Archive for the ‘Blogging: How To’ Category
by jim on July 2nd, 2008
I just met a small town mayor here in South East Asia. He’s the mayor of a small agricultural city, rural as rural can be. I think I stood out of the crowd being naturally city-folk(country folks CAN tell). And it being a really small city, he heard from a friend that I was a computer person. He set up a meeting with me to pick my mind regarding “blogging”. I was a little confused with what he wanted to do (I thought he wanted to know what blogging meant) UNTIL he told me that he wanted municipal events, activities and other municipal news blogged. His primary audience? Former town residents who are now spread all over the globe. This mayor knew what blogging is and he had a specific project for it.
The mayor wanted former town residents to know what’s going on with their old town. He wanted to let them know what’s new… AND what they can do to help their roots develop in this new cyberworld.
I smiled… literally smiled wide! This is the kind of mind that aims at progress. Blogging about their small city is a great progressive step. He’s going to pass this project on to the youth council, who seem to be gungho about the entire thing.
I’ll probably start by dropping a few URLs about blogging and see where their interest brings them. I for one can probably demo what and how setting up a blog site is. Do you know any URLs that can help them?
Funny how blogging is taking its aim at even the rural communities of South East Asia. It’s the grassroots communities that, I think, can benefit from blogging. Tons of things may happen if they keep telling people about their small town. Opportunities, change, development… progress.
Keeping my fingers crossed that this will press on!
Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging: How To, Interesting
by J. Angelo Racoma on October 8th, 2006
I started my problogging career as a corporate problogger, meaning I blogged mostly in the context of the company I worked for. Incidentally, I was also part of the company’s team that developed a blogging application, so it was very apt for an insider to blog about the product. I was the blogging evangelist.
Back then, all the essential tools were company-provided, including the computers, free coffee, and yes, the window with the view. And I also got to see all sorts of stuff in my daily commute to and from work. This stimulus was very much helpful, especially in my coming up with ideas for what to write about.
When I started problogging fulltime–on my own and working for the blog networks–I mostly stayed at home. I imagined I would be able to get more creative, since I controlled my time and I was no longer constrained to work in a fixed environment. The office window with a view was cool, but being at one place almost everyday was very stifling to creativity. This was one reason I quit my day job.
I realized, however, that staying at home everyday proved to be as stifling to creativity as well. So at times I went out to cafés, parks and malls to write to experience the outdoors for a change. It worked quite well–again, the stimulus provided to be helpful in gearing my mind towards writing interesting stuff (stuff that gets people’s nod, judging from how some of my articles had been DUGG to front page). Still, I realized I can’t just go out all the time. There had to be a sense of regularity and familiarity. There had to be that sweet spot wherein I would feel most energized and excited. And considering that I worked best at nights up to the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t just wander around at will.
Probably the best thing I did recently was move my family out from our previous apartment to a relatively bigger place. The old place was getting cramped, and I could already feel the strain of not having a creative environment to work in. This time I have a room all to myself as my home-office, which I try to keep free from distractions and the un-creative stuff. Okay, the kids sometimes watch DVDs and play on the computers (yes, several of them here, all online, all energy-consuming), but I still get to have a space of my own. And having this space that I can control and derive inspiration from is essential in creativity.
On Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra shares her thoughts on why creative environments are essential.
The thing is, we all expect and understand why designers have–and need–creative work spaces, yet we somehow think programmers (or just about any other role that’s not considered one of the “creatives”) don’t. We act as if programmers don’t care about their environment. But you don’t need to know an Eames from an Eero to appreciate the impact your environment has on your energy, creativity, productivity, and happiness.
… I started working from home. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t so much the other people that were missing, it was the stimulating work environment. I tried coffee shops and considered shared office spaces where other self-employed or work-from-home people can have some of the benefits of an office, but I actually prefer to work alone. It’s not the people I miss… it’s being in an environment that makes me feel creative and energetic. I want a space that matches my enthusiasm.
It’s all about finding your flow. It’s about getting in the zone. Now this is subjective. Whether you prefer to get yourself a vintage trailer, sharpen a dozen pencils before writing (on paper, that is!), or walk half a mile up to on your small house on a hill everyday to write, it’s ultimately your creative environment and it’s up to you to decide what works.
Blogging is no different from writing a book, in terms of the creativity and attention needed. If you want to be a successful blogger–especially if you derive income from your writing–then your environment matters.
Categories: Blogging Sense, Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on October 5th, 2006
I have seen many articles listing how to become a better blogger, and the latest one on Tech Republic is a little too common sense, but if you are not doing most if not all of these, you better get your act together.
Define your purpose
Create visual appeal
Use the proper tools
Make it easy to navigate
Stay in one place
Engage your readers
Establish a blogging schedule
Keep it concise
Proofread before publishing
Go syndicate yourself
I need to work on a being better at a few of these myself. A good reminder to those that think the are in “the know” when it comes to blogging.
Categories: Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on July 6th, 2006
Shel Holtz has a great post about links and how deeplinking to articles and other types of files are still a bit of a legal question mark.
The article works on answering the question: “Do you need permission to link to somebody else’s content?”
My understanding is that, with some very narrow exceptions, any content that is freely accessible on the web is fair game for a link.
The question today, though, is whether the broad court findings on deep links apply to non-HTML content. Based on search engines’ ability to find Adobe Acrobat PDF files and the various search engines that scour images, audio, and video, it would be easy to assume that all publicly-accessible content is fair game for linking. As one court put it, if you don’t want people to link to it, don’t put it on the web
via Lorelle on WordPress
Categories: Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on July 6th, 2006
Forty Media has a post up called “Five Rules for Great Websites”, and while it was specifically written for all websites, I think it would apply well specifically to blogs and more so to those that want to blog for an income.
The rules are as follows:
Rule #1: Challenge Assumptions
Rule #2: Provide Rich Content
Rule #3: Make it “Sticky”
Rule #4: Bring in a Pro
Rule #5: Love Your Website
A very interesting article, read the full text at the Forty Media Blog.
Categories: Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on July 6th, 2006
Matthew Stibbe, from Bad Language, has a great post up which is a simple list of things to do to help you concentrate on writing. I, myself, have been having issues bunkering down and getting both work related and personal writing done, and so this is as much a resource and reminder for myself as it is for your benefit.
- Switch off email.
- Isolate myself.
- Greed and guilt.
- Stop with the blog already.
- Get up early.
- Little treats.
- Chunking.
- Go full screen.
- Shitty first draft.
- Change location.
Since writing on blogs is where I write, and I am not a morning person, there are two points in the list that I don’t agree with, but the overall list is sound and hopefully it will help me get the concentration I need to find to get my long list of work done.
For the details that go along with each point, check out Bad Language.
Categories: Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on July 4th, 2006
Lorelle has a great article on Tagging and Tags, what they mean and what they do for you the blogger. There is also a great list of resources in the article.
1. A Tag is a Keyword in a Link
A tag is a keyword. It is created by adding the attribute rel=”tag” in any link going any where.
<a href=”http://lorelle.wordpress.com/” title=”Lorelle on WordPress” rel=”tag”>Lorelle on WordPress</a>
This creates a “tag” for “Lorelle on WordPress”. The tag is the words which the link wraps around. Without it, it’s just a link. No more, no less.
With it, it is recognized by search engines and tag services crawlers which add that word or phrase to their “tag database”, acting like a keyword. When a visitor types in the tag word or phrase in a search engine or tag service, like Technorati, any post with that “tag” or those keywords, even if not tags, will turn up in the results.
Check it out at Lorelle on WordPress. I could not have written the article better myself. Very comprehensive and easy to follow.
Categories: Blogging: How To, WordPress Tips
by David Peralty on July 4th, 2006
I recently contacted Liz Strauss about the WordPress Challenge I had imposed, as her audience was much the same as who I was hoping would participate in the challenge. I will have the results on that challenge later today or tomorrow, but right now I want to talk about Successful Blog, which is written by Liz. She not only mentioned my challege, but contacted me for an interview about what I was doing.
I was amazed that someone I had been reading for months was at all interested in what I was doing, but she sent off an e-mail with a few questions and so I proceeded to answer them.
An example of our exchange includes:
Aren’t there already enough WordPress themes and plugins to go around?
Honestly, I still feel some very important areas have been ignored. How many grunge themes are there? Themes that are more girly in nature? What about good three and four column themes? I still feel that there are also so many ways WordPress themes could go that have not been explored.
Also as the community grows, I have been noticing that there are about a dozen themes that do really well, while all the rest are more or less ignored. I would like to see that upper level increase to a group of two dozen superb themes.
I also think the same of WordPress plugins. You might say “how many plugins do you need to integrate an image gallery into your site?” but honestly I have yet to come across one that does what I need it to do, how I want to do it. With plugins, the different workflow that people have has to be taken into consideration, which is why you can have a dozen plugins that do the same thing, but people will follow the one that works the best for them.
I think that there are still more plugins in the minds of creative people that if given the right incentive, and motivation, will be released and we will all go “Wow!”.
Check out the rest of the interview over at Successful Blog, and look around the archives of the site for some great golden nuggets of wisdom, as well as some links to some great sites.
Categories: Blogging: How To, Interview
by David Peralty on June 22nd, 2006
Darren Rowse tackles the subject of SEO a bit today, looking at the different ways you can set up your title, to best optimize your blog, and its posts, pages and whatnot.
He goes over some great tips, and as always practices what he preaches. Here is just one of the tips in this great article:
Factors to Consider When Deciding Title Tag Configuration
SEO is not the only factor to consider when working out how to set out your title tags. Here’s are a few things to consider:
- Brand
- SEO
- Usability
- Selling your Post
- Title Tag Length
Check it out at Problogger.net
Categories: Blogging: How To
by David Peralty on June 19th, 2006
One of the things I get asked most often by people looking to set up their first WordPress site, is how to do it. WordPress has one of the easiest set-up processes you can ask for, but it does take a fair bit of computer knowledge to get through it the first time. You have to interact with a database, edit a configuration file, use an FTP client to upload the software, and then run through its quick online install process, before modifying WordPress to suit your needs.
In this short guide, I am going to walk you through my install process, as I go through the starting steps, to which plugins I use to help my workflow and keep comment spam to a minimum.
I am going to assume a few things in this article, like that you have already downloaded WordPress from WordPress.org, and that you know a little bit on setting up a database and FTP’ing files. If you don’t know how to deal with adding a database to your host, you should check out their Frequently Asked Questions, as I know Dreamhost was a bit odd to me, due to the way they handle databases and their control panel. If you have problems FTP’ing files up onto your account, you will want to contact your web host, or check their Frequently Asked Questions, as they usually have some great tips, tricks and tutorials on how to upload files quickly and easily.
Setting up the Database
All of my web hosting accounts allow me to use cPanel, an easy to use interface that allows you to quickly get to the important control areas of your website. It allows me to easily add a database as well as a user for the database so that WordPress can run properly. The steps you need to take in cPanel is to click on mySQL Databases link, or icon, depending on your host, and then adding a new database, adding a new user, and making sure you add the user to the database, giving the user full permission to add and remove records and whatnot.
WordPress stores all its information, and your blog posts in the database, and so it has to be able to connect to the database with full permissions.
Editing the Config File
To tell WordPress which database to use, you have to edit a file that comes with WordPress. They give you what is a wp-config-sample.php. You have to rename this to wp-config.php and change a few lines. They have commented the code really nicely, so understanding what to change is relatively easy. You can use pretty much any text editor to change the file, but I use Crimson Editor.
define('DB_NAME', 'dbname'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'dbusername'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'dbpassword'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value
// You can have multiple installations in one database if you give each a unique prefix
$table_prefix = 'wp_'; // Only numbers, letters, and underscores please!
The things in bold are the ones you can change. For the first three items, you will input the information you used when creating your database. The last item, asks you what you want the tables in the database to be prefixed with. This allows you to install more than one WordPress blog in one database, as you can change the prefix to different things. I always change mine to better identify which blog the tables refer to, though you can keep it as its default.
Uploading WordPress
Next you have to get your blog onto your web host. You need to upload the files to where you want to install WordPress. Most people put it in one of two places, either in the root directory, so it is the first thing people see when they come to your site or in a sub-directory, a folder like “blog”.
For uploading my files, I either use Explorer or WS_FTP LE. I input my details and connect. I then drag and drop all the files and folders and upload them to my hosting account.
Installing WordPress
Once all the files are uploaded you only need to browse to where you put WordPress and go to /wp-admin/install.php. So if you installed it in your root directory, you would go to www.somedomain.com/wp-admin/install.php and it would bring you to WordPress’ install page.
You then click on First Step, and it will bring you to a page asking you what you want your blog title to be as well as your current e-mail address. Once you click submit, it will bring you to the last page in the install process where it shows you your temporary password. You will want to write this down so you can log into your WordPress blog. I also recommend changing it as soon as you are logged in, via the Users tab.
Anti-Spam Plugin Akismet
For WordPress 2.0.x and above, Akismet is one of the plugins that comes with the software by default. A plugin is an additional tool or feature that not every user needs, but can expand WordPress far beyond its original intensions. Akismet is a plugin that is one that I think should just be integrated into WordPress’ core, as it is to combat comment spam, and honestly, who doesn’t want to combat comment spam?
To activate it, you only need to go to the plugins page, click enable, and it will say that it can’t enable all the way without an API key. This key is easy to get though. If you sign up for an account at WordPress.com you can get an Akismet API key. Another route you can take is to purchase one from Akismet.com.
Changes I Make
I don’t like the visual rich editor, and so I uncheck that box once WordPress is installed. I also make sure to give a proper tagline to my blog under Options -> General, as none of the blogs I launch, are “just another WordPress blog”. I also check over all of the other options to make sure everything looks right, and then I mess with my Permalinks. I don’t recommend playing with the permalinks unless you have some idea of what you are doing, or atleast know someone that does. While WordPress makes it extremely easy to use, you can still run into problems that while easy to fix, could be very annoying until you find the resource to fix them.
Conclusion
There are many other plugins, themes and whatnot that I won’t talk about here, as that is getting a little advanced for this post, but most of them are as easy to use as Akismet. You just upload them to the correct place, enable them, and change a few small details here or there to make them work correctly on your blog. Once you have installed WordPress more than once, you will find your own workflow being created that allows you to install, add plugins, and customize WordPress for your needs in a timely manner.
For those of you out there that already have a workflow for installing WordPress, I’d love to hear about it, so if you have a blog, post about your install process and link to this post. It should add your post to the trackbacks here. I would be very interested to see how other’s do it, as I have heard some very interesting ways to install, update, and modify WordPress.
Categories: Blogging: How To, WordPress Tips
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