Internet

What Is Wrong With Me?

People do make stupid mistakes. That doesn’t mean they aren’t stupid. It means that they either don’t pay attention before they perform the mistake, or ignore the after-effects. I chose the former, by deleting my Technorati claim on Educated.

I thought I was deleting the claim on (one of) my other, totally untouched blogs. But at this point I’d like to thank Technorati for not providing those WordPress-like confirmations that are shown in another page (they use simpler JavaScript popups, which I’ve seen so many of that I could click OK to one thousand of them while in a coma). By the time the claim deleted screen came around, it was too late to realize that I had deleted the actual Educated claim.

The only positive note here is that it doesn’t take too long to get everything (except the blog description) back in order. Just make sure you put in the exact URL to the blog as you had before, or else Technorati will treat the blog as a totally new one.

Remember this, and you’ll save your bottom dozens of times: Look before you click.

Beginner Blogger’s Tips

Ryan decided to start his own blog recently, probably in response to my new blogging obsession. So I ended up giving him the low-down on blogging. Here’s what I told him:

…The key point to success with any type of web site, be it a blog or business portfolio, is content. That means you should post, post and post a lot more. This helps out for the following reasons:

1. Google likes to look through content. Your writings quickly become Google’s friend.
2. Google likes frequently updated content. If it sees that you post more, it will index your site more.

One other thing you need is links from “good neighbors”. This means that you shouldn’t just add your link to a free-for-all page; rather the sites that link to you should have good content and be on good terms with Google.

I would also suggest setting up permalinks now. They will help your site’s rank in Google’s index, and in general you shouldn’t change the addresses of your pages once they are set. If you need help, I am pretty proficient in the workings of WordPress, and surely I can provide help.

Blogging isn’t rocket science, but in order to make your way up the ranks (I have gotten that far yet), you need to put in lots of effort. The effort will pay out with lots of traffic, as you will see in due time.

…

About the part on rocket science, the effort really does pay out. Once you start blogging, you will read other’s blogs, and you will discover many new things (like how I discovered my WordPress static home page technique). Those new things will help you gain traffic, which is many people’s goal in their blogging career.

Trackbacks Explained: Networking With Your Blog

Trackbacks are one of those blogging features that some beginners just don’t get (I was there – trackbacks have only made sense to me recently). The truth is that they are very simple to understand.

Think of trackbacks as comments that are posted by your blogging tool, rather than your own self-determination. To use a rather crude comparison, they are similar to video responses on YouTube. Someone makes a video. You think that you can add to that video. you make a video, and it shows up under the existing video.

Same concept with trackbacks. You find a blog post on someone’s blog that you think is interesting. You write about it on your blog, and leave a trackback in the process. The whole nine yards:

1. You read a blog post, and you like it.
2. You write a post on your blog about it. This could possibly be an “Aside” post.
3. While posting, you paste the address of the post you are commenting on in a special field on your post editing screen. With WordPress-powered blogs, the trackback address of posts will be the post address, followed by “trackback/” (ex. http://www.mysite.com/blog/2007/01/02/my-first-post/trackback/).
4. Upon the publishing of your post from your blog, their blog is notified by your blog, and a link to your new blog post is made on their blog.

To make this all fair, you should remember to include a link to their post in your post if your post is not specifically about their post, in which case you may not remember to leave a link. That way, the network between you and them is built, and you two have formed a “micro-relationship” of sorts.

You should also leave comments on blogs regularly, but that’s another topic. Following these tips will help you build your blogging future, giving your blog increased exposure. But remember the main rule for any Web site: Content is king.

What Keywords Rank You Highest?

Lorelle raised a blogging challenge for this week. She wants to know what search keywords (when used on Google) bring your site up to the top of the list.

Your blog challenge this week is to research what word or phrase makes your blog number one in Google search results.

It’s an interesting challenge, one that will demand a lot from many bloggers. Fortunately, I know that I have a set of keywords that bring Educated to the number one position:

ultimate static front page

Give it a shot, and report back on either mine or Lorelle’s blog. Good luck!

How To Blog From Word 2007

Devin has outlined the steps to blog from within MS Word 2007. Follow-up to my original post.

Blogging With Microsoft Word

SixApart is showcasing how their MoveableType Enterprise blogging platform and Microsoft Word link together to create the ultimate hook into existing productivity apps. It’s nice to see how the daddy (no way – WordPress rules) of blogging tools is connecting with existing programs to help bring users toward a unified environment for al their dialy tasks.

What I’m trying to say here is that I think a Word addon for WordPress blogging would be a great idea. You don’t really need much to do it – you already have xmlrpc.php on the server side, so all you need to do is build a client. I looked around for some info on this, and found a locked thread on the WordPress support forums, which was mostly suggesting other desktop blogging apps.

So, are there any WP + Word combos out there, or in development?

Update: I have gotten word that Word has blogging capabilities in the box, in the form of the Publishing tools. I have yet to experiment with it (I haven’t even tried a beta of Office 2007), but PC World says they are there.

Beta Syndrome Hits Gravatar 2.0

A few days ago, I gained interest in Gravatar, which I had come across before in my early blogging career. At first I didn’t really understand what it was all about, and to this day, some of its features are still unclear to me. I understood the basic concept – showing a single avatar next to your comments on any site set up to display Gravatar avatars (the name explains it: Globally Recognized Avatars.

So anyway, back to my original topic. For some time, Gravatar was closed. They recently re-opened up their service on a public basis. Of course, I registered. But after trying to upload my favorite avatar (featuring a picture of the front of an Orion VII Hybrid bus), I got a very generic looking error from the site saying that something went wrond, and that it has been logged for further investigation.

Sounds like beta to me!

While on the topic, I have recently put Educated into beta. I think it’s the way to go, because I don’t need to worry if my site suddenly fails, do I? (I am pretty confident it won’t go downhill anytime soon – ComputingHost is doing a very nice job so far).

New Attacks: Regstration Spam

Recently, I’ve been observing a new form of spam on my blog. It is coming in the form of vague registrations, with email addresses including Russian domains and strange user IDs. For now, it’s not too bad, so I won’t take serious action. If things do heat up, I’ll look into ways to effectively block spammers from clogging up my users table.