WordPress | A Fool of Myself

Tagged: WordPress

August 8th, 2009

Join the Movement to Kill IE6!

For those of you not on the web developer train, you may not know about the headaches outdated browsers can give us. Internet Explorer 6, specifically, has security issues and doesn’t conform to standards set forth by the powers that be. Last month, Mashable.com published this article, “IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On.” It says:

Internet Explorer 6 is outdated technology in a rapidly-changing Internet landscape. Imagine trying to use the social web, Microsoft Office, iTunes, IM, your video games, and all of your desktop apps…with a computer from 2001 (20 GB of space, 256 MB of RAM, anyone?). It’s the same thing: a great deal of new web technology is simply incompatible with IE6.

So I have joined the “movement” to kill IE6. For starters, A Fool of Myself and all the other sites I maintain no longer support the browser. Using Shockingly Big IE6 Warning WordPress plugin, these sites won’t work in an outdated browser and display an alert with links to new browsers like IE8, Firefox, or Chrome. I hope you’ll consider joining me!

Tags: browsers, chrome, firefox, ie6, ie6 must die, ie8, kill ie6, shockingly big ie6 warning, WordPress
Posted in brilliantly creative | 1 Comment »

March 17th, 2009

Blogaronis Don’t Disappoint, Lots of Ideas for Springfield Bloggers Association

At the end of yesterday’s post, I mentioned that I was going to the Blogaronis last night with my friend Teresa. Well, I went, and today I’m reporting back to you. In case you don’t know, the Blogaronis are local blogging awards given by the Springfield Bloggers Association, a loosely-organized group of bloggers in the Springfield area. I wasn’t nominated for A Fool of Myself (perhaps because I haven’t done much local blog networking), so I went to meet some new people and put some names to faces.

I had no idea what to expect. Honestly, I was a bit concerned that this “association” was just a group of geeks getting together to drink. Thankfully, I was wrong. The SBA is totally legitimate; essentially they’re a varied group of uber-blogging nerds like me. I’ve finally found my element.

Ten or so bloggers were there; I’d say about half were veteran SBAers and the other half were newbies, which put me at ease. We introduced ourselves, and Larry Litle of Simple Thoughts of a Complex Mind handed out the 14 category awards. After a photo, we split into separate conversations. I asked lots of questions. Found out that Larry’s wife is having a baby in a few weeks and that he needed someone to pick up the ball and schedule the next few meetings. So I became a ball picker-upper and volunteered to organize the next meeting. I am crazy.

Seriously, crazy. You know me. I’m an administrative, organizing freak of nature who is constantly thinking of ways to improve the things around her. I am an unstoppable monster. And as to be expected, I came away from Patton Alley Pub with a million and one ideas running through my head of how SBA can improve. I mentioned a few of them to Teresa. I told Chris about them. I woke up before my alarm this morning because I was thinking about them.

So if anyone from SBA reads the rest of this post, please understand that I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or ruin the status quo of the organization. I’m a newbie; I don’t know how things work. At the same time, I want to get involved, spread the blogging love, and help the organization grow. So here are the ideas I’ve been chewing on since last night:

Blog

I think it’s a little silly that a blogging association doesn’t have a blog, and if SBA had a blog, it would be easier for local bloggers to stay up to date with the organization. Currently, meeting news, the blogroll, and the blogaronis are scattered across several different blogs, which doesn’t make it easy to learn about the group. I would propose a WordPress blog with pages for essential information about SBA and posts with news and announcements and such.

WordPress has a powerful blogroll (Links) function that allows blog owners to categorize their links, and the site could also allow bloggers to submit their blogs for the blogroll. The blogroll could be organized according to location (i.e. Springfield, Nixa, Ozark, etc.), genre (i.e. sports, technology, news, etc.), or by any other specifications.

Meetings

I’m in charge of scheduling the next meeting, and I have no idea what that entails other than selecting a meeting place. I’m going to ask around, but I’d like to see some “programs” at those meetings. You know, 20 minute (or so) lessons on any number of blogging topics or words from some “celebrity” bloggers. Maybe they already do this. I really don’t know. While it is fun to get together and have a beer (or Diet Coke, in my case), I think some people might be more inclined to come to meetings if there is a clear purpose.

Community Service

Not sure how this would shape up, but bloggers have some power with their pens, er, keyboards, and I’d like to see them put those skills to good use. Off the top of my head, we could adopt a non-profit organization to plug on our blogs for a specific period of time, we could adopt some local businesses and get them on the blogging train, we could teach senior citizens how to set up their own blogs. The sky is the limit.

Flair

Lastly, SBA needs some flair. I’m talking SBA badges and Blogaroni “trophies” for our sidebars. We would need a designer, but I happen to live with one who might be up for the job.

And those are my ideas. I’m so glad to get them out of my head because they were driving me crazy! I think SBA has great potential to grow a blogging community in Springfield; I just want to see it succeed. I’m definitely going to exchange some emails with some of the veterans last night about how I should go about scheduling the next meeting. I’ll keep you posted on how all this pans out. Scary!

Author’s Note

It totally didn’t occur to me yesterday to share some link love with the people I met Monday night. If you’re in Springfield, definitely check out these blogs:

Jason of Life of Jason
Dr. Andrew Cline of Rhetorica and Carbon Trace
Teresa of Daily Adventures and The Springfield Foodie
Chris of The World According to Chris Brewer
Steve of SpringfieldMO Soccer
Angie of Sugar Britches
Newsy and Donna of Show-Me Opinions
Mike of Ozarks Photos
Jack of Fat Jack’s Erratic Rants

Tags: blogaronis, community service, flair, ideas, meetings, patton alley pub, simple thoughts of a complex mind, springfield bloggers association, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | 4 Comments »

March 11th, 2009

DMCA Resources for Bloggers

Last week, I wrote about copyright and creative commons for bloggers, and I want to revisit that briefly today. Thanks to Steve, I’ve been reading PlagiarismToday.com, who had a post about the problems bloggers are having with Google’s DMCA policy. Essentially, Google isn’t keeping records of DMCA take-down requests and is removing blog posts without notifying the bloggers. When the bloggers request information about the DMCA take-down request, Google can’t (or won’t) provide it. Google also seems to be making it difficult to submit DMCA take-down requests, requiring them to be submitted via snail mail or fax instead of email.

I’m not aware of any copyright problems with my blogs; however, I reviewed the policies of some other blogging platforms (+ Twitter), and they’re all pretty straightforward and specify how to request a DMCA take-down. Here are the links to these sources:

Anyway, I wanted to pass this information along today. It’s a good idea to review the DMCA policies of your blogging platform or web host (mine didn’t have one that I could find), and it’s always a good idea to backup your work on a local machine in case you ever need to provide proof of ownership to a third party. Happy blogging!

Tags: Blogger, bloggers, dmca, google, plagiarismtoday.com, policies, twitter, typepad, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | No Comments »

November 18th, 2008

Five More WordPress Plugins to Simplify Your Blogging

When I finally bought my own domain and hosting, I knew that I was going to use Wordpress.org as my blogging software. As a regular reader of Blogger’s Guide, the first thing I did once WordPress was installed was check and install the “Five WordPress Plugins That Make Blogging Life Easier.” Since then, I’ve downloaded and installed several other plugins, and these five have are just as helpful as the first five. They aren’t as vital as WordPress Database Backup and WordPress Automatic Upgrade, but they certainly make blogging life easier.

Subscribe to Comments: This plugin gives your readers the option to subscribe to comments via email by placing a button below the comment form. Once logged into a post, readers can easily change their notification settings if they decide they don’t want to get any more updates. Plus, Subscribe to Comments lets you choose the default wording your readers will see or lets you write your own.
Comment Remix: If you want to build loyal readers, have a conversation. When the blog author responds to comments, readers know they are being heard. Subscribe to Comments emails your readers your replies and the replies of any other commentser, and Comment Remix makes it easy peasy for you to respond, right from your WordPress dashboard. My favorite feature of this full-featured plugin is the unreplied comment notifier: an unobtrusive red speech bubble. Comment Remix also provides widgets that display top commenters, posts with the most comments, recent trackbacks, and more. You also have control over how trackbacks are displayed, the order in which comments are sorted, and whether or not you want to use comment tags. With a combination of Subscribe to Comments and Comment Remix, your readers and you can easily carry on meaningful conversations.
Add to Any: One of the easiest ways to promote your blog is to let your readers do it! By installing the Add to Any plugin, users can choose which social networking site they want to share your post on. You can choose how large the Add to Any button is (you can even create your own), and whether it is also appended to your feed.
Google XML Sitemaps: In order for search engines to crawl your site (more accurately/better), you should have an XML sitemap saved on your domain. This plugin automatically creates one for you and updates it each time you write a new post, while notifying Google, MSN, and Ask at the same time. These features and many more make Google XML Sitemaps a must-have if you are trying to build your SEO.
Ultimate Google Analytics: If you’re like me, you love combing over your analytics and Ultimate Google Analytics helps to show you exactly how your readers are using your site. This plugin inserts the Google Analytics tracking code into every post page, tracks outbound links (including mailto:), and tracks downloads. All you have to do to get started is to enter your Google Analytics account ID.

Tags: add to any, comment remix, google xml sitemaps, plugins, subscribe to comments, ultimate google analytics, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | No Comments »

August 29th, 2008

Blogger’s Guide Carnival | August 29, 2008

This is the August 29, 2008, edition of the Blogger’s Guide Carnival! The posts below were written on other blogs and were submitted by their authors at BlogCarnival.com. Thanks, everyone, for contributing!

Michael. presents WordPress Free Blogging Platform Software Review posted at Review Hookup.

Rod presents How to exclude pages from WordPress’s page listings posted at Hippo Web Solutions, saying, “How to take control of your WordPress page listings without hacking.”

Raymond presents Battling Blogger Burn Out and Lack Of Blog Posting Frequency posted at Money Blue Book.

Sudhanshu presents Blogger to Wordpress posted at Gyaan Sutra.

MoneyNing presents Spend Money On Good Web Hosting posted at Busy Blogging Dot Com, saying, “Don’t be cheap about web hosting! You won’t be sorry in the long run!”

Raymond presents The Best Credit Card Rewards For Google Ads and Search Advertising posted at Money Blue Book.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of bloggers guide carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Tags: Blogger, exclude pages, sarahjoaustin.com, web hosting, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | No Comments »

August 14th, 2008

Blogger’s Guide Carnival | August 15, 2008 Edition

This is the August 15, 2008, edition of the Blogger’s Guide Carnival! The posts below were written on other blogs and were submitted by their authors at BlogCarnival.com. Thanks, everyone, for contributing!

Nesher presents 14 Ways to Promote your Blog Offline posted at Blogging for Good in the Modern World.

Hops presents How to track all your blog mentions posted at Hop To It!.

Christopher Johnson presents Making Money With Amazon.com posted at CoffeeBreakEarnings.com, saying, “Making Money With Amazon.com Affiliate Sales”

Christopher Johnson presents Blogging With Wordpress posted at CoffeeBreakEarnings.com.

Christopher Johnson presents Making Money Blogging posted at CoffeeBreakEarnings.com, saying, “You can make money blogging without ads and affiliates.”

Robert Phillips presents 3 Simple Ways to Increase Blog Traffic posted at How to Create a DVD without Spending a Dime.

seanjames presents Activating FeedFlare is optimizing your blog posted at Practical Jokes.

seanjames presents How to add Social Bookmarking Icons to your site posted at Practical Jokes.

Rod presents Stumble your way to a Rush of traffic posted at Hippo Web Solutions.

MoneyNing presents Be Patient with Increasing Traffic to Your Blog posted at Busy Blogging Dot Com, saying, “Be patient and keep writing to gain readership!”

Rob Edmond presents How to Be a Great Guest Blogger, and Be Invited Back posted at Blog To Great, saying, “Info on the importance of writing for other blogs. Help & tips on how to be a desirable “guest” blogger and how to get invited back.”

James Hills presents Blogging Lessons – Follow Your Passion, Not Your Wallet posted at mhn Integrated Online Marketing.

Kacper Wrzesniewski presents Taking break from blogging? posted at KacperWrzesniewski.com, saying, “Sometimes blogger needs to take a break from writing. How to handle such situation?”

Samir Bharadwaj presents Blog Ads by PerfomancingAds posted at SamirBharadwaj.com, saying, “Blog ads are the most lucrative way to monetise your blog. The new PerfomancingAds takes the effort out of selling advertising and managing inventory, so here’s a detailed guide to the whys, hows, pros, and cons of the service.”

Robert Phillips presents How to Use Blog Carnivals to Increase Traffic posted at How to Create a DVD without Spending a Dime.

That concludes this edition. For more information about how I edit the Blogger’s Guide Carnival, check out our Carnival page. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Blogger’s Guide Carnival using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.

Tags: affiliates, amazon.com, blog carnivals, guest blogging, guest posting, increasing traffic, making money, performancing ads, sarahjoaustin.com, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | 4 Comments »

July 11th, 2008

Blogger’s Guide Carnival | July 11, 2008 Edition

This is the July 11, 2008, edition of the Blogger’s Guide Carnival! The posts below were written on other blogs and were submitted by their authors at BlogCarnival.com.

Raymond presents Best Locations To Blog With Free WiFi Internet Access posted at Money Blue Book.

Mr. Javo presents How Long Should Be a Post? posted at Mr. Javo dot Com, saying, “Before to start writing, you should organize your ideas. I recommend you to set priorities, tags or keywords, which you could clear your mind and this way, you will be writing a good post. The post length is not too important, as long as you write good content and keep your thoughts focused in a point.”

Nandita presents Nasty Comments on Your Blog posted at Lawmatters.in.

Hendry Lee presents 6 Free Advertising Server Plugins for WordPress — Setup, Manage and Track Banner Ads posted at Blog Building University, saying, “Selling ad space is one low hanging fruit for bloggers. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help you setup, manage, and track ads on your blog.”

Traffic2mypage presents Using OBP to increase web traffic – Part I – StumbleUpon posted at Traffic2mypage.com, saying, “This is a unique method i use on how to increase web traffic to your site using stumbleupon to find blogs to comment on that are active”

nhc1987 presents Create a simple EntreCard ad for your blog | ThemeLib posted at ThemeLib, saying, “A nice tip on EntreCard”

Mr. Javo presents How Important It’s The Title For A Post? posted at Mr. Javo dot Com, saying, “The title is the first impression of the post, and because of that, you need to learn how to write a title correctly. The title is definitely one of the most important part of the post. Most of the time, people will only get to read the title and if the title is not catchy or attractive enough, then no matter how good the content is, no one will be reading it.”

Alex Sysoef presents 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have posted at WordPress Web 2.0 How-To Spot-er, saying, “But while standalone Facebook portal provides you with plenty options – its interactivity and usefulness factor greatly multiplied through the usage of the Apps provided by other developers. In fact as a blogger you have a superb way to promote your content on Facebook and get yourself additional audience… More Traffic! Could You Use Some? In this post I’ll discuss 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have.”

Mr. Javo presents Things You Should Consider When You Are Going To Write A Guest Post posted at Mr. Javo dot Com, saying, “Writing a guest post is not an easy task, you need to do your best and consider some factors that you usually skip on your own blog… This post attempts to give you an idea of the factors you need to consider to write successfully a post in other blog.”

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Photo Source

Tags: bloggers, blogs, carnival, entrecard, facebook, sarahjoaustin.com, stumbleupon, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | 1 Comment »

June 27th, 2008

For-the-Love-of-Links Friday | 27 June 2008

Today’s link-lovin’ is brought to you by ScribeFire, this rock awesome little Firefox add-on that let’s me blog without logging in to WordPress.

That said, let’s get down to business. I honestly didn’t think I’d have much for you to read this week, but I was surprised by how much was on my list. If you read anything this week, be sure to check out “We all scream for ice cream.”

It’s Okay to Just Shut Up: Understanding Introversion. Anyone surprised that I’m an introvert? It’s not that I don’t like people; it’s that super-social situations wear me out, and I need more alone time than an extrovert to recover from them. I love how this author instructs us introverts to not apologize for our introversion. Even though extroverts make up 75% of the population, the rest of us are not freaks of nature.
The 100 Thing Challenge. This guy has the grand idea of narrowing everything he owns down to 100 items and living with just those items for a year. I don’t know if I could do it; I mean, what constitutes an item? Is my house an item? Are my books one item each or a collective item? One thing’s for sure: deodorant would definitely make my list.
You are a runner… I sure am. My body and mind take turns craving runs when I’ve spent too much time on the couch or when I’m stressed out. Running totally recharges me.
Are You Skilled Enough for the TSA’s “Black Diamond” Security Line? I’m sure this is more complicated than it sounds, but I think it’s brilliant! No, I probably don’t have the skills for the Black Diamond Security Line, but I could take on the Blue Square as long as no skiing is required.
Has modern life killed the semicolon? Next to the em dash, the semicolon is a favorite punctuation mark of mine; I highly recommend its use when wanting to connect two complete thoughts without a coordinating conjunction.
We all scream for ice cream… Yeah, we do! I love my pal G’s commentary on life in suburbia, even without 2.1 kids and a dog.
Bananas Represent Everything That is Wrong with Our Food System. If you didn’t read my book review of Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle then you probably won’t understand why I like this item. So read my review and come back to this one.
Christianity ‘could die out within a century.’ Sounds like Britain needs some serious Christ-followers to “sacrifice” life in the States to minister to the folks across the lake.

If you liked what you read today, be sure to check out my Google Reader Shared Items all week long! Have a great weekend!

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Photo Source

Tags: 100 thing challenge, bananas, barbara kingsolver, britain, christianity, firefox, food system, ice cream, introversion, runner, running, scribefire, semicolon, suburbia, tsa black diamond security, WordPress
Posted in link-lovin | 2 Comments »

May 12th, 2008

Blogger vs. Wordpress: Who’s Got the Upper Hand?

In the blogosphere, Blogger and Wordpress are two very popular blogging tools, but they’re popular for different reasons. Blogger tends to be the beginner’s place to start because it simplifies the art of blogging and makes it easy for the novice to understand. On the other hand, Wordpress tends to be the intermediate and advanced bloggers’ tool of choice not necessarily because it’s more complicated than Blogger but because in general, it produces more professional-looking blogs. I’ve used both tools, and I like features in both.

After about six months of serious blogging and reading blogs on a variety of topics, I switched my personal blog from Blogger to Wordpress. When I made the announcement, several people asked me why I made the move, but I had a hard time nailing down the reason. I guess I was just ready to try something new—to take my blog to the next level—and I thought Wordpress was the place to start.

Even though I had researched Wordpress and how it functioned differently than Blogger, a few surprises slapped me around once I made the switch:

No custom URL. With Blogger, I was able to direct the original site (sarahjoaustin.blogspot.com) to a custom URL (www.sarahjoaustin.com), which eliminated the ‘blogspot’ in the middle. If I wanted to do the same on Wordpress, I would have to pay $10/year and keep my blog hosted at Wordpress or host my blog on my own. Instead of forking over the cash, I made due for a few months by forwarding www.sarahjoaustin.com to sarahjoaustin.wordpress.com, but I always hated having ‘wordpress’ in my URL, so I eventually broke down and bought my own hosting.
No JavaScript; therefore, no Google Analytics. Too many scripts on a web page can slow down or crash your browser, so Wordpress prevents this problem by banning embedded scripts (including JavaScript) on Wordpress.com-hosted blogs. On Blogger, I used Google Analytics to track my site statistics, but because I couldn’t embed my itty-bitty piece of JavaScript in my Wordpress site, I could no longer use Analytics. But Wordpress has its own stats tracker in every blog’s dashboard, so I could still see the most pertinent statistics for my blog. I just started hosting my blog on my own external server, so now I can embed JavaScript again, but even with Google Analytics available, I still use the Wordpress stats for day-to-day updates.
No HTML or CSS control. Both Blogger and Wordpress have some great themes and templates, but I have some HTML and CSS skills, and I like to customize templates to meet my needs. With Blogger, I could completely manipulate the code to make my blog function as I wanted (i.e. change layout, colors, type, images, etc.), but on Wordpress, once I committed to a template, I was stuck with the template designer’s choices. Some templates allowed me to change header images, but that was about it.

This sounds like a list of reasons why I hate Wordpress, but it really isn’t. When I made the initial switch, I was frustrated because I didn’t know I’d have to give up the control that I loved having with Blogger. I wished someone had lined them up side by side and told me how they were the same and how they were different, and that’s what the table below is designed to do. On the left is a list of features that are important to me as a blogger, and in the Wordpress and Blogger columns are the details for each tool. If the specs are different for hosting on Wordpress and Blogger than they are for hosting on an external FTP server, I’ve listed those, too.

	Wordpress	Blogger
Themes/templates	Yep, free.	Yep, free.
Custom URL (excludes cost of domain name)	Yep, $10/year if hosted at Wordpress.com. Yep, free if hosted on external FTP server.	Yep, free.
Custom CSS	Yep, $15/year if hosted at Wordpress.com. Yep, free if hosted on external FTP server.	Yep, free.
AJAX	Yep.	Yep, if hosted at Blogger.com. Nope, if hosted on external FTP server.
Sidebar widgets	Yep.	Yep, if hosted at Blogger.com. Nope, if hosted on external FTP server.
Javascript support	Nope, if hosted at Wordpress.com. Yep, if hosted on external FTP server.	Yep.
Statistics	Yep, automatic if hosted at Wordpress.com. Yep, must install a plug-in if hosting on FTP server.	Nope, but you can embed Javascript, so you can add Google Analytics.
Multiple users	Yep, up to 35. For unlimited users, it’s $30/year.	Yep, up to 100.

I don’t want to be a blogging snob and tell you that Wordpress is best because your decision should be based on your needs as a blogger. Yes, I use Wordpress for my own blogs, but I manage other blogs that use Blogger and get by just fine. Yes, Wordpress has more (and cooler) templates, but if you have HTML and CSS skills, a Blogger blog can look just as great. Bottom line, both are excellent tools; you just have to evaluate your blogging needs and experiment a little!

Tags: Blogger, blogging-tools, google-analytics, javascript, WordPress
Posted in bloggersguide.net | 11 Comments »

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