Here are five links to posts about writing - what to do and what not to do:
- Bloggers are terrible writers?!
- Suffering from writer’s block?
- Blogging is about writing!
- How long should your posts be?
- Here are 10 tips on writing a post.
Author Archive for Tara
We’ve decided to institute a Five Link Friday here at Blogging Amigos. We’ll be linking to all kinds of different sites and articles - each Friday has its own theme, and we’ll just post according to what catches our eyes…
Without further ado, here’s the first Five Link List.
Social Media Articles from Dosh Dosh
If you have been wondering about social media - what it’s about, how it can benefit you as a blogger, how you can get your name out there - these articles are for you:
- Developing Tactical Knowledge on Social Media Websites
- Relationships and Online Social Networks
- Understanding the Value of ‘Friends’ in Social Media Websites
- Building a Popular Social Media Profile
- How to Get More Twitter Followers
For you Joomla users out there: have you ever wished for something more than the default blogging tools in Joomla? They sure leave a lot to be desired - they make for some pretty ugly blogs, and you have to install extra bits even to have commenting!
Chalupa runs his lebowskipodcast site on Joomla. It’s not a blog in and of itself - it’s become a fan site for an awesome movie. It does, however, have a blog. Chalupa posts almost daily, and he’s got a lot of people reading. Unfortunately, Joomla’s blog tools make it difficult to read, and the commenting add-ons are ugly and cumbersome.
We’re in the process of updating the site - making it easier to get around in, and more aesthetically pleasing overall. One of the biggest changes that we needed to make: clean up the blog and make it more… useable.
Enter mojoBlog. The folks at joomlify have created a rockin’ Joomla component. It’s Wordpress for/in Joomla! And just like Wordpress, it’s free! Doesn’t get much better than that, folks, especially since before this component, you had to pay. For crappier stuff.
The install was smooth as can be, but it took a little doing to get the admin menus to display. A note to any of you who want to install this: install as the main Joomla admin, not under a secondary Super Admin account. It’ll save you headaches and it’ll keep you from having to mess around in your userID tables and caches…
If you’re running Joomla and looking for an elegant blog tool/solution, mojoBlog is your tool. When we get lebowskipodcast up and running with its new threads, I’ll post a link so you can check it out.
Most of us here at bloggingamigos blog using independent installations of Wordpress. We’ve also got some LiveJournalers, some Wordpress.com folk, some ex-Blogger-ers and a TypePad-ist.
Because I have a goal of checking out all of the blogging platforms, I spent some time today playing with squarespace. There’s a 15-day trial, then a monthly fee (basic hosting is $7).
It’s an amazingly quick setup - like any good blogging platform nowadays, the registration process is choosing a username/blog address, password, and verifying that you’re human by typing in some letters - and then you start blogging immediately.
BONUS: there’s a tutorial mode that shows you how to do just about anything you’d ever want to do - no digging for help in FAQ files, no trial-by-error.
This platform gives you a lot of slick built-in template options, as well as allowing you to modify existing themes and upload your own (which isn’t a standard feature across platforms) - you can have FULL control, and not know a LICK of CSS.
You get detailed site traffic stats, custom form tools, domain mapping, viewer permission levels, member accounts, automatic backups, etc.
Check it out. If you’re gonna pay for a blogging platform, this is a great option. It’s simple, intuitive, and sophisticated.
Chalupa and I spent some time last night talking about how best to organize this site for users. We have very different category/tag setups on our individual blogs, and with so many authors here, we needed to figure something out quickly.
Note to you folks just getting started - think about organization BEFORE you get going. It’ll save you time and headaches down the road.
You can organize your blog any way you want to. You can use pages instead of categories, categories instead of tags, any of those alone, or all of them together. Usually a combination of categories and tags does the trick.
What’s going to be the most useful organization of content for your readers? My thoughts on the matter:
- Most users will look for some kind of heirarchy.
- People browse content most easily when it’s organized in general groups.
- Folks aren’t going to spend a lot of time looking for something. If they can’t find it right away, they’ll move on to someone else’s site. There are a LOT of people blogging out there - chances are you’re not the only one writing what you’re writing.
There has been a lot of research suggesting that people can retain more information (and, relevant here, can FIND information in less time) when it’s “chunked” - divided - into intuitive groupings. An intuitive grouping for most humans is a hierarchy.
Think, also, about the way categories and tags display on your platform. In Wordpress, for example, unless you seriously tweak things, your categories and subcategories will display in a list. You don’t want a list that makes your page scroll for miles, so it makes sense to limit the number of categories and subcategories you use. Tags, on the other hand, display in a cloud - meaning you can have a LOT of tags and still won’t take up tons of vertical space on the page. So, WP users might use tags for more specific labeling/grouping.
Another note: Don’t categorize or tag so specifically that only one post/article is going to use the category/tag. Make sure that you’re general enough, even in your specific labels, that you can reuse them - remember that you’re grouping (or “chunking”) things.
I decided to use this hierarchy for our category/tag structure: categories to group posts by general topic, and tags to label them by specific topic/content. Example: this post deals with, on a high level, organizing your blog content, and specifically working with tags and categories. So this post goes in Category: Administration and Organization and is tagged with “tags” and “categories”.
So… two things to take away:
- Organize content so it’s easy and quick for your READERS to get around (even if it’s not the way you think).
- Think through the organization of your content before you go any further - it’ll save you some serious time.
A couple of days ago, I downloaded the ScribeFire add-on for FireFox. It’s a blog-from-your-browser tool that allows you full control over your posting to any number of blogging platforms. I’ve only really tested it with Wordpress, but it’s been working like a charm - I have no doubt it plays well with other applications. Bonus: it’s compatible with FF3 beta!
There are two parts to the add-on:
An in-browser (as an adjustable frame) editor with its own sidebar and tab bar:
…and a toolbar for the browser that only displays on your blog page(s).
From ScribeFire, you can:
- Write posts AND pages on multiple blogs (rich text/CSS, with images, videos, etc.)
- Edit existing posts and pages - even ones you didn’t create using this tool
- Tag, categorize, re-date content
- Share the posts and pages (in various sites/social networks)
- Etc.
ScribeFire auto-saves everything you type, so you can close and open the window at will without worrying about losing info - great if you blog on the fly, on breaks at work, etc.
If you’re lazy like me (I hate logging into Wordpress), or want to post without using the blogging software’s interface, this might be the tool for you. Those of you who give it a whirl, let me know how you like it!
After you’ve got the “essentials” out of the way, it’s time to style your blog. Without knowing a thing about HTML and CSS, you can personalize your site’s look-n-feel.
There are a lot of pre-made themes out there for you to use. The best site out there for browsing these themes is themes.wordpress.net. It’s a slick site that lets you search for themes based on the features you’d like to see.
So, with all those choices out there, how do you choose the right theme? Here are a couple of things to think about:
- How many columns do you want? These will contain both your content and your extras (widgets).
- Do you want your site to stretch when people resize their browsers (fluid width), or do you want it to look the same no matter who sees it (fixed width)?
- You’ll definitely want to get a widget-ready theme. This will allow you to add… stuff… to your blog in the future. We’ll post, at some point, about widgets.
For different kinds of blogs, you’ll want different kinds of features - different types of themes. My suggestions on getting started:
Journal-Style Blogs
Start by looking for something with at least two columns. You’ll have your posts, of course, but you also have complete control over the rest of the space. And there are some pretty great plugins and widgets out there. At the very least, you’ll want to have a sidebar that displays things like your blogroll (list of links to other blogs you find interesting), a list of the latest posts and/or comments on your posts, and a list (or cloud) of your post categories/tags.
From your selection of multi-column themes, choose something that matches your content. If your blog is a personal journal blog, choose something that reflects on your personality and have fun. If you’ll be posting on a theme (news, politics, religion, movies) that might interest a broad audience, make sure that the theme you choose is simple enough you’ll be taken seriously.
Video/Photo Blogs
If you’ll be posting only videos or photos, you’ll want a theme that really makes your work stand out. Try to find a theme that doesn’t have multiple columns/sidebars - rather, look for something that’s laid out with horizontal bands (like Hemingway or Squible). Getting rid of the distractions in the sidebars puts the focus on your photography.
That’s it for now - stay tuned for more posts on templates and themes. I’ll be writing about how to tweak and customize the look of your new theme.
Five Link Friday: Commenting
Here are five links about commenting - how it can help your blog, and how you can become a better commenter.