Northwest Indiana Blog Carnival Starting

Mar 30 10

BradBlogging and Social Media 3 Comments

Northwest Indiana bloggers will have a place to showcase their writing and gain readers by participating in the  Northwest Indiana Blog Carnival.  Don’t know what a blog carnival is?  Neither did I, but you can find an explanation and instructions at BlogNWI – Northwest Indiana Blog Carnival

Plugin Recommendations for WordPress

Mar 13 10

BradBlogging and Social Media, WordPress No Comments

I am liking WordPress more and more as a blogging script. One thing you can do is customize WordPress by adding plugins from the admin panel. The process is very simple, but there are so many plugins it is hard for a beginner to know where to start.

You want to add some plugins to make WordPress more secure against intruders, protect against comment spammers, increase search engine rank, increase human usability, for a start.

Fortunately I found some really good guides that have lists of many good WP plugins for any new blog.

Here is a great thread at Cre8asite forums: “must” WordPress Plugins;

Another list at Wolf Howl: SEO Plugins WordPress;

DevelopedTraffic had this post for a new captcha plugin which I liked.

You won’t use all of the plugins listed but if you read through the lists you will see several mentioned by most everyone, if they suit your needs, then those are good ones to start with.   One tip from me: you want the Akismet plugin!

Have fun blogging. winking

Blogging Fiction and Being Mobile Friendly

Mar 11 10

BradBlogging and Social Media, iPhone No Comments

A blog is a great platform for publishing serialized fiction (novels or stories) and even short stories on the web. (Here are some examples in the science fiction and fantasy genre.)

This got me thinking that it is better to use a blog platform that will display the story blog in a smartphone friendly format. If I was riding the train into work I would much prefer to read a story blog on my iPhone if it was actually formated for my phone.  There is a lot less pinching, swipe-scrolling and resizing on a swaying train that way.

Here is a good example of what I mean: check out this link on your iPhone, Android OS phone or Blackberry touchscreen: Aboveground.  See the difference?  What would be easier for you to read?

Of course I think this applies to all blogs fiction or nonfiction, it is to your benefit to present your content in a manner that eliminates as many barriers to consumption of that content as possible.

As far as I know, right now, only the WordPress blog platform really supports a mobile friendly template so if you are going to consider starting a story blog.

Free WordPress hosts supporting smartphone formats:  Blogetery, WordPress.com

What’s this Blog About Then?

Mar 10 10

BradLife No Comments

I have several subjects I want to write about, I started a couple of new blogs at Blogger, thinking that a single subject per blog was the way to go.  But several of these topics will only get intermittent play from me so I thought maybe just a subject category on a larger blog would be better.

Another factor was that I was not completely happy with Blogger as a platform, there were new social media – synergies – I wanted to experiment with and Blogger just didn’t make them as easy to implement as I thought they could be.  Ditto WordPress.com which I have used on and off over the years.  Posterous has some neat posting features but not being able to really edit the templates and make it my own, soon bothered me.

I had this laundry list of features I wanted:

  1. smartphone screen friendliness;
  2. the ability to admin and post from a smartphone;
  3. a directory;
  4. static pages as well as blog posts;
  5. my own domain (I always recommend  this to other but fluff it off for myself)
  6. serious integration with Twitter and other social media. I really want to see how blogs, readers, social media and search engines can all interact.

Anyway, the free hosted blog services just were not going to meet my needs.  A WordPress blog on my own hosting and domain seemed the way to go. I’m a bit of a plugin addict, and WordPress is so popular that there are usually a dozen plugins to choose from for every need. (But note: there is not one H.P. Lovecraft plugin.)

Some blogging features I like:

  • The ability to subscribe by email.  A lot of internet users just do not understand about feed readers, but they do understand email and I think being able to be informed of new blog posts by email is important.
  • Sending a tweet to Twitter automatically with each new blog post.  Half the reason for me blogging is because there are some subjects that just cannot be handled in 140 characters.
  • Automatic daily digest of all of my Tweets on the blog.  Blog posts are permanent whereas Tweets soon fade but they gain a second life in an archive.  Plus there is some linky goodness going on there – Google may or may not like it but tough – I like the synergy here.

So there you have it – nothing radical but I’m interested in what I can make of it.