Image courtesy of Darwin BellIt’s happened to us all. One day you’re merrily surfing along, you click a link, and Bam, you get a page not found error. Why, what happened? Well, chances are the link you followed used to resolve to a legitimate page, but the page has now been taken down or moved to a new location. Couldn’t it have left a forwarding address? Well actually, yes it could (and should) have.
Archive for August, 2008
This whole month I’ve been struggling to get this blog to show up on Technorati. I’ve been pinging them every time I’ve done a post; I’ve even pinged them manually, all to no avail. Every time I’ve checked their blog directory, I’ve been greeted with this put-down:
People have all kinds of reasons for starting blogs, from the downright inane - “it seemed like a good idea at the time” - to the highly strategic. I decided to explore some of these motivations in a little more depth, not only because it’s interesting, but because I believe it’s an important question for all of us to think about. Why? Well, it gives purpose and direction to the activity, and is also a way of measuring your progress. Now, I’m not one of those 5-year people who can tell you in detail what they’ll be having for breakfast on 14th June 2012, but I like to have a broad idea of where I’m heading.
Image courtesy of Georgios Karamanis
Here are some reasons I believe people get involved in blogging:
- fun
- staying in touch
- fame and fortune
- professional exposure
- lifestyle
Participating in Bog Carnivals is a great way to increase your exposure in the blogoshpere. The main benefits you get are:
- a few more backlinks to your site for free (proper follow links too, not the less useful nofollow variety)
- referral traffic from the carnival itself
- networking opportunities with other proactive bloggers
If you’re a blogger keen to develop your readership, those are all essential things you should be aiming to do at every opportunity! They all directly and indirectly lead to increased traffic to your site (more on that later).
Continue reading ‘Collect traffic and backlinks by participating in Blog Carnivals’
Every blogger or website owner should check their stats regularly to measure the progress (or lack thereof) of their site - things like:
- traffic
- subscribers
- revenue from ads and affiliates
The key, as with so many other things in life, is not to overdo it. Every minute you spend checking your stats is a minute you could have spent crafting that latest post or networking with other sites via commenting, social bookmarking, or whatever other means you choose to build your traffic.
I know I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to this, which is why I was thrilled the other day to come across a plugin that automates the process for you and brings your stats right into the WordPress dashboard.
Continue reading ‘WordPress statistics plugin’
Have you ever felt a need to alter one of WordPress’s default page listings so that it doesn’t show up certain pages? I did when I was first starting out with WordPress, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out a satisfactory way of doing it (sure I could have hard-coded the links into my template, but that’s not what I consider a satisfactory solution).
In fact, at the time, I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be changing any of my theme’s template files at all, after hearing all those dire warnings not to hack the core. Now that I’m a bit more experienced, it’s obvious that most people use a theme as a starting point for their site, but then customize it to suit their particular needs and taste, and to give their site a unique look.
Continue reading ‘How to exclude pages from WordPress’s page listings’
I’ve recently outlined my strategy for including images in posts, namely:
- Find an image you’d like to use
- Resize it with GIMP
- Upload it to my web server via FilleZilla
- Include it in a post
Well, guess what? WordPress has a built-in mechanism to streamline this process via its Media Manager. It automatically resizes the image, uploads it to your site, and can even embed it within your post if you wish! As a matter of fact, it can also manage your audio, video and other media files for you too, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.
Continue reading ‘Managing images with the WordPress media manager’
As I mentioned previously, a few well-chosen images can really help to give your blog a visual lift. One problem that you may have come across though is that often image files can be quite substantial in terms of size. So today I want to show you how to resize them using GIMP, a popular open-source image editor.
Image courtesy of cpt.spock
Continue reading ‘How to resize images using GIMP’
Using images on your website or blog can really brighten it up and make it a more appealing place to hang around. I’m not sure if there are any scientific studies about this, but I truly believe that a well-chosen image near the top of a blog post draws readers in, particularly if your content is being consumed in a feed reader. But sourcing images can be a problem if you don’t know where to look and can’t afford to pay.
Image courtesy of joseboa
Continue reading ‘Bling your blog with free images’
The other day I mentioned in passing that I’d needed to transfer some files to my web server using FTP (File Transfer Protocol), so thought I’d elaborate on that a bit. Now, modern blogging platforms like WordPress have drastically reduced the need to use FTP for day-to-day tasks like posting articles and such, but if you run your own website or blog, you will find that you need to use it at some point for things like:
- Retrieving backups
- Installing plugins
- Redirecting URLs
