Weblog Tools Collection

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I have been asked this question quite a few times and I never have a perfect answer. It is obviously an important question to ask but it can be answered in many different ways based on preferences, need for plugins, optimization techniques used and a variety of other factors.

Weblog Tools Collection uses a lot of plugins and is very query heavy but the in spite of that, the front page uses 59 queries to generate itself. I think the default (on a vanilla WordPress install on the default theme) is 27 or something of that nature. The larger the number of queries, the slower the page is going to load and the more load you are going to put on your MySql server. All of the above is true if you do not use inline or regenerative caching mechanisms. The caveat on this blog is that its plugins and its MySql server are highly optimized (via inline caching mechanisms) to reduce load.

Larger number of queries on a WordPress blog are probably caused by plugins that have been installed. Plugin authors can have non-optimized and useless queries that either take a long time to execute or need a large(r) number of queries to acheive a simple(r) result. I suspect that one could follow the 80-20 rule with 80% of the queries on your blog being generated by 20% of the plugins. If you can identify the top hitters and either optimize or replace them, you will have a happier blog and a happier MySql server.

It is also important to remember that the number of queries might not be the only straw that is breaking the camel’s back. SQL queries can be poorly constructed and can put a tremendous drain on resources. I remember a certain recent comments plugin that made queries which scanned entire tables before producing a result. If you are concerned about the speed of you blog or the number of queries, start disabling plugins. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that a few plugins might be causing most of your headaches. Once you identify the suspect plugins, you can then either find replacements that are more oprtimized or find other ways of obtaining the same result.

How many queries does your font page generate? If you find efficiencies by disabling plugins, please tell us about the results.

WordPress for iPhone: Big news from the Automattic team yesterday. They released a first look at their iPhone App that works on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs. The application is Open Source, available from the iPhone App store and will be available for free. The screen real estate problem with the large on screen keyboard looks to be largely solved with this app and it adds the ability to modify previous posts and view your blog on the web. The official iPhone app for WordPress blog is linked above. The application received rave reviews from a variety of sources such as TechCrunch and Webware and ma.tt talked about it yesterday. Check out the screencast when you get a chance. It definitely has a wow factor.

I’ve been reading a very interesting discussion over on the IntenseDebate blog with regards to the question, Who Owns Your Comments? IntenseDebate is one of three major third party commenting systems available. The other two are Disqus and CoComment.

Before I dive into the WordPress aspect of this question, you need to know that IntenseDebate is asking this question because they are a third party commenting system. Therefor, they act as a link between the blog and the commenting system which is outside of the in-house solution provided by publishing platforms such as WordPress. Because of this fact, IntenseDebate needs to figure out how comment editing between the two will work out for the best.

However, the question IntenseDebate raised can be addressed to the realm of blogging in general. When you browse around WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress powered blogs and leave a comment, who really owns that comment? You or the blogger? Or should there be shared ownership between the two?

A number of interesting points were made in the comments of the ID post. For instance, some users didn’t care who owned their comments just as long as they couldn’t be changed by the blog author. Others believe that because of the way U.S. copyright law works, commenter’s retain the ownership and copyright of their comments. While still others believe that a Creative Commons commenting license is in order for Blog owners to display on their site.

Where do I fall on this issue? Bloggers have had the ability to edit comments for quite some time now. I believe that editing a comment to misconstrue the original comment is morally wrong. In fact, I believe the entire issue of what bloggers do with comments after they have been posted comes down to morality. In my own experience, I have only edited a few comments due to misspelling or the posting of personal information such as phone numbers or email addresses.

I don’t believe a commenting bill of rights needs to be created in which all blogs should follow. However, I do think that each blogger should create and make publicly accessible a commenting policy. This policy should clearly explain what you as the blog author will do with comments posted on your site, who retains ownership of those comments and explain circumstances which would require you to edit an end user’s comment.

That’s what I think. Let me know what you think in the COMMENTS!

WordPress.com 2.5 Essential Training at lynda.com Online Training Library® is a set of training videos by Maria Langer (who also happens to be a professional helicopter pilot) that walk through the setup and use of WordPress as a blogging tool. Sadly, the title of this set of videos might be a bit misleading (though the title does indeed say WordPress.com, I was taken by the version number in the title) since the videos are tailored for WordPress.com blogs and not for self hosted WordPress.org blogs. However, a few of the initial videos are offered for free download and the only option for purchase of the full set is via a monthly subscription for $25 which would give the user access to all the videos on lynda.com. There are plans to sell the videos as a CDROM for purchase but those are not available as of this post.

The videos are aimed towards the basics of blogging and range in topics from setting up a blog on WordPress.com to creating and maintaining posts, pages, categories, adding multimedia, choosing and setting up themes, managing users and participating in the blogosphere.

I never get this right. There are times when I will be reading a post and it feels as if the chronological order of comments would make better sense. At other times, such as the comments on this post on IP Democracy (which has newest comments on top), seems opposite. I actually found it quite difficult and counter intuitive to read through the comments on that post to follow the story as it unfolded. Scrolling upwards on a post is just plain weird. On more popular posts, readers tend to complain when the list of comments grows beyond a certain number and they loose the forest for the trees. The TechCrunch comment threads are simply useless if you want to follow any part of the discussion and I tend to just read the highlighted ones from Michael or the other authors. On the other hand, comment reply threads are unwieldy, take up too much space and somehow fail to mirror forum discussions. Alternatively, outsourcing comments to a third party is just not an elegant or attractive solution for most people.

I feel that commenting systems on blogs need to evolve some more. Some blogs have decided to spin off comments to forums. Others have moved their comments to external services such as Disqus. Yet others like TechCrunch move comments to a linked forum for further discussion after the post has become somewhat stale.

What do forums have that comment threads on blogs do not? Are paged comments a good idea? Should comments threads be pruned by type? Are you more willing to participate in a forum discussion than post a comment on a blog? If that is the case, how could we enhance commenting on blogs to mimic the reader involvement of forums?

I don’t think there is a single right answer. However, I do consider our readers’ comments to be the lifeline of our blogs and shy away from shipping them off elsewhere. That being said, Disqus and Intense Debate have the right idea but the execution takes away from blog ownership. Comment editing and tagging, and comment to post and comment to commenter relationships need a lot more TLC if comments are to become as ubiquitous and as widely used as forum posts. Gravatars go a long way in bringing those relationships closer to a global audience but more needs to be done.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the present state of comments in the blogosphere. Did you come across a commenting system that bridges some of these gaps? Was there some feature that stuck with you or made you go Hmmm? What would make commenting less of a hurdle for you?

I had this interesting thought which I am sure can be easily defeated but definitely points towards the success of WordPress.

I was searching the web for something inconspicuous as the “iWrap” and I came upon some interesting results. While browsing the results and then switching back to the search results page, I realized that the first page had at least three results that were either related to WordPress or were on a WordPress blog. I repeated the search for completely inane search terms and had at least one result show up on every search I performed from a blog that used WordPress as the blogging tool. I have had this happen in the past with various other queries but had not quite put two and two together. So my hypothesis is that a WordPress blog or a link that is somehow related to WordPress, shows up on the first page of results on every search performed on Google.

Do you have a search term or phrase that proves otherwise?

[EDIT] Since there seems to be some that do not, conversely, what percentage of search results do you think has WordPress in the first page of results?

New ‘AB Meta’ Markup Tools Could Create a Smarter Web: Wired has an interesting article on a new set of tools from Adaptive Blue called AB Meta which could be used to easily add metadata to your blog pages that can in turn, be used by search engines to correctly categorize and annotate content. Dougal’s HeadMeta WordPress plugin can be used to insert AB Meta into your posts. The Wired article and the Adaptive Blue blog post have some examples on how this works and what should be done.

Disclosure: Adaptive Blue is an advertiser on this blog.

Asides from having one of the simplest looking websites on the net, Yougler is a newly launched service which aims to provide bloggers the ability to establish a professional looking profile along with other perks. Using Yougler which is pronounced (Yoo-Guh-Ler) users can create profiles that bloggers can link to for spam free contact information. One of the long standing problems that bloggers have faced is the way in which end user’s can communicate with the blog author. Usually, this would consist of typing out your email address as so ( blabla at blabla.com). Replacing @ with at was a very inexpensive way of defeating the spam bots which would scrape the content of websites looking for printed email addresses but this method creates a few caveats. The first, user’s need to manually type out your email address which is far less convenient than clicking a link. The second, the look of the email address doesn’t look very professional.

Creating A Profile

There are two types of profiles you can create. The White Pages Profile is for those who want a presence on the Internet, more or less to be found within search results. The other is the Blog or Blogger Profile which is tailored specifically for blogs or bloggers. This is the profile you would want to use if you want an easy way for your readers to contact you which I’ll explain in a minute.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the blogger profile.

After typing in your information, you’ll be greeted with a CAPTCHA image which is used to prevent automated bots from creating Yougler accounts. I’m sure those profiles would be rather interesting to see. After the CAPTCHA process is complete, Yougler sends you a confirmation email which you’ll have to confirm in order to activate your account. Once your account is activated, it’s time to download and then install the Yougler WordPress Plugin.

The WordPress Plugin

The plugin provides an easy way to provide a contact link which is attached to the top of a post and then at the bottom of the post. The link forwards people to your Yougler Profile Page where readers can get a gist as to who you are via your profile and then, send mail-forwarded mail. Providing a means of communication in this way is supposed to keep communication between the blog author and his or her readers easy while at the same time, blocking unwanted spam.

Installing the plugin:

1. Download the Yougler plugin to your desktop. Upload the entire Yougler plugin folder to your WordPress plugins directory under wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate your plugin under the WordPress Plugins tab.
3. Click options, click Yougler, set “add signature and Yougler link at end of post to yes.” Enter whatever signature you would like to add to the end of your posts in the box provided or you may leave this blank. Click update and you are done.
4. The Yougler Plugin will now create a link to your Yougler Profile page at the end of all your posts. The link name will be your “Display name publicly as:” setting under the User’s tab in WordPress. Yougler will display the author’s name and url on each post so if a blog has multiple bloggers this should not be an issue.Your Yougler page will provide a form mail page for your readers to contact you. On your Yougler page you can also tell your readers a little about yourself or your blog. You can also add a picture (and maybe some more things in the future).

Here is a screenshot that showcases a Yougler configured plugin in WordPress. Click the image to see the full size.

After the plugin is configured, each post will contain a link to your Yougler Profile page at the end of your posts. The link name will be your “Publicly displayed as name” which is configured under the User’s tab in WordPress. Your Yougler page contains an avatar, a small bio section and a form for people to contact you. Aside from that, readers can insert their own Yougler Profile URLS in their comments so others can contact them as well without worrying about spam.

Yougler is free at the moment and it looks like it will continue to be free. The site/service is still in it’s early stages of development which is why Pete is taking comments and suggestions via his own profile link Yougler.com/pete.

Overall, I think what Yougler is doing is a novel idea. However, as far as the spam communication goes, I think the same affect could be accomplished by publishing your email address in the form of a picture that when clicked on, opens up your preferred email client. Also worthy of noting is that, if you were to browse someones About Me page on their blog and that page had a contact me button or form on that page, would there then be any reason for you to use this service?

I think the true strength of this service is for multi author blogs where the about me section is usually limited to the information about the blogging network or the domain and not the actual blogging authors.

If you happen to use this service, I’d be very interested in knowing what your experience is like. I’d also like to know how you have implemented this service into your blog/blogs.

Julien of Webinventif has created a shortcode generator for WordPress. Shortcode is like BBcode in that it provides the ability to use shortcuts to execute a block of code, rather than having to write out the block of code time and time again. Julien has made use of the new API calls within WordPress and with his shortcode generator, makes it easy as 1,2,3 to create your own custom shortcode. Although everything has been written in French, this generator looks promising. If anyone could translate this generator into English, I think there would be many WordPresser’s who would be grateful.

Here is a screencast showcasing the generator in action.

Shortcode generator from WebInventif.fr on Vimeo

Social Media Marketing at SeaWorld They put up a WordPress blog and uploaded raw content to Flickr and YouTube. They then worked the online communities focused on roller coasters to get the word out. This article is based on a video podcast by Shel Israel of FastCompany.tv. On one of the panels at WordCamp, we were asked a question that roughly translated to the same one that Shel is trying to get answers for. “How do you measure a conversation?” SeaWorld simply put together a blog and some pictures and videos using tools that are feely available, to generate buzz and conversation amongst ethusiasts they might have normally overlooked. The question in my mind is not how we measure but what we measure as the outcome of a social media marketing strategy and how we know that it is time to measure a particular set of results.

We had talked about introducing something new and exciting and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Weblog Tools Videos to my readers. It is simply an extension of Weblog Tools Collection and a means for us to have the ability to find, upload, view, peruse and aggregate videos related to WordPress, blogging, tutorials, web design etc.

I am really excited about quite a few of the features of Weblog Tools Videos. In addition to the obvious ability to browse through the latest videos and the most popular ones, readers can add videos from various video upload sites, link to videos published elsewhere, upload their own videos and most importantly, record and upload videos from their computers directly from their webcam. There are plans to allow screencast capture and record and post Skype videos and conferences as well. So go ahead and register and start uploading and linking videos.

The power of Weblog Tools Videos is in its users (which is why I ask you to register). When you upload a WordPress or a blogging video to YouTube, your video is lost in YouTube’s content stream, picked up and washed away in the barrage of new content. On Weblog Tools Videos, your multimedia will be exposed to a highly concentrated and well defined audience looking to view and absorb just the kind of media you are looking to produce. Since most of the other features, including the embedding and the social interaction is the same, you could upload your newly produced videos to Weblog Tools Videos and use it/embed it on your blog and/or social content in almost exactly the same way as before (expect an embed plugin soon). In the process, you will receive the attention of the Weblog Tools Collection audience as well as benefit from the exposure on your own site.

Are you videoing yet?

Six Apart created the Trackback specification as a way to enable bloggers to communicate between each other via a link or acknowledgement.

My question to the reader: in what ways do you use Trackbacks?

Do you still find Trackbacks useful? With the growing Trackback spam, how do you keep up with legitimate bloggers?

Those in the blogosphere will at one time or another hear of a service called Technorati. What is Technorati anyways? Technorati is a search engine for blogs that scours the web to try and tell you what’s being said about what and by whom. In order to tell which blogs are the more popular of the bunch, Technorati uses a ranking system that determines how many people have linked to a blog which is called (Authority) and how many people have added that blog to their Technorati favorites.

BlogStorm has published an interesting post which clearly illustrates the need for a major overhaul of the Technorati ranking algorithm. In this article, BlogStorm describes four different blogs that have a high authority level and at times, a ranking of 1 within the Technorati ranks. Two of the blogs mentioned are authored by two of the biggest names in the WordPress arena, Matt Mullenwegs Photomatt blog and Alex Kings Denver Web Developer blog.

These two blogs have been removed from the Technorati Top 100 list because they didn’t get to that position naturally. By natural, I’m talking about someone linking to a specific post on their blog which would be a natural link. In the case of the Photomatt blog, Matt Mullenweg has the advantage of being linked to by default with any new WordPress installation via the BlogRoll. As for Alex King, he makes some of most popular plugins for WordPress, one of which is called Popularity Contest. According to BlogStorm, Yahoo reports 1.7 million links to the plugin home page.

If you still don’t understand what’s going on here, I’ll make it really simple. When you create a theme for WordPress, you usually add a link to your blog or homepage as a means of giving credit to yourself. If this theme becomes popular, each blog that the theme is installed on will have your link on it. Each blog that has a link to your site on it will bump up your authority ranking on Technorati which leads to the fundamental problem of the authority ranking system.

Their authority ranking is completely inaccurate. According to Technorati,

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

It is important to note that we measure the number of blogs, rather than the number of links. So, if a blog links to your blog many times, it still only count as +1 toward your authority. Of course, new links mean the +1 will last another 180 days.

Also worthy of mentioning is this bit of text;

The #1 ranked blog is the blog with the most other distinct blogs linking to it in the last 6 months. If your blog’s rank is, say 305,316, this indicates that there are 305,315 blog ranks separating your blog from the #1 position.

So if you take into account what authority means, you can clearly understand why Photomatt and Alex King were leading the pack.

At first, I want to call Alex and Matt cheaters for gaming the system to get to the top, but that would be a hasty mistake. The fact of the matter is, the algorithm is wrong and it should not count these sort of links. For bloggers trying to make their way up in the blogosphere, it’s really upsetting that while you bust your butt writing content while obtaining legit links from other bloggers, you will never show up on the radar because other bloggers have developed a popular theme or plugin with their own little credit link attached.

So instead of banning people, what should Technorati do? What would you suggest to Technorati in terms of changing their algorithm so it’s fair for all bloggers? Or do you think that hand editing is the way to go and Technorati should just remove those sites from the Top 100 list if they are receiving non-organic links?

Lets face it, you may think that Technorati is no longer relevant in the blogosphere but you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Their numbers, rankings, and search engine still plays a significant role in the blogosphere. This is why this is a hot button issue and something has to be done about it.

*UPDATE*

It has been brought to my attention by Mark that the links contained in the blogroll on a default installation of WordPress no longer links to individuals. I have confirmed this and have crossed out that line of text within the post. However, it is true that at one point, he and others were linked to by default in the blogroll and that’s the main reason why Matt had such a high authority ranking. As was brought up by (ThatGirlAgain) in the commenting area, Alex King was also a beneficiary of the default blogroll.

Also, “you will never show up on the radar because other bloggers have developed a popular theme or plugin” has been taken out of context. It’s not that I don’t want creators of these wonderful things not to receive credit, I simply don’t want Technorati to allow these links to be part of the Authority equation.

Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers From Original Blogger Jorn Barger: In many of my daily reads, I come upon an article or a link that makes me go Huh?!? “Original Blogger” Jorn Barger gives us his Top 10 Tips for new bloggers. Blogging has evolved a lot since he coined the term and intended it to be no more than a list of interesting links. Still, this post in Wired gives us an insight into what the original Weblog first was intended to be and prompted me to think about how it has evolved over the years. To me a blog is so many things at once that it is difficult to classify and the diversity of the term and the variety of purpose is what makes blogs so interesting to me.

What is your blog to you? What purpose does it serve?

I cherish the ability to communicate and I try to praise and imitate those who have the ability to communicate ideas lucidly and with alacrity. With that intent in mind, here are the Ten Reasons to choose WordPress. Aimed at the non-technical, could-be blogger, I could not have created a more succinct and convincing list myself.

I first found WordPress back when b2 was still alive, and had the WordPress bug bite me the minute I downloaded the zip file. I have not looked back since. What are your reasons for using WordPress?

OneClick Install Firefox Extension: Anirudh had written the OneClick Plugin for WordPress that allows a user to upload and install themes and Plugins to their WordPress blog with one click. But to make his plugin more useful and extensible, he has realsed a Firefox Extension for it as well. The Firefox Extension adds a contextual menu item to your Firefox that will let you directly install plugins and themes from their zip download locations. Just right click on the download link for a plugin for theme and install it on your blog with One Click. Thanks to Digital Inspiration for pointing out the extension.

Thanks to TipMonkies for the idea via Lifehacker

Bold: Alt+SHIFT+b
Italics: Alt+SHIFT+i
Link: Alt+SHIFT+a
Blockquote: Alt+SHIFT+q
Code: Alt+SHIFT+c
Read More: Alt+SHIFT+t
Unordered List (ul): Alt+SHIFT+u
Ordered List (ol): Alt+SHIFT+o
List Item (li): Alt+SHIFT+l

Here are a few of the others that I have featured here in the past:

Advanced Editor: Alt+SHIFT+v
Publish the Post: Alt+SHIFT+p
ins: Alt+SHIFT+s
del: Alt+SHIFT+d
Unquote/outdent: Alt+SHIFT+w
Undo: Alt+SHIFT+u
Redo: Alt+SHIFT+y
Edit HTML: Alt+SHIFT+e
Align Left: Alt+SHIFT+f
Align Center: Alt+SHIFT+c
Align Right: Alt+SHIFT+r

More from the comments:

Headers: Ctrl+[number] to get various header sizes on highlighted text. Thanks Henk

Have any more to share with us that we might have missed?