Blogging Art and Practice
A blogging coach's tips and techniques for a better blog

The day comes in the life of every blog reader when they realize they are spending too much time reading blogs…and they don’t want to give up reading any of them. That’s why smart blog readers use a feed reader to help them stay on top of the blogs they read.

What’s a feed and why would I want to read one?

So what’s a feed reader? Well, let’s back up and figure out what a feed is, first. A feed is a special kind of file that organizes its information in a form easily read by computer programs. That orange square with the arcs in it, pictured at the beginning of this paragraph, is the standard icon, letting you know that a feed file is available for you to subscribe to. The feed reader is the program that reads the file and translates it into a form easily read by humans. Feed readers differ in their features and how they arrange the information they get from the feeds. They can be a program you install on your computer or one that you access with your web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox).

Getting started with Bloglines and Firefox

I am going to talk about about the online feed reader that I use: Bloglines. Bloglines is free, and has a lot of features you will appreciate after you get familiar with it. (more…)

Continue reading “How to read more blogs in less time” »

Google Penalizes Paid Links

Last fall, Google started cracking down on paid links. To understand what this means, you first have to understand that Google lists sites in its search results in part by examining who the site links to and who links to it. Some websites pay money to other websites so that they will link to them, and this improves the buyer’s standing in the search listings. Google felt this distorted the value of its listings, and so it started penalizing sites that were buying links by reducing their Page Rank. Page Rank (named after one of the founders of Google) is Google’s way of assigning a value to websites for the purpose of determining who gets listed higher in search results. It seemed to most people that primarily those taking advantage of Text-Link Ads’ paid links were being targeted. At the time, and up until recently, I was running Text-Link Ads on my gardening site. (more…)

Continue reading “I got rid of Text-Link Ads” »

Thanks to Doug Green (via a listserv), I learned of this fascinating animated chart demonstrating The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You. I had a clue that some of this stuff was going on, but didn’t realize the scope of it.

Continue reading “What Happens to Your Blog Post After You Publish It” »

I don’t plan to make a habit of discussing products I haven’t used myself, but I saw a patron at our local public library using one of these things, and it’s gotten stuck in my head. My first reaction when I saw it was, “Oh, how cute!” My second reaction was, “I want one!” Boy, that shocked me. It’s been years and years since I wanted something because it was cute. I almost took my temperature, but I was in the library. (more…)

Continue reading “Asus Eee PC” »

Blogger changed its comment form

Recently many bloggers have become upset upon discovering that a comment they write for a Blogger blog no longer links back to their own blog–unless they have a Blogger/Google ID. Blogger has responded by saying these commenters can post using OpenID.

As the official OpenID site explains,

…people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

The idea behind OpenID is that you would have one login and password for all the places you visit on the web, and that login could be associated with a website, either your profile at a service you use, or your own website. But many non-Blogger commenters resent having to sign up with yet another service–and are annoyed with the inconvenience of typing their url into every post. (more…)

Continue reading “How do I comment on a Blogger blog and automatically link back to my website?” »