Archive for November, 2007

Lorelle VanFossen recently penned an informative article cataloging some of the things she wants “gone from the web in 2007.” I agree with most of her points, like

• killing pop-up windows
• out-of-control advertising
• music on websites
• not “splogging”

Some of the points, like “validate with other browsers,” while important, are kind of obvious.
I’ve also been implementing some of her tips. I’ve removed the CAPTCHA I had on my comments, and I’m relying solely on Akismet’s comment protection service. I’ve been meaning to (for a few months now) meaning to build a print style sheet, but I haven’t had the time lately. (more…)

Marco of Ruelicke.net and I will be talking about a blog-related topic on the upcoming pilot episode of BlogCast.  The only problem is neither of us have decided on a topic yet.

So, here’s my question for all of you: What do you want us to talk about?

Is there something that you want to know more about? Leave a comment, and we’ll consider your idea.

• How to Set Up a Sideblog The Smart Way - You can decide how smart this method is yourself. Personally, I don’t want all my Del.icio.us bookmarks published to my blog.
• Sploggers Get Craftier. Or Should I Say “Sploggers son cada vez más complicado!”
• Bored with your standard RSS icon? Replace it with one of these 51 buttons. I especially like the 3D ones, and the peeling sticker version.
• “What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like.” This appeared on nearly every major social bookmarking site recently.
• The Best and Worst Logo Remakes of the Century
• Once again, Smashing Magazine smashes you with the Best of October 2007.
• Webmaster Essentials Checklist
• Darren Rowse reports that AdSense has changed the clickable area on ads, decreasing click through rate, but possibly reducing accidental clicks.
• I still don’t get the whole Facebook thing…but it seems to be a good marketing tool for blogs.
• Obama’s innovation plan a Christmas list for the geekerati
• Smashing Magazin’s writers have an odd ability to write HUGE posts about virtually anything web-related. This time it’s pagination.

What if you decide to go in a different direction with your blog? It happens. What if everyone hates your blog’s name? Is your blog’s name too long?

It’s okay to rename your blog, but be sure to think it through. First of all, why would you want to rename it? Do you have valid reasons…or are you just bored with your blog? Don’t go through the hassle unless you have a need. For example:

• You’re going in a different direction than when you started your blog, and the name doesn’t quite fit.
• People are complaining about your domain being too long. If that’s the case, consider just getting an add-on domain and redirecting it to the normal one.
• Your old domain has a bad reputation with search engines (which is common with “previously owned” domains).

There are plenty of reasons why you don’t want to change the name: (more…)

Not everyone is a designer (or can afford to hire one). Luckily, you can just grab a free Wordpress theme and tweak it a little. If you decide to go that route, make sure you pick a well-designed theme.

To save you some time, I’ve assembled this list of places to find good themes. (more…)

The problem with AdSense is people tend to ignore them. As a webmaster, you have to continually update your ad placement to prevent this “banner blindness.”

How can you tell what the best placement and ad format is? You use A/B Testing. When you A/B test, you randomly show your readers one ad or the other, and track which gets more clicks. It’s easy to do, and will improve your earnings.

First, generate to ad code snippets. Make sure both ad formats are assigned to unique (and descriptive) channels. That way you can tell how many clicks each ad block gets. For example, put your 200×200 square ad in a channel called “200×200 AB Test” and your 250×250 ad block in “250×250 AB Test.” Paste the generated codes into notepad for later use. (more…)

Wordpress is more than a blog engine. It’s an easy-to-use CMS (Content Management System) perfect for running a “webzine.” I’m not a big fan of most CMS systems, though I’m a huge fan of Wordpress. Joomla is too convoluted and Drupal isn’t that great either. I’m not going to go around the web bashing other CMSes right and left, but I do like to point out Wordpress as a viable option for “non-blog” sites.

The Main Page

The main difference between a blog an a webzine is the index page. While the typical blog just shows the most recent posts, a webzine goes beyond that. There are a lot of ways to display content on the main page. Here are some examples of webzines:

• ProBlogger
• Revolution Wordpress Theme
• The Leaky Cauldron
• The Morning After Wordpress Theme
• CNet
• CNN
• Yahoo

Look around the internet. You’ll find no shortage of different “non-blog” index styles. Do you see how they are all similar? They highlight different types of content. “Featured” posts, “normal” posts, “news,” etc. Before you get into developing your webzine too much, map out the main page on paper. Decide what types of content you will have, and how you will display them on the main page. (more…)

Sideblogs are “mini-blogs” that allow you to share links and write short updates to your readers.

Speedlinking is a method of posting. When you Speedlink, you round-up a collection of links to other blogs’ posts that you think would be interesting/useful to your readers.

The question is: Which is better for you?

Sideblogs

• Sideblogs are quick to update
• Sideblogs are instantaneous. You see something, you add it to your sideblog, and it’s out there for everyone to see. With speedlinking, you round-up your links then publish them all at once every week or so.
• Sideblogs allow you to post other things besides links.

Speedlinking

• Speedlinker posts show up in you main feed. Sideblog entries generally don’t.
• Speedlinker posts tend to get a lot of views and linkbacks. Also, everyone likes a big list of links.
• Speedlinking gives you a break. It’s real easy to write a short list of links, and a few notes about them.

Personally, I like both. I speedlink and I have a sideblog. I use the sideblog for timely links that can’t wait until the end of the week, as well as for quick updates and things that can’t be expanded into a full-blown post. My speedlinker posts, known as “BlogBuzz,” handle the rest of my linking needs.

How do you blog currently? Do you just enter your post and hit publish? Sure, that works fine, but there’s a better way.

Most blog software includes a Time Stamp feature that allows you to write your post ahead of time and have it appear on your blog at a pre-scheduled time. Using this feature you can make blogging easier.

How often do you post something to your blog? Every day? Every other day? For simplicity, I’ll assume you post to your blog every day. What if you were unable to blog for a day (for whatever reason)? Some your readers wouldn’t like that too much. You can avoid that using the Time Stamp option.

At the beginning of the week, write a few posts and set them to post on the following days. Now you can do other things over the rest of the week. You can write more posts for the next week, you can work on some linkbait, or you could play Pirates of the Caribbean Online. (more…)

What do you think? Alex King just released the new version of the great ShareThis plugin, but I don’t like it as much. Here are my main reasons:

• It’s a lot slower, as it uses JavaScript to load the collapsible DIV’s contents from ShareThis.com.
• The default styling doesn’t look as good.

I’m still using the original plugin, and I don’t intend to stop.