Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category
Posted on October 24, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies
Why You Should Turn Comments Off
Most people expect, when they visit a blog, to be able to leave a comment. Some may even think it’s a bug if they can’t. But in fact a small percentage of blogs have simply decided that their blogs aren’t the place for comments. I have decided that for this blog in particular; it is best to keep them open.
But for those who are unsure of why anyone would want to. Here are a few reasons:
- A lot less hassle - Writing the post is only half of the work. Then, for the rest of the post’s existence you have to monitor all the comments that flow in. Some may need a response, some deleting. If you didn’t have comments in the first place; when you hit the publish button - that would be it. Shawn Blanc puts it best:
When I hit publish - I’m done. The article has now been completed. It’s off to print. That’s all she I wrote.
- No comment SPAM - This could be reason enough for anyone. Sure, Akismet does a good job, but I still have to go through the SPAM folder every so often to make sure that nothing has been accidently missed.
- More personal communication - If someone has something that they feel you want to know, they’ll email you directly, it gets rid of those who are leaving comments for the sake of a link and allow you to get a stronger relationship with you most faithful readers.
- Your blog isn’t devalued - You’ve spent hours crafting a post, and all you get are stupid comments and people being TROLLS. What does this do? Simply devalue
Who Has Done It?
One prominent blogger out there, John Gruber of Daring Fireball has. He is the sole author of one of the most popular Apple orientated blogs.
This is what he had to say on the matter (transcribed by Shawn Blanc):
I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read. I want him to like this website so much that he reads it from the top to the bottom, and he reads everything. Every single word. The copyright statement, what software I use, he’s read it all.
If I turn comments on, that goes away. It’s not that I don’t like sites with comments on, but when you read a site with comments it automatically puts you, the reader, in a defensive mode where you’re saying, “what’s good in this comment thread? What can I skim?”
It’s totally egotistical. I want Daring Fireball to be a site that you can’t skim if you’re in the target audience for it. You say, “Oh, a new article from John. I need to read it,” and your deadlines go whizzing by because you have to read what I wrote.
I believe that whether to turns comments off is a battle that everyone has to fight at some point. Some make the decision straight away, and for others it takes a while for them to realize. Some may disagree, but I think some of the points made provide quite a convincing argument.
Posted on October 1, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies
Review: MarsEdit Publishing From The Desktop
All of the post I write come through one program. MarsEdit. MarsEdit, in my opinion is the premier desktop blog publishing application on the planet. In this review I’m going to be looking at what makes it so good and also appealing to many people.
Background
MarsEdit is developed by Daniel Jalkut, though was previously part of NetNewsWire. However after changing ownership a couple of times it landed in the hands of Red Sweater Software and has gone through it’ 2.0 release and a lot of changes.
It’s used by some of the greats in the blogging world, one of them; Shawn Blanc had this to say in his review of MarsEdit:
I finally landed with MarsEdit as my preferred method for publishing. I think I made a pretty good choice too, because the more I use it the more I feel it’s a Mac app which truly is out of this world. (Get it?)
Writing
Setting up your blog with MarsEdit is laughably simple. You enter the name and URL of your blog and it goes out and pulls down all the information it needs. Then you type in your username and password that you log into and you’re set up. I use Wordpress so I’ll be refering to that, however, Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and many other blogging platforms are suppported.
The interface for MarsEdit is very simple, like most Mac applications. You have a small amount of buttons along the top varying from “New Post” to the search box, a new feature of the 2.0 release.
However most of the fun starts when you create a new post. There is, in fact no WYSIWYG editor built into MarsEdit. Some would say that this is a flaw, but I think it’s a feature. You don’t have to mess around with any formatting as you jump between views. It’s just simple text and there is nothing that the WordPress interface might not misinterpret as I found it often does when writing posts in their WYSIWYG view.
One problem that I have encountered is that there are just to many pop-up windows. I think that the Media uploader would be better suited as a drop down menu instead of an extra window.
Of course for the less code savvy (if you can call html code) along the top right hand corner there is a drop down menu with some of the more popular code snippets such as blockquotes, h1, h2 etc. Of course you can edit these and ad your own if you find yourself using any particular tag a lot of the time.
All from within the MarsEdit interface you can add tags and categories - change the post status. It is little things like this that sets this app apart.
Conclusions
MarsEdit is a fantastic bit of software let down by a couple of weaknesses in the UI. If you’re running Windows have no fear as Microsoft has Windows Live Writer for you and another WYSIWYG editor on the Mac is Ecto.
MarsEdit can be purchased for $29.95 from Red Sweater Software. There is also a free trial so you can become addicted.
Posted on September 22, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies
10 Wordpress Plugins Your Blog Needs!
Wordpress is the premier publishing platform on the internet. It has a massive, loyal user-base which swear by it. One of the great things about this is that there are also a large group who like to make plugins for Wordpress to expand on it’s features.
I have comprised a list of ten Wordpress plugins that I feel every blogger should have in their arsenal. Feel free to add any that you think I’ve missed in the comments.
1. Adman
Adman allows you to place ads in your blog without having to go into the php and find the right spot. You have the choice in having the ad appear before the first post, after a post and within the post.
One of the super cool things about this plugin is that it can calculate the best spot to place the ad when you want it in the post. Though if you want it in a certain place you can specify with a tag.
2. Ajax Comments
Ajax Comments is a very simple, but very useful plugin. It adds some AJAX voodoo to your comments system so that they are published without having to refresh the page.
This plugin may be considered more of a luxury than a need, but it makes your site run that bit slicker.
3. All In One SEO Pack
If you’re not on Google, you don’t exist. Just about everyone uses Google and if you want to make your blog that much easier for people to find; then you’ll install this plug-in.
Basically, All In One SEO Pack gives you a form to fill in within Wordpress to make your site more attractive to Google’s bots. Such as keywords and page headers. In the first month of installing it on my personal blog I jumped a page in Google’s results.
4. Maintenance Mode
If you ever want to have a tinker around with your website for a bit without having the whole web being able to see the changes you are making, I highly recommend Maintenance Mode. This plug-in allows all the visitors who come to your site to be met with a page displaying that the site is not currently available.
You have a lot of options with what the page can look like, but you are given a template which you can fill in that documents the amount of time you expect the site to be inaccessible.
5. No Self Pings
I love this plug-in because it solves one of my pet hates which is when you link to a post within your blog and it pings it within the comments. This can be especially frustrating if you have linked to one post several times. It starts to look a lot like spam.
By using this plug-in you simply remove the clutter sent from other posts within your blog.
6. Related Posts
If you want to keep your readers attention then this plug-in is a must, most people place it in the sidebar or below the post. It will display some posts that relate to the topic that was just blogged about. If they were willing to read to the end then they probably want more.
I’ve found the plug-in to be accurate nine times out of ten, but sometimes a really random one is thrown in there. There is even the option if you don’t have any relevant posts to display random ones so there isn’t a blank space.
7. SRG Clean Archives
I’ve never really been a fan of the default Archives page that comes with Wordpress so I had a look around and SRG Clean Archives seems to be the best.
It elegantly displays the posts by month and allows each month to be collapsible. Very slick!
8. What Would Seth Godin Do?
If you’re very keen to increase your subscriber count. It basically uses cookies to recognise new users and if they are so display them a message of your choice. Normally suggesting that they subscribe to the blog. However, I have seen a few just saying “Hi” and hoping they enjoy the blog.
There are loads of options varying from the placement and the overall design of the message.
9. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
I’m lazy, very lazy and I don’t like messing around with stuff I don’t understand. Wordpress is one of those things. So to solve this problem, I’ve enlisted the help of Wordpress automatic upgrade which takes you through the upgrade procedure and never makes you leave the Admin panel.
All you have to do is click through a couple of messages telling you what it’s doing, and if you want download a back-up file.
10. WP Contact Form III
If you want an easy way for people to contact you without having them use email then this would be a great plug-in for you.
WP Contact For inserts a form wherever you specify, whether it be on a post or a separate page. You can setup a special question to stop spammers getting to you as well. For instance; I ask people “What colour is snow?” and the contacter has to put “white” for it to get to me.
The Question For You:
What Wordpress plug-ins do you use on your blog?
Posted on September 19, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies
Feedburner: a blogger’s best friend
If you’re a blogger then you should be using Feedburner; a very powerful RSS publishing platform now owned by Google. The service is used by thousands of bloggers from around the world so that ten times that can read their content from the comfort of their own feed reader.
Feedburner has received much praise for its massive feature set but also criticism for its sometimes unreliable stats recording.
In this article I will be looking at some of the more interesting and popular features of Feedburner, but also the inevitable handicaps that a service is its scale naturally has.
Fantastic Features
- Easy set up - I wish most web services were so easy to configure. Once you have signed up for an account you simply put in your website URL on the front page and press next. You then, simply put in a couple of extra bits of information about your feed and the feed URL. That is how easy it should be to set up any web service you want to use.
- In for the long run - As I mentioned previously, Feedburner was acquired by Google not to long ago. Luckily for all its users, as if it were to go away so would all your subscribers. Now that they are owned by Google, we can we sure that the feeds will be accessible for a very, very long time.
- Adsense Integration - If you want to earn some money off the lazy lot who don’t bother to come to your site then Feedburner has a tool for you that easily ad a couple of adsense content and image ads.
- Its Free! - Best of all you can get everything that Feedburner offers without spending a dime. Though this wasn’t originally the case, since the Google purchase all the pro features are available to you.
Possible Problems
- Dependence - If you start to get a lot of people subscribed to your feed and Feedburner does something horrible that you don’t agree with, (like put in their terms of use that they own all your content) you are still kind of tied into the service unless you don’t mind leaving your readers out in the cold.
- Unreliable stats - One problem I hear all the time from people using Feedburner is that their stats don’t always make sense, or sometime they drop to zero every so often. If you need really reliable stats for advertisers etc, this might be a problem, even if it doesn’t happen very often.
- Web UI not great - When I say “not great” I mean it isn’t as good as it could be. Sometime things don’t seem to be in the right place or are not entirely obvious. There is some room for improvement here, some novice users might find it a bit hard to get their heads round at first. That said, there are some great guides to Feedburner out there.
From the horse’s mouth
Blogging Adventure uses Feedburner and so does my personal blog. For the year that I have been using it, I have had relatively little issues with the service and plan on using it for the foreseeable future.
The features that you’ll find me using are the email subscriptions, Feed ads and the chicklets.
If you’ve never used or heard of Feedburner before I recommend that you check it out and see if it can enhance your website or blog.
The Question For You:
If you use Feedburner why do you like it and what features do you like about it? Are you worried about the changes that Google has made the the advertising?
Posted on September 15, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies
Welcome To Blogging Adventure!
For the past month or so I have been scheming in my lair (aka bedroom). Making plans and slowly putting them into action - one of these plans has been Blogging Adventure.
Blogging Adventure is a blog that I have created to document what has become one of my biggest passions. Blogging and how to be successful at it.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, after all the site is called Blogging Adventure. It is just as much a learning experience for me as it is for you.
I can use Blogging Adventure for different experiments, for trying various different methods, whether is being ad campaigns or writing styles. That’s what is so great about Blogging Adventure, I can make all the mistakes so that you don’t have to!
I want Blogging Adventure to be just as much a community driven blog then it simply being a journal of my thoughts. If you have ideas or methods don’t hesitate to send them in and, if I can, I’ll give them a go and document the results.
Why you should read this blog:
- If you are interested in starting a blog.
- If you want to earn money from your blog.
- If you want to produce better content for your blog.
- If you want to be cool!
My thanks go to Woo Themes for providing their Papercut theme. Also, my friend Rupert Maspero has been working away at something very special for Blogging Adventure in the next couple of weeks.
Coming Up!
- Feedburner: a blogger’s best friend
- Which is more important? Unique Visitors or Subscribers?
- 5 Ways to keep your content fresh
- Choosing a Niche to blog about - a guide
