Lost In Cyberspace

Archive for the ‘WordPress’ Category

In the Official Google Reader Blog today there was an interesting post that mentioned that Michael Bolin had created 'Your Page Here', a gadget for iGoogle that allows you to embed the Google Reader, Calendar or just about any web page on its own tab in iGoogle. This seemed like a pretty nifty idea to me so I thought I would give it a whirl, and it seems to work very well. You can only have six tabs on the iGoogle homepage (though there is a hack . . .) so if you are already at maximum you may have to have a bit of a sort out, you can't really have anything else running in the same tab. I now have my Google Reader and Calendar along with Docs and Spreadsheets running in their own tabs, as well as a tab with this blog in it which allows me to run this site without ever leaving iGoogle. There were a few problems getting Gmail to work in its own tab, but that may just have been me, feel free to give it a whirl yourself and let me know how you got on. With the Remember The Milk now working offline via the Google Gears application I thought I would see how well that worked too, so I added that into a tab as well and it synchronizes fine when you go back online. All in all I think that the addition of Michael Bolin's'Your Page Here' gadget will go a long way to helping me be more productive, especially if I can work out how to get Gmail to work! What uses do you think you can make of it? Do you think this will increase your productivity? Let me know in the comments.

A topic I have been following recently is that of whether to use the “rel=nofollow” command, which by default most blogging software adds to all links in comments. Undoubtedly the intentions behind this are good - to prevent spammers benefiting from the link juice they could gain from commenting on your blog. But with the arrival of such anti-spam plugins as Akismet and Bad Behavior is there any real need to keep using this command? Many feel that it is time to move on, that it is time to allow those that comment on our blogs the opportunity to share some of the SEO benefits that Google can give through those links. Having read the article over at MiLienzo calling for more bloggers to join the "revolution" I have decided to try out the plugin from Semilogic that should override the default setting. That's if I have installed it right, anyways. If you notice a problem with this plugin please let me know and I will do what I can to correct it. I have added the U COMMENT I FOLLOW badge to my sidebar to let people know that this is now a "Do Follow" blog, it was originally created by Randa Clay and she has made it available in several colours to suit your blogs design. If you are not sure about whether to change your blog over, take a look at the 13 reasons given to do so by Loren Baker on his blog Search Engine Journal.

Over at Performancing they have relaunched their pMetrics service, this looks as though it could be very useful little service. I have been using a couple of plugins to monitor my site and so far they have been pretty useful, especially Counterize II, but I realize if I want to expand my blog at all I obviously need to look at something a bit more powerful. Having taken a brief look at the service it definitely seems to one of the more comprehensive out there, even more so than Google analytics that I have been considering trying out. The basic service is free, you just need to have set up an account with performancing.com, but this is not the full package and limits you to only 1000 page views per day, though that's hardly a problem for a site of my size. The main benefits of paying out the $14.99 for a year (or $1.99 a month) is having an allowance for 10,000 page views per day, acess to your statistics via RSS, "Spy", outbound link tracking, and download tracking. You also get to have the text ads removed from your pMetrics homepage. No doubt as new features are introduced they will mainly be for premium users, but lets hope there will also be some additions for the basic users. This is hardly a complaint though as the service they provide for free is already excellent. Performancing have also allowed all new users a 21 day trial of the premium service, a very good way to find out which service is best for you. They are also offering a free 12 month upgrade to the first 100 blogs that post a review of pMetrics, making sure it is of adequate length (250+ words) and is left up for the duration. All in all this seems to be a very good service that I would recommend to any bloggers that are serious about their stats. Thanks to the Blog Herald for the heads-up.

Over on the Lisa Sabin-Wilson blog I saw some good news today, she has handed in her last round of submission for her new book "WordPress for Dummies". Being a bit of a dummy myself, I know that I am going to find this an in-valuable resource. The book is due for release September 24th, and though she is a first-time author I am sure this will be a big seller. She has vast experience in helping other WordPress users via her blog "A Girl In The World" and her blog hosting service, and this along with her WordPress design experience at E.Webscapes more than qualifies her as an author worth taking note of. You can see some of her design work at Technosailor, Women Trip and Vin Cache . Make sure you reserve your copy early, I know I will! :-) WordPress for Dummies *Disclosure: Amazon.co.uk links are affiliate links*

Box.net have announced that their service is now available as a sidebar widget on the free WordPress.com blogs. This should be a very handy addition for the WordPress community, I know a couple of times in the past I have wanted an easy way to share a file on my Whedon's World blog and have ended up posting a link out to one of the other file sharing services, now I will be able to do it right on my own site. You can see it in use on my Joss Whedon blog.

clipped from blog.box.net Box.net on Wordpress.com! We’re very excited to announced that the Box.net widget is now a sidebar option on Wordpress.com, our favorite blog host. To add the Box widget to your sidebar, just click Dashboard -> Presentation -> Sidebar widgets -> then drag in the Box widget into the sidebar. Awesome.

Is everyone talking about themes? I guess it's probably because my awareness has been raised as I am in the middle of changing my own theme, but as of late it appears as though every other post I read is looking at the subject. A couple of weeks ago there was a discussion over at Weblog Tools Collection looking at whether two or three column's was best. Mark had this to say:

I personally prefer one column themes with a minimal second column. Most information that is put on my sidebar(s) is extraneous and could be placed elsewhere. I have also found that some of that information deters from the original content of the blog. The landing page concept is nice for search engine traffic where extra links and information on the content might help you draw in the user to explore some more. However, the face of the blog is cleaner and chock full of good stuff to read with lesser distractions.

It's well worth clicking through to see the various comments, plenty of food for thought there. This weekend Lorelle On WordPress has also raised the issue. Her viewpoint?

I believe that above everything else, your blog must “look” like what you want it to look like. It must reflect who you are and what you blog about. The choice of how many sidebars the blog requires must service those points.

I agree with most of the commenter's over there, it's not how many columns but how you use them. Overall I think that more than three columns can be a bit overwhelming, but all in all it is not how many columns you have, but making good use of them. Provide good content in your main column and make it easy for your readers to navigate your site with the side columns, keep them as uncluttered as possible. Obviously advertisements are the things that ruin most sites looks, this is where real care needs to be taken. So far I have not tried to monetize this site in any real way, a couple of affiliate links in posts but I have kept my sidebars clear. The sites that make real money out of blogging are the ones that manage to keep their blogs from becoming to cluttered, allowing their revenue sources to stand out without being too obtrusive, a neat trick but not easy to pull off. I guess this is why a lot of them have custom made themes. Which leads to the next point. Being discussed over at Pro Blogger is the subject of free themes versus custom made. Guest blogger Mathew Coddington from Net Business Blog had this to say:

At one point in every blogger’s career he or she has to make a choice between investing in a custom template or staying the course with a premade, downloadable template. There are important factors that you have to keep in mind with each ranging anywhere from funds to brandibility.

Most commenter's seem to feel that the middle road is the best way to go, customize a theme you already like, which is the way I usually go. It doesn't take too much skill or time to turn a free download theme into something that no one else on the interweb has. And as a final point on the subject, more and more of the free WordPress themes you see on the WordPress Theme Viewer seem to be sponsored, and there were two posts about this that caught my interest. The Blog Herald looks at the pro's of sponsored themes:

I know several designers who give away WordPress themes to blog hosting services for free, so long as they get a link back to their sites. Now this seems to be a great business model for people who want to monetize their theme creations. Not all bloggers can afford to pay for your themes. But there are companies and businesses that would be willing to foot the bill. In the end, everyone’s happy: users get great themes, designers get good money, companies get inbound links.

But there has been some negative thoughts about it too, as expressed by Small Potato over at WP Designer.com:

sponsored-theme designers are pushing it. Let me remind you I don’t have a problem with sponsored theme designers and the practice of theme sponsorship, as long as the designers make it clear to the users of what they’re downloading. However, sponsored theme designers are really pushing it. Some are blatantly spamming the theme viewer.

Plenty of food for thought on both sides, but once again it seems to be not whatis being done but the way it is done. Anyway, enough from me, what are your thoughts? How many columns do you prefer? Would you pay for a customized theme? How do you feel about the sponsored themes that seem to be more and more prevalent? Let me know in your comments.

I came across the iMP Auto Slimbox in my Google Alerts yesterday, and it was a plugin that immediately caught my interest. I have tried a couple of Lightbox variants for my images over the last couple of months and must admit to having failed to gain any real success in using them. But they do look really cool, so I hadn't yet given up all hope. The first big advantage I saw I could gain with this particular lightest of the light Lightbox clones was that it would automatically add the "rel" attribute (rel=”lightbox”) to my images, even working retroactively to add the values to all my previous attempts. This was a bit problematic as I had fiddled quite a bit with some of the code for these images, some having the rel=”lightbox” attribute already added which I think caused some confusion. Having added it to my Sandbox site and finding it very easy to set up and use I have now added it to this site. This post is in part a test, I am writing it via BlogDesk and I will test this time whether the plugin will add the values to the picture in this post or if it only works in the online "Write" page of the blog.

*Edit: Apparently it only applies to images posted directly from the Admin area*

So March has blown by, I cant say as my challenge for last month of a comment a day went totally according to plan, but I did post more comments than I otherwise would of done so that's not so bad. :wink: For April I have set myself the challenge of getting this blogs look more finalized, if you have visited before you will notice that I have changed themes again, this theme is based on the RockinSuckerfish by Nathan Rice of RockinThemes.com, but I have adapted it fairly extensively with my own preferred colours. I have also added "Sweet Titles" and I have moved around the RSS and changed the date/authors name layout. That was all in the CSS, I have also added a couple of extra plugins such as "smileys" for the comments and a tag cloud of my categories for my sidebar. Also as a final touch (for now) I moved Robs Translator from my Sandbox site to here, you can see it at the very top of the page on the left hand side. I hope you like the new look, please let me know what you think in the comments, also if you notice any problems that I may have overlooked. Thanks. :grin: