Blogs and Blogging

Introduction:  This entire post was compiled from posts made by Iskwew, one of our repeat customers and a frequent contributor to our forum.  She raises so many good points that we wanted to share this with the Solostream community through our website.

New To Solostream Themes? Here Are Some Tips For You

If you have just bought a theme, there are a few helpful things you need to know before you start setting up the theme, and discover that you can’t get it to look as nice as the demo you saw.

Make sure you upload the theme correctly to your server

When downloading the theme, it comes in a zipped file. Unzip the file with appropriate software. I use the inbuilt unzip functionality in Vista, but there are programs for unzip as well.

Look at the unzipped folder. Some of the themes will after unzipping have a two folders with the same name i.e. /wp-smooth_ basic/wp-smooth_basic/ Make sure you upload the theme from the lowest level folder. If you upload with two folders, one inside the other, the theme will not be functioning properly.

Read the posts on the theme demo site for your chosen theme.

You will find all the basic information you need to start setting it up. There are a few things common on the demo sites. A get started post, listing any additional plugins you need, and how to do the basic things you need to do to get it working, and information about Featured Posts, Banner Ads, etc.

Reading those posts will get the theme basics up and going (and with Solostream themes, it’s not hard!)

Search the forums

You can either search the whole forum (if you are at the top level) or any of the underlying theme forums (if you are in one of those). What you are struggling with will most likely have been encountered by other Solostream theme users.

Ask in the forums

If you have read the theme demo site, and searched the forums, but still haven’t found the answer, you can ask in the forums. The Soloteam and associates (Martin is a big help) are very helpful and can pretty much solve almost everything. Or maybe other forum users have had the same issues and know the answers.   Be patient and you will get an answer, at least that’s my experience.

Avoid editing php and css files inside WordPress.

Download for instance PSpad editor, it’s freeware and makes working with theme files a lot easier. Download here: http://www.pspad.com/en/. Now all you need to do is to play around with colours in your theme settings page (for the themes that have those) or dive into your CSS.

Thanks Iskwew for the great contributions on this topic.  It is greatly appreciated and helpful.

In Ohio, where I grew up, we had cowtipping. Here in the blogosphere, thanks to Easton Ellsworth, we have blogtipping.

“What’s blogtipping? It’s where you forget yourself for a few minutes and think about another blogger. It’s a win-win. All you do is this: Say three nice things and offer one simple tip.”

I was the recipient of a blogtip yesterday, compliments of Tom Bailey over at Business Blog Hive. Here’s just a slice, but check out the full post for yourself, and jump on the blogtipping train next month.

“Michael D. Pollock’s blog is one of those solid pieces of work that every business blogger should add to their feed reader.”

Thanks Tom. And thanks Easton for starting the meme. This is a great way to expose new bloggers and generate some link love. And that’s good for your karma.

Wendy Piersall wrote a nice post titled: Unsuspecting Secrets to Fast Blogging Success. Lot’s of good ideas there. Here’s one of my faves:

Be passionate about your chosen topic. If you are bored, your readers will be too. Same goes for blogging about a topic that you think will bring in the traffic and the money – but in the end, isn’t really what you are passionate about … Everyone wants to feel good and be happy – the more enthusiasm that comes through in your blog, the more your readers will catch it and come back for more.

If you really want to pump up the traffic to your blog or website, at least temporarily, just get a link from any of the Technorati Top 100 bloggers. No, it’s not easy, but here are ten ways that might gitterdun for ya.

Read More

It’s time to start thinking differently about websites, blogs, podcasts, etc. In fact, it’s time to STOP thinking in terms of “blog” and “website” altogether. I’m not saying we should stop using terms like “blog” or “podcast.” Nor am I saying blogs are dead or anything like that. Afterall, the majority of the population hasn’t even caught up with the whole blogging phenomenon yet, and there’s probably no need to confuse them with new terms now.

But it’s time that we - as small business people, web publishers and developers - take our thinking to the next level. It’s time to start thinking in terms of an integrated “web publishing platform” instead of merely a blog, a website, a podcast or a video blog. Read More

So, you want to irritate your website visitors? You say you want to provide a lousy experience for them and practically guarantee they never return? Here are 5 ways to make it happen.

1. Make your off-site links open in a new window.
At one time, this was “convetional wisdom” for websites. The idea is you want people to remain on your site as long as possible, so if you link to an outside site, open that link in a new window, and thereby leave your website alive in the previous window.

That line of thinking is so Web 1.0. The reality is people will leave your site whether you want them to or not. Methods to trap them or keep them there just irritate them. Let them have the option to open links in a new window (or new tab for us Firefox users) if they choose.

Read More

In case you missed the short NYT piece on Thursday, check out Booksmart by Blurb. It’s software that lets you convert your blog into a book.

“This handsome, hardcover book captures your online wit and wisdom for posterity – not to mention friends and family with painfully slow dial-up connections. BookSmart’s Automagical archive feature flows your blog directly into elegant, pre-formatted pages, and you can pick and choose your words from there.”

Unfortunately, it’s currently available by invitation only. Anybody tried it yet?

It’s somewhat laughable, but the Chicago Tribune, parroting some stats from a December 2005 Gallup poll, suggeted this week that blogs are dying. Practically everyone in the blog world has already weighed in on the matter, but I’ll give it a shot just the same.

According to the Tribune article titled Blogging Bloggy, we hardly knew ye:

You’re forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve. A new report from Gallup pollsters, ‘Blog Readership Bogged Down,’ cautions that ‘the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year.’”

First of all, when has anyone in the mainstream media establishment ever equated “conventional wisdom” with “an unrelievedly rich future” for blogging? That statement practically contradicts the entire premise of the article. Conventional wisdom, if I’m not mistaken, still holds that blogging is merely a fad; a fad - like bell-bottom jeans, furbees and chia-pets - that soon will be relegated to a mere footnote in the Silicon Valley history books. Just as soon as the blog bubble inevitably bursts (please excuse the mixed metaphor), that is. Read More

Using del.icio.us and Feedster, Derek provides a neat little trick for creating a video blog without actually having a blog.

“That gave me the idea, I don’t really need a blog, I just need an RSS feed. Del.icio.us does that. Which is even better, cause I don’t have to deal with the files. When I find an interesting video I can just tag the video url with del.icio.us and I’m done. Feedster looks at del.icio.us’ RSS feed, finds the video, puts it in the proper enclosure so it shows up in iTunes. No posting, no uploading, no cost.

To use your own video you just need to add a place to store the video file into that mix. Ourmedia.org is one of many sites that will host your content for free. Just upload your video then tag the file’s url with del.icio.us.”

I read a great article by Keith Robinson titled: Fixing (RSS/Atom) Newsfeed Subscription. His basic statement is blogs, RSS, etc. are way too techie - too much geek-speak, and it’s slowing down adoption of the technology.

I agree, and here’s a short screencast (15 minutes) to help folks better understand RSS and subscribe to blogs using My Yahoo or Bloglines. Hope it’s helpful.

Technorati Tags: blogs rss screencast

A generous offer from Debbie Weil:

“My quick guide to the “what, why & how of business blogging” went live moments ago on Seth Godin’s ChangeThis site. Download my “Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging” as one of the new manifestos. It’s FREE… until Jan. 25, 2005 so don’t wait! Download the PDF here. Hope you find it useful. And a special thanks to Seth and Amit and the other clever folks at ChangeThis.”

Since blogs are still pretty much in the early adopter phase, I thought I’d provide a few good links to help get some folks up to speed (if you’re not already).

About Blogs, in general - Technorati provides a tidy little summary about blog basics, as well as an FAQ that lends great support to the hotly debated notion that blogs are the greatest thing since Victoria’s Secret.

How to read a blog - John Dvorak (Dvorak Uncensored) posted a neat little primer that’s basic yet comprehensive (is that a contradiction?). Yes, I’d be happy to tell you myself how to read a blog, but I’m really not sure how I do it. It just happens.

How to write a blog - Alot to talk about here.

1. First off, the boys over at Business Logs created the PDF whitepaper, Writing For the Web, that you can download for free. Lots of good stuff about blog writing, including (following is from their site):

• Choosing your voice and being consistent with it.
• Understanding your audience before you begin and as you go.
• The type of posts will best suit your company.
• Making things easy to read.
• The importance of humor.
• The necessity of honesty

2. Seth Godin has a short but interesting post titled Beware the CEO blog. Even if you’re not a CEO, you need to know get this.

3. Dennis Mahoney, writing from A List Apart, drops a thunderously entertaining load of words when he describes, simply, How to Write a Better Weblog. My favorite line (well, one of my favorites) is “Being a writer is funny. Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

4. And well, you just can’t leave out Debbie Weil when you talk about blogging. She writes BlogWrite for CEOs, and her stuff is phat (ooh, damn, did I just say that?). Really, I couldn’t pick out just one post from her site. There are so many good ones. Get over there and checkem out. Even if you’re not a CEO. Blogging is blogging, whether you receive stock options, decide the dinner options or both.