, it’s worth updating only after checking to make sure all your plugins have been verified to work in the new version.

Links Roundup - May 26th 2009
May 26, 2009 at 5:00 am

A roundup of some good blogging posts from the last few days

10 Twitter Hacks For Your WordPress Blog - A fantastic roundup of Twitter related hacks for WordPress.
15 Ways to Rework Your Next Blog Post Title - A great post about improving your blog post title.
WordPress 2.8 Beta 2 - You can now download the 2nd beta version of the upcoming 2.8 WordPress release.
How to Change the Category for Multiple Blog Posts With WordPress - A good explanation of the new bulk post editing feature in WordPress.
5 Things to Do With a Blogging Day Off - A good post from Jonathan about what you could do on your day off!

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5/26 Blogging Tips

2009-05-25T22:18:00.001-07:00

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China's Ban on Blogger Blogs (and Possible Workarounds)
May 25, 2009 at 10:00 am

Written by Amanda Fazani from Blogger Buster

There has been much speculation about China’s recently imposed “blanket ban” of all Blogger powered blogs. Some believe this is intended to quell references to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, while others wonder if this is a technical difficulty as hinted on Blogger’s Known Issues page.

In either case, this ban affects blogs hosted on the *blogspot.com subdomain (approximately 275 million) and also those who use a custom domain for their Blogger blogs (statistics of which are very difficult to gather). Here are the results of accessibility tests from WebsitePulse which show whether sites are accessible from within China:

According to logs from Herdict Web, Blogger powered sites have been blocked from around the 16th of May onwards; even today, there are dozens of references via Twitter from those in China who are unable to publish to their blogs or access websites they wish to visit:

What can we do to work around this ban, ensuring those in China can publish their blogs and access the sites they want to read?

For bloggers in China who want to publish new posts

Bloggers in China are unable to access their Blogger dashboard by regular means. However, there are other services which can still be accessed that can publish to Blogger on your behalf.

Post by email

Blogger has offered the “Mail to Blogger” service for quite some time, enabling bloggers to publish new posts while on the move. This enables us to write an email to our secret “Mail to Blogger” address which is then automatically published on our sites.

The only downside to this is that the Mail to Blogger address must be set up from within the Blogger dashboard, so this service is only possible for China-based bloggers who have already set up their email address.

A possible alternative is Posterous, which you can set up as a third party “Mail to Blogger” client using your blog’s unique ID number (which can also be found in the source code of your blog’s feed).

Auto-post via Facebook or Ping.fm

BlogIt is an app for Facebook which enables you to update multiple blogs and status feeds from your Facebook profile. Once you have installed this app in your Facebook profile, you will need to authorize use of your Blogger account (through Google hosted pages), after which you can update your blog via Facebook any time you like.

Ping.fm is another alternative, offering a simple solution to update your Blogger blog (and other social profiles) from a single application. Using Ping.fm you can update via the web, IM, email and other third party applications. It is advisable to use Ping.fm for short posts only as no formatting options are enabled.

To read Blogger powered blogs from within China

For those wishing to read their favourite Blogger powered blogs from within China, here are a couple of possible solutions:

Translate Blogger blogs

Using Google Translate or Babelfish, you can circumvent the restrictions by viewing Blogger blogs in a translated page. This ensures that the URL of the site you are reading is based on a different server.

Choose to translate from Chinese to English (or whichever translation you prefer) and paste the complete URL of the blog you wish to read. The blog will then be accessible for you to browse recent posts or archives with ease:

Unfortunately this does not appear to work when attempting to access the Blogger home page, so this workaround will not enable you to post from the Blogger dashboard.

Subscribe to “banned” blogs using an RSS reader

It is also possible to read updates from your favourite sites by reading in an RSS reader. Sign up to use Google Reader, BlogLines or Newsgator (none of which appear to be banned in China) and add the URL of the default feed for the Blogger blog you wish to read. This will be in the following format: http://your-favourite-blog.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

You will then be able to read the latest updates from your favourite blogs, though unfortunately it may be impossible to comment on these posts since this requires access to Blogger servers.

Digital Inspiration also offers some interesting techniques to access banned sites from within China in this post.

How to find out if your blog is banned in China

The simplest way to discover if your blog (or website) is inaccessible from within China is to use this free tool from WebSitePulse. Paste the URL of your blog in the window and hit enter. After a few moments, you will be presented with results which show if your blog can be accessed from China and comparitively with other servers from different continents.

How to find out if your ISP is blocking Blogger blogs

To discover if you will be able to access Blogger powered blogs through your internet service provider, it is advisable to ping blogspot.com using your computer’s DOS ping tool.

If you use Windows, you can do this by clicking the “Start” button and choosing the “run” command. Type “cmd” into the box and hit “enter”. Then type ping blogspot.com into the black box followed by enter.

For unrestricted access to blogspot.com through your ISP, you will see something like this on your screen:

Pinging blogspot.blogger.com [208.73.210.121] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 208.73.210.121: bytes=32 time=329ms TTL=239  Ping statistics for 208.73.210.121: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 294ms, Maximum = 337ms, Average = 323ms

In cases where the URL is blocked, you will likely receive a message like “Ping request could not find the host. Please check and try again.

Final thoughts

It seems unlikely that Blogger powered sites will be accessible from within China in the close future, though as we have seen before, such restrictions are usually lifted after a period of time.

I hope the information and tips in this article assist those who need to post to their blogs or read Blogger powered sites from within China. Please feel free to offer your own suggestions and comments below.

Written by Amanda Fazani from

Confusing Words and Homonyms: Part 4 "M, N, O, P, and Q"
May 25, 2009 at 5:00 am

Written by Patricia Vennes from Stiletto Woman

Words can give us many problems all the time. Homonyms are words that sound the same, but have different meanings and are spelled differently. These words can cause a writer to say something that they don’t mean and end up sounding like a third grader. There is hope on the horizon though. This list will go through confusing words and homonyms from "M" to "Q", but if you missed any previous posts you can find them here.

Made: to create. "We made a house out of sticks."
Maid: a cleaning person. "Cinderella was a maid for her stepmother."

Mail: correspondence. "Go get the mail!"
Male: opposite of female. "Male animals have an extra appendage between their legs."

Main: primary. "Use the main exit when we burn the house down."
Mane: long hair. "Let’s braid the lions mane."

Manner: behavior. "If you continue to behave in this manner I will have to shoot you."
Manor: residence. "The 18th century manor has sixteen rooms with only one lavatory."

Marry: to be wed. "Jack won’t marry Jill because he wants to marry Jeremy."
Merry: to be happy. "His merry smile lit up the room."

Meat: animal flesh. "Zombies eat the meat of people."
Meet: an event or to touch. "The meet is at two o’clock." or "Our hands meet in the middle."

Mind: intelligence or to obey. "She has a brilliant mind." or "You better mind your mother or I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap."
Mined: excavated ores. "Frank mined the coal for the corporation."

Miner: someone who extracts ores. "Frank is a miner."
Minor: someone under age or small. "She’s only twelve, so she’s a minor." or "This is only a minor mistake."

Missed: failed to hit. "He missed his target and the cow got away."
Mist: fog. "The mist comes into the bay in waves of white."

Mood: a state of emotion. "Matt is in a foul mood this morning like always."
Mooed: the sound a cow made. "Sally the cow mooed all night long at the beautiful moon."

Morning: beginning of the day. "The sun is shinning brightly this morning."
Mourning: sorrow or grieving. "We are mourning the loss of our beloved cow Sally"

Mustard: yellow condiment. "If you put mustard on my hamburger I’m going to attack you."
Mustered: gathered. "He mustered up the courage to ask her to the dance."

Naval: pertaining to ships. "The naval base is right by the water and it contains all of the gray war ships."
Navel: belly button. "Pull your shirt down; your navel is showing."

None: not any. "I want an apple, but there are none."
Nun: female member of a religious order. "The nun holds her rosary in her hands as she prays."

Oar: a paddle for rowing. "Don’t let the oar fall into the lake."
Or: conjunction. "You can have chocolate or nothing at all!"
Ore: metal bearing mineral. "We found an iron ore when digging for gold."

On: to be on top of something. "She is on the roof."
Onto: the act of getting on. "She is going to go onto the roof."

One: single unit. "There is only one answer and that is my answer, which is the correct one."
Won: past tense of win. "The math-lets won the pi competition."

Overdo: to excess. "Don’t overdo your makeup, you’ll end up looking like a hooker."
Overdue: past due. "Your books are overdue by a week and a half."

Packed: past tense of pack. "We packed last night."
Pact: an agreement. "Let’s make a pact to never stab each other again."

Pail: a bucket. "Don’t spill the milk pail because I want soggy cereal this morning."
Pale: lacking color. "The pale light does not help the campers see very well."

Pair: two of something. "The pair of lovers held hands eternally in the black box."
Pare: to remove or peel. "I will pare the orange so I can get to the delicious middle."
Pear: type of fruit. "I will have a pear today instead of an apple."

Palate: roof of the mouth. "To vampires, blood tastes wonderful on the palate."
Pallet: portable platform. "Bring the pallet to the middle of the stage so we can stand on it."
Palette: a board to hold and mix colors. "He mixed orange and blue on his palette."

Passed: past tense of pass. "We have passed this house twice already."
Past: the time before the present. "The past will always haunt us."

Patience: willing to wait. "You must have patience if you want to lose weight."
Patients: people under the care of a doctor. "You let the patients escape from the psych ward!"

Peace: calm. "The sea is at peace tonight without crashing waves."
Piece: a portion of something. "I want a piece of cake."

Plain: simple, without extravagance. "Her dress is so plain it could be a rag."
Plane: flat surfaces or short for airplane. "The cattle graze on the plane." or "The plane will land in twenty minutes."

Pole: a piece of wood or metal. "Put the pole against the fence so it won’t fall."
Poll: a survey. "The poll asked voters if they preferred cheese over crackers."

Pore: a small hole. "My pore is filled with pus."
Pour: to send liquid. "Pour one cup of oil into the pan before you begin."

Praise: approval. "The teacher did not speak words of praise to the evil class."
Prays: make a request to a higher being. "The mouse prays to the cheese."
Preys: huts for food. "A cat preys upon a fly."

Presence: appearance. "Your presence is requested at the Living Dead Festival."
Presents: gifts or offers. "She received many presents at her birthday party."

Pries: wedges open. "She desperately pries open the ice cream."
Prize: reward. "The prize is a ham sandwich and a cucumber salad."

Profit: gain. "Our profit this quarter is down by two percent."
Prophet: a seer or predictor. "The mouse believes that the cheese is a prophet of good and evil in its future."

Pros: experts or professionals. "Let the pros handle the schizophrenic."
Prose: literature. "Please read Hinton’s prose before you come to class tomorrow."

Quarts: units to measure liquid. "Place two quarts of orange juice into the blender."
Quartz: a mineral. "He has a shinny quartz ring that glimmers in the sun."

Written by Patricia Vennes from

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Blogs and the Right Business Model
May 24, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr

Getting the most from any Internet-based business usually involves three different aspects.

The Right Site

You need to make some decisions when you’re starting an online business about the kind of blog that you want to have. Remember that these are the modern day version of the business card so you’ll want to be sure that you present yourself and your goods or service in the best possible light. You need to take into account your budget as this could be the difference in some cases between video and a good ppc campaign when it comes to marketing. As well you need to look at the size of the operation you run and your financial position. All these things help to determine the tone and the features of your site.

Payment Methods

With the first section out of the way, there are several other choices that you’ll want to make including how you will ask you customers to pay. The first option is as you might expect the most basic. It allows you to take orders through email or via an online form that you put on your website. This is generally the method that the newcomer uses so that they can get a footing in the business. It’s important to note here that the business using this model needs to communicate quite extensively with the customer to ensure that all the terms are accepted by both parties.

Electronic Payment

However, the best method for efficiency and customer satisfaction is electronic payment. Of course there is the obvious reason why this is the best business model for taking payment in that once it’s set up it’s the easiest and requires the least interaction and synchronization between the front end and the back end of your business. Still you need to remember here that this is the best model for the business if the products or services that you are selling have a fixed price.

Total Integration

At the top of the line is what’s refereed to as total integration. This high end occurs when the front end and the backend work in conjunction with each other in that orders can be placed and go right through to the inventory and/or shipping departments at the back end of the procedure.

Getting the right business model in place can be just as important as any of the promotional aspects that you choose.

Written by Rob Starr from

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5/25 Blog Tips

2009-05-24T22:17:00.001-07:00

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Bloggings Is Great!
May 24, 2009 at 2:34 am

Blogging is a great way to log your ideas, opinions and experiences regarding any subject that you strongly feel for. When blogging began it was just a means of expressing oneself but over time the purpose of blogging has undergone a phenomenal change. Today blogging has come to be a great marketing tool and the next step to creating a blog is to begin efforts for diverting traffic to your blog.
Blogs can actually get a lot of traffic and be a marketing platform for your products and services. Blogging can also become a source of income for you and just writing a blog on any issue or a product review can be a means of income for you.
There are several blog affiliate marketing programs that can divert a lot of traffic to your blog and make it real hot property in no time. Ways of getting traffic to your blog would be to have firstly, very informative and interesting content in your blog. Content plays a very important role in getting people to check out your blog. Regular updating of the blog content is another important factor as it is the only way you can retain the interest of the people who have started visiting your blog. A good blog affiliate marketing technique would be to link your blog to similar other blog sites.
Monetizing your blog or how to generate income from your blog can become very simple if you do keep the following things in mind:
•   The content provided on the blog should be keyword based. This would help bring traffic to your blog through the search engines.
•   The advertisements provided on the blog should be such that it is related to the blog and also links provided should be subject related. This would provide additional information related to the topic for all those who visit your blog.
•   The quality of the content should be very high. The content should be such that provides appropriate solutions.
•   Provide content that is of interest to a major share of people.
If you keep the above points in mind then monetizing your blog will no longer be a far-fetched dream. There are thousands of blogs that are started everyday and efforts are being made to divert traffic to each one of them . In spite of all these efforts and millions of words of content being generated , there are very few successful blogs that manage to interest the public at large. It is this secret that one has to master. Efforts are put in by all who want to achieve success but success comes to those who not only work but "work smart". So a little understanding of the market trends and a little creativity is all you need to monetizing your blog and making it a huge success. If your blog is one that receives a lot of traffic then you are sitting on top of a goldmine and this is just the beginning of good times to come.

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5/24 Blogging Tips

2009-05-23T22:18:00.001-07:00

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3 Quick Ways to Improve your WordPress Blog SEO
May 23, 2009 at 10:14 am

Written by J. Travis Lusk from BlogCraving

SEO is all the rage these days. Actually, it has been the rage for quite a while now, and just when people started calling it bunk, it started to surge back.

Personally, I’m a 50/50 believer in it. There are some good practices preached by SEO’s that really do help. Here’s the three I have found that make a difference.

#1) Get yourself an SEO plugin. The two most popular ones available (for free) these days are Headspace and All in One SEO. They both accomplish the same goal in the end, so it really comes down to a matter of personal preference. Personally, I am partial to Headspace.

Headspace is a beast because it has a ton of great functionality and settings in it. It’s a bit of a one-stop-shop.

After you get all your settings taken care of, Headspace will become part of your day to day publishing experience. The plugin allows you to write a title tag that is different than the title of the post. The title tag is the part of the HTML code that <title>Looks like this</title>. Ultimately, what gets in that title tag is what ends up in the top bar of most browsers. More importantly, it is what the search engines read as the “title” of that particular page. So writing a good title tag is critical for good search engine rank.

Unfortunately, search engine friendly title tags aren’t always the coolest article titles. I like to be a little snarky or humorous in an article title, but what I’m writing doesn’t have very good Google mojo. This allows me to write my fun “human friendly” title that shows up on the site while still writing a keyword rich title in the title tags.

The other great thing Headspace lets you control is the indexing of specific pages within your site.

Did you know that it is a bad thing to let Google index every page of your Wordpress site? I know, it seems counter-intuitive, but it is true.

Google hates when it sees duplicate content on a site. It actually ends up hurting you in the long run. So if you have a post on your homepage, the post page itself, the archive by date page, tag archive, and search results page, Google will get confused.

By default, Wordpress puts the article in all of those places for you. However, the search engines see it as 4 or 5 “pages” that happen to have the exact same content (because it shows up in all those places).

In order to tell the search engines that you are not duplicating content, you need to put a no-index tag on certain pages of your site. That tells the search engines, “Go ahead and crawl these pages but don’t include them in search results.”

The pages you do not want indexed are: archive pages, tag pages, search pages, author archive pages.

Really, the only page you want in the search engines is the actual post page itself. That way when a user searches for “How to blog like a ninja…” and your post comes up, the link will take them right to the post itself. Not some archive where the post may have fallen off already, etc.

There’s a lot of other cool things in Headspace I recommend you check out.

#2) Don’t forget about your images!

One of the most common mistakes I see is people forgetting about the SEO value of their images. Just slapping an image on your post may be visually appealing for the reader, but it can also bring people to your site through search engines. However, that’s not going to happen if your images are not SEO friendly.

When you load a photo or image into your blog post, you need to make sure to properly fill out the Alt tag and Title tag fields for that image. The Alt tag is the more important of the two. That text serves as a description of that image. Generally speaking, it is the alt tag that search engines use to identify the subject matter of a photo. So if you are leaving it generic, you are robbing yourself of traffic.

Also, the file name itself is important. VC100043.jpg doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Just because that’s the default title your digital camera gave it doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. The image file name should be keyword rich as well.

There is a plugin called SEO Friendly Images that will automatically take the title of your post and put it in as your Alt tags. That way, you’ll never “forget” to ad alt attributes to your images. You can also manually override the alt tags if you want to write your own.

#3) Got SEO Slugs?

It is important to also remember the SEO value of your slugs. What’s a slug? A slug is the part that /comes-in-as-the-link-for-your-post.

By default, the newer versions of Wordpress take the title of your post and automatically generate a slug for you. However, you can manually override that and write a better one. Words like a, I, am, the, from, go, etc are valueless when it comes to your slug. You want them to be short and sweet with good keywords. So for every post, you should at least be thinking about how to improve the slug.

There is also a plugin helper for this. SEO Slugs is a plugin that automatically weeds out these garbage words for you. It leaves your post with a nice, neat slug. Of course, if you want to change it, it will let you do that too.

Happy blogging.

Written by J. Travis Lusk from

Get your latest tweets on your blog - Plugin free
May 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Written by Ryan Edmunds from Needless Productions

There are a lot of plugins for WordPress that deal with Twitter. It can be hard to find the right one when you have a specific feature in mind. Although there are some really useful ones, sometimes a plugin is not always the answer. If you want to add your latest tweets to your blog but you don’t have the resources for another plugin, or you just like doing things by hand, here is some code you can use to add your latest tweets from Twitter to your blog without a plugin.

Everything we need can actually be accomplished in three lines of code.

The first bit of javascript we need to accomplish this is supplied to us by Twitter.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/USERNAME.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=1"></script>

You’ll want to change USERNAME to your Twitter username. You can also change count=1 to whatever number of Tweets you want to show up. You are best to put this script somwhere at the bottom of your template. That way if there is any load issues at Twitter your blog page will still load first.

Now all you need is a line of HTML code to display the Tweets.

<div id="twitter_div"><ul id="twitter_update_list"><li>&nbsp;</li></ul></div>

It is up to you where you want your Tweets to appear. If your blog is widget-ready you can simply paste this HTML code into a text widget and drag it to the desired location. You can also manually edit sidebar.php or even put it in the header or footer of your blog.

From here you are free to add a new selector to your stylesheet to style the updates. Make a CSS selector with the ID ‘twitter_div’ and style it as you see fit.

Written by Ryan Edmunds from

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5/24 Blog Tips

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

Blogging Advances
May 23, 2009 at 2:32 am

There are many various multimedia advances happening to the good old blog. Although the blog is only a few years old, technology has kept right up there with it. Now, you have the ability to do a number of fascinating things with it. As the blog owner, this can mean huge potential dollars in marketing. If you are just a blog reader, you can now access your favorites online any time that you feel like it.

There are several areas in which the blog has entered the multimedia world. Here are some of them to think about.

* Text. Okay, so this isn't anything new. It is the most commonly thought of type of blogging. Simple writings that are done on the blog.
* Images. This takes it one step ahead. Now, you can send images to your fellow bloggers, your family or your friends.
* Video. Even better, the blogs can now come packed with video from your digital camera or the cell phone that is video enabled.
* Podcasts. The latest feature. It allows individuals to receive the information that they want, when they want it. Very marketable tool here. Podscasts allow you to receive both audio and video over the internet.

But, just because you have the ability to use these various types of blogging, what happens to it? Does it just sit on your website in the hopes that someone will actually want it? The good news is that you can now send these multimedia advances to individuals on their Ipods or their mobile phones once they sign up for services at your site. This means instant notification when you update the blog and instant access no matter where they are located. In short, it translates into dollars through marketing.

New advances in blogging are occurring all the time. Learn what is out there and available. Stay connected to your consumers, your fellow bloggers and your favorite blogs. The fact that you can do all of this from your mobile phone; just makes it even better. More than likely, you'll have something to blog right now.

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5/23 Blogging Tips

2009-05-22T22:18:00.003-07:00

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Creativity Lesson From A New York Times Columnist
May 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Written by Debbie Harbeson from Debbie Harbeson

Those of us who follow the journalism side of the blogging world watched a big story unfold this week. A blogger discovered that Maureen Dowd, long-time columnist for the New York Times, had a paragraph in a recent column that matched a previously published blog post almost word-for-word and she did not credit the source. Ms. Dowd says that she had no idea this came from a published blog and if she did, she would have attributed it.

But the issue gets even more interesting because she said she received the information from a friend. So, now we also know that her friend did the same thing when she was communicating to Dowd about the issue. Apparently they both just copied and pasted someone else's words and used them as their own.

Most news reports and commentators are focusing on the non-attribution of previously written and published material, but let’s focus on another, more subtle lesson to be learned for all bloggers, journalistic or not:

Copying and pasting is bad for developing creativity.

Of course, we constantly absorb information all day long and after a while it can truly be hard to see how this influences our end product, whether it's something written, a musical composition, a painting, or any other creative work. On a certain level, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, we all end up copying or being influenced by those who came before. But that's different than a straight cut and paste job.

Those of us who interact online can get caught up in a fast-paced world where everyone wants to be first with information, but it's much more important to find the unique and interesting angle that meets your needs and goals. If that takes more time, you don’t need to worry about it because the people you want to reach will know and will see the value.

And perhaps more importantly, you are developing and improving your creative ability in general. Copying and pasting is not going to do this. Creativity is one of the most important abilities you can develop to set yourself apart from everyone else in the crowd. Do the necessary research to gather the information you need, but after that's done, sit down and think for yourself. Slow down, relax and when you find your unique angle, it will all come together.

The time you take to work on your creativity will pay off in more ways than just writing a well-crafted blog post. Creativity is what solves problems and if you are busy working on creativity in every way, you will be much more prepared to use your brain to solve other problems and issues that come up. This will help you not only as you continue to develop your blog, but in other areas of your life as well.

Spend your time creating, not copying and pasting.

Written by Debbie Harbeson from

Quickly Bookmark and Share Your Links With Start.io
May 22, 2009 at 10:00 am

Written by Charnita Fance from Social Web Tools

Start.io is a quick and easy way to create a basic startpage displaying your favorite links. Although it is supposed to be primarily used as a startpage, I've found that Start.io is also a great way to keep up with your favorite bookmarks. Plus, since you get your own personal Start.io URL, it's also a useful way to share your links with others. Signing up only takes a few seconds and once you do, it's fairly simple to setup; you'll have your startpage done in a matter of minutes.

Start.io can really help you organize your links since you can put them into groups. You can even make your groups different colors, sort them and set them to be private or public. You can also add new groups right from the Starti.io bookmarklet.

In order to add your links you can either add them manually through the website or use the Start.io bookmarklet. Plus, you can even import bookmarks from your browser (Firefox, Safari, Opera or IE). This is a great way to backup all of your bookmarks in case a disaster hits - such as a computer crash. I find that the best way to add links is by simply using the bookmarklet. You'll get a little pop up as pictured below and it only takes a few seconds to add your links.

If you want to organize your links further, you will need to do that from the website. You can also make links private or public, change their colors and sort them. If you have your links set to auto update you can even see which links have new updates.

There are not many features or settings to customize in Start.io but one thing they do have is the ability to change your layout. You can choose from one of the six premade layouts or you can create your own. Plus, each layout is completely customizable but you will need to know a little about CSS in order to customize a layout further.

Start.io is also mobile compatible. So, if you have Internet access on your mobile phone you can use and view your startpage. An example of how it would look on your mobile phone can be seen here. If you have an iPhone, you can view your links using Start.io's enhanced iPhone layout. An example of what that would look like can be seen here.

Conclusively, Start.io is a great solution for those wanting a simple, quick loading startpage that can be setup with ease. Too many features are not really needed for Start.io to be effective; it definitely gets the job done.

Do you think Start.io is something that you would use? If not, what startpage do you prefer?

Written by Charnita Fance from

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2009-05-22T22:18:00.001-07:00

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

Blogging: A Critical Part Of Your Business Strategy
May 22, 2009 at 2:30 am

The methods by which we use to contact each other, especially in internet marketing activities continue to undergo dramatic transformation. In the not to distant past (only a couple of years ago!) we kept in touch with customers – existing or potential new ones, using the telephone, fax machines, direct mail marketing and even in-person meetings. Today, people expect more frequent updates, new information, and the latest of everything. So much so that it is literally impossible to keep up with this dizzying pace and certainly not on a continuing or ongoing basis with any consistency. Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don’t have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It’s nothing special. There are several methods of writing ‘blogs’, but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a popular blog website. One example is called blogger.com.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don’t have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone’s Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don’t have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don’t face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

After a small amount of basic research and reading, you will quickly see, there are numerous advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. One of the biggest reasons is that search engines love them. This is because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely the thing that searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. What this means to internet marketers is that if you don’t have a blog for your business, you are potentially reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

For all the reasons mentioned above (and many, many more), blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. All the marketing research you can find will tell you that regular contact with your customers is a vital component in retaining existing clients, as well as gaining new business. Don't put it off any longer; it is time to get your blog going—today!

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5/22 Blogging Tips

2009-05-21T22:19:00.001-07:00

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15 Common WordPress Blunders
May 21, 2009 at 5:16 pm

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today

WordPress is a very easy to use and very efficient blogging platform. However, that doesn’t mean it, nor its users, are perfect.

There are some mistakes that even experienced WordPress admins seem to make when setting up and running a WordPress install. Some of them are due to WordPress’ default settings, others are just easy to forget and lose track of.

So, if you’re a WordPress user and want to make sure you didn’t forget anything, here’s a quick rundown of some of the most head-slappingly easy mistakes you can make.

(Note: All of the page references are from WordPress version 2.7.1 and are for self-installed WordPress blogs. Your setup may be different.)

General Settings

First, log into your admin section and visit the “General” page under the “Settings” drop down, there, look for the following items.

Change the Tagline: It can be easy to forget to change the tagline if you don’t use it in your theme. Still, it is important to change it because A) It may be used in metadata for your site and B) You may change your theme.
Check Your Email: Change your email address recently? Make sure it’s correct here. It is used for several administrative functions. You will also want to do this on your profile.
Disable Membership: If you do not require users to register to comment, you probably don’t have much use for this feature so it is best to disable it.
Check Your Timezone: Your timezone doesn’t change for daylight savings time so it is important to check and make sure it is still accurate. This can cause problems with forward posting new entries especially.

Writing

Next, under the settings drop down, visit the “Writing” page and check the following items:

Disable Remote Publishing: If you don’t use external blog editors, it is best to disable both Atom and XML-RPC publishing as they could feasibly be a security risk. If you do use such an application, be sure to keep them enabled.
Disable Post Via Email: Make sure that the post via email feature has bogus information unless it is a feature you actively use. You don’t want that option available as it too could be a security issue.
Check Update Services: Make sure that, at the very least, Pingomatic (http://rpc.pingomatic.com/) is in your Update Services box. You may wish to add additional links, such as FeedBurner (http://ping.feedburner.google.com).

Privacy Settings

Next, also under the “Settings” drop down, you check the “Privacy Settings” page and check this one item:

Enable Blog Visibility: Make double sure that your blog is visible to the search engines. Many disable this feature when they work on their blogs but forget to re-enable it.

Permalink Settings

Also under the settings drop down, open up your “Permalink Settings” page and check the following item:

Use “Pretty” Permalinks: WordPress’ default permalinks are pretty ugly (/?p=xxx) and changing them is important for SEO and reader benefit. If you are not changing from the default permalink setup, use a permalink migration plugin to ensure you don’t create non-working URLs.

Users

Under the Users tab, make sure of the following items:

Remove “Admin” Account: Ensure that the default admin account has been removed and that the actual administrator is logging in under a different username. This can create security problems.
Delete Unused Accounts: Remove any accounts that you aren’t actively using. This reduces the number of ways an attacker can log in to your site.
Check Permissions: Also, make sure the other accounts you do have that no one has more permissions than they need.

WP Super Cache

Finally, if you have WP Super Cache installed visit the admin page under the settings drop down and make sure of the following things:

Enable Super Cache: This is an extremely easy mistake to make. Many disable Super Cache while they make changes and forget to re-enable it. Double check that it is and that it is set to the highest setting practical.
Check Your Expiration Time: Read the information below the two expiration times (there may only be one if you are on half-on mode) and make sure your expiration time is within reason. Too long or too short may slow your site down.
Disable Lock Down: If you have “Lock Down” mode enable, disable it. If you aren’t in the midst of a major traffic surge, having it on causes issues with your site including comments not posting.

Bottom Line

In the end, this isn’t intended to be a complete list of WordPress mistakes, much less a complete guide on securing WordPress (feel free to leave your suggestions/stories in the comments). These are just some of the easier mistakes to make that might not always be obvious when looking at your site.

It’s worth taking a few moments every once ina while to do a “reality check” to make sure your settings are in order and your house is fairly clean. After all, we all make mistakes (I’ve made a few of these myself, some repeatedly) but the key is to catch them before they become a problem.

If you can do that, you might not be a perfect administrator, but your readers might not know it.

Written by Jonathan Bailey from

Wordpress Theme Inheritance
May 21, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Written by Sarah from Stuff By Sarah

The WordPress template system has a relatively unused gem in the template system, Theme Inheritance. Theme Inheritance allows you to set your theme to inherit files from a parent theme, meaning you could create your theme in the colours you choose, but then you can create a number of new themes with just a stylesheet in them, and set each stylesheet to inherit from the main theme, and then just override the styles set.

So, if we use the example of having perhaps 6 different theme styles on one site, and offering user’s a style switcher to select which one they preferred to see. Often people may just have the 6 themes online, each directory having the index.php theme file, the functions, page, archive, category, single and comments template files. That’s fine until a new version comes out of WordPress, there are maybe a few new tags you can use, or you decide you want to add a bit of code to say the footer of your site. 6 themes may not be so bad, but if you run a multi author blog, perhaps on WordPress MU, then try changing 6 to 60. Suddenly it’s not so good!

Our main theme (we’ll call it ‘Parent’), would consist of all the theme files we need. The typical files being:

style.css
index.php
archive.php
single.php
page.php
comments.php
sidebar.php
header.php
footer.php
functions.php

Of course you may have additional files as well, but those are a selection of the most common theme files. To define the theme, the style.css file will have the following at the top of it:

 /* Theme Name: Parent Theme URI: http://www.mysite.com/ Description: The default Parent theme from mysite Version: 1.0 Author: Me Author URI: http://www.mysite.com/ */

We would then put this theme directory in the usual place under /wp-content/themes/.

Now we can move on to creating a child theme. So for example, our parent theme is quite plain, standard letter sizes and black and white. We can then create one child theme that uses a variety of colours, and a second theme that increases the size of the font and allows the site design/layout to work with the increased font size. So for the first child theme we could call this one Rainbow, and tell it to inherit from the parent theme. We would create a new stylesheet for the Rainbow theme, and at the top of style.css we would place

 /* Theme Name: Rainbow Theme URI: http://www.mysite.com/ Description: The Rainbow child theme from mysite Version: 1.0 Author: Me Author URI: http://www.mysite.com/ Template: parent */

The additional line in this to tell the theme where to inherit from is the last line ‘Template: parent’. The template name should refer to the directory that the theme is stored in, and it’s case sensitive.

You can then set all of your styling in this style.css file for the site and upload it to a new theme directory called ‘rainbow’. If you wanted to inherit the styles from the parent theme then you would need to import the parent stylesheet in, then add your own CSS below to override any styles necessary. So you can add:

@import url("../parent/style.css");

below the top comment in the file.

Then we’ll create our second stylesheet, for increasing the overall size of the site (yes a well coded site shouldn’t require a second stylesheet to increase the text size and size of the site, but this is only an example!). This one we’ll call Large B&W. So again we do the same as above in our new style.css file

 /* Theme Name: Large B&W Theme URI: http://www.mysite.com/ Description: The Large Black and White child theme from mysite Version: 1.0 Author: Me Author URI: http://www.mysite.com/ Template: parent */ @import url("../parent/style.css");

We then put this into a directory called largebw.

Our themes directory would now look like

parent
- style.css
- index.php
- archive.php
- single.php
- page.php
- comments.php
- sidebar.php
- header.php
- footer.php
- functions.php
rainbow
- style.css
largebw
- style.css

Up until WordPress 2.7 that was all we could do. It served a purpose, but was obviously limiting in its usefulness for most people. However, since WordPress 2.7, you can now also add PHP theme files in your child directories to override the parent’s where necessary. So, for example, if you wanted to put an advert in your Large B&W single post theme file for a screen reader, then you would take a copy of the single.php file from the parent theme, add in the additional code for your advert, and then put this into your largebw theme directory. This directory would then have the files style.css and single.php, the other theme files would inherit from the parent directory.

You may still wonder if this is of any use to you. If you decide to purchase a theme (or find one for free at WordPress) then you would hope that the theme be kept up to date with the newest WordPress additions and functions. Yet, you may want to make some changes to it to suit your own style. Perhaps change the sidebar to use h3 on headings instead of h2, maybe change the header to have a big advert across the top, or maybe add a flickr badge in the footer. However, when the theme is upgraded, you have to do this all again - which usually means it’s unlikely you’ll upgrade your theme! With Theme Inheritance, you can create your child theme to inherit the untouched theme and then you can just copy the files you want to change into it, make your alterations, and leave the rest as normal. Yes you would still have to make a few alterations possibly on upgrading the theme, but it wouldn’t be as much hassle.

So, hopefully now you can see the potential for using child themes on your site, regardless of whether you have one theme or many, it has a use that is not widely used yet but I’m sure will be in the future

Written by Sarah from

Subject and Verb Agreement; Collective Nouns, Amounts, and Numbers of
May 21, 2009 at 11:19 am

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford

The last few weeks, I've discussed subject and verb agreement in a number of areas. You can view those from my author page: http://www.bloggingtips.com/author/pattistafford/

Up next in the exciting world of agreements and playing nice, lets discuss collective nouns, what to do about writing amounts, and working with numbers of.

Collective nouns denote a group of people or things; like choir, family, herd, team, majority, etc. And even though it suggests more than one person or thing it can be singular or plural depending on how it's used in a sentence. And that's where it gets tricky.

The verb has to be singular if the collective noun is referring to a group or unit. The verb has to be plural if the collective noun is referring to individuals.

Examples:
The class is in session. (The class is referring to the whole group so we have a singular verb.)
The class are taking their tests today. (The class in this sentence is referring to each member as an individual so it uses a plural verb. This sentence appears to read wrong at first, but if you stop to think about it, it's correct in the form it takes.)

When it comes to writing amounts such as measurements, weights or dollar amounts they usually have a plural form but are usually considered to be a singular unit and should take a singular verb.

Examples:
Ten dollars is the entry fee. (Ten dollars is considered one amount of money)
Six months is needed to complete the assignment. (Six months, in this sentence, is one period of time.)

Ten dollars were tucked in the mattress. (In this sentence, ten dollars is considered to be ten individual dollars and not a single unit)
Six months have passed since the assignment. (In this example, six months is considered six individual months)

If we need to write fractions or percents we need to have the verb agree with the object of the preposition that follows the subject.

Examples:
Three fourths of my salary goes to taxes.
Three fourths of the juniors are going to the dance.

We find another problem when we need to write phrases like "a number of" or "the number of", and while they are similar in nature, one needs a singular verb and the other needs a plural verb.

"The number of" requires a singular verb and "A number of" requires a plural verb.

Examples:
The number of musicians signing to record labels increases each year.
A number of musicians intend to get a contract deal each year.

I've mentioned before that subject and verb agreement contains many rules and can seem overwhelming, but the general rule, of 'if it sounds correct, it usually is", will stand in most cases.

Written by Patti Stafford from

Interview With Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller From Gravitational Marketing
May 21, 2009 at 9:04 am

Written by Kevin Muldoon from Time To Tweet

I recently started subscribing to The Jim & Travis Blog, a marketing blog from Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller. Jimmy and Travis are the authors of ‘Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers‘, a successful marketing book which you can buy from Amazon for $16.17.

One of the reasons I started subscribing to their blog was their fantastic video clips. I don’t remember seeing anyone being as funny, confident or lively in front of the camera as Jimmy (5FtHighMktgGuy) and Travis (BigIdeaGuy). It’s a refreshing change from reading long boring articles on marketing.

Check out their recent video on ‘How To Use A Twitter Hash Tag‘ to see what I mean

I contacted Jimmy through Twitter last week and he quickly replied saying that they were more than happy to take part in an interview for you guys. Enjoy

As is usual in BloggingTips interviews, I like to ask interviewees to first introduce themselves and let readers who don't know you find out a little about you guys

We’re Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller, creators or Gravitational Marketing and authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers (Wiley 2008). We met in college at marching band camp in 1995 (seriously). Since that moment we’ve been obsessing about choices (like why did we chose to sweat our butts off on this damn marching band field). What makes one person choose one thing and another person choose another? What effect can we (as individuals or companies) have on those choices? And how can that influence or persuasion be made to feel natural rather than forced?

Born as an ideal, the concept ultimately transformed into reality as Gravitational Marketing…a powerful, natural force that can’t be defied, which causes people to gravitate in mass quantity to your idea, your business, your cause.

Today our emphasis is on speaking to, writing for, coaching and consulting entrepreneurs toward greatness by creating reliable and intentional systems for attracting and converting the perfect customers.

Your book ‘Gravitational Marketing - The Science Of Attracting Customers’, was a huge success and has received a huge amount of praise from reviewers. There are thousands of books on Marketing available today which makes choosing the right book very difficult for would be entrepreneurs. What sets Gravitational Marketing apart from the crowd?

We don’t focus on theory and fluff. We get right down to business and we’re not afraid to talk about making people buy. We talk about things that make people come to you and make the cash register ring. We focus on lead generation, which is so frequently overlooked. Most other marketing advice assumes you already have a flow of leads. What good is a sales strategy if you don’t have anyone to sell to? This is about creating prospects out of thin air, positioning yourself in a way that's engaging and unique, providing value first and becoming a trusted advisor instead of a product pusher.

How did you guys first get involved in Marketing and Advertising?

We got into advertising after we flunked out of calculus class in college. We were both math and science majors… pre-med (Jim) and engineering (Travis). After calculus we knew we needed to find different career choices. We both chose communication and advertising. It's what we were really good at. We figured it would be easy and it was. The problem was we didn't learn anything about really making advertising work.

I graduated first with a degree in advertising and public relations and got a job as the assistant to the vice president at a direct response agency using my now legendary 7-page resume. Later I recruited Travis to the agency after his stint in radio sales.

Being the new kids on the block Travis and I were given the worst clients the agency had. The clients nobody wanted to deal with. We had the task of selling the worst car in America. Locked in a room for a week we created a formula that worked like crazy. From this winning atom bomb strategy we discovered the foundational principles that later would inspire us to create Gravitational Marketing.

Since then we've spent over $96 million dollars testing, proving and honing our marketing chops. Oh, and that $96 million we spent wasn't wasted. We turned it into over $12 BILLION is sales for ourselves and our clients.

You are known for being Anti-Marketing. What exactly do you mean by this?

We believe that SAME IS LAME. If you do what everyone else does, you're gonna get the same results. Those results are mediocre at best. We're Anti-Marketing the way most people traditionally do it. We don't believe an entrepreneur or small business owner should PAY MONEY to "get their name out there" or build a corporate brand. It's just a waste. You need to spend your money to attract customers in a natural way. Done right your marketing should gravitate people to you and cause them to directly respond to your messages and offers so you can build a lasting relationship with them.

It’s important to note that non-traditional marketing and advertising doesn’t mean you don’t use traditional media. It’s the approach that differs. Non-traditional advertising and marketing is about leaving behind the traditional and boring conventional marketing wisdom and being sensational in everything you do…including your advertising.

How important do you believe marketing is for the average blogger?

If you are trying to get a message out, then marketing is essential. The first thing you need to define is why you're blogging. Is it to just have the microphone and be heard, to make money, to influence, to affect change, all the above?

After that you can choose who you’re writing for and why they should choose to read your blog vs the thousands of other blogs out there. Then you need to stand out. Give value and position yourself as an authority on your topic. This is where marketing begins.

* A huge thank you to Jimmy (5FtHighMktgGuy) and Travis (BigIdeaGuy) for taking part in this interview. If you are looking for a good book on marketing then I encourage you to check out their book ‘Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers‘, as all the reviews have been incredibly positive. At the very least you should subscribe to The Jim & Travis Blog, I know you won’t be disappointed.

If you would like to ask Jimmy or Travis anything about their blog, their book, their videos or marketing in general, please post them in the comment area and I’m sure they will reply when they can

Written by Kevin Muldoon from

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

Beginner's Blogging Tips
May 21, 2009 at 2:28 am

A blog is basically an online journal wherein you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything that you want people to read. Blogs come in different styles, formats, and settings, depending on the preference of the user. Many blogging sites, offer built in features such as hyperlink, straight texts, pictures etc. Some blogging sites, even allow you to put video and mp3’s on your blogs.

Instead of writing texts, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly, by using spoken word entries. This is called audio blogging.

Basically a blog contains these features:

title- which allows you to label your post
body- this is the content of your post
trackback- other sites can be linked back to your blog
permanent link- every article that you write has a URL
comments- this allow readers to post comments on your blog.

One of the advantages of blogging, is that it is made of only a few templates. Unlike, other websites that is made up of numerous individual pages. This make it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fix setting that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc.

This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can chose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.

Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they’ve become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other bloggers pages, and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members’ blogs.

Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs espouse on their specific themes. This way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.

Some bloggers even use their blogs as a means to advertise. Some authors advertise their books on their blogs. While other bloggers, use their blogs to shed light to currents issues, events, news and catastrophes.

Nowadays in education, blogs also play an important part. Professors use blogging to document the lessons that they have discussed and taught. This way, students who who have missed classes, can easily catch up with their assignments.

A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, with millions and millions of people logging onto the net everyday, blogging has become a lucrative move. Some bloggers who run online businesses promote their merchandise online. While others profit through advertisement.

But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, poems, rants, opinions, find that blogging offers them a medium in which to express themselves.

Bloggers usually communicate within themselves. This is one of the appeals of blogging. It creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other.

Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. First time users who want to get an idea of what the blogging world is all about can browse through a number of blogs using these directories. This way they’d get an idea of what these blogging communities are like.

Blogging is popular all over the world. Blog is short for the term weblog. There are no rules when it comes to blogging. Bloggers have the freedom to express themselves how ever way they want, and the best thing about blogging, is that most blogging sites are free.

There are numerous blogging websites to choose from in the net. This give first time users the option of joining a blogging community that appeals to their interests.

Just search any blogging directory and you’d get a listing of a lot of blogging sites that are available on the net. It’s easy to search a blogging directory, because it is organized according to category. This way you would get exactly what you are after. Blogging is really for everyone. It is fun, simple and easy.

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Blogging Tips - Blogging Guides, News, Tips, Resources

Get Unfollowed on Twitter? Don't Take it Personal.
May 20, 2009 at 12:00 pm

Written by Kristen Nicole from Kristen Nicole

I have a friend that uses Qwitter on a regular basis in order to find out when people have stopped following him on Twitter. He says he considers it critical feedback, as he’ll match up the time someone has stopped following him with the time of activity on his Twitter account. In his mind he’s wondering if he said something stupid, useless or offensive in order to turn people off to his Twitter stream.

In some ways this line of reasoning can be readily applied, but aligning the general time stamps of Twitter activity and the act of being unfollowed doesn’t always mean there’s a correlation, let alone causation. What I’m trying to say is, don’t take un-follows or no-follows too personally.

While it’s generally considered good form to follow a user that has followed you, both parties should be well aware that they don’t have to follow anyone and everyone, and each Twitter user needs to do what’s best for their personal and professional objectives. So if you follow a user and they don’t follow you back, it’s OK. They may have accidentally deleted the email alerting them to you as their new follower, or their third party app that auto-follows all users that follow them may be glitchy or have some Twitter authentication problems.

And if someone that was once following you no longer follows you, it’s OK. As long as you’re utilizing Twitter in a non-spammy and socially acceptable manner, there’s no point in fretting over all the people that have un-followed you. See here for more guidelines.

What’s important to remember is that your Twitter experience is what you make it. Stick to your topics of interest, remain active in the community and reach out to those that have similar interests in order to have a fulfilling Twitter experience.

But there are times when noting those users that don’t follow you is important. When you’re hovering around the 2,000 cap for the number of Twitter users you can follow, seeing who isn’t following you back can help you keep a healthy following-to-followers ratio.

Also, keep this last point in mind when using a service to see which followers have un-followed or have never followed you at all. Perhaps they followed you in hopes of getting a return follow, and you were the one that missed your email alert. That unfollow may simply be their own act of balancing out their Twitter ratio.

Written by Kristen Nicole from

Adding custom icons to your WordPress theme
May 20, 2009 at 10:00 am

Written by Ryan Edmunds from Needless Productions

If you are using a WP framework it is quite simple to modify the background images and icons set up with the theme. Some of the more powerful themes even allow you to upload new images from right inside the admin area. However, if you’re using something a little simpler, most of the time you have to go in and manually add images to your theme the old fashioned way. If your theme falls under the latter, we’ve got the quick and dirty guide you need to add custom icons or images to your WordPress theme.

You Will Need:

Basic HTML Knowledge
An FTP Client
No Fear of PHP Code

In order to add images to your theme you will need to first create a folder within your current wp-themes folder called images. Unless it already has one, in which case it would be found in your wp-folder/WP-Content/WP-Themes/YourTheme/images.

Using your favorite FTP Client ( I like leech FTP ) upload any images that you want to use in your theme. If you just want to replace the images that come stock with your WordPress theme you can probably get away with simply renaming your new images to overwrite the ones in your current theme images folder. If you’re adding images to place they didn’t exist before, read on.

Grabbing the directory with WordPress template tags

You can use a WP template tag to refer to the current theme’s directory without having to type out the entire URL. This is the most compatable way as it uses a dynamic reference to the directory, and will work on any installation.

<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>

This will simply get you into the directory of whatever theme is currently active. Now lets look at two ways to implement and image from this folder.

First we’ll look at getting a background image from this directory, then a static image that could be served as a logo or an icon elsewhere in the theme.

In your stylesheet:

body{ background-image: url(<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/my-image.gif); }

The code above simply looks for a specific image inside the images folder within your theme. The second code will do the same, but will populate a normal HTML image code.

<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url');?>/images/my-image.gif" alt="my icon"/>

You should know feel relatively safe adding your own images to any WordPress theme.

Written by Ryan Edmunds from

Corrections: How to Handle Them
May 19, 2009 at 6:02 pm

Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today

Everyone makes mistakes. Whether you do one post per week or 50, something is going to go wrong and it is important to be prepared for those mistakes before they happen.

They key to respect and trust while blogging is not to never make a mistake (though keeping them to a minimum is important), but rather, to handle the ones you do make gracefully while learning from them.

So how should a blogger handle their mistakes? There are many different rules and suggestions, but there are a few generally well-accepted practices that seem to work in most cases.

Spelling, Grammar and Minor Changes

If you make a mistake that is not a matter of fact, such as spelling, grammar or punctuation, you can usually just push a corrected version live and not make any note of it. Though some sites and forums have a custom regarding noting that a post was “edited for grammar”, the specific error usually isn’t cited and this is only common when posts automatically display an “edited by” time stamp.

For the most part, if you find a grammar and/or spelling error that does not change the meaning of a post, you should feel free to edit it and move on. Mistakes happen but it is better to fix the mistake, when practical, than leave it.

Minor Factual Errors

Errors of fact are the most difficult to deal with. Some bloggers have the instinct to quickly rush in and fix the mistake, others want to delete the post and still others want to just create a new one. Unfortunately, none of those responses work out great in the end.

Fixing the mistake with no mention does not allow those who come later to understand that there has been a correction, deleting the post does nothing to fix the error and creating a new post, though a good solution for RSS subscribers, does nothing to help those who stumble upon the first post from Google or via an external link.

If the error is relatively minor and doesn’t change the overall post, such as getting a person’s name or a specific fact wrong, WordPress offers a simple solution to the problem, namely the strikethrough button. If you use the HTML editor, you’ll notice a “del” button at the top and those who prefer the visual editor will see what looks like the “ABC” but with a line through it. What it does is strikes through the text you want to remove and, in the HTML code, adds a time stamp for when the change was made.

For example: ~~I am striking through this text~~ and, if you view the source, you’ll see that it adds a “datetime=”2009-05-19T19:31:01+00:00″” to the tag, indicating when I pressed the button.

Then, in the post itself, you can add the correct information after the strikethrough, either as a parenthetical or as new text.

This lets readers of the post know that there was an error, what it was, and what the change is. This keeps transparency to the maximum and, since strikethrough text is very visible, it actually draws people to the error, unlike a correction in a footnote.

Major Factual Errors

If the entire crux of your article has been compromised, more drastic action may be necessary. For example, if you wrote a post about an upcoming game being released next week and, it turns out, that the game won’t be released for another year, a simple strikethrough will probably not be enough.

Though these errors should be fairly rare, especially for blogs that attempt to follow up and do their homework, they can still happen. Fixing them, however, is no simple task.

It is important, first and foremost, to make sure that readers who stumble across the existing post know that the story is an error. Posting a header saying that the story is “Updated” with the new information at the top of the story is a good beginning. If needed, you can provide additional information in an update section at the end of the post, similar to what others do when a breaking story is unfolding, but it is important to ensure that every reader of the post sees the new information first.

However, given the nature of RSS and that many readers may not have read the full story but did skim the headline, it may be wise to go ahead and post a new entry on the topic, one you can reference prominently in the original post. If the post in error is short, you can consider doing a massive strikethrough and adding new text at the bottom. However, removing the erroneous information, without at least explaining what it was, gives the appearance of trying to “hide” the error. Given the fact that Google Cache and the Web Archive both likely have old copies of the page, it may not do much good anyway.

Being upfront about the error and doing everything you can to clarify it is, quite literally, the best thing you can do for your reputation and for yourself legally.

Acknowledging Errors

If you’re lucky, you will spot the error yourself and can handle it appropriately. However, odds are that most errors will be pointed out to you by readers, either via comments or emails. Should that happen, it is important to acknowledge and thank the reader for their help, ideally in the comments and in the post itself if appropriate.

Remember, you want to encourage people to notify you of corrections and inform you when you make mistakes. For every person that lets you know of an error, it is probable that a dozen saw it and said nothing. Readers who report mistakes are not your enemies, they’re people trying to help you and should be treated as such.

Legal Issues

There are many blogs and Web sites that seem to let mistakes languish even after they learn that they aren’t true. In addition to harming their reputation (this is a common practice of gossip sites), it also carries with it legal risks.

Defamation law, in this case libel, makes it very dangerous to knowingly publish false information that may harm the reputation of another. Though defamation suits over Web postings are still fairly rare, they are becoming increasingly common and the damages awarded have been very high.

Though a good correction policy may not remedy all of the legal issues of publishing false information in the first place, it makes a lawsuit much less likely and mitigates against any damages that could be awarded.

Bottom Line

Though it is best to be accurate with everything you publish but it is equally important to be ready in the event of a mistake to handle it swiftly, accurately and with transparency. Giving your readers the appearance that you are hiding your mistakes or simply doing nothing about them may not only hurt your reputation among your readers, but also may hurt your chances in the courtroom.

Since we’re all human, it is best to start planning for our mistakes before they happen even as we work to ensure that we don’t make them in the first place. Though no one wants to go through the humiliation of having to publicly admit they were wrong, it’s a part of life on the Web and a part of being a responsible person both online and off.

The good news is that very few mistakes are lethal. Most people get up the next morning and resume blogging none the worse for the wear. The only way most mistakes can become disastrous is through poor handling of them.

If you plan smart, keep your mistakes to a minimum and are open about the errors you do make, most people will forgive you for being human.

Written by Jonathan Bailey from

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

Using Trackbacks On Your Blog
May 20, 2009 at 2:26 am

Trackback is a system used to associate posts on different blogs and, in a greater sense, it allows blogs to "share" readers.

An example! Just as a simple example of how Trackback works: If you have just posted an article discussing Admiral Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition and then happen to run across a similar or related post on another blog, you could use the trackback mechanism to notify the other poster of the existence of your post. When your trackback notification (which is the permalink to your post and, possibly, some basic information about your blog) appears on the post in the other blog that blog’s readers will also be notified that you have something to say on the subject and they may pay you a visit.

Everyone can have it but not everyone does! Some blogs have this Trackback capability built in and others do not but the good news is that Haloscan, a very popular comment tracking program, now offers a trackback feature for those who don’t have it and the better news is its FREE! If you are interested you can go to http://www.haloscan.com/members/join.php to sign up. Note that signing up for Trackback (if you don’t already have it) will give YOU a trackback capability but you will still not be able to Trackback to a post on a blog that does not have Trackback.

Trackbacks vs. comments! Normally you will see a post you have something to say about and comment on it. Using a Trackback when you don’t have an honestly related post — one that adds something relevant or clarifies the subject post — is not an accepted practice. If you become known as a "trackback spammer" by sending unrelated trackbacks you may be banned from the offended blogs.

How it works! Trackback works by sending a "ping" (an electronic notification) from your blog to another blog to notify them of your post. This ping also notifies their Trackback program to list your post. Some bloggers moderate their trackbacks, i.e., they manually review each trackback notification and verify that it is indeed a related post — this prevents spammers from relating their junk posts to real blogs. If the blogger reviews your post and finds it relevant he or she can permit the trackback and your post will then be listed as a trackback on the other blog.

The first step in creating a trackback is getting the "Trackback URL" from the post where you want to send your Trackback notification. If the post does not have a Trackback URL, they either don’t have a Trackback capability or they have it turned off.

Next, copy that URL into the appropriate place on your blog’s post. This will usually be identified by some reference to "Trackback URLs" or "Trackback pings."

Next, republish your blog — your trackback software will automatically send the Trackback ping to the target blog’s post.

That’s all here is to it, your trackback, featuring a permalink to your post, will be sent to the target post and, after being approved (if the blogger is moderating trackbacks) your Trackback will be listed.

Other functions! On some systems it is possible to send simultaneous Trackbacks to more than one target posts. Another capability of Trackback allows you to send a trackback ping to yourself, linking a post on another blog — this lets your readers know that the other post is out there and can be considered a "recommended reading" type function.

Just a review of four important Trackback points!

Not every blogger has a Trackback capability and some that have it do not have it enabled.

Some bloggers moderate their trackbacks to avoid unrelated posts being linked. Some however do not moderate or even monitor their Trackbacks, so trackback spammers can sneak in. Don’t be a Trackback spammer and don’t tolerate them.

Haloscan is now offering Trackback capability packaged with their commenting program (both are free).

Installing Trackback on your blog will not allow you to send Trackbacks to blogs without that capability.

More information on Trackbacks! Wikipedia has a very comprehensive entry on Trackbacks you can find it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackback. Wikipedia articles are always comprehensive and will provide you with information you can rely on.

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5/20 Blogging Tips

2009-05-19T22:19:00.001-07:00

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Contenture - The anti-ad network
May 19, 2009 at 10:00 am

Written by David Silversmith from InfoMusing

If you want to make money from a blog you have a limited number of options. The most popular approach is to run ads - typically using an ad network like Google’s AdSense. Many bloggers also join affiliate programs and post links and banners for those programs - but to the visitor it is just more ads. You can also charge a subscription fee - but you will have to have some truly unique content to pull that off and also the systems to handle the ecommerce. So your primary options are to run ads and annoy your visitors or collect money from and annoy your visitors.

Next week, Contenture is launching what they call the “anti-ad network.” The basic idea is that you would add a subscription component to your blog/website. You would offer some type of premium benefits to visitors who are signed up with Contenture. Those benefits could be priority access to new content, exclusive access to your archives, special commenting privileges, and/or an ad-free experience.

The twist to the subscription model is that the consumer only has to sign up with Contenture - not with dozens of individual blogs and websites. Contenture plans to sign up bunches of sites to this model and users pay one flat monthly fee to have access to the premium services of all of these sites. Every time a Contenture user visits your web site, you make money. You are paid a piece of every visitor’s monthly payment. The amount will be based on how many visits they made to your site divided by the total number of visits they made to all Contenture sites.

Installation for the web site will be simple. Paste some Javascript code into your site, and then configure the premium services and content controls, if you choose. The setup doesn’t sound any harder than setting up affiliate links or AdSense.

The convenience, for both visitors and web site owners, is that there is only one sign up. I can sign up one time with Contenture, but in any given month my $5.99 might be paid out to 5, 10 or even a 100 websites. It might only be pennies to each site, but for many folks AdSense is in the same ballpark on a per visitor basis. If Contenture gets a volume of users it becomes interesting.

The challenge, like any network, is you to need to get a critical mass to sign up into the Contenture network. Contenture is the team behind Clicky real time web analytics so they have an immediate base of over 100,000 web sites that they can market too. They will pay websites $1 for every new paying user who signs up so all the member sites will have the incentive to advertise Contenture.

Contenture is launching what they call the Micropayment Revolution” on Tuesday, May 26. So far no big names announced - but if they could land a social media site or two, Contenture could get interesting very quickly. Without a big name - it is going to be hard to get the Contenture ball rolling.

Written by David Silversmith from

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5/20 Blog Tips

2009-05-19T22:18:00.001-07:00

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

A Great Idea Is Not Enough!
May 19, 2009 at 2:25 am

Whether you
are starting up a new web site aimed at bloggers or
whether you are looking to make your existing blogging
site more distinctive, the key to building and
maintaining a site that will capture the interest and
attention of the blogging community is finding your
niche. If you can fill a unique need in a way that no
other web site does, you’ll be able to build a lasting
readership among web surfers. Once you have
discovered a niche, you will still have a lot to do, but
finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to
begin.

Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea,
and you can’t build a successful site that will last
without one. There are many great sites aimed at
today’s bloggers, and competition for the attention of
this growing demographic is fierce. To make your
blogging web site stand out from the pack, you will
need to offer something that no other site is currently
offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an
already popular site does but in a more impressive or
valuable way.

One way to discover an ideal model for your blogging
web site is to look at the sites that have successfully
captured a blogging audience already to determine if
you can appropriate some of their strategies to help
realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add
a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart
from your competition. Many people agree that the web
sites that do the best in today’s market are the sites that
have the most personality. The fiercely individual
surfers who are bloggers are a demographic that
responds especially strongly to personality, so consider
how you can give your site a unique and attractive
feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to
your site’s design and content.

Once you have a great idea for your site, have
pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to
fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next
step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers.
In the long run, a great idea just isn’t enough to propel
your blogging web site to success. You will need to
draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to
draw readers to your site. Once you hook a blogger,
your great content will keep them coming back, but it is
vital to get that first glance or your site won’t have a
chance to shine.

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5/19 Blog Tips

2009-05-18T22:19:00.001-07:00

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Blog Tips - Training, Tools And Technology For Savvy Bloggers

5 Big Mistakes
May 18, 2009 at 2:24 am

Too often bloggers complain that after a great start, a year later their blog is as dead as can be. This is a common problem that almost always revolves around a small list of common mistakes made by the blogger. A blogger can sit back and expect the blog to do all of the work for him or her, which is a terrible way to approach blogging. A successful blogger would tell you that great blogging takes a certain amount of dedication and hard effort to make it work. You have to put effort into a blog to sustain it, especially after the first month or so of completing the design. Many people work so hard during the initial design phase that they get lazy after it is complete. To avoid this happening to your blog, check out these five common mistakes that can bury a blog.

Infrequent Updates

One of the biggest mistakes a blogger can make is to "forget" about posting. The most successful blogs are updated with new posts at least once a day. Some larger blogs are constantly being updated. You should try to create new posts as often as possible. If you miss a day here and there, it will be no big deal. However, if you miss a week or more without posting, you might as well consider the blog dead already. You have to take a few moments, even as few as five, a day to create interesting posts or content. If you are writing short and concise posts like you should be, this should not be that challenging. It is easy to keep your blog updated, if you make it a priority.

Too Much Advertising

Most bloggers today do want to make a profit from their blog. This is a trend that can get out of control quickly however. If you are interested in adding ads to your blog, do so with caution. There is nothing wrong with a few appropriately places ads that offer viewers links to places that correlate with your blog's content. However, adding a massive amount of advertisements on your blog is a mistake. If you have a bunch of flashy ads on your blog, your content will get lost within the hoopla. Therefore, you should always limit your ads to three or less per page. Make sure you place them in appropriate places that let your content shine through. Don't allow enormous ads to fill up your pages either. They will simply annoy readers. Be smart about including advertising on your blog!

Unprofessional Look

Looks do matter when it comes to your blog. The more professional and crisp your blog looks, the more your readers will take you seriously. If you are interesting in boosting traffic, you should try a more serious layout or presentation for your blog. If you can afford to hire a professional, you should. If you choose to do it yourself however, you must make sure the end product is good. If you have a sloppy blog that looks "homemade" you will not likely have a great response. Try different layouts and approaches to see what gets you the most traffic.

Graphics Overload

Pictures can add a ton to your blog and draw in more readers. However, when done excessively, much like ads, pictures can drive people away. The main reason too many pictures can ruin a blog is because there are many web surfers who still use slow internet connections. When they try to load your page, it will take an excessively long time to do so. This in turn will likely drive them and anyone else with this problem away. Try limiting to a few pictures per page.

Inappropriate Content

Everyone knows that the web is a place where you can freely express yourself. However, if you want your blog to survive, you might want to think about that freedom of expression. Although you should always say what you feel, you can do so in appropriate manners on your blog. There are ways to say anything on your mind, without using profanity or any offensive lingo. If you want your blog to be successful, you cannot be inappropriate with your content.

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5/19 Blogging Tips

2009-05-18T22:19:00.000-07:00

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Writing to Persuade
May 18, 2009 at 3:03 pm

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford

Remember the days of personal blogging? All the blogs you read were from a personal standpoint, the writer either shared their personal life or would write a review about the latest gadget they had found? They weren't trying to sell you anything, they were just sharing their opinion and in effect probably did cause many people to try the product they were speaking of.

Today's blogging world is a lot different. Today we're trying to sell something, whether it's products, ad space, revenue from clicking or even ourselves we're selling if we're a freelance writer. We often write to persuade instead of just review.

Today we're going to cover a few points for writing to persuade. One thing we want to avoid though is making the reader feel like we're trying to 'sell' them. Most people hate a sales pitch. The only people who like a sales pitch are the one's watching infomercials on late night TV.

When writing to persuade you should use logical arguments which contain no flaws in reasoning. Make sure you have strong arguments and evidence to back them up with.

Use reliable facts that come from a good source. Use examples and statistics instead of your own opinion. If you're writing a personal review your opinion is important, but in general persuasive writing you need to stick with the facts.

Get testimonies from experts if you can. People like testimonies and they like to hear from experts, so use those whenever you can.

Don't use emotionally charged language. To persuade you need to be polite and soft-spoken, or soft written in this case.

You need to anticipate opposing opinions and concede those if you can. Try to hit every angle so the reader is persuaded without any further question because you've answered those questions already.
The most important thing is to remember you're dealing with people. In writing and selling we often refer to them as "target audience" or "the reader" and we forget that they're actually people. Treat them as a friend and persuade them from the standpoint as you would a friend you know personally. Just because the blogging world has changed doesn't mean you have to consort to being an infomercial.

Written by Patti Stafford from

Most Requested Features for Blogger
May 18, 2009 at 10:00 am

Written by Amanda Fazani from Blogger Buster

Back in April, the Blogger team created the Product Ideas for Blogger forum where Blogger users could offer their suggestions of the features and gadgets they would like to use.

The Product Ideas forum was open for a month and closed for new suggestions on the 14th of May. During the time it was open, the forum received over 1500 different suggestions and thousands of votes from enthusiastic Blogger users.

In today’s post, I’ll highlight some of the most popular suggestions, along with discussion of the likelihood that these suggestions could come to fruition and be integrated into the Blogger service.

An overview of the Product Ideas for Blogger forum

Product Ideas for Blogger was announced on Blogger Buzz in April, when Blogger users were invited to add their suggestions for:

Blogger features - general enhancements to the service
Blogs of Note - notable Blogger powered blogs which are acknowledged in the Blogs of Note blog and on Blogger’s home page
Gadgets - Blogger specific widgets which can be added to the layout in a few clicks, through the Page Elements section of the Blogger dashboard.

The forum was open for public viewing, though only those holding a Google account could log in to suggest a feature or add their votes to existing suggestions.

Voting on the Product Ideas forum was simply “For” or “Against” the ideas presented. There was no means to comment on suggestions or provide details about our degree of agreement/disagreement of an idea.

As there were no pre-existing suggestions, those who offered their suggestions were able to add any idea they liked. This meant that many ideas were duplicated due to different wording of the ideas presented, or the specifics of suggestions provided. Also, many ideas were submitted to both the Features and Gadgets sections of the forum. I suspect this caused some confusion among participants as to which ideas they should vote for or against.

However, despite these misgivings I believe that Blogger’s decision to open up the forum for suggestions to the Blogger interface will prove successful: by offering Blogger users the means of expressing their interest in certain features, the Blogger team have provided a sense of community participation and will hopefully implement some of the more popular suggestions in future enhancements to the system.

Let’s take a broad look at the more popular suggestions and consider the likelihood that these ideas will be considered.

Suggestions for new Blogger features

In this section of the forum, participants posted their ideas for general enhancements to the Blogger interface.

Improvements to the comments system

Suggestions for improvements of Blogger’s comments system appeared many times in the forum, and in many different formats.

Generally speaking, participants of the forum seem to feel Blogger’s existing comments system is too basic and suggest that comment avatars (particularly avatars), comment threading and integtation of a system like “CommentLuv” would vastly improve the system.

Furthermore, a better system for prevention of comment spam similar to Askimet would be much appreciated by the Blogger community. I was surprised that prevention of comment spam did not feature in the top tier of results once voting had closed for the Product Ideas forum, but when browsing through the hundreds of suggestions it was clear that this was suggested in so many different formats that a single clear suggestion was missed.

Will it happen? Based on recent integration of other Google services, I believe that any improvements to Blogger’s comment system may be based on Google Friend Connect. As some of you may already know, Friend Connect offers a means of commenting for any web page, including threaded comments and Google-based avatars; some creative Blogger users have already chosen to add this functionality to the comments section of their blogs. It is more likely that an adaptation of the Friend Connect comment box will be added than a stand-alone improvement specific to Blogger.

“Wordpress style” pages for Blogger blogs

Participants of the Product Ideas forum voiced their opinion of this suggestion in many different ways, and I can attest from experience that this feature would be hugely appreciated by the Blogger community!

Rather than hide important pages of our blogs (such as an “About” page and contact details) in the archives, most Blogger users would relish the opportunity to add a selection of pages separately, without the date and year extention. As many have pointed out, this feature is available for those using Wordpress and other blogging systems. Those who use Blogger create such “pages” by designing a post which is linked from the layout and hidden deep in the blog archives.

Will it happen? I suspect that great modifications to the Blogger engine would be required to accomodate this feature. Though I suspect it could be possible, I doubt this feature would come into effect in the near future. Yet with the demand from those using Blogger through the sheer number of votes for this feature..? We shall have to see!

New/Better Blogger Templates available through Blogger

The selection of default templates available from Blogger has not changed for the past 5 years when StopDesign was commissioned to design the templates with which we are all familiar. Although many designers have turned their talents towards designing “third party” templates for Blogger, many Blogger users would feel far happier if a new (or wider ranging) selection of designs could be chosen from Blogger itself.

Will it happen? I would hope there is the possibility of new designs in the pipline, though I strongly suspect that any new templates would offer new designs, but not improved functionality. Many recent third party templates offer functions which would be difficult to implement as default Blogger templates due to the nature of the code used to produce them. Default templates include code snippets and widget tags in specific places, enabling blog posts, widgetized sidebars and comment sections (to name a few aspects) in specific places in the template. It could be very difficult to manipulate functions for default templates for the millions of Blogger members who would use them.

Addition of a “Read More” feature (post summaries)

At present, when we publish a blog post with Blogger, the whole post is displayed on the home and archive pages of our blogs. There is no facility built in to Blogger which allows only post summaries to be displayed, and while there are several Blogger hacks to add this functionality, these can be complicated to implement.

Many suggestions on the Product Ideas for Blogger forum included the facility to summarize posts when required. If this was enabled through the Blogger interface itself (rather than by hacking our Blogger templates) this would prevent the need to selectively hide sections of our posts using JavaScript and CSS.

Will it happen? Again, I’m unsure of the implications for the Blogger engine, and how extensive modifications would need to be to support this feature. However, there is such demand for this feature to be added that I hope the Blogger team will certainly consider this.

Suggestions for new Blogger gadgets

In this section of the forum, participants suggested new Blogger specific gadgets which they would like to use for their blogs.

Visitor statistics (based on Google Analytics)

One of the most popular gadget suggestions was for a visitor statistics widget (to show page views) which is based on data from Google Analytics. This could prove useful for those who wish to display details of their readership.

Will it happen? I would think this is possible, since Blogger has integrated many of Google’s other services into the Blogger interface in recent months. More likely than this is the addition of Google Analytics data to the Blogger dashboard, as was hinted at in this post by WebProNews…

A popular posts widget

I suspect this gadget would be more popular among Blogger users if it was to come into action! At present, there is no reliable gadget or widget which Blogger users can add to link to their most popular posts. However, Blogger recently introduced the star ratings system which readers can use to rate posts. As yet a gadget to display the most popular posts based on these ratings has not been made available.

Will it happen? I believe that the Blogger team may already have looked into a solution to display the most popular posts based on this system. In fact it would be a natural progression of this widget, and I am surprised we have not already been able to use such a gadget for our blogs.

Another possibility may be to display popular posts based on Google Analytics data if (or when) this feature is added to our dashboards.

So… Will Blogger act upon our suggestions?

Last year, I asked Blogger Buster readers to suggest the features they would most like to use; among these was the addition of a comment form which - to our surprise and warm welcome - was implemented even before the poll had ended!

My thoughts are that the Blogger team do care a lot about how the system is perceived, and that the most popular (and attainable) suggestions will certainly be considered for future updates to the system. I was personally surprised to see the Product Ideas for Blogger forum opened for suggestions of new features as previously our suggestions were voiced through the Blogger help group, but I believe that the Blogger team created this forum to discover more about the opinions of the Blogger community so such suggestions can be acknowledged and acted upon.

What are your suggestions for new Blogger features or Gadgets?

Did you suggest a new feature/gadget or have a strong opinion about any of the suggestions posted on Product Ideas which would improve Blogger? Please feel free to let us know about your suggestions and opinions by leaving your comments below.

Written by Amanda Fazani from

Spelling Woes
May 18, 2009 at 5:00 am

Written by Patricia Vennes from Stiletto Woman

I’m not trying to be picky, but when it comes to spelling (which is something I’m terrible at but I have someone to make sure I don’t sound like an idiot) I expect companies to have it together. When I see something on the Internet that is spelled incorrectly I can mostly chalk it up to the fast paced society that we live in and the need to get things out on the web as quickly as possible. But when I see something that has been printed and sent out that has errors in it, I can’t help but be completely turned off by the incompetence of the company and feel a strong urge to send a nasty letter to their team of editors.

Anytime you post something on the Internet or hand out a printed copy, whether it be an article, a blog post, or just a response to someone else’s article, make sure you are as accurate as possible so you don’t fall into the same categories as the following examples.

When out on the town for mothers day, I came across this sign while waiting for my flowers to be finished. I had to look at the sign for a moment to comprehend what I was really seeing. Could the "buisness" owner be this dumb? I have to take into consideration that I live in a small town where the inhabitants are frequently referred to as "hicks", but I also have to wonder if the owner knows what spell check is.

They want to sell their business, but they can’t even get this right. And what about "inquireies"? I know that it’s supposed to say inquiries, but at first glance I can’t help but think that my eyes are playing tricks on me and this is some new word that I’ve never heard of before. Alas, it is not so. The person who made this sign should go back to grammar school, or at the very least get a dictionary.

My fiancée bought an MP3 player so he could enjoy music. Though there weren’t many directions or information with the device, there was a slip of yellow paper that stuck out like a sore thumb. You might have to zoom in on this picture to see it more clearly.

I’m not a punctuation Nazi, not at all, but since this is a big company you’d think that they could at least edit the information they put with their products. When looking at this image you might not see anything wrong, but when you look more closely you’ll notice that there is a space before the colon in the first paragraph. Sure not that big of a deal, though it is obvious that there shouldn’t be a space between "support" and the colon. The same thing happens at the very end of the memo where a space is placed before an exclamation mark. Are the editors of this document using some form of the English language that I’m not aware of?

The error that made me yell when I saw it was the floating comma. Personally, I hate commas. I loathe them because they always seem to end up wherever I don’t want them and never where they need to be, but never had I let a comma hang out all by itself without a word to hold onto. A comma is like a child needing a hand to hold. A comma needs a word to attach to rather than swimming in an abyss of white all by its lonesome.

The purpose of this article is to remind you to always spell check your work and let someone else take a look at it before you publish it to the world.

Written by Patricia Vennes from

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5/18 Blogging Tips

2009-05-17T22:20:00.001-07:00

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Why Headlines Are Important
May 17, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr

It’s well known that one of the best ways to get your blog noticed is to employ some form of Internet advertising and one of the best ways to get the word out is through article marketing. Articles are a perfect vehicle to expose your business for several reasons and when you’re looking to use article marketing as your means to draw traffic to your site there are three things you need to keep in mind about why people use the Internet this way.

They want:

Entertainment
Information
A sense of community

And a good article provides them with one or all of those things. But the whole process of article marketing is like a pyramid. If the article doesn’t work, there will be no traffic to your site. And to get the articles to be effective, you need to have a great headline at the top of the pyramid. There are a few things you should keep in mind that might seem obvious when you’re writing a good headline, but they can easily be overlooked in the excitement to write the actual article.

The Headline Should Be Relevant

Remember that you should be direct and to the point. Leave subtle nuance to the novelist and other literary writers since search engine spiders and many of the people who will read the article will not understand irony or some other sense of humor in the title. Remember that although it’s generally great for the search engine optimization, putting keywords in the title might throw both the reader and Google off.

The Headline Should Make The Reader Want To Click Through

Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that you’re writing for the human reader as well as the search bots. It’s important to keep in mind that the headline is the first thing that the reader sees before they even click on the title. Here’s a good formula to follow. Make the first few words specifically what the article is about then add something after that flushes out what the reader can expect after they get into the text.

Finally, the best way to write a successful headline is to be succinct. It’s important to keep in mind that the shorter the title, the more focus there is. It could take several attempts before you get it to the point where you’re comfortable, but the extra effort will be worth it in sustained traffic.

Written by Rob Starr from

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Hello world

2009-05-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

This my blog about blogging. Welcome everyone