Blogussion » wordpress

Tips on Successful blogging for small business owners and writers

AliaHaley — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:13:52 +0000

Blogging or using a blog as a part of your business strategy is an emerging trend. Most businesses are advised by the marketing teams to include a blog as an important publicity and sales tool. For writers, too, blogs are an easy way to get their writing out to the public without having to go through the publishing and distribution channels. With technology becoming more users friendly and blogging platforms and tools becoming easier to use, blogging is rapidly gaining the edge as everyone wants to be a blogger. Here is a look at what you will need to start your own blog.

The first thing a blog needs is a purpose

A few things need to be done as part of the planning stage of a blog. Getting these basics will save you a lot of hard work after you set your blog up. Many blogs are successful because they focus on a particular purpose, a reason, or a niche. If you are blogging for a business, it will make sense to adopt a specific aspect of your business as your niche. For writers too, you will need to find a reason that you can offer your readers for visiting your blog. For business blogs, a common way of creating a niche is to provide comprehensive, trustworthy, and broad-based information about the particular industry segment that the business is focused on. For writers, you may want to focus on reviews of books, music, or cinema. Just having a blog for the sake of having a blog will not translate into success. The bottom line is that you must be able to define the purpose of your blog in terms of value that it will generate for the reader.

Choose a blogging platform

You will need a blogging application to blog with. This is what you will use to upload and publish the content on your blog. The more popular platforms out there include Blogger, WordPress and TypePad. There are a host of other platforms too that offer robust features and designing capabilities to the users. Browse through the features that each of them offers to get a feel for what you find most suitable. Keep in mind what you are trying to achieve with your blog in terms of user features, functionalities, widgets, etc., and choose a platform that will meet your needs.

Start uploading quality content out

Now that you have decided on your purpose, and your platform, the next thing to do is to start publishing high quality content on your blog. Always keep in mind that it is the quality of what you put out and not the quantity of it that will determine whether people will keep coming back to read your blog, and whether they will share or recommend your blog to their friends. When creating a blog post, keep in mind what the reader is going to get out of it. It could be new information about a business strategy or an innovation in the industry. It could be a music review that makes him want to listen to the artist or an article that makes him think afresh about some aspect of life.

Start promoting your blog

A blog out there by itself will attract very few readers no matter how earnestly you create good content. You have to get the word out. You can do this in a number of ways. You can use your online social networks to let them know about your blog. You can include the blog in your company stationery and in your email signatures. You can create attractive banners or pop-ups on your company website to let people know that there is a blog up. Many bloggers have found that community-bookmarking sites can generate large amounts of quality traffic. As you study the art and science of blogging further, you will want to familiarize yourself with the concepts of SEO, various ways of improving your page rank, URL optimization, use of keywords and other technical tweaks that can lead to higher traffic.

Network with other bloggers in your niche

As you start adding content to your blog and promoting it, you will want to know what the standards for blogging are in your particular niche. You can do this by linking up with other bloggers who are doing something similar to your blog. Study their blogs, and see how they are using the tricks of internet marketing to attract people to their blog. Start a dialog with them by commenting on their posts. Do not fall into the trap of doing this for the sake of a link back to your blog, but to exchange ideas and add to the value of the post. As your opinions are noticed, you will find people automatically coming to your blog to see what you have to say about things.

Blogging is an extremely useful tool for small businesses and writers to get word out to people about their products, thoughts, and opinions. It costs little more than the time that you spend creating classy content, but it can bring in huge rewards. Building up a dedicated readership of a blog takes time and persistence. Do not expect to find your sales zooming once you put a blog out. A blog is only a referral or a lead generating tool, and one that can only be built with time. Be patient and enjoy the process of learning about the latest techniques and tips and tricks of blogging. As you build up a significant body of work, and a sizable number of repeat visitors, your blog will slowly turn into an important part of your marketing strategy.

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About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger who is a fashion buff and very passionate about learning new things. Her latest interest these days is in learning about architecture. She recently shared an article on green design.

*picture from google images.

Taking Your Blog Mobile: A Basic Guide

Alex — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:00:25 +0000

Has your blog gone mobile yet? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ever since smartphones were introduced, mobile web browsing has exploded. More and more people are visiting your site on their phones, and you may not be prepared to satisfy them with a great experience.

Without any effort on your part, your visitors can try to load your site up on their mobile device and will get directed to your normal site. That seems fine, but it’s actually a bad thing.

Why? Well, from a designer’s perspective: you are trying to browse a site that was built to be viewed on large screen computers. You think a horizontal scrollbar on your laptop is annoying? Imagine one on a tiny iPhone screen.

That’s Kolakube on my iPhone, and definitely not optimized for mobile viewers.

The #1 Forgotten Aspect of Mobile Blogging

Something we pay attention so closely for our regular websites is something that is forgotten when it comes to mobile sites.

What’s one of the most important elements of good design? Navigation.

Just because your navigation works on your regular site doesn’t mean it will work on your mobile site. Have you seen the navigation bar on Blogussion? It’s a great system for someone with a mouse and a 15″ screen. But try using that on a smartphone – it’s a little harder.

Navigating a site on a mobile device is tougher, and is something most site owners haven’t thought about. People read off of a mobile phone more than most people think. I do at least 80% of my online reading on my iPhone and there’s nothing worse than going to one of my favorite site’s and seeing they haven’t optimized for mobile devices.

Mobile Browsing Options

It is very easy to set your site up for mobile viewing. There are plenty of services that generate a mobile site for you, and if you use WordPress – plugins. Here are some resources for getting a mobile site together:

Noupe’s Massive Mobile Resource List

Noupe has come up with a huge list of some great mobile resources such as plugins, services and tutorials on how to do it yourself.

Read More →
WP Mobile Detector

This is what we use on Blogussion, and it’s definitely the best mobile plugin out there. It comes with some great options and themes, as well as a premium version which gives you just so much more control.

Learn More →
Mobify

Mobify is probably the best service out there that will turn your site mobile. You can even personalize your layout pretty in-depth too…for free!

Learn More →
Cameron Moll’s Mobile Design Tips

I found this great article by Cameron Moll who shares a ton of great techniques for designing a mobile site, as well as some great perspective at the best practices. Definitely a must read.

Read More →

With such great services and resources out there, creating your mobile site can be really simple, or really complicated. Tools like WP Mobile Detector are more automated, whereas something like Mobify will put more customization into your own hands.

If you don’t understand what a mobile design should consist of, then you may want to turn to something that creates one for you entirely.

Like minimalist web design, just because there isn’t a lot on the page doesn’t mean a mobile site is easy to design.

Remember these 4 things, and your mobile site will turn out great:

Make it easy to read. Try to stick to a simple, light design with dark text. Not every phone has a sexy display like the iPhone, and you have to keep a high contrast between the text and the rest of the site.
Keep it simple. Don’t try to add flashy graphics everywhere, or go over-the-top with jQuery and all of that fun stuff. There is nothing wrong with a mobile site that is plain text.
Keep your main content in focus. If you write for a blog, make sure you implement a theme that will focus on content above everything else.
Brand it. Even if it’s just a logo, brand your mobile design. You can usually customize the colors, so get the colors that represent your non-mobile site.

Venturing into the App World

This is a concept that I have been reading up on a lot lately, and personally can’t wait to try and do. Have you ever thought of developing an app for your site? Even if it’s just a simple RSS reader, having your own app would be pretty awesome. I personally love the Cracked.com Reader for iPhone.

Have you ever thought about developing an app for your site?

What are your Thoughts on Mobile Browsing?
They say mobile computing is the future. If mobile innovations like the smartphone and tablet computing keep springing up like they have been, then soon the desktop will be near obsolete. How have you prepared for the mobile takeover?

Photo by Ricky Romero

How to Justify Spending Money on Your Blog (In a Good Way)

Alex — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:00:05 +0000

Many bloggers are so worried about making the most money possible from their blog, that they don’t really stop to think about spending money. Yes, when it comes to making money, spending it seems like the last thing you’d want to do. But, the saying “you gotta spend some to make some” is true, and it’s also something I know from experience.

Now, the message that I want to get across to you is that it’s okay to spend money on your blog. I’m not telling you go to spend money on something that you can’t afford, or won’t help you. It all comes down to deciding what you really need, and whether or not you can justify spending money for it.

I have been a bit of a spender lately, but anything I have purchased in the last week or so are really going to help me make what I do just so much better. And my 3 main purchases were all well over a few hundred dollars each. But I had no problem spending the money, so long as that was for a good reason.

I’m not rich by any means, and I don’t want to sound like a snob or anything. But what I am trying to say is that if you see something that you might need (not want, there is a difference), and it’s within a price range you can afford, then go for it. But let me expand on that broad statement.

The Difference Between Spending & Investing

You see, as a blogger trying to earn some income from your blog, anything you buy will hopefully help you do that. The purchases I have made this month were all made to help me do that, which is why I had no problem spending.

They were investments; something I could use to help me make money off of.

Now, if I decided to just spend my money on things that really wouldn’t benefit me, then I’m just sort of blowing it off on nothing useful. Then, it becomes a little harder to actually want to spend it because I know I won’t be making that money back.

But that’s the beauty of making those investments, you should one day make your money back and even more because of what you bought. Of course, if you don’t put the work into making sure you invested properly, than you may have just lost money.

But that wouldn’t happen, because the instinct of any passionate blogger is to work hard. And the second instinct should be to want to make these investments.

How to Justify Spending that Money

If you’re a blogger who doesn’t have a very large blog, or much money to your name then it will be a little harder to justify spending potentially hundreds of dollars on something.

But then again, if you don’t have a large blog then you should maybe hold off on spending too much until you have a community to work with.

It took me a year of building up Blogussion and taking on some freelancing jobs before I decided to make my first thousand dollar investment into something.

But once I did it, it paid off well and because I was okay with spending some money (keep in mind, I didn’t have much more left after that), I now have hardly any trouble spending on the things I KNOW I need and that I KNOW will pay for themselves later. It’s all about experience and having the right mindset.

Developing the Right Mindset

Again, it may still be difficult for you to spend your hard earned money on something for your blog. But, you either act big or don’t act at all, right?

I just want to share with you some of the thoughts that were flowing through my head back from before I made my first large investment online. I remember that for an entire day I sat and just thought about what I should do.

I want you to think about the same things I did before you go out spending:

Will it pay off?

This is the most important question to ask yourself. If you cannot answer this with a big fat “yes,” then I would stop myself from buying right there. You need to purchase with complete confidence.
Can I use it?

It depends on what you buy really, but you should know if you know how to use it. For example, I bought a vBulletin license the other day and because I have experience with it, I knew I could use it. Don’t go out buying things you may not know how to use, and may not be willing to learn (ex: if you can’t code in PHP/HTML/CSS, don’t buy Thesis).
Do I absolutely need it?

Spending for luxury is harder, unless you’re spending to simplify your business. For example, do you really need an Apple iPad? I mean, your computer pretty much does everything for you.
Are there free alternatives?

You should never settle for subpar, settle for only the best. However, there are some things out there you can get for free (the LEGAL way!) that are better than what you can pay for. Don’t believe me? Think about it, WordPress is FREE, yet beats any PAID content management systems. And you can’t argue that.
What happens if it doesn’t work out?

The only reason an investment you make doesn’t work is because you don’t make it work. Put in the hard work, and don’t think about what could go wrong; just what will go right.

How else could you justify making an investment that could set you back a few hundred dollars? Maybe a thousand? Thousands?

Don’t Get the Wrong Message
I am not saying that because you see a nice product for sale online that you should buy it. I’m saying if you know you can make good use of it and it can somehow help you make back whatever you spent on it and more, then maybe it wouldn’t be bad to buy it. But, buy in moderation.

Design Versus Week Winners, New Blogussion Design & More

Alex — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:16:28 +0000

Hello faithful Blogussion readers and contest participants, welcome to the new Blogussion! A lot of the same look is still here, but with some great tweaks. I’m very excited for this design, and I have great confidence that you will enjoy it as much as I do.

As a conclusion to Design Versus Week, I said that there was going to be this new, refreshed look. While this is exciting, I think there is something that you are even more excited about if you participated in the Design Versus Week contest.

I won’t go into the details of what exactly went down during this week (except that there was an awesome contest with awesome prizes), but I will say that Design Versus Week was a success and created plenty of buzz on Twitter. I will also tell you, that there are three extremely lucky winners of some extremely awesome prizes.

Before I reveal the winners of the prizes, I just want to say that the following three people below have been picked at random. I did not pick any of them myself, I used a service called TweetAways to pick them. I also checked to see if each winner played fairly, and did not break any of the rules of this contest.

I also wanted to say this:

I don’t care if this is the first time visiting this blog, or your 100th. Thank you so much for supporting Blogussion during Design Versus Week, and supporting Blogussion by just being here now. Seriously, I have achieved more success with this blog than I thought I ever could have with any blog. And it’s thanks to your continuous support of everything I, and past Blogussioneers have done. I hope this contest shows how much I appreciate you guys.

And without further ado, the winners of the Design Versus Week competition are…

A huge congrats to all three of you! I will be sending you all a direct message on Twitter with information on how to claim your prizes shortly. And, Chris, I look forward to working with you on your blog design!

I Want Your Feedback
You competed in the contest and now I want to hear what you thought of it. How do you think the contest was run? Did you enjoy the idea of it? What kind of contests would you like to see from Blogussion later in the year? Let me know, I think this was a good experience for the whole blog!

And on that note, I would like to bid Design Versus Week a goodbye. It was fun, thanks again for making it great guys!

The New Design

Now, I want to talk to you about the new design. I really love the new look here, and I hope you guys do too as well. I experimented with some new things in the making of this design, and I really hope the results of that experimentation come out great.

Before I go over the new features of this theme, I thought I’d let you guys see the design progression of Blogussion since our opening in January 2008. This is the fourth design update.

I think this theme will stay around for a while. Now, some of the new features I want to highlight are as follows:

New homepage layout
On the homepage, rather than having a featured post and teasers, the layout is now all teasers. There will be 6 posts featured on the front page, as well as the addition of my favorite posts.
New Favorite Posts Setup
Before, I had a list of my favorite posts on the sidebar here. I decided that it would be best to put even more emphasis on this content and throw it in the actual content area. I hope you have fun with the slider, it’s jQuery!
Custom fonts for headlines
I have chosen to use a custom font for the headlines here. Some of you will see it, and some of you on older browsers will not. I thought this would add something cool to the design, and make headlines look more interesting.
The Dropdown Menu
I have a new and much more valuable navigation in place. In the red bar (the main navigation), 2 new tabs have been added: Community and Content Jump.

Community

The community tab is where all of the user-to-user interaction takes place. In it, I have a link to our (also new) Active Topics page. On this page, a list is generated where all of the discussion around Blogussion is going on. This is a great way to participate in discussions in current, or old articles.

Content Jump

This is a cool one I thought. Basically, this menu has a list of categories and popular tags on Blogussion. This is pretty useful information if you are looking to jump over to specific articles on the blog.
Beautiful post footer
The information after the posts on this blog are now in a much more organized fashion. It’s smaller, yet full of great information. I have to say, this is probably my favorite section of the new design. I am sure you would agree.
Restyled comments
The comments section has been restyled, and split into pages when more than 50 comments are on the post. Also, trackbacks have been moved to the end of the page to make posting a comment easier.
General UI Improvements
Throughout the new design, tweaks have been made to make the experiences and usability easier. For instance, the sidebar is now gray, the footer is simplified, the search bar stands out more, and so on. You’ll notice them as you check out the design!

I Want Your Feedback

I would appreciate hearing your thoughts of the new design here. What do you think could be improved about it? What do you love about it? Hearing these things from you helps me make the design better. So please, don’t be shy! Leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about the fourth Blogussion look.

From Planning to Earning, Take II

I’ll be honest with you, the original blogging course we had here, From Planning to Earning was a failed attempt at me making money through affiliate links. I’ll admit it, and I’m not ashamed to either. But I decided that, based on the reaction of the first version – that it has potential to be a pretty successful course.

So I have decided to totally revamp it, and make it so much more useful. I have a lot of ideas for what I want this guide to be, and I think that you guys will like the direction it goes in.

What is From Planning to Earning?

Just a little background info, From Planning to Earning is a guide created by Blogussion to help you build a blog that can one day earn you money online. This course will literally cover every aspect of starting your blog from scratch, to earning money from it.

To give you a rough idea of how this course will be set out, it will basically be broken down into two sections. A web course, and an email course.

The web course will all be on the blog, and will basically cover the information you need to know to start your blog, market, design, maintain, etc.. Then, section 2 will be the newsletter. This will cover more of the monetization aspects of blogging, and goes pretty deep into what making money from a blog really is.

You can signup to the newsletter in the sidebar, or in the form above. Since From Planning to Earning is not yet ready for your eyes, anyone who signs up to the newsletter will receive emails once a week with some great blogging tips. The same content you would expect from the blog, except it’s for you, the subscriber only.

There are still many things I’d like to do for this blog, and I am always hard at work on writing new content and creating new cool things for you guys to enjoy. I hope you like the new changes you see here, there are many new things to come still!

If you have any questions, concerns or feedback – let me know here! I would love to hear all of your critiques about the direction Blogussion is heading in.

How to Skyrocket Your Blogging Efficiency

TomWalker — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Today, Tom Walker goes over a list of 10 different things you can try and improve to maximize your blogging productivity.

At times, blogging can be a time consuming, not to mention aggravating task. There are a multitude of duties and roles pulling at your attention on a daily basis. These tasks are sometimes so distracting that it is easy to lose sight of your goals and be caught up in the menial tasks of the day-to-day operation of your blog.

To keep your frustration to a minimum and make the time you spend upon your blog or blogs more effective, here are a few tips to take into consideration.

1. Choose Your Work Atmosphere Carefully

Whether you enjoy listening to ambient music, having the news on in the background or working in complete silence, we all have certain conditions that are more conducive to improving our working productivity. Choose your work area carefully and make sure that the atmosphere in which you ply your trade is helpful in maintaining your work ethic rather than detracting from it.

2. Breaks are Important

Taking a break now and then is important to staying fresh, both mentally and physically, but you’ve got to manage yourself and resist the temptation to overindulge. Take a walk, get out and take in some fresh air, do some stretching or jumping jacks, or whatever it takes to get yourself energized. Rewarding your hard work with breaks can be a great way to stay motivated, but don’t make them so long that you lose the intensity that keeps you productive and efficient.

3. Don’t Get Stuck in a Rut

Routine is often important to maintaining your work ethic, but taking your routine to the extreme can leave you feeling bored or as if you’re stuck in a rut. Doing the same thing day in and day out can get monotonous, and monotony can breed contempt for your work. While you may want to keep yourself on track when it comes to your work related duties, throwing in a bit of variety now (like working from a coffee shop) and again can keep boredom at bay.

4. Know Your Limits

There is little sense in pushing yourself to work when you know you won’t be productive. Sitting at your desk and staring at a computer screen when you don’t feel like working can be extremely frustrating and counterproductive. Understanding when and where you work best is key to keeping productivity high and being a more efficient blogger.

5. Keep Notes

There are lots of duties to keep track of as a blogger, especially if you are running more than one blog. Consider using an online project management app such as Basecamp or jotting down a todo list of tasks that need to be taken care of as well as the dates or times by which they must be accomplished. Adding a simple order of priority will mean you can get through the list of todos even more efficiently.

6. Stay Organized

Keeping notes is a great way to stay organized, but there is more to effective and efficient organization than just jotting down a few reminders. Keeping your work areas, computer, and website clutter free are easy ways to increase efficiency and productivity. You don’t have to be zen-like in your decluttering, but you do have to be ruthless. That pile of unpaid bills on your desk is a distraction. All the balsas connecting all your peripherals are unsightly. The empty but unclean coffee mugs take up space.

The point is this: remove anything that’s going to detract from your focus on work.

7. Carry a Recorder

Sometimes when you’re on the move, you’ll be hit with a great idea or remember an important task that needs to be dealt with urgently. Consider carrying a voice recorder to take notes with or leave yourself a reminder. A recorder is a convenient tool (often built into modern smartphones) that is lightweight and easy to take with you when you’re out and it can be quicker, easier, and more efficient than using a pen and notepad.

8. Have a Backup Plan

Have you ever considered how you would work if your power went out? What would you do if your computer died? What happens if the dog gnaws through your laptop battery charger? How would you keep your blog running smoothly?

If you aren’t sure of these things, you might want to take some time to develop a plan to getting access to a computer and your files in the event of an accident. If that means using a friend’s computer, stocking up on a couple extra laptop batteries, buying a UPS or getting a USB mobile broadband dongle, you should at least have a strategy to fall back to in the event of things going wrong.

9. Allocate Your Time Wisely

Sure, your emails might be important, but breaking off to check them every ten minutes might detract from the efficiency of your work. Between emails, phone calls and text messages, your workflow is constantly being interrupted. While you shouldn’t disconnect entirely from society, it will help boost your productivity if you allocate a set time to do emails and make those phone calls.

10. Set and Track Goals

Knowing whether you are being efficient with your writing might be difficult if you have nothing against which you can gauge your progress. To determine if you are being productive and efficient, consider setting and tracking goals that can help you decide whether your work is paying off. This can be as simple as aiming to write a certain number of words per day or publishing a number of posts. Just make sure you have a target, don’t get into something with no blogging strategy!

What gets you going?

What little tips and tricks can you share that help you get into a more productive and efficient mindset? I think a lot of the things mentioned above are things we do already, but I know that not everyone follows them to the best of their abilities. How do you get into the best possible work flow?

Blog Content Optimization Made Easier…Much Easier

Alex — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:33 +0000

When it comes to writing content, you have a lot of things you need to take into consideration before publishing that final draft onto your blog. The one thing you need to consider before publishing anything is whether or not your article is ready to be seen by many people.

There are a lot of ways an article can bring in traffic. It can be from social media websites, a mention on another blog, link directories, newsletters, etc. However, there is one method of driving traffic to a blog that is pretty difficult to wrap your head around.

Search engine traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tricky subject to say the least, but it’s a method that can bring thousands of visitors to your blog easily. Do you know what the only thing you need to do to achieve SEO greatness is? Keep writing blog content.

When it comes down to it, all that truly matters for good SEO is good content. It’s not about writing content that humans will enjoy for SEO, it’s about writing content that search engines will enjoy (but don’t get me wrong, always put the humans first).

Because of the confusion that this topic causes, there are many bloggers out there who simply do not understand how SEO works. With that lack of understanding, many ignore it, and many approach it the wrong way. Lucky for us (yes, I consider myself a pretty dumb SEO’er), there are people who understand how search engines work and are nice enough to help us dumb-dumbs rank better within the search engines.

For you today, I have a list with three of the absolute best tools there are out there for making SEO seem almost easy and effortless. I use all three of them here on Blogussion, and so far I have been pretty pleased with the results of each.

1. The Thesis Theme for WordPress

You guys are probably tired of hearing about it, but Thesis has had such a huge impact on the SEO of my blog that I can’t help but mention it anytime I bring up search engines!

I won’t go over the millions of things Thesis does to help your SEO, but I will tell you the one feature that is particularly useful to your content.

One of the coolest things that Thesis has to offer are the extra options it adds into the post screen section of your blog. You can add a custom title tag, meta descriptions and post tags to match the content of your article. Those three things have an impact on how well your content can rank in the search engines, and Thesis makes dealing with those important things easy.

Buy the Thesis theme →

A simpler alternative

If you don’t own Thesis (what are you, crazy?), you’re still in luck. There are plugins out there that have the same features Thesis does to your post screen to help you better your SEO for articles. There is a plugin for WordPress called All in One SEO which is a must have plugin for any WordPress user not on Thesis (as Thesis eliminates the need for All in One SEO).

2. Scribe SEO

I have just recently started using Scribe SEO to optimize my articles, but I have to tell you – it is one of the most useful services I have signed up for in a long time.

Scribe basically acts as your very own SEO instructor. It analyzes your content, and grades you on the optimization of your article. It then works with you, generating a list of things you can do to improve your article for the search engines until you have a “perfect SEO score.”

What a post with a perfect grade will appear as after review by Scribe

Scribe checks the obvious things like your post title, meta descriptions and post tags. But the cool thing is it even looks over the minor details of your post that can affect your SEO.

Did you know, for instance, that a good SEO practice is to add at least 1-2 hyperlinks towards the beginning of your article? I didn’t, but Scribe has taught me little tricks like that, and so much more.

The only thing is, Scribe is a paid service. There are monthly subscriptions, but it is well worth the money to have a tool that will help you with the SEO of your articles as much as Scribe does. I will write a more detailed review of Scribe later, because I just flat-out love this service.

Like any good service, there is a free trial for Scribe available if you would rather try it out before you buy it.

Useful Scribe Links:

3. Insights Interlinking Plugin

Insights is a totally free plugin that helps you do one thing: interlink. Interlinking blog posts is a technique that helps older articles on your blog with a few main things:

Drive traffic back to your older articles.
Helps search engines get to your older content and increase PageRank, index them (if for some odd reason they were never indexed), etc.
If you choose a specific set of keywords to link back to that article, those links will help you rank for those chosen keywords in search engines.

Interlinking without any tools to guide you can be tricky if you have a lot of posts on your blog. We can’t remember every single article we write on our blog to interlink, so that’s where Insights comes in.

The plugin adds a new menu to your post screen that has a search bar in it. With this search bar, you can type in keywords of posts you want to find so you can interlink to in your current article. Not only that, you can search Google and many other sources right from your admin panel.

This plugin makes interlinking a breeze, and I recommend it to every single one of you reading this article.

That’s what I use

Those are the three amazing tools I use here to prepare my articles for a run in the search engines. Even though two of them are paid for, they will pay off for you immensely with proper use. If a 16-year-old kid can afford them, I’m sure you can too.

Are there any SEO tools you use in particular? There are more that I have found, but I chose to limit this article to just these three major ones. But I would love to hear what you guys use to optimize your content.

How to Setup a WordPress Backup System

David Turnbull — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:52:52 +0000

Most bloggers stress the importance of backups but have lackluster systems in place themselves. Luckily, because of WordPress’ brilliant community there are plugins available to help even the laziest of bloggers. But I must point out that there are far more advanced backup systems that you may want to explore as your blog grows.

In the early days restoring from a day old backup is not that big of a deal, but if you’re posting multiple times per day or get a large amount of comments then a tool such as rsync for fast and incremental backups may be worth looking into. In most cases that setup isn’t particularly feasible however, which is why the system I’ll describe is the best choice for most WordPress users.

Setup Your WordPress Backup System

Amazon S3 Backups

Amazon S3 is an affordable and scalable data hosting solution provided by Amazon that acts as a great destination for your WordPress backups. WP S3 Backups is the plugin you’ll need, but it takes a few steps before the backup system will get going.

Start by creating an Amazon Web Services account.
Once you’ve done that you’ll need to sign up for Amazon S3.
When that’s done login to your account and go to the Access Identifiers page.
On this page there are two keys, Your Access Key ID and Your Secret Access Key. Make sure you keep your secret key a secret, otherwise other people could rack up a hefty bill you’ll be liable for.
Within your WordPress administration area navigate to S3 Backup, located under the Settings tab.
Copy and paste access keys into the two text fields on this page.
In the text box labelled Or create a bucket: type out any name you want to identify as your backups folder on your Amazon S3 account.
Select the Backup schedule you’d like and then the Parts of your blog to back up (I backup everything except plugins).
Hit the Save Changes button and you’re done.

If you get an error in relation to not being able to connect to your Amazon S3 account, wait a few minutes. I found it took a while for the plugin to recognize the account had been created.

Avoid racking up a huge Amazon S3 bill by using an application such as Transmit which allows you to login to your Amazon S3 account and manage files. Every 2-3 months log into your account and prune older backups to keep costs low.

Email Backups

WP-DB-Backup is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically and manually backup your WordPress database by sending it to your email account. Most people would just setup the plugin itself, but we’re going a tad more technical to get an overall smoother backup system in the long run.

If you don’t have a Gmail account, set one up now. If you already have one then that’s fine too.
Create an email forwarder such as backup@yoursitename.com. This can be done via cPanel, Plesk and most other popular control panels. Direct emails from this email to your Gmail account.
In the WP-DB-Backup configuration area within WordPress make it so backups are sent to the email forwarder. In terms of backup frequency I feel once per day is fine.
Head over to gmail.com and go to the Settings page and click on the Filters tab.
Click on the Create a new filter link.
In the text box labeled To: type out the email address you setup previously (backup@yoursitename.com) and then click on the Next Step » button.
On this page select the check boxes labeled Skip the Inbox (Archive It), Mark as read and Never send it to spam.
On this same page, select the check box Apply the label: and then via the dropdown menu select the New label… option, and name it something like “backups”.
Finally, press the Create Filter button.

Now, with just a few minutes work you have a completely automated WordPress database backup system and all the backups will be sent out of sight so they aren’t clogging up your inbox. And since you’re using Gmail it’s unlikely you’ll run out of storage any time soon.

You can use the WordPress Backup plugin to backup your /wp-content folder. Setup is once again straight forward, and you can direct the backups to the same email forwarder created above.

Host Backups

If your web host doesn’t perform their own daily backups then it’s probably time to switch. These systems certainly shouldn’t be relied upon as your sole backup system but in most cases your web host will be able to restore backups faster than you can and it’s just a good idea to have as many layers of protection as possible.

Now what…?

If you’ve done everything up to this point then good job, your data is more secure than the vast majority of bloggers out there. But if you’re like me there’s a chance you’ve caught “the bug” and want to find out everything you can about preventing your blog from imploding whilst you sleep.

If you have anything in particular you want me to cover then feel free to leave that in the comments, but over the coming weeks and months I aim to tackle the unsexy side of blogging: backups, security, and all the other behind the scenes stuff that doesn’t get too much attention.

5 WordPress.tv Videos Worth A Watch!

Janith — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:20:05 +0000

Wordpress TV was launched earlier this year, which was soon followed by Alex’s post on the new project. Personally, I thought it was a great idea because when I saw the videos for the first time; they were extremely high quality both visually and content-wise.

So, since their launch – what does WordPress TV have to offer? Countless number of useful tutorial videos. Everything from simple installation of themes to complex editing tutorials; it has the lot. However, I want to share with you – just five of these videos that I’ve found quite useful.

Getting Started With Google Analytics

Installation Google Analytics on a WordPress blog is relatively easy, but there are so many ways – that it can become a bit messy. This video will follow you through the step-by-step process of installing the coding successfully.

Introducing the P2 Theme: Blogging in Realtime

Want to post a quick message, while not having to run through the post editor? The P2 Theme introduces a “Twitter-like” blogging platform to WordPress. It’s a nice little idea to further enhance your WordPress blog.

The Twitter Friendly Links Plugin

No longer do we need to confine ourselves to ugly TinyURLs that are are from an external domain and a random string of characters after the slash. This plugin will allow you to create your own shortened URL under your own domain.

Speed up WordPress with Gears for Firefox

I’ve never used Gears (or Turbo, I think it’s called now) before for WordPress because quite frankly; I had no idea what it was. They promise a “faster” blogging experience, so it’s definitely worth a check.

Intense Debate Plugins : Taking Your Comments Even Further

Replying to comments, rating them and tracking them has never been the same since IntenseDebate came into the blogging field. The developer’s team “recently” joined the Automaticc (people behind WordPress) and they take the commenting system to a whole new level with every update.

Looking Back into the Past – 20 of my Favorite Articles on Blogussion

Alex — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:20:31 +0000

Let’s go back in time a little bit here. 152 posts ago, 2,528 comments back, to December 11th, 2008. All that time ago Blogussion was nothing that it is today. Today, it is a blog full of great blog content, some great features, and best of all – an amazing community of commentators, guest posters, and loyal readers.

I want to go over with you guys some of the best stuff here at Blogussion that has been posted here all that time ago. A lot of our best articles are deeply buried in the 11 pages of blog posts we have here. Some of them aren’t getting the attention they deserve I feel, so I want to bring 20 of those great posts up front to you today.

1. Mapping out a new blog: Choosing a great theme and some killer plugins

Hundreds of blogs are made everyday. There are the bloggers who take time to prepare a blog by doing things like planning out a marketing strategy, writing posts for the future, and finding all plugins. Then there are bloggers who do not take those important steps. A successful blog will take more than 5 minutes of planning. Whether it be 5 hours, 5 weeks, or 5 months. 5 minutes just won’t cut it. [...]

2. Why Google’s new favicon gets more attention than your blog

As I’m sure you have noticed, Google has gotten a new favicon. It has gotten a lot of attention on the web, and even TechCrunch wrote a post about it. How is it that a stupid little thing such as a new favicon can spark so much discussion throughout the web? And why isn’t it that your blog is getting talked about on big blogs like TechCrunch? [...]

3. Envy whoever you want, it won’t make you them

I see it almost every day: people who want to be a better, more successful blogger. I know I want to be a better blogger too. But I am unlike many bloggers out there; I understand the costs and time it takes to become a better blogger. Unfortunately, people are all talk and no work and will get nothing accomplished. I hear blogging being described as simply “upload your platform, add a theme, start writing content, and you’re all set!” which is 100% wrong. [...]

4. How to host the perfect interview?

Where ever your field of expertise may lay, once you establish a respectable profile – all eyes will be on you. This ‘statement’ cannot be any more truthful than in the world of blogging as we see big time bloggers like Darren Rowse and ShoeMoney, along with several others dominating the blogging niche. Everyone visits their sites just as much as everyone reads their content. You probably thinking if there was only a way to stream some of their readers on your blog? [...]

5. 10 ways to find post inspiration without even leaving your blog

Finding inspiration for blog posts can be a tedious task. Whether you follow the ultimate writer’s block tip or follow our other , you can still find it hard to come up with inspiration for any blog posts. Sure, you can go outside, or work out in an attempt to clear your mind. But honestly, how many people can say they actually do that? It gets suggested over and over again but you know you probably won’t [...]

6. How would you like 59 Awesome Ajax Scripts?

The unspoken beauty of running a website is the power it gives you. The power to provoke a thought or initiate change or maybe just give you a peace of mind. Blogging has made this ever-so possible with unbelievable ease. You can make your website heart-felt or winter-cold all depending on your choice of visual themes, images and user interactivity. [...]

7. Blog Design: Making the most out of your footer space

The footer (the very end of your blog) is a very important place of information on your blog. Your footer can hold a variety of information, such as copyrights, links, ads, and a lot of other stuff. The footer is also important SEO wise for a lot of reasons. Reasons I will cover in this post. The point of this article is to help you analyze your footer and make the best out of it. [...]

8. Why Are ‘Private Ad Sales’ Better Than ‘Google Adsense?’

With the ever-increasing concerns on the global economic crisis, everyone’s feeling their fair-share of pain. On a personal level; I don’t even get pocket money anymore. That’s both from my parents and Mr. Google. Ever since the global economic slump, there has been a non-stop stream of complaints that are tainted with earnings plummeting and advertisers zipping up their pockets. [...]

9. Conformity and Blogging In It’s Simplest Form

One thing I have been thinking a lot about lately are blogging trends. You know, what’s “hot” and what’s “not”. It’s always puzzled me to see that so many bloggers take other people’s advice so seriously that they do exactly as they’re told to do. So many blogs today defeat the concept of what a blog really is. In my opinion, just because you install the needed software for a blog [...]

10. Preparing Yourself For Blogging: Offline & Online Strategies Part II

So people say that staying in front of your computer for too long is bad for your concentration. While I believe that to be true, there are some things on your computer you can do that aren’t so bad at all for your thinking. Always keep in mind, you should limit yourself to how you prepare yourself online, because regardless of what you do I still find that [...]

11. 5 Experimental Writing Habits you may want to try

Every blogger has a different writing style. That’s what makes every blog unique from the other – a different author with a different perspective and style of writing. However, there is one thing that many bloggers share and do the same. All bloggers have their own writing habits, and some may have the same habit as another. Just keep in mind, habits, and styles are different. [...]

12. How I Realized Banner Ads are Harmful to my Community

The first thing I did when I logged into Blogussion after returning from my vacation was take down the 125×125 banner ads on our sidebar. All paid for ads had expired, and all that was left was a few affiliate banners and an “Advertise Here” banner. So, with that being said I would like to present you with a list that will actually have an affect on you when it comes to writing new blog posts. [...]

13. Tracking Your SEO Performance

When we talk about Search Engine Optimization today, pretty much everybody has a gross idea of what it is all about. When you ask those people how do they evaluate and track the performance of their work, the logical answer is through looking at their Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP). Actually, beyond looking at your SERP progress, there are 8 vital points for you to study in detail for the well being of your site and real objective optimization of your pages. [...]

14. 5 Funny Things Bloggers Do To Make Their Blog Look More “Official”

I just want to point out 5 things I notice other bloggers do on their blog (I even do one or two of them). It’s basically all of those things we do without even realizing it to make ourselves look more trustworthy to our readers. I find them funny, so here it goes. 1. Referring to themselves as “we” instead of “I” or “me” This may not be the case for some bloggers who have multi-authored blogs, but I read a lot [...]

15. 404 Error – “Page Not Found” doesn’t mean “Forget I Exist”

Believe it or not 404 error pages are a very important part of your website. Just because it’s (hopefully) the least viewed page on your blog doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be paid attention to. The reason why it is so important is because it serves as a gateway for lost and misguided users on your blog. You should always work your hardest to never let a user [...]

16. The “Holy Trinity” of SEO

It’s so simple, just three simple methods – it’s a wonder everyone doesn’t do it! Search Engine Optimization is one of the most effective methods of gaining higher SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) – yet so many developers neglect the basics and only a handful utilize it. The techniques used by web-masters and bloggers alike today range from simple “BOLD” texts to black-hat marketing. Today, maintaining an online community and writing content for your readers is easier than ever. [...]

17. Interviewing Alex + Janith: Our answers to the list of 50 questions to ask yourself as a blogger

Just over a week ago, Alex published a post with a series of questions entitled “50 Self-Reflecting Questions To Ask Yourself As A Blogger“. They were unbelievably thought out questions and really makes you think about your status and habits as a blogger. [...]

18. Do You Utilize Tags On Your Posts?

One of the most under-rated features of Content Management Systems (CMS) is the user-friendliness that comes standard. Many systems with the likes of WordPress and Google’s Blogger make it as simple as possible for a surfer to launch a blog and start posting pretty much anything. Like anything else in life, when we get something easily – it is usually accompanied by laziness. Many bloggers (including me at times) [...]

19. What does it mean to really connect with your readers?

Many people in the blogosphere nowadays fail to really connect with their readers. Sure, you reply to comments on your blog and you respond to emails (if you even get either of the two). But is that all there is to really creating a steady user base? And on that note, recurring readers/visitors? I have covered so much in my articles that to have a good, discussion filled comments area is [...]

20. Guaranteed Bad Search Engine Ranking in 7 Steps

If what you do right in SEO is extremely important, know that what you do wrong is equally important when it comes to affecting your search engine ranking position. I spend most of my time teaching people what they should do to implement proper SEO, and what I realized is that there’s a lack of knowledge from these people as what is bad SEO. Unless you get rid of your bad SEO habits, no matter [...]

But the Posts Don’t Stop There!

There are 132 other amazing articles here at Blogussion that you should totally check out. The 20 above are just my favorites out of every post here so far, and I want all of those posts up there to be recognized, read for the first time, and even have some of them re-read!

What’s your favorite post up there?

WPDude – Your WordPress Technical Support Dude

Janith — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:05:54 +0000

Ever found yourself searching your head off, trying to solve that WordPress problem? Or trying to fix something that’s not broken – but you just want to make it better?

Well I’ve found myself in that situation; too many times to count but never had a reliable resource when it comes to some of these very minor but sometimes; annoying problems.

Who is WPDude?

Roughly, an hour ago – I didn’t even know WPDude even existed. However, thanks to Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger newsletter – I ran across a recent guest post by WPDude on Banishing Spammers and Trolls With .htaccess Files. The post was very well written because he explained a fairly complex concept in terms anyone could understand.

I was so intrigued by this post, that I eventually had to go check out his own site. Ahh, to be honest, it’s an absolute gem! You can read a bit more about the writer behind the blog; Neil Matthews or even follow him on Twitter.

Fields of Expertise.

Personally, I think his blog’s appeal lies within its diversity. He covers almost every possible WordPress-related topic, so there’s something for everyone. Whether your new to WordPress or an absolute seasoned professional – we can all learn something from Mr. Matthew’s blog, I certainly did.

Coming back to the blog’s diversity – I don’t think there are any other categories you can add to his list, can you?

Mr. WP-Dude’s Case Studies

If I had to pick one aspect of his blog based on resourcefulness - I would definitely pick his Case Studies. Case studies in general are reports or documents explaining a particular project or event, and that’s exactly what WPDude’s case studies are too. Anyone that has trouble with WordPress, can hire him for a set $50/hour and he keeps a log of all his clients, but more importantly – the solutions to those problems!

Looking through some of those case studies, I cannot stress how often you run into a minor problem but no-one has a solution to it – some of these case studies target exactly those issues. What’s even better? His solutions are absolutely free! They are like normal WP-Posts placed in the Case Study category.

I think it’s this category that convinced me to dedicate a whole-post to him, here at Blogussion. Simply because everyone can learn a thing or two from his work and his effort is something to be reckoned with.

Up, Up, Up for Hire!

As I’ve mentioned above, Mr. Matthews offers a service to help you fix all your technical issues with WordPress. Quite frankly, his blog-posts will solve most of those problems but if it just doesn’t cut it – you can hire him for a fixed rate of $50/hour.

Definitely not the cheapest WP Pro around but I’m a believer of price reflects upon quality – to some extend. Also, reading his case studies – it seems to be a worthwhile investment. What I like about Mr. Matthew’s approach to his service is his simple yet solid policies – If your not happy with the final product or I can’t fix it, you money will be refunded.

Finally, I just want to add that his blog is one of many that doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. That, along with the beauty of his case studies compelled me to write about his blog! Just out of curiosity, has any of our readers worked with WPDude before?