Around November 2007 (about a year ago), I added a “sideblog” to Webmaster-Source, where I could post “asides” — short updates that were, well, not long enough to merit an entire post. These little postings appear in the sidebar, as you can see (as of this writing).

Now, it’s been nearly a year since I added the feature, and I’ve added a total of 69 entries in the sideblog. I’ve posted updates about downtime, plugins being added to the WordPress/Extend respository, XKCD comics, links of interest, etc there. However, my postings there have slackened over the past months. I’ve been using my Twitter account for what I originally intended.

EDIT: What…? This post was originally three times this length! The majority of it is gone! I doubt I have a backup of it, but I’ll check…

EDIT: No, no backup. The post wasn’t saved properly because my internet connection was interrupted while writing. I’ll try to boil down my long-winded article into a few bullet points, since there’s no replacing the lost data. I doubt it will have the same impact as the full article though.

• I use Twitter a lot.
• I rarely update the sideblog.
• Few people (like 3, to be exact) subscribe to the sideblog feed, but I have 420+/- followers on Twitter.
• I’m planning a redesign of Webmaster-Source. Is it worth filling up a bunch of space just for the sideblog? Between Twitter and speedlinking with my BlogBuzz posts, is there really justification for it?
• Why not have a small Twitter box in the footer or sidebar (like many other bloggers have) instead?
• I wouldn’t delete the old posts from the sideblog, but I’d stop cluttering up the sidebar with them.

(more…)

Twitter! It’s addicting isn’t it? It can also save you some time if you’re interested in Speedlinking, or provide an easy way to Sideblog.

How? Using Alex King’s amazing plugin Twitter Tools. If you want to get the most out of Twitter blog-wise, you should definitely check-out this WordPress plugin. It does a lot, including Twittering your blog posts and displaying your latest Tweets.

Before we continue, install the Twitter Tools plugin, and configure your login information. If you use Twitter for personal uses, as well as for speedlinking/sideblogging, then you may want to create a secondary account. If you use the Twhirl client to post Tweets, then you’re in luck. It can easily post to more than one Twitter account. (more…)