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This post is not written by me but is reproduced, with permission, from a post in the Weblog Tools Collection News Forums. It was written by Weathervane. Since  Frank has downloaded 530 plus plugins, and most of his thoughts are well expressed and documented, this post might trigger some good conversation. Please chime in.

As a new WordPress blogger, I wanted to customize my installation, so I began a review of the available plugins. My first installation of WordPress was version 2.3.1. Because this version was a significant change, there was a list of v2.3.1-compatible plugins, of which I downloaded and tried most of them.

Since then, I’ve downloaded 530± plugins (this was what’s left after deleting extensions of commercial services), and tried/tested most of them. Five-hundred± is an incredible number and rivals, I think, Photoshop actions or plugins—and there are lots of those. The WordPress plugins community is impressively prolific.

Whenever I’ve had a problem with a plugin, I’ve added a text file to the plugin’s folder. (If it was a “Fatal Error,” “Warning,” SQL error, etc., I’ve pasted the error in the file.) Then I’ve gone to the author’s site and added a comment telling them about the error, including my version information for WordPress, MySQL, PHP, server, and browser. (I’ve frequently heard back from the author with their help.)

About blog comments for plugin pages: It sure is nice to have lots of comments but there are two issues that make them tedious when they’re about a technical issue: trackbacks, praise.

Maybe praise could be responded to with a thanks and deleted; it just clutters the list when you’re also using the comments for technical support. We have to scan through all that before we find answers. If we can find the answer, we won’t waste your time duplicating a question you’ve answered, and being disappointed when you don’t respond. (How ’bout using a rating plugin so visitors can leave behind evidence of their appreciation.)

Those trackbacks/pingbacks are the most unusable gibberish. “[…] blah blah, yada yada […]” makes no sense to the average person. (Developers/engineers talking amongst each other has been an obstacle for computer users since the microcomputer was popularized by the IBM PC and the Apple.) I understand that authors want traffic to their site but it’s just as easy to do by adding your URL to your comment entry—most comment forms have a “your Web site” input.

Your blog should be as creative as you want it to be when it’s blogging but it needs some standardizing when it’s about technical content, like plugins. A lot of plugin authors are already good about how they prepare their downloads. Establishing a standard, however, is mostly for the user. Below is a short list of recommendations for plugin standards—from a user’s point-of-view.

Naming Conventions

1. Do not append your WordPress plugins with “wp-“ or “wp_.” We know it’s for WordPress, it was in your description. Use an evocative name even if it’s only “joe’s-.“ It’s not just you. When ASP was popular, everything (it seemed) was called asp this and asp that (as in asp calendar, asp blog, asp faq, and on and on).
2. Tell us where we’ll find your plugin access. If your plugin options are in the Admin Area under Options, say so.
3. Don’t create an Admin. Area menu item. Your plugin access has a home in Options or Management or within the other existing Admin. Area menu items.
4. Do not add your plugin access in an unexpected Admin. Area menu item, such as a Plugins submenu item.

Operations Convention:

1. It would help us if authors would either agree to include update notice capability in their plugins or let us know if it does not have it. This way we can schedule to occasionally visit their site’s plugin page.
2. It would be a great help if plugins were always updated and tested in the latest version of WordPress. Too often a plugin is said to be compatible with version 2 or higher but activating it in version 2.3 or higher fails.
3. Clearly state any conditions required for your plugin. Some plugins must be in their own folder (even if it’s only a one-page plugin); state if the folder must be named the way you provided it in your download file. Also state whether or not a one-page plugin can be renamed.
4. Clearly state—in user language—what we need to do to get your plugin result. Please don’t say, “Place the if (function_exists(’timeofdeath’)) {timeofdeath(); } function on your page.” We’re not savvy enough to know that what you actually want us to put in the page is <?php if (function_exists(’timeofdeath’)) {timeofdeath(); } ?>.
   And let us know where in our template to insert your function. An instruction such as, “Once it’s activated in WordPress, you can call it from your WordPress template using the yada_yada() function” is unhelpful to the untutored.
5. If the operation of a plugin is theme-dependant, how will we know that? There seem to be a lot of questions (usually as comments in the plugin’s page) whose answer relates to the blogger’s theme. Can the author can help us identify what needs to be in our theme/template for the plugin to work?
6. I’ve begun to learn enough PHP to appreciate the value of “if (function_exists ….” That helps to gracefully fail the function if something’s happened to the function.
7. If your plugin requires a Key or API or database file (for your IP-related plugin), as you know the URL to get one could you include the URL? We can go hunting around, say Google, until we find the Google Map API but it would be thoughtful to include that URL.

Structural Conventions:

1. Have a unified file set for your plugin. You may have instructions at your plugin page but including a readme file and a link file in your download helps.
2. The structure of the download file really helps us identify the nature of your plugin files and how to install them:
   * If your plugin is only one file then put it in a subfolder called “plugins.” Everything else should be in the root folder. When your plugin download is uncompressed we’d have a folder with your readme, a URL shortcut, and any screen capture files. Within this folder is a second folder called /plugins containing your plugin file. * If your plugin has multiple files, then instead of /plugins, your folder would have an expressive name. It would help if the name of the subfolder was the same as the name we’re going to see listed in the Admin Area Plugins list.

   * Now for the biggie: Some plugins have files that go into multiple folders (/plugins, with others going elsewhere, like /wp-admin). The plugin could uncompress to a folder called /installation with two folders in it: /wp-admin and /wp-includes/plugins, containing their respective files—or something like that. With this structure I only have to drop the folders in /installation into my WordPress folder and it’s done.

3. It would help us users if readme files contained a standard set of topics:

• Plugin name (as we’ll see it in the Plugins listing)
• Plugin version
• Plugin URL
• Demo URL(s)
• Author
• Author’s URL
• Author’s email or contact page URL
• WP Version compatibility
• System requirement(s)
• Description
• Features
• Release notes (what you’ve changed since the last version)
• Screen capture description(s) (if you included captures)
• Installation instructions (including structural requirements, if any)
• Configuration options (including where to find the option/management form(s)
• Usage (function parameters, with output examples if practical)
• Donation URL (if you’ve got one)

If these topics are clearly written, there’s no need for a FAQ.

Nice Gestures

1. User testing. In business, there’s User Requirements Testing (URT). The people who commissioned the work test the application to ensure it meets the application flow they described in their requirements. There is another testing format that seems to have disappeared from the corporation, let’s call it Real Time Testing (RTT). I wrote about my experience with a plugin I really liked, Thinking It Through: The DG Review Site Plugin. I wish the author had given the plugin to a non-coder, blogger friend to try-out. The plugin’s a real nice idea but ….
2. If you include images that you made using software that stores it’s originals in a specific format—like Photoshop, Illustrator—include them so we can customize them for our site design.
3. We should maintain a list of existing plugin names, so that authors won’t duplicate plugin names. Microsoft did this a long time ago for various Windows objects/components. It cuts-out confusion.
4. Someday, it would be nice if the WordPress would focus on plugins. Say, something that assists in installing them. A Manage or Options submenu, with a browse button to select the file or the folder to be added to /plugins. It would require some thinking but the WordPress people are pretty good thinkers.
5. You should be using your plugin on your site, if for no other reason than to show us it works—it gives us courage. If your plugin page says, There’s an example of my plugin running in my sidebar, then have it running there. Occasionally check your plugin page to see that everything is up-to-date and correct.

Admittedly, this must seem ungrateful of me. Authors took the time to code, freely offered their work, and I’m suggesting a little more work. I think some standards would cut-down blogger frustration, requests for help, and give us all more time for blogging (or coding).

The science of blog reading: Nick Carr gives us an executive summary of an article by a team from CMU (and Nielsen) and he explains their thesis with the following foreword: The problem of detecting contaminants in a public water system is analogous to the problem of figuring out what’s going on in the blogosphere. Any article that claims that the blogosphere is essentially a sewer, is worth the read. I whole heartedly disagree with the list of 100 blogs that “everyone should read” but the concept is amusing and the principles behind their claims might have some merits. But then again I disagree with any and all such lists because all blogs and their readers do not have the same interest in all subject matters. Also as an astute commenter on that post points out, some of the blogs on that list aren’t even updated anymore and thus their list should have been better researched or at least chronologically updated before publication. Some researchers (I have been guilty of this myself when I wrote my thesis) concentrate on the numbers so completely that they tend to forget the bigger picture and consequently lose some credibility in their folly. If you are interested in social behavior surrounding blogging, the article is called Cost-Effective Outbreak Detection in Networks.

More appropriately, does Techmeme Leaderboard threaten Technorati’s Pop Blogs? Technorati’s descension from their once heralded position has not been lost on me. I think this might be the death knell but I do not understand the point behind the other observations. In reading through the commentary, it seems that everyone agrees that Technorati is on the chopping block but the people that were on Technorati’s Pop list and not on the Techmeme Leaderboard have a more negative take on the new product.

The epitaphs levelled at Technorati range from “Attacking Technorati’s Stronghold” to the new bandwagon of “Techmeme list heralds the death of blogging“. Duncan claims that taken in context, this means that “ … New verticals (are) on the way“. You can follow the rest of the conversation on Techmeme.
The primary theme of all this diatribe is that multiple author blogs have better coverage, content and attention and that old media such as newspapers and magazines dominate the new list. If a blog rises to the level of content assimilation and dissemination as TechCrunch or ReadWrite Web, it will become more than what a single person can handle. I would expect them to have more than one person help source, gather and pontificate on the information since otherwise they would lose their edge. Its a no brainer. I would assume that highly successful single person blogs also have back end support people who are not publishing articles directly. The more (useful) people you have, the more ground you can cover and the less thin you spread your quality time and the better your blog reads to your audience. If your blog is about a singular purpose and much of the content is self motivated, you might be in a better position to run single handedly but then you do not list on “hot news” lists such as the Techmeme Leaderboard. I am not sure this emergent conversation is saying anything that we did not already know. If you have a team of seasoned publishing professionals, you will have more content, better content and more eyeballs than if you do it yourself. However, how does this reduce the power or the propensity of single person blogs? We can beat this horse till the cows come home and sniff the glue but remember the long tail? (too many idioms in one sentence, I know)

Oh, and since I have made the trademark mistake myself in the past, I would like to point out that it is Techmeme and not TechMeme, however 2.0 the second version looks.

11 Jobs: I was writing an article/paper on social media and blogger jobs and by some unknown quirk of fate, I decided to search Monster for jobs with the word “blogger” in the title. It returned 11 jobs (!?!!?). The number of results left me dumbfounded. Is corporate America really that naiive? Is blogging still a fad that cool CEOs just happen to do when they feel like berating their closest competitor? Is blogging a niche that only matters if you happen to be in an industry that directly benefits from it? Are we, as a community of bloggers, doing enough to tell the corporate world that blogging is important, useful and finally a very powerful and personal means of communicating directly with your customers? I believe that much of corporate America still thinks that blogging and bloggers provide a slight competitive advantage and nothing more. There are some people making an independant (spelled entrepreneurial) living on blogging but I think the benefits are lost in translation.

I break because I know that there are many important blogs in the blogosphere. Some of these get the requisite amount of interest and attention that they deserve from their corporate beneficiaries. However, when will it become important to recruit talented folks that can help those important blogs become that much better or start a new blog to communicate real intent and direction to their customers? When will corporate America realize that a good blogger is just as much of a catch as a good programmer or a fine marketing exec?

Blogging is mainstream, folks. Wake up and smell the eyeballs and opinions. Your company will be that much better for it.

How to Design Your Own Minimalist Wordpress Theme: Here’s a simple trick* for creating your very own minimalist Wordpress themes, as discussed endlessly by Diggers. First, download and install your chosen theme from any of the various Wordpress theme sites. Next, accidentally on purpose delete the themes image folder. View your blog with all of the theme’s original images missing. Interesting thought.

I love bloggers, they are very good people. But even the most kind hearted and best intentioned bloggers sometimes either misinterpret or misread information and the piece ends up very different from where it started its life. This somewhat macabre movement of information from one person to other with slight mutilations is very interesting to me. All of us have studied or read about it in one form or fashion.

Now here is the idea for the meme: Read through the following news paragraph and recreate a post on your blog from memory if you will. Encourage your readers to do the same with a link back to your post.

Now, imagine throwing video into that mix. By the time I got the headphones on and the video downloaded, I’d be on to designing some new feature (or, more likely, answering more email). I’d only get to hear three words at a time, which just doesn’t seem very satisfying. I can sometimes have podcasts on the in the background, and those are easy to download and listen to at the gym. (I have a working shuffle! I can once again listen to things while I work out! And I can still do email at the same time.) But videos? I realize this is my own personal shortcoming, my short attention span that accelerates my multitasking tendencies, but why can’t all videos come with transcripts, like closed captioning for those of us with attention deficits? (I realize also this wouldn’t work so well with videos of cute jumping cats.)

I would love to read the third (or fourth and so on) reiteration of this paragraph.

Notwithstanding the results of this experiment, these human failings are just the reason us bloggers (and any media outlet for that matter) should pay very close attention to the originator of a thought or discussion and read the language and details quite closely before jumping to conclusions. We should be even more careful in reiterating these thoughts in our own words and make sure we link to the originator so their viewpoint is preserved and readers have the option of checking with them.

When the news or topic is hot, it is easy to fall into the trap of jumping on the bandwagon (first to market is a slippery slope, remember webvan?) but I think we owe it to ourselves and our readers to look closely.

Thanks to posts here on WLTC and around the blogosphere, the topic of “sponsored themes” is at the top of everyone’s minds. I thought this would be a good time to share my thoughts on the ramifications of sponsored themes, and what it means for our community.

For those who are new to the topic, in the past yew years a market has developed around advertisers that pay money to websites to have plain-text links back to their properties so they can rank better in search engines like Google for the text in those links. At some point the people gaming Google realized instead of buying links from dozens of individual sites, they could pay theme authors to bundle their links with their download and get hundreds or thousands of sites with their link for a small fraction of the cost. This is politely referred to as “theme sponsorship.”

Sometimes theme authors do this without telling their users it’s a sponsored theme before download, or use CSS or PHP tricks to hide the links or other ads in the template so most people will either never notice or not know how to remove the ads. I’m not going to talk about these folks, because they’re obviously unethical and should be banned in every way possible.

However there is another class of themes that disclose up front they’re sponsored, and generally appear on the up and up — what about those? I think there are three main issues we need to keep in mind:

1. Google penalizes sites that promote things Google considers spam. Because of the trend of paid links, even on respected sites, Google has publicly stated that they have taken measures to diminish the effect of these links by lessening the value of where they’re coming from. I don’t claim to know their internal rankings, but I believe this is related in some way to Trustrank — if you link to untrustworthy places your Trustrank goes down. (Just like if you kept recommending crappy movies to your friends they’d stop taking your advice.) I’d be the last to recommend any of us should tailor what we do to please Google or any other search engine, but at least on my blog it accounts for 60% or more of my traffic, so I’d rather stay on their good side. Once someone understands the ramifications they are welcome to make a link ad decision for their own site, but it bothers me when theme authors are making the decision for others.
2. Many users of WordPress probably don’t understand the above point or are not able to properly modify their templates to remove the bundled ad if they did. In fact, the economics of theme “sponsorship” depends on most site owners not touching the link. When advertising or something else unwanted is bundled with a desktop application and relies on most users not removing it we have a word for it — adware. (Sometimes malware.) It’s not illegal, and it’s certainly one way for software authors to get paid for their work, but it’s ultimately disrespectful toward the user and reputable download directories like Download.com ban it.
3. Finally many of these themes try to legally disallow you from removing the advertising link by claiming it’s part of the Creative Commons attribution to leave it. This is almost funny, because these themes are on shaky legal ground themselves. WordPress is Free, meaning you’re free to do pretty much anything you like with it. It’s under a license that encourages user freedom called the GPL, which says if you distribute something that links internal functions and data structures of a GPL program (like themes do with WordPress) that also needs to be Free. At best, theme authors claiming you can’t remove the link are ignoring or ignorant of the license issues, at worst they’re actively exploiting the work of thousands of volunteers that have poured their blood, sweat, and tears into WordPress.

There are other issues, such as a proclivity of some ad-bundled theme designers to value quantity over quality, but I don’t think those are as important.

Themes with bundled and embedded advertising will always exist, and it’s perfectly within the rights of the GPL for people to create them and even sell them. I also bear no ill-will toward theme authors who’ve succumbed to the attraction of the money, I disagree with their decision but people make mistakes and it’s not a personal thing. However as a community we should decide whether the slippery slope of bundled advertising is a behaviour we want to encourage and promote on our official resources such as WordPress.org and the Codex, and even on community hubs like Weblog Tools Collection.

I’ve seen some designers claim if we discourage bundled advertising with themes we’re taking away their livelihood and saying they should work for free. (Conveniently ignoring the fact that WordPress was built “for free.”) However just because you can make money from something doesn’t mean you should. Something doesn’t have to be illegal for it to be wrong. There are more important things in life. At every conference I go to I meet dozens of people who make their living with WordPress and manage to do so in a way that doesn’t exploit users or cross ethical lines, so I find it hard to believe that the lack of sponsored themes will hurt the WordPress ecosystem. Authors could also monetize their own sites with ads, instead of putting them on yours.

Finally, no one is forcing these people to make themes. In fact I would posit that it’s better not to release anything at all than to release a sponsored theme. Our design and theme community thrived before themes with embedded ads came along, and it will continue to thrive long after their gone. Embedding ads in themes is disrespectful to users, and creates confusion and uncertainty about which themes people can trust.

Two years ago I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life when I made a decision to accept a “sponsorship” on WordPress.org without considering the ramifications it would have for its users, our community, and the web as a whole. It pains me to see others going down a similar path. We should think about how these people are trying to exploit the WordPress community and good name instead of looking the other way because they’re paying.

Once you’ve had time to mull over the social and ethical issues of ad-bundled themes, I encourage you to vote on this WordPress Idea to remove sponsored themes from WordPress.org, rating it 5 if you agree and 1 if you don’t. Thanks for your time, and happy blogging.

My primary responsibility out here at Weblog Tools Collection is to keep a close eye on WordPress plugin and theme releases.

One of the places I check regularly for theme releases is the WordPress Theme Viewer. I also keep track of updates via Google Alerts and more importantly our News section.

I’ve lost track of the number of themes that I have downloaded, read about and previewed.

While doing this, I have observed several different methods of promotion and distribution of themes by their authors; some highly effective and some so bad that I have had no option but to ignore the release.

This WordPress Codex page has an indepth explanation on starting off with themes for public release to promoting them and is a recommended read.

In this post I hope to address a few points that every theme author should consider when releasing a public theme.

The Theme Page

What use is a theme if nobody knows where to get it from? One of the most important elements in marketing your theme is a static page devoted to it.

I’ve seen a lot of theme authors have a single page which will list all their themes. It’s good if you have a single, but what if you release two, or maybe five or maybe fifty?

Do you want your visitor to download your theme quickly or search through the list to find it?

One practice I follow is to make a seperate page for each theme and plugin I create.

Contents of a Theme page

The theme page could contain the following:

1. Short description of the theme
2. Features
3. Screenshot or a Link to a live preview (I prefer the latter)
4. Download Link
5. Changelog
6. Known Bugs
7. Things you can do with the theme. This should preferably be a list of links to different posts that explain in detail
8. Support Information. Make sure you specify how a theme user should contact you if you are offering support. If you are not, make this clear.

How a theme page helps

For one, it provides a quick and easy way for people to link to your theme, find the theme etc.
It also works well with search engines as it normally becomes the top result if someone is searching for your theme.

Additionally, the page is timeless, unlike posts, especially if you have a permalink structure with the date in it.

Individual Posts

As I mentioned above, the theme should be on a static page. However, you should use individual posts to market the theme.

Posts should be used for theme releases and updates. It should also be used to highlight things you can do with the theme, e.g. if your theme has a custom header image support, then a post explaining how to change the header will be in order.

Posts also appear in your feeds by default and if someone is subscribed, he/she will be able to keep track of your development.

Effectively using the WordPress Theme Viewer

The Theme Viewer should be the first place where you should be getting your theme listed. It’s one place many people, including us at WLTC, track new themes.

However, this should not be your only place. The theme page belongs to your blog, not to some other site.

Another point I noticed with the theme viewer is that though you get a link back to your site, you don’t have a link to your theme page. However, they do allow you HTML in the post.

When writing a description, include the name of your theme and link that to the theme page you created. Also, a good detailed description with features works well, especially for those reading via RSS where categories are not visible.

Make the contents of your theme clear

I’ve recently been reading about the controversy surrounding sponsored links in a theme. While some authors are for this, others are against.
Hence, if you are including paid links into the footer, make it clear to those who are downloading that these are present. Also make it clear if you need them to be there, because if you have an open license, the user is free to modify your theme and remove these links.

While you don’t have to account for each and every file in your theme folder, it helps if you have an explanation for a few critical ones. e.g. if you have an Archives template, let your visitor know.

Summary

To sum up:

• Create a page for your theme
• Use individual posts for theme updates and other information related to your theme
• Use the Theme Viewer effectively
• Make the contents of your theme clear

Do you have any other tips that you would like to share?
If you are a theme author, what have you done to effectively spread the word about your theme. Have you posted your theme in our News forum?

After much deliberation and tallying, here are the winners of the Blogging Essay Competition from Weblogtoolscollection.com

First Prize of $150 goes to The Private Intellectual for the essay Re-thinking Weblog Advertising.

Second Prize of $50 goes to Bes Zain for the essay Importance of Transparency in Blogging

An honorable mention goes to Ronald Huereca for the essay Things you should avoid blogging about for attracting the most attention in the competition. His entry was viewed well over 5000 times.

Congratulations to the winners.  All the entries were superb. I will email the winners seperately. Thanks to everyone for participating and for helping to rate the essays.

This is the Twenty Fifth entry in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Bes Zain

Online users prefer sticking around sites which are written by people with clear intentions. Online users also like it when blog authors express things transparently. Being transparent on the web is vital for a site to succeed. When you are open to your users about yourself and your site, you will gain more trust from people visiting your site compared to if you made yourself and your site anonymous. You must practise and master the art of transparency in some area of your choice on your site if you want your site and your blogging to succeed.

What does practicing transparency mean?

Being transparent on the web is the same as being transparent regarding certain things with people in real life. Tony Hung on Problogger says that transparency “means that no matter what the blog is about, the readers know what they’re getting into.” Mentioning your personal details on the web is still considered a taboo by most people. While personal information should be kept private in many cases, giving users extra information that lets them know who they are indirectly interacting with is an excellent step towards establishing your credibility and making your blog better. Here I present to you some explanation of transparency by showing you how a company and an individual deal with transparency through a site and a blog respectively, and how I try to deal with transparency through different ways.

How a company website can show transparency

Any site on the internet can use the power of transparency to gain loyalty and trust. Whatever a site maybe about, the more information it gives to readers about the nature of the content offered, the better. Take Agloco as an example. It is run by the same founders who ran AllAdvantage. AllAdvantage became popular in 1999 because it paid online users to view ads. It closed in 2001 because of not earning enough money. Agloco explains this on its new site with details about the past and how the new model is more stable. This comparison is a form of transparency, where a company mentions the bad things that happened before and explains the current plans in order to regain any broken trust from previous users. This way, users can know about the risks involved when using such a service. Simply visit http://www.Agloco.com directly.

How individuals can practise transparency on blogs

In addition to content, it is sometimes important to make the online personality of an author transparent. When people read great content, they wonder about the author. The author, whether a single person or a company, becomes associated with the content in the minds of the readers. If users can trust the author, they will try to read more things written by that author. Darren Rowse is an example of presenting yourself transparently. The ProBlogger author talks about how much he earns from different advertising mediums and also about his personal life from time to time on his website. Users see Darren as someone who is willing to share something personal from his life which results in users associating his site with quality content and Darren himself with credibility. Because of this, Darren is trusted since users know who and what they are dealing with when they visit his blog.

John Chow recently launched a linkback campaign where a MiniTV USB was offered as a prize along with a linkback to anyone writing a review of his site. The review could be either good or back, and John explained in his post how this would benefit both his site and the site of the reviewer. This is transparency, where the users know exactly what the blogger aims to gain from the blog and what the blogger aims to give back to the users via the blog. The contest is now over at JohnChow.com and John is still offering linkbacks, so I thought of using this as an opportunity to use his site as an example of transparency on blogs and as a small review also.

My attempt at transparency

When you are doing something via your site that the users may not be aware of, it is best to explain things that may not be obvious. Take the Amazon links on my site as an example. Almost all of my Amazon.com links [except the one mentioned in this paragraph] have a referral id in them which allows me to earn referral commission from Amazon purchases by readers like you. This is stated in my About page also. Take this very post as a second example for this. I stated clearly earlier in this post how one of the links contained a referral id for Agloco while the other did not, and I did that on purpose to convey this example. Similarly, stating my intentions behind reviewing John Chow’s site while using it as an example for my post at the same time is my attempt at making this very post as much transparent as possible.

Just like in real life, when people know more details about a person online, they tend to interact with that person more comfortably. I have noticed on my site that people contact me more when they know something about my site or myself compared to when they do not know anything about me or my site. Being anonymous is nice, but just like in real life, you must open up some part of yourself, directly or indirectly, or else risk alienating yourself from the world. Am I good at being transparent? No. I am still learning everyday on how to be more transparent and how to open up some parts of my personal life for the benefit of my site readers, and how to keep certain parts only to myself as I do in real life.

My conclusion : be transparent about relevant things

You do not have to be completely transparent on your site about everything related to you, specially when some things are not related to your site. While a reader may be interested in knowing who a site owner is, they will not be expecting to know everything there is to know about that site owner. Be transparent and be mysterious. Refrain from mentioning unnecessary details. Stick to the point and convey the point so well that the users know everything that is to know about the nature your site and the message conveyed through it.

Regardless of the nature of your site, users will trust you if they notice that you are willing to share something interesting with them. The more open you are about relevant things, the more trust you will get from your users. Transparency online is a good thing. The more transparent you are about yourself and your intentions on the web, the more respect and loyalty you will gain from your fellow blog visitors.

This is the Twenty Fourth entry in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Sreejith Ramakrishnan

When I refer to this statement I’m talking about the westernised version of karma other than the traditional Indian word. Here, karma refers to the “do good things and get good things” approach. Before starting off on this topic, read through the lines which follow, and feel the difference between an idealised world and the real world. So, here goes a little recap about blogging.Many of you may feel that this is just article about the evolution of blogging. But, the point is that, reading this would help you conceive the theory.

Blogging evolved as a medium or platform for expressing opinions and circulating news. Within a short period of time, blogging has achieved “world domination” through it’s simplicity and power. Anyone, from teenagers to professionals, can be a journalist. They can publish and popularise their views, in their small corner of the blogosphere. This led to immense changes in the whole “feel” of the internet. Blogs became more and more common and it increased exponentially.

Search engines whetted their appetite on the rich content from blogs and blogs became “a search engine’s best friend”. But trust me, this is a much idealised description of what is going on. People, who knew the power of blogs and the advantage it had, over traditional websites, began to switch to blogs and started practising a lot of “tricks” to get attention. These tricks, eventually, became “parts” of blogging success.

Us bloggers started to manipulate the blogosphere. We started to steal content through RSS syndicated feeds and popularised it using bad SEO. We blended Ads with the page layout to rip off ignorant visitors. We, literally, sold our own views, through article directories.

But why ? Why should we be cheating, when we are already given equal possibilities ? Don’t you think we are competing on unfair grounds ? Well, we are. Some may think: “Dude, that’s the way it is. How am I supposed to make a difference?”. But, the fact is that, we can make a difference !! How ? By “blogging for karma”. You may ask: “Hey, you new age hippie freak, how are you supposed to do that ?

It’s easy. Do good things and get good things. That’s all. So, how to do good things ? Well, writing good articles which would help a lot of people from some kind of problem is a good thing. Just think of it like this : You’re helping out a lot of people who are in need of help. All for free !! So, you’re doing a big favour. And what do you get in return ? That’s the best part !!

When you blog for those of people, you’re actually helping them a lot of hours of struggling. So, when you write good content, obviously, people like it and you get “good karma”. Now, this “good karma” is going to be really helpful in the long run. When people like your content, they come for more and more of it. Thus, increasing your traffic.

Gradually, they become loyal to you. They will start trusting and respecting your opinions. They will recommend your blog to other people so that more people come to your site and feast on your content, thus leaving more good karma. And, as long as you keep doing this, you get more karma and this my friend, goes on and on !! And many a times, people may think your content is worth some bucks and may leave you some donation, that you actually deserve.

Gradually, search engines will also start trusting you, because of the traffic patterns to your site, and you will get ranked higher in SERP (Search Engine Rank Pages). After a long time, you evolve to become an “authority” in your topic, all because people trust you. And, the other “big guys” out there will say : “Hmm…who’s this new kid in town ?”. And HURRAY, you’re in their club !! You’re a blogging celebrity !!

But remember, all this comes from just one little concept: “Blogging is karma”. Though it may take a lot of time and effort to practise it, it is still worth it. Of course, karma isn’t the only road to success. But, this concept leaves long time results which can stretch to a lifetime of blogging success.

This is the Twenty Third in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Manuel Amador

Offending your audience for fun and profit: how to say controversial things

Do you blog? Then offending your audience should be the least of your concerns. And here’s why.

I’m going to begin this article with a single thought: I’d rather you insult me than have you be dishonest with me.

And here’s why.

Lies and deceit in pretty words

Let me lift a couple of words from one of Paul Graham’s writings:

Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. “Blasphemy”, “sacrilege”, and “heresy” were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times “indecent”, “improper”, and “unamerican” have been. By now these labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they’re mostly used ironically. But in their time, they had real force.

We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the all-purpose “inappropriate” to the dreaded “divisive.” In any period, it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that’s a straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as “divisive” or “racially insensitive” instead of arguing that it’s false, we should start paying attention.

The message in this? Say what you mean. Impopular speech is still valid speech.

Political correctness: censorship in disguise

What’s the difference between political correctness and honesty? One lets people offend with fancy words in disguise. The other means “honesty first, respect and consideration second”.

Which one would you rather apply? If you said “political correctness” to yourself, let me ask you one thing: do you think honest discourse is less valuable than popular discourse? I beg to differ. If you are a moron, and I call you a moron, it’s the truth, no matter how unpopular. If you’re a moron, and I say “but, well, you’ve got your own opinion, and we’re both right”, then I’m a bigger moron for being politically correct and not telling the truth. Political correctness is just a way to make discourse “less offensive” and less truthful.

Say what you mean; use transparent, contundent, honest words. For example: have you heard the word “handicapable” being used? That’s a great example of political correctness, because:

1. Can someone honestly think people with hindrances are “more handy and capable” than people without them? The word “handicapable” certainly suggests a falsehood.
2. The fact that handicapped people are, well, handicapped, doesn’t mean they are worth less than a non-handicapped person. Fortunately, we live in a society where everyone has the same rights and the same intrinsic value is bestowed upon all of us.

So, in this particular example, just because it’s “hip” to call handicapped people “handicapable”, doesn’t mean it’s an honest word. If you ask me, equating self-worth with capabilities is offensive to handicapped people. Using “handicapable” reeks of political correctness, a “feel-good” word that conveys a falsehood in disguise.

Don’t just stay there, make a fuss about it!

In short: if you want to raise concerns about something in your blog, then don’t hold back. Don’t try to cater for people with thin skin. Odds are, they’ll be the ones marketing your writings.

Do yourself a favor: and attempt your best to deliver your ideas them with the most punch and the greatest veracity. Use your courage to say things. And, for the love of all things dear: don’t shut up!

Leave the “politically correct” and “slanderously afraid” angle to newspaper journalists; after all, almost no one reads them anymore.

And for the love of all things dear to you, please don’t shut up.

“But think of the children!”

You may think that, by practicing self-censorship, you’re serving your audience; nothing could be further from the truth: politeness and political correctness usually do your readers a disservice.

Always prefer plain facts and truth, even if they’re inconvenient. Cherish and uphold your own values in the face of defiance. In other words: don’t lie, and don’t “dress up” stuff. Incongruence in discourse has a way of showing.

If I have learnt anything in years of blogging, is that offended audiences are the most rabid readers and spreaders of your word. They may whine and complain all you like, but they sure count as page views.

Advertisers and sponsors count as readers

The same philosophy must apply to your sponsors and advertisers: it’s your duty to treat them straight to the truth, no matter how inconvenient it may sound. Doing the opposite is called dishonesty, and people pick up on that.

Be dishonest about your stakeholders and, sooner or later, your readers will shove your writings into the big archive (also known as the recycle bin of oblivion).

Treat people like they deserve - no more, no less

In short: don’t be afraid to alienate your readers - you may end up censoring yourself, and that’s not good for neither your readers nor you. Wanna hurl a couple of “bad” words at me? Do so, but don’t lie to me. Heck, you should apply this philosophy to your entire life! A couple fistfights never killed anyone.

In the end, a couple roughed feathers won’t harm anyone, and they could benefit you. Remember: if you tip-toe around your readers, they’ll head somewhere else.

Now I’ll leave you with a reading assignment - two must-reads that’ll let you learn more about yourself in the world:

1. What you can’t say, by Paul Graham
2. Re: What you can’t say, by himself again

This is the Twenty Second entrant in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Jessica Beck

Blog Juggling: Keeping All Your Online Identities In The Air at Once

These days it isn’t unusual for people to have several online aliases. There’s the personal persona, hanging out on MySpace and YouTube; there’s the work persona, reading news feeds and doing online research; and there’s often a third, leisure persona, frequenting specialized bulletin boards and sites for hobbies like crafting, D&D or politics. And, of course, it wouldn’t be Web 2.0 if each of those aliases didn’t have its own blog.

As someone who manages several distinctly different blogs, I feel for people taking on the challenge of multiple online identities. The need for them, however, is undeniable. Here are some ways to make it all work (and crank up your productivity in the bargain).

Compartmentalize

The first step in managing multiple identities is breaking them down into bite-sized chunks. If you’re dealing with the line between business and personal, that may be an easy task. But what if your personal and leisure identities overlap? How do you categorize, for example, your love of a site like Dogster - is that personal, or is it leisure? Do you even need a leisure persona? The easiest way to figure that out is to look at your Dogster identity as though you were a stranger. Would you want the random Dogster aficionado to Google the alias in your profile and see, for example, your personal MySpace page or your Flickr photostream? If the answer is yes - if you’re on Dogster to invite other dog-lovers into your life, or if your life is already all dogs, all the time - then you probably don’t need a leisure persona. But if you’d rather your personal life and your hobbies remained at least superficially separate, you’d do well to use a distinct identity for each one.

Social Bookmarking: Mark ‘Em All, Let the Internet Sort ‘Em Out

If you’re going to use any sort of blogroll on your sites (and who doesn’t, these days?), you’ll want an easy way to sort the different links to correspond with your different identities. One of the easiest ways to do that is by using a social bookmarking service like Ma.gnolia or Del.icio.us. Just make sure you tag religiously and tag well, and you’re good to go. Truly compartmentalized people like me may even use different accounts for personal vs. business links, but within each account I use tags to separate, for example, my parenting links from my catch-all check-out-this-page links.

Browse in Multiples

One you’ve figured out how to define your categories and started the process of separating the personal from the professional, it’s time to put your browsers to work for you.

Only using one browser? That’s so last year. The easiest way to segregate one identity from another is to use different browsers for each. That way you can visit the same sites and collect different cookies. That’s especially useful for internet searches and news portals, but is also good for managing sites like Flickr, which requires a separate login for each alias. Think about it like this: if you want to comment on a friend’s photo, do you want to use your business login? I’m too impatient to log in and log out each time I visit a site; with separate browsers, I can stay logged in all the time, even if I use overlapping services. It’s also good for web forms and blog comments, for the same reason. You can have each browser remember a different address or e-mail - home and work, say - so you don’t have to re-type it every time.

Also, with separate browsers, you get separate bookmarks. For me, this is key; I don’t like having to search through lots of different folders to find the bookmark I’m looking for. Knowing that all my business links are in Firefox (for example) saves me a lot of time. I can set up each browser to open a specific set of bookmarks for me each time I log in, and I can easily manage the follow-up on sites I want to write about.

Yes, I said write. This is an article about blogging, remember? All of these things lead to this next thing: managing your blogs.

One Blog Per Person(a)

I’ve got a lot of blogs. A business blog, a mommy blog, and a fledgling copywriting blog, to name a few. At any given time, I have between ten and twenty tabs open in each of my browsers - stories I want to read or write about, services I want to check out, links I want to bookmark, reference material and entertainment. How do I keep track of it all?

Since I’ve assigned my personas different browsers, the first big chunk of work is done for me. I know at a glance that all the tabs I have open in Firefox are related either to writing (for Buzzverb) or design (for What Could Be) while the tabs in Flock are related to parenting, kids, or my new obsession with crafting. This makes it easy to focus my attention on one thing or the other, which in turn means I won’t be derailed in the middle of writing an article about web design by an amusing parenting anecdote. More importantly, it means I won’t lose an important link by overloading my brain with too many disparate subjects.

Since I use Flock, posting to my Cranky Mama blog is easy as pie; I just fire up Flock’s integrated blogging client and go to town. Since my mommy blog is pretty informal and doesn’t require a lot of editing (or, to be honest, a lot of research), I don’t miss the more advanced features of a robust desktop client.

For my business blogs, though, I want something with a few more options. I use MarsEdit, although there are dozens of options that are equally useful. Since all my links are open in Firefox, it’s easy to reference articles and sites, and if I want to find something I looked at a few days ago, my history is relevant to my business persona.

Don’t Forget That There Is Only One of You

Despite all this talk of multiple identities, you’re still only one person. Don’t expect that you’ll be able to maintain daily blogs for each of your personas unless you’ve got a truly ridiculous amount of time to set aside for blogging.

Decide ahead of time which blog you want to devote the most attention to, and make that your priority. Here are some ideas for managing all that writing:

• Set deadlines for yourself so that you don’t leave any of your blogs hanging. If you’re particularly anal-retentive like me, you may want to use a calendaring service to remind you which days you plan to publish to which blog. Backpack, for example, will send an e-mail each week to remind me to post an article to What Could Be. I’m not suggesting that a mild case of OCD is a good thing; I’m just saying you might as well put it to work for you. Am I right?
• Compose entries ahead of time whenever possible; this makes it easy to publish something when your creative energies have run out.
• Don’t underestimate the power of linking. On days when you just can’t come up with anything to say, put those open tabs to work for you. Tell the world what you’re reading about. The world will thank you, if by thank you you mean take a look and collectively shrug. (A caveat: make at least a token effort to describe your recommendations using your own words. If you just post a list of links, the other kids on the internet will point at you and laugh.)

Bring it All Together

Now that you’ve got everything all neatly separated, how do you bring together all your myriad online identities? My suggestion is an identity management service like ClaimID or an aggregator like Jaiku. ClaimID lets you list every single little bit of information associated with your name and compile the links in one page; you can set privacy levels for each item and arrange by importance (or however else you want). Jaiku lets you enter the RSS feeds for all your many blogs, photo streams, or whatever, and uses all that to create a page which has a constantly-updating, personalized information feed, showing you at a glance where you’ve been putting your energy. (And no, if you’re wondering. I get nothing for making these recommendations. Just the inner satisfaction of making good links, and really, isn’t that what linking is about?)

Go. Blog.

Now put all these suggestions to work for you. You’ve got the tools. You’ve got the interests. Give it a whirl and see if you can juggle more than one identity. In fact, nothing is stopping you from starting a new blog right now. Go ahead! I’ll wait.

This is the Twenty First entrant in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Brad Finn

I am not a serious guy. Well, that’s not entirely true.

Damn it, I’ve begun by lying to you. I am off to a bad start. Please let me try again.

I can be a serious guy when it comes to my job or paying my mortgage or when I am in court defending myself against a totally trumped up charge of statutory rape (hey, she showed me her driver’s license, how was I supposed to know it was a fake?)

But for the most part, the writing I do for my blog is not serious. My focus is humor. Now, by humor I don’t mean knock-knock jokes or where to find the best deals on joy buzzers, although joy buzzers are certainly fun. Can we all agree on that?

My blogging is an extension of my sarcastic, angst-ridden, and absurd take on life and that is exactly my intention. I want it to be light, because that is where the bulk of my writing ability lies. I am not going to be the guy writing an in-depth post about global warming, supply-side economics, the vanishing rain forest, or who is most likely to be President in two years. Trust me; I don’t understand any of that. I am not going to be running down to the patent office any time soon saying “Hey, look what I invented; give me a number on this thing!”

I can’t do that. I’m just not wired that way. And for the most part I am not really interested in reading about those things either, unless perhaps there is a little humor thrown in to help make it go down a little bit easier.

My main point is this: humor is the great common denominator. Everyone likes to laugh and be entertained, or at least they like to chuckle. Even Dick Cheney chuckles for God’s sake. Sure, he does it in a way that makes you nearly wet your pants in terror, but still…

You don’t have to be a jolly goofball like me, but a light humorous touch really does mean so much. It can take the edge off, keep someone’s interest piqued, and in general lighten up what might otherwise be a pretty heavy post.

Now the thing about a sense of humor is that everyone thinks they have one, but they don’t. It’s kind of like being good in bed, everyone thinks that they are, but not everyone is. Believe me; I know what I’m talking about, and I still have the rug burns to prove it.

However, I am of the opinion that most people who write can be funny, and humor is one of the most powerful tools you can possess in your creative arsenal. Well, that and blasting caps. You’re going to need those as well, but I can’t tell you why.

If you are angry about something, sarcasm can be a humorous way to get your point across. If you feel compelled to complain or vent about something going wrong in your life, a little self-deprecation can go a long way toward making the post a little more palatable to readers. Also, a well placed witty bon mot can make you seem a lot more intelligent than you really are. Trust me on that one as well. I have spent my entire life devising ways to make myself appear smarter than I really am. It seemed less work than actually improving my intellect.

Believe me, if you throw around a couple of big words correctly and toss off a witty quip now and then, no one is going to focus on your inability to diagram a sentence or do long division. When people like what they see, they don’t dig too deep.

Readers, by and large, want to be entertained. Yes, there is a place for serious discussion on religion, politics, world events, etc. but the majority of us just want to live our lives, share little pieces of ourselves along the way, engage in friendly conversation with like-minded individuals, and make our own little world a happier place to live.

Wow…if that isn’t a sentence that calls for a group hug than I don’t know what is.

And not only will a humorous touch keep your readers coming back, but a similar approach to comments left on other blogs will attract a whole new group of readers to your site. A clever comment is to a blogger as a monkey is to an organ grinder…or something.

Soon word of your razor sharp mind and your gift for witty repartee will spread through the blogosphere not unlike the way dysentery spread through my family the day we let Uncle Malcolm man the grill at the reunion barbecue. That was a special time.

Humor is the salt in your spice cabinet, the ketchup on the condiment shelf, the tidy whities in your underwear drawer, the ribbed rubber cylindrical device in the nightstand where you keep…well, you get the idea.

Find and embrace the funny. Make a friend of the funny. Cultivate the funny. Trust me when I say that a little investment in humor will pay huge dividends down the line. Your readership will grow steadily and it won’t be long before you will hardly be able to remember those lean times when you would go days between getting a comment.

A humorous touch will make you seem more real and more likable. You don’t have to be a joke machine or a shock jock. You just have to be you. And you’re funny, right? I could tell right off that you were a person of wit and good humor.

So go forth and lighten up! Be the kind of writer that you would want to read. When writing, always keep an ear out for how your words might sound to others. In no time at all other bloggers will be sending their friends over to check your site out.

And so it will begin.

This is the Twentieth entrant in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by John Masters

For many years, I worked in the Records Management industry. This discipline has moved from merely being concerned with what’s in the file room to managing the myriad types of content, both paper and electronic, maintained by every enterprise. It is a fun and challenging industry.

While I’ve always been technical and computer literate, some years ago I realized I needed to become more literate with programming and the internet as my industry moved towards being more technical. As more a “doer” than a “reader,” I started out creating some websites. These turned out OK, and I did learn a lot. I was asked to create a few other sites, some for a small stipend, some as gratis work.

After moving and settling here in Tampa some years ago, I joined a local Methodist Church. Although it’s a reasonably large church, I was fortunate enough to become friends with the two ministers. Subsequently, I assumed the role of redesigning and maintaining the church’s website. It really was lacking, and while I’m not the greatest web designer in the world, I knew I could make it look better.

A few years ago I began to explore blogging as a way to learn other aspects of the web as it moves from static HTML to more interactive types of programming.

After building and spending some time tinkering with my Wordpress-run blog, I was feeling confident about my skills. I had an idea for a way to drive traffic to the church website, and make it interactive for the members. I approached the ministers about an idea for something that came to be called “The Barnabas Project.”

The project is named for the friend and colleague in ministry of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Barnabas was a source of support, encouragement, and inspiration to Paul. In fact, the name was interpreted as meaning “son of exhortation” or “consolation”. Barnabas was the person who was Paul’s advocate to the disciples after his conversion. Without Barnabas, what would have happened to Paul? With Barnabas, the world was changed.

The idea for the project was to allow anyone to visit the Barnabas Project Blog and leave a story about the people in their life that had made a difference…the people that had inspired and encouraged them along life’s way. For those people not comfortable writing their story on-line, we had arranged to have the youth available to enter hand-written stories. I created an instruction page in both paper format, and on-line and of course installed the blog software and configured the site.

To kick-off the project, the Senior Minister preached a sermon on an early January Sunday in 2004 using the story of Barnabas as the sermon text. I happen to think it was one of the best sermons he had preached in my three years at the church. At the end of the service, he called attention to a bulletin insert with instructions, and announced the blog.

Since this was my idea, I’d written an entry to start things off. I wrote about the person that had been the band director in my hometown in North Carolina. He was something of a legend, and a tough guy, but he was able to start you out in Junior High, and present a high school band that played the highest grade concert music and consistently received “excellent” ratings in the state band competition. I wrote about how it was this man who taught me that I could do most anything I set out to do, and he showed us all the discipline required to do it well. Those lessons have stuck with me throughout my life.

Well, our little project was out there, and after nearly a year I had not given it a lot more thought other than the occasional software upgrade. It never got the attention I’d hoped, but a number people posted some wonderfully touching stories and remembrances.

Just a little over a year after that kickoff, I was sitting in my office on an otherwise rather “blah” day. It was February, and even here in Florida there can be cool gray days. There was nothing special going on, and I was actually rather busy and under some stress. I remember it was a Wednesday.

My phone rang, and a rather deep scratchy voice on the other end of the line quietly asked, “Is this John Masters from Kings Mountain?” I said yes, and from the other end of the line I heard, “well this is Mr. Deal.” Needless to say, I was a little taken aback, as I had no idea why, after over 20 years since last speaking with my old Band Director, he’d be calling me. The blog entry never occurred to me. I’d written that over a year prior.

As the story came out, Mr. Deal’s brother in Arizona had been doing some genealogical research on the web. One of the results he’d come across was the blog entry I’d written. He sent the link to Mr. Deal back in my old home town. Since my mother is also retired as the nurse for the school system there (and it’s a small town besides), it wasn’t hard for him to get in touch with my mother to get my phone number.

He was calling to tell me about reading the story, and about how much it had meant to him. Believe me, it was probably a bit of a shocker, as I was one of the guys that was always pushing the envelope a little. We’d conducted some late night raids of putting realty signs in his yard. (Yeah, I know pretty tame by today’s standards, but we always thought we were rather daring.) We would never miss a chance to get into some mischief during marching band season.

We had a great time reminiscing about the band trip to play at Disney World, and a group of us throwing him, along with some of the other chaperones, into the hotel pool. We talked and laughed about some of the other goings-on and other people that had been in the band at the same time.

Once our conversation was over, I could only sit here at the desk quietly for a few minutes, and I got a bit choked up over how good this experience made me feel.

I couldn’t wait to share it with someone, so I called a good friend to tell him what had just happened. He reminded me of an important life lesson when he said, “Sometimes you don’t know if you are giving or getting.” How true that is. I thought I was creating something to let other people share their stories as a tribute to others, and then, out of nowhere my little blog idea had reached out across all that time and distance to bring back to my life this important person in such a warm way.

I am definitely one of the people that can get wrapped up in the bits and bites of technology, but an important lesson to remember is that these fabulous technologies can also bring great joy and fulfillment.

This is the Nineteenth entrant in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Jessica Beck

I admit it: I have a love affair with my blog.

It started so fast, as these things do. I had a LiveJournal, which was okay as far as that goes, but after three years of friends-only journaling, the spark was gone. It just didn’t excite me anymore. I’d been eyeing the platform blogs for a while - the sexy, inscrutable Movable Type, the alluringly available WordPress. I told myself I was happy with what I had, but it was hard to deny that my eye was wandering.

Then, one day, I just did it. I bought a domain name, got a WordPress install, and jumped head-first into the world of blogging.

As a writer, I didn’t feel too much trepidation about getting my words out there. No, what I felt was a peculiar mix of self-consciousness and freedom. A new blog is a lot like moving to a new town and starting fresh: no one knows you, and you can be whoever you want. The question is: who did I want to be? A no-holds-barred confessional? A standard, run-of-the-mill mommyblog that doesn’t stray from topics of babyrearing and poop production? A highbrow book-review and product-critique site?

I finally settled on something in the middle. Since it was a personal blog, it could reflect more than one aspect of my personality. It might be a little schizophrenic, but what good story isn’t? Specialization is great for the niche blog, but in my favorite personal blogs, the thing that stood out was the writer’s rich and multilayered life experience.

The trick is to find a particular voice and stick with it. The way you write is sometimes more important than what you write about. Think about journalists like Jon Carroll or Dave Barry. Every week, their subject matter varies wildly – from cutting political commentary to personal observations to (in Barry’s case) hilarious essays about bad drivers and theoretical band names – but the author’s voice is unmistakable.

Now that I’d settled on how I’d be writing, it was time for some window dressing. It’s not widely discussed, but the way a blog looks has a lot to do with how the writing is viewed. I know I’m attracted to well-designed blogs, but the thing I find interesting is how repelled I am by a badly-designed one – even if the writing is good. If the writing is only average and the site is a mess? I can count on the fingers of one hand how many unattractive blogs I read regularly. It’s sad, but true.

With that in mind, I set about customizing my shiny new blog with the same verve I’d once used to get ready for a date. At first, I fell victim to over-accessorizing; my header was an enormous, flashy graphic and my sidebars were practically bursting with widgets and plugins and links. Sure it was fun, but it looked a little cheap, you know? The kind of blog you’d visit once, but probably wouldn’t call the next morning. Every time I looked at it I felt like wiping off some of its lipstick with a tissue.

My next iteration was more subtle. A nice, attractive theme with a gently customized header. Some sidebar glitz, sure, a few unnecessary widgets, but for the most part the site was pretty classy. A keeper. The “such a nice girl” of blogs. The spotlight was on my writing, which I liked. I was so charmed by that layout that I kept it, with only a very few tweaks, for a year.

The trick is to find a particular voice and stick with it. The way you write is sometimes more important than what you write about. Think about journalists like Jon Carroll or Dave Barry. Every week, their subject matter varies wildly – from cutting political commentary to personal observations to (in Barry’s case) hilarious essays about bad drivers and theoretical band names – but the author’s voice is unmistakable.

Now that I’d settled on how I’d be writing, it was time for some window dressing. It’s not widely discussed, but the way a blog looks has a lot to do with how the writing is viewed. I know I’m attracted to well-designed blogs, but the thing I find interesting is how repelled I am by a badly-designed one – even if the writing is good. If the writing is only average and the site is a mess? I can count on the fingers of one hand how many unattractive blogs I read regularly. It’s sad, but true.

With that in mind, I set about customizing my shiny new blog with the same verve I’d once used to get ready for a date. At first, I fell victim to over-accessorizing; my header was an enormous, flashy graphic and my sidebars were practically bursting with widgets and plugins and links. Sure it was fun, but it looked a little cheap, you know? The kind of blog you’d visit once, but probably wouldn’t call the next morning. Every time I looked at it I felt like wiping off some of its lipstick with a tissue.

My next iteration was more subtle. A nice, attractive theme with a gently customized header. Some sidebar glitz, sure, a few unnecessary widgets, but for the most part the site was pretty classy. A keeper. The “such a nice girl” of blogs. The spotlight was on my writing, which I liked. I was so charmed by that layout that I kept it, with only a very few tweaks, for a year.

Once I’d found a layout I liked, the business of writing became my focus. Blogging is excellent for writers. It keeps the creative muscles limber. All the how-to books say that you should write something every day, but how are you supposed to come up with something new to write about? After all, you have a life, right?

With a personal blog, the what is figured out for you. You’re the what. Writing isn’t so much an exercise as it is an experience. You learn to make your life into something other people want to read about. There are no deadlines or expectations; it’s just you, your keyboard, and your words. The phrase “I’m blogging this” may be a punchline for jokes involving the word geek, but it’s also an indication that thousands of writers are using their everyday experiences as inspiration. I love that. I love being a part of that.

A little while ago, though, I found myself feeling restless – not with my writing, but with my blog. The simple, classy theme was getting stale. It may not have bothered anyone else, but I looked at it every day and it no longer made my heart go pitter-patter. I switched around my sidebars a little, added a few buttons, but nothing felt right. I found myself trolling the WordPress theme collections - furtively at first, then openly. I downloaded a few of the more exciting themes, but never installed them. They were just reference, I thought. I was just admiring the design.

Maybe it was easier to stick with the status quo. The old layout was fine. There was nothing wrong with it; I was just bored. The problem was with me. Maybe I couldn’t be happy with just one blog. I started a couple of other blogs on the side, specialized blogs. I told myself that they were “for the business,” but the truth was I was enamored with the new sites and their themes. Was it over between me and my blog?

Once I’d found a layout I liked, the business of writing became my focus. Blogging is excellent for writers. It keeps the creative muscles limber. All the how-to books say that you should write something every day, but how are you supposed to come up with something new to write about? After all, you have a life, right?

With a personal blog, the what is figured out for you. You’re the what. Writing isn’t so much an exercise as it is an experience. You learn to make your life into something other people want to read about. There are no deadlines or expectations; it’s just you, your keyboard, and your words. The phrase “I’m blogging this” may be a punchline for jokes involving the word geek, but it’s also an indication that thousands of writers are using their everyday experiences as inspiration. I love that. I love being a part of that.

A little while ago, though, I found myself feeling restless – not with my writing, but with my blog. The simple, classy theme was getting stale. It may not have bothered anyone else, but I looked at it every day and it no longer made my heart go pitter-patter. I switched around my sidebars a little, added a few buttons, but nothing felt right. I found myself trolling the WordPress theme collections - furtively at first, then openly. I downloaded a few of the more exciting themes, but never installed them. They were just reference, I thought. I was just admiring the design.

Maybe it was easier to stick with the status quo. The old layout was fine. There was nothing wrong with it; I was just bored. The problem was with me. Maybe I couldn’t be happy with just one blog. I started a couple of other blogs on the side, specialized blogs. I told myself that they were “for the business,” but the truth was I was enamored with the new sites and their themes. Was it over between me and my blog?

Not on your life. The brilliance of the blog is the possibility for reinvention. I slapped on a new theme, cranked out a new graphic, tweaked some CSS…and just like that, the love was back. Once again, I found myself visiting my blog in the middle of the day, just to admire it. I lovingly installed some new sidebar widgets, only to remove them when they didn’t complement my site in just the right way. Nothing was too good for my site!

Me and my blog, we’re in it for the long term. Assuming, of course, I can get that sidebar to look right…

This is the Eighteenth entrant in The Blogging Essay Contest from WeblogToolsCollection.com If you would like to participate, please email me your entry at mark at wltc dot net. Please rate this article using the star system below. The competition will be judged primarily on the input from readers like you. Thank you.

This is written by Chris Poteet

It amazes me how many bloggers spent an inordinate amount of time trying to improve their hits, comments, etc. that they forget the most important element in having a good blog. If the content is found lacking then often it doesn’t matter how pretty your site is, or how often your site gets hit. The content of your blog is what separates the good from the bad, and the visited to the not visited.What will follow are tips that will help to ensure that your sphere of influence in the blogging realm will continue to grow. Remember that this year’s Time magazine’s person of the year is: “You,” and that pronoun refers to the people who are generating influential, thought-provoking content through the Internet medium.

The suggestions will cover a range of issues from syndication to structure and back again. I hope it encourages the reader to be mindful and to create meaningful blog content.

Remember Your Syndication

Why does RSS exist? It exists to all my content to be portable across applications. I no longer have to worry about visiting my favorite sites to get updates, because now I am notified. In my RSS reader, I don’t care what your website looks like, because all I see is your content. If the content lacks in quality then it will eventually be removed from my list.

Further, sites such as 9 Rules do a good job of ensuring that the best writers get the recognition over those with the flashiest sites. It’s true that many of them look fantastic and have fantastic content, but they make their judgments on who has the best content.

Writing with Well-Structured Content

Being readable is also a fundamental principle in ensuring that your now well-written content gets read. It seems all-to-often that good web writing structure gets lost in the mix of making sure that our blog reflects the latest design trends. Remember the 7th grade when you learned about topic sentences,