Post under Blogging | By LGR | On October 31st, 2008
I don’t know what prompted a comment I got this morning from a visitor/reader about my post about our Halloween pumpkins, maybe it is because it is Halloween, or maybe they are just having a bad day. I won’t say who sent the comment but here is small quote (I will edit it for language).
I don’t #$^! about what you carved on your pumpkins. I read your blog because you usually have some good ideas and tips, not crap like your latest post. If you keep posting &*%$ like that I am going to unsubscribe from your blog!
First, I would like to say thanks for subscribing! Nice to know there are people reading my blog. Second, I am sorry you are not interested in my Halloween 2008 post. I usually don’t stray far from topics that will help webmasters run their websites. There are times however when it is good to stray from your usual on topic posts.
Straying from your usual topics can provide variety to your readers and offer a nice change of things to write about. While I enjoy writing about web development and the varied and many topics that includes, even I need a break once in awhile.
Blogging is a way to connect on a more personal level with people. I am not just a freelance web developer. I am a Dad, a husband and a just a regular person with other interests and hobbies. I am not just a faceless corporation. I like to connect with my clients and their needs to find the best way that their website can help them. In return I also like to post about some of the things going on my life. If you follow my Twitter feed you probably already know that.
How often do you post off topic posts on your blog?
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On October 23rd, 2008
You pour your heart and soul into your blog. You work hard to come up with new and creative ideas to write about and keep looking for your purple cow to make your blog stand out. Then you go and look at your statistics, and discover that no one is reading and appreciating your hard work. It happens to all bloggers at one time or another. It can be frustrating and might make you want to just throw in the towel on your blog.
If your blog has been feeling under appreciated lately then you might be interested in joining an idea to help under appreciated blogs become more appreciated. Chuck Westbrook has an idea that might help. The idea is simple in some ways join together and appreciate other blogs and your blog will be appreciated by others. This might be just the thing to give you some new blogs to read and gain some more appreciation for some new blogs as well.
Post under Blogger | By LGR | On October 18th, 2008
One of the things that has always bothered me about using Blogger.com as a blogging platform is how limited it is for adding extras to your blog such as a top posts widget. Sure it has gotten better, but if you use their FTP publishing service you are still limited to either some kind of server side scripting hack, doing it manually by editing the template HTML or some kind of Javascript widget. I have not found a decent top posts widget for Blogger.com up until now. I came across AideRSS a little while ago and quickly realized I could use it to add a dynamic top posts widget to my FTP published Blogger.com blog.
AideRSS is more than just a top posts widget. AideRSS is actually a way to sort through a lot of the noise by filtering out posts by different levels based on your interests. For example you might not want to read every single post Boing Boing posts. Using AideRSS you can subscribe in your RSS reader to the best posts that they create, thus eliminating some of the noise that can clog up your RSS reader.
The side benefit of AideRSS is that they create top posts widgets. You can submit your own blogs RSS feed, such as your Blogger.com blog and AideRSS will create a top posts list sorted by what they call postrank. You can choose the time period that you want the top posts to be created from. Either year, month, week or day, and the number of top posts you would like to show. Here is a sample of Epibloggers top posts widget showing the top five posts for the year.
If you are looking for a top posts widget for your blog the AideRSS widget might be just the one you are looking for. Because it is Javascript it will create no extra load on your web hosting if you use a self hosted blogging platform and if you are on a hosted blogging platform, such as Blogger.com, most allow some Javascript widgets to be added. You could even use it to show off your friends blogs top posts if you want. With a little CSS styling you could probably make it blend in perfectly with your blog.
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On October 8th, 2008
I wanted to get back to writing the beginners guide to blogging. It has been a little while since I wrote on this guide and it can be difficult if not impossible to write a definitive guide for beginners to start blogging. While reading and choosing a topic are part of starting your blog, choosing a blogging platform moves the process of starting a blog into a more technical area. If you do not have a technical background then this step can be one of the more challenging.
Now that you have been reading and you have chosen your blogging topic you can look at what blogging platform you will use to power your blog. There are a number of blogging platforms available and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The first decision you need to make is whether you want to have a hosted blog or a self hosted blog. What is the difference? A hosted blog is one where the content of your blog is hosted on the blogging services servers. Examples of a hosted blogging service include Blogger.com, WordPress.com and TypePad. There are many other hosted blogging services and Wikipedia has a good list of available hosted blogging services.
While some people will tell you that you should never use a hosted blogging solution for your blog there are some very good reasons to use a hosted blogging service. If you do not have a very technical background a hosted blogging service can get you up and blogging faster with less headaches. You don’t have to worry about software upgrades, security is less of a concern just make sure you have a good username and password to keep your account secure. Each service has its differences and I would encourage a beginning blogger to test and experiment with each service to decide if they want to use that service. Personally, I find the Blogger.com service very easy for beginning bloggers to use. The number of settings do not seem to be as over whelming to the beginner and they have made a number of enhancements over the last few years including allowing you to have your own domain name and scheduled posts that make the service more attractive.
The biggest disadvantage to using a hosted blogging service is you do not own your content. There are many stories of blogs being closed down for any number of reasons and your content can simply vanish overnight. It is for this reason alone I like to host my own blogs on my own web hosting. Wikipedia again has a nice list of many of the open source self hosted blogging platforms that are available. If you dislike free and open source software you can also look at the proprietary weblog software that you can install and use.
If you have never blogged before and you are just starting installing blogging software on your own web hosting space I would recommend looking at WordPress as your blogging platform (no surprise there eh). There are many good reasons to use WordPress as your self hosted blogging platform. For beginners there will be a learning curve to using any blogging platform, but the self hosted WordPress is perhaps the easiest to learn from the many options that are available. Many web hosts also offer an easy to use install service called Fantastico or another similar system that will install WordPress for you quickly and easily. Dreamhost, the web host Epiblogger is now hosted with, offers a one-click installer. This takes some of the harder work out of installing WordPress. Once you have WordPress installed you can also use the easy installers to upgrade the software when new upgrades are released. While some blogging consultants recommend you don’t use the easy installers for your initial install or upgrading and there are reasons to not use it, for beginners they are useful tools. You should at some point learn how to upgrade your WordPress installation without the easy installers.
The best reason to use WordPress as your self hosted blogging platform is because of the great community of WordPress users. They are a great resource for helping bloggers of all levels from beginners to expert. Many solutions can be found for any problems you might encounter in the WordPress support forums. If there is a problem you can’t find a solution for in the WordPress support forum the widespread use of WordPress makes it easy to find a WordPress guru to pay to help solve your problem.
Your choice of blogging platform can make a large difference in your blogging. You want to make the most of your time and when you are just starting out the learning curve can be kind of steep no matter what blogging platform you chose. In my experience of working on the web and working with many different blogging platforms over the years I do find Blogger.com and WordPress, either hosted or self hosted, to be the platforms that are the easiest to use. It is also possible to move your blog at a later time to another platform if you feel you want to change. Some platforms don’t give you any options to move afterward and you will then either have to abandon your blog and start over, or find another way of moving your data, such as copying and pasting.
Your turn, every blogger has an opinion about what platform people should use. What blogging platform would you recommend to a beginner blogger?
Photo by whiteafrican
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On August 27th, 2008
There have been a number of transitions in my life lately. Most notably we packed up our house in Rosthern, Saskatchewan and moved to Regina, Saskatchewan so my wife could take a new position in the city. It has meant a great deal of change for all of us in the house. Rhett has also moved to his new house and you have probably noticed our posts here at Epiblogger have been some what sporadic.
As I was watching the movers pack up our house into the truck in Rosthern and then later that day spending the night at our new house in Regina it struck me how both these places were just houses. They had no personality, they were just empty shells waiting to be filled with our lives, our memories and our stories.
Since then my children have made new friends who are routinely coming and playing in our house and backyard. The neighbours have welcomed us to the block with some baking, and certificates to eat out while we were getting settled and this new house in Regina has slowly started to feel like our home as more and more of us comes out in how we care for the place, how we decorate the rooms and as our stories start to be told here.
Blogs are likes houses, they are nothing but empty shells waiting to be filled with our stories that will make the blog our online home of our lives. It is not easy to risk and expose ourselves on our blogs. It is like welcoming strangers into your home, but for those that we connect with our lives will become richer with the new relationships we have created on our digital home. Do we welcome people to our blogs like they are coming to our home or are they merely strangers that we want to make leave as quickly as possible?
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On August 5th, 2008
When I was a kid I used to hate watching television in the summer. Looking back that was probably not a bad thing since it got me outside and playing, but the reason I hated watching television during the summer was because all of the shows were reruns. I never understood then that they don’t sit and make televisons shows all year long and that it takes time to create shows. Fast forward to today where I realize it takes time and energy to create content for television, media, and of course blogs. Time is something that has been very precious to me so far this summer. My family and I made it a priority to spend time together during July before making a move to Regina SK. Rhett has recently become a home owner and has been swamped with holidays and work himself.
Recently there have been some highlights for Epiblogger. We made Liz Strauss’ 260 Blogs: 260,000 Thank Yous! Rhett and I would both like to thank Liz for including Epiblogger on her list. There are some great blogs that she showcased. If you want to subscribe to all of the blogs that Liz showcased in a feed reader you can use an OPML file that Barbera Ling put together.
Epiblogger has been open now since January 1st of this year and I thought you might be interested in visiting or revisiting some of the more popular posts that we had over the last 7 months. Of course you are also welcome to browse the archives for some of our other great posts. I am sure this will probably make Rhett grimace, but here are the top ten posts on Epiblogger since we opened our doors to the world:
We will continue our regularly scheduled blogging soon!
Photo by dawnzy58
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On July 16th, 2008
You have been doing lots of reading, and you are now at the point where you know you want to start a blog. The next step to start blogging is to decide what you want to blog about. What will your blog focus on?
Personal Blogs
If you want to start a personal blog this step can be very easy. Personal blogs allow you a great deal of flexibility to talk about what ever you wish. You can talk about your family, experiences, your hobbies. While I do not currently have a personal blog, Rhett is currently running a personal blog at Bailing Bucket. I think Rhett’s blog is a great personal blog. It allows people a chance to get to know the “real” Rhett. His blog is a part of who he is. Don’t be fooled into thinking that personal blogs do not have a focus, it is still important for a personal blog to have a focus. For example on Rhett’s blog you will rarely see him talk about work. Rhett’s focus is to talk about who he is, not what he does for a living.
Topic Blogs
If you want to start a topic blog that is more focused than a personal blog you might have more research to do before moving on to the next step. To start a topic blog the first place to look to focus your topic is inside you. Find a topic that you enjoy it will make writing for your blog much easier otherwise you will be nothing more than a botox blogger. You need to find your character and bring you to the blog. Without adding your unique perspective and story to your blog you are not going to add anything new or interesting.
Once you have narrowed down your topic to a few do some research on your topic. Search Google for other blogs that are on your topic. Do some keyword research using the SEOBook.com Keyword Research Tool and Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to determine if there is enough people interested in your topic. You might find there is already a lot of competition on a particular topic, but if you narrow it down you might find it easier to write. Perhaps focusing your topic on a more local level or on a specific area like families. Even if you are interested in a competitive topic don’t give up hope. Find what it is that you have that is unique and you can still be a success.
If you want to make money from your blog (don’t we all want to make a living from our blog) you will want to look at some ways that you can monetize your blog. When a blog is new it can be best to look at using some affiliate networks. Look for products and services that you use on your topic, and consider placing those ads and maybe writing a post or two about the products or services and why you use them and recommend them. Be genuine. For example here on Epiblogger, Rhett and I have placed two ads. Rhett purchases t-shirts on a regular basis from Uneetee.com and I use MozyHome as an online backup solution for my personal computer. We did not choose those ads lightly. We only wanted to recommend products and services that we personally use. Being genuine in your recommendation will help a great deal in your blog monetization. I will talk more about how to monetize your blog later in the series as well.
What are some ways that you focus your blog topic when you start a new blog?
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On July 9th, 2008
Between Rhett and I we have been blogging for just over four years. That might not sound like a long time, but consider that the first post you can find on Problogger is September 30, 2004 which is just over four years ago and the amount of experience that Rhett and I have as bloggers combined is not that different from Darren Rowse. I have also been involved in creating websites and other web projects since 1994 so I have been working on the Internet for 14 years. I do not say that to brag, but rather to make the point that it can be hard for me to step back and look at blogging from the eyes of a beginner. Rhett gives me a rough time occasionally that my posts are to “technical”, and that might be true but there is a place for the more technical blogging posts. Sometimes you just want to know how to do something. The problem with being technical is we forget that not everyone is at that level. With that in mind this is the first of a series of posts where I will try and give you a non-technical explanation about how to start blogging.
The Starting Point
I tend to jump in to web projects feet first. Meaning I jump right in and start installing WordPress, start writing and just start going. When Rhett came to be with the idea of Epiblogger the first thing I did was read, and I read a lot. Why should we start another blog about blogging? There are so many out there. I read through a Problogger, I read through Copyblogger, I read DailyBlogTips, I read Lorelle on WordPress, I read, I read and I read. In the end we decided to go ahead with Epiblogger because in all the reading we did we decided we have a unique perspective on blogging to give to people.
The point is if you think you might be interested in starting a blog, the first thing I would suggest you do is read. Read other blogs, take part in those in those communities and start to explore what it is you would like to blog about. While you are exploring other blogs, reading and taking part in the discussions you can explore what it is that you really want to blog about. I have talked about this before, and if you are a regular reader of Epiblogger you might be getting sick of me saying it, but you need to find your passion! Great blogs are not created by keyword research, they are created because the people that write for them are passionate about their topic.
What are some blogs that you spent time reading before you started your blog? What advice would you give a new blogger about where to start blogging?
Photo Infinite staircase by fdecomite
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On June 30th, 2008
As it turns out Rhett and I both ended up scheduling holidays for the same week here in July. If you read most of the tops bloggers on blogging they will tell you that you should keep a consistent post schedule and if you go on holidays you should arrange for guest posts or have several posts written and ready to publish while you are gone. It is sound advice, and very easy to do with most blogging software. That being said Epiblogger is going to break those “rules” not because they are not good rules to follow, but because there is something to be said for taking a vacation.
It can be difficult to constantly be creating new and creative posts for your blog. To be creative and a better writer you need to take a break occasionally. Your mind will relax, your body will relax and most importantly you will return in a better state of mind to continue pouring your heart and soul into your blog.
I think we have some great posts coming up in the next little while when Rhett and I return from our holidays. Rhett, I believe, is going to continue his series on “Being Sold (Out)”. I have also started a series of posts specifically for new bloggers. Posts that will help people get started blogging. It will be great to come back full of energy and ideas.
What do you think should bloggers take vacations from blogging?
Post under Blogging | By LGR | On June 23rd, 2008
One of the things I like best about blogging is the connections and relationships that you make by participating in blogs. That is one of the main reasons I started blogging to begin with, I wanted to make connections and learn from others. It can be easy to become discouraged when you run a blog, to continually pour your heart and soul into your blog and then you look at the numbers and your RSS subscriptions have only increased a couple from the week before, and your traffic statistics don’t show any significant jumps. Ultimately blogging is not about the statistics or the RSS subscribers, it is about the relationships and that is what people need to focus on if you want to have a successful blog.
Rhett and I appreciate everyone that has linked to us but I wanted to say a special thank you to a couple of people that have been kind enough to give us advertising space on their blogs.
First is Simonne over at All Tips and Tricks. I have been a regular reader of All Tips and Tricks for a while and enjoy Simonne’s writing and can often find something interesting and new to think or write about myself. Simonne offered to place Epibloggers 125×125 ad several months ago and I really appreciate her support of Epiblogger.
Next is Ronald over at The Reader Appreciation Project. The Reader Appreciation Project blog has many things in common with Epiblogger and I think our blogs compliment each other very well. The Reader Appreciation Project focuses on why the readers of blogs are the greatest asset a blog can have.
Thank you very much to everyone that links to us. We appreciate that you take the time to read, comment and link. It is a great show of support for Epiblogger and I have been enjoying getting to know you all through comments and reading your blogs.
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