I read the comments on a post where ProBlogger asked folks what they could do to improve the site for readers, hoping to get ideas for improving my own sites. To my surprise, one suggestion came up over and over:
A forum. People want a forum.
I’m just curious to know if anyone else wants this, as [...]

I read the comments on a post where ProBlogger asked folks what they could do to improve the site for readers, hoping to get ideas for improving my own sites. To my surprise, one suggestion came up over and over:

A forum. People want a forum.

I’m just curious to know if anyone else wants this, as opposed to just commenting on blogs. Do forums really encourage better discussion? Or networking relationships with other posters?

No, I’m not volunteering to start one. I wouldn’t attract enough really helpful people to make anyone want to join. It would need to be somebody like ProBlogger to make it work. I’m just curious what everyone thinks.

I read a post at Neat Living recently about de-cluttering blogs, and it got me thinking. That post suggests several items you can go read yourself. These are some of my thoughts.

Shorter, more frequent posts? This is something I already do, just because I don’t have the attention span to read really long articles, and [...]

I read a post at Neat Living recently about de-cluttering blogs, and it got me thinking. That post suggests several items you can go read yourself. These are some of my thoughts.

• Shorter, more frequent posts? This is something I already do, just because I don’t have the attention span to read really long articles, and I doubt my readers do, either. I find most long articles are redundant and full of extra words anyway.
• Reducing categories? I’m not sure why SEO experts recommend trying to keep the categories down to 10. That just doesn’t make sense for some sites. That said, you certainly don’t need categories that sound almost but not quite exactly like the same thing. They should be consolidated, and if you have a permalinks structure that doesn’t include category, it won’t even disrupt your inbound links slightly.
• Rewriting Old Posts? Rewriting is an idea I definitely want to play with. I’m not sure how it’ll work out for SEO. Since I never have dates in my permalinks nothing will change. The services will get pinged but there will be nothing new for SE bots to index. Still, the impact on readers could be interesting. I would recommend acknowledging the posts are rewritten so people don’t think, “Hey, some of this sounds familiar” and suspect you of copying the work of others.
• Deleting old posts? I’m not sure what I think about this. I’d avoid deleting anything that’s got inbound links and gets clicks, but if you have some old posts that aren’t great and don’t seem to be landing pages, maybe deleting them is a good idea. Unless they’re worth re-writing, of course.
• Adding images to posts? I still don’t get this. I just don’t. I very often feel like pictures get in my way, I resent the time they take to download, and I can’t recall a time I ever thought they added anything. But maybe that’s just me. I’ve always been more oriented toward sound than visual, so maybe I just don’t appreciate it the way most people would?

Copyblogger has an insightful post about the future of blogging. Twitter-style social networking is currently pulling some people away from some blogs. Stats are going down.
But in the end, it will be a good thing to separate blogging from Twittering. Because sometimes people want to know that the famous blogger just got her car back [...]

Copyblogger has an insightful post about the future of blogging. Twitter-style social networking is currently pulling some people away from some blogs. Stats are going down.

But in the end, it will be a good thing to separate blogging from Twittering. Because sometimes people want to know that the famous blogger just got her car back from the shop and isn’t happy with the repair work, and other times they want to know if she has a solution for digging their sites out of Google’s supplemental index. Twitter and blogging fulfill entirely different interests. In the end, they can’t actually steal each other’s traffic because if you want to get information, you’re not going to Twitter. You’re going to go blogreading.

Your options are expanding. You no longer have to have personality to be a successful blogger - you can just impart information. Or if you’re all personality, go sort out how you can make money by keeping an audience of Twitterers glued to their screens.

I’ve been using Qumana as my desktop blogging app for a while. It’s not bad at all, but as time goes by, it started getting harder and harder to open. I’d launch it, and the launch screen would come up, but the program never really loaded. Plus, it does some things with bulleted lists that [...]

I’ve been using Qumana as my desktop blogging app for a while. It’s not bad at all, but as time goes by, it started getting harder and harder to open. I’d launch it, and the launch screen would come up, but the program never really loaded. Plus, it does some things with bulleted lists that reduce me to tears.

So I read some good things about Zoundry and decided to give it a shot. Here’s what I’ve found so far in no particular order.

• If you copy and paste, say, a blog entry title complete with link so you don’t have to waste your time linking to it manually, Zoundry kills the giant header font and pastes it in at the size font you’re using. Nice!
• When you’re highlighting words to link to or format, the highlight jumps more intuitively. I wasted a lot of time and wrist movement trying to keep Qumama from grabbing punctuation marks and other items near the stuff I meant to format.
• The timestamping feature is hidden when you first install it. Don’t be like me and waste 15 minutes hunting: click the blue arrow thingie near the top right corner (at the end of the Tag Words field) to expose the timestamp stuff.
• I rather liked Qumana’s blog manager: a separate window where you could quickly look at your recent posts on each blog. Since I like to post ahead, this helps me keep track of what day I’m up to. Zoundry puts this in a sidebar, and then you have to click the blog, and then you have to click the latest entry to see its stats (like when it posts) in the bottom window. It’s a bit more clicking, but I’ll live.
• It seems to work faster than Qumana and I’m not seeing bugs so far.
• I haven’t played with images, but this guy did and you can read what he said. It looks like it has a great interface for that.
• Keyboard shortcuts for all the things I do most often. Swwweeeet! And you know how you find them? Hover your mouse over the button for the function you want to use and it gives you the shortcut.
• Plenty of pinging options, and it’s easier to configure them than it was in Qumana (my word, that took some time!).
• Initial setup is also easy via our friend autodiscovery.
• When you hit “publish”, it pops up a window to confirm that the pinging services you want are selected (you can change it if not), that the date you’ve chosen is what you want (if you’re timestamping) and gives you an opportunity to post it as a draft, which is a nice option if you need it.

I’m liking it and I’m going to keep using it. I’ll definitely let you know if I run into anything bad, but for free, it’s pretty wonderful.

Which do you do?
Until recently, I had just the excerpts, thinking it would drive readers to my sites and give me ad income. Then one day I realized how freakin’ annoyed I am by excerpts in feeds, and how often I unsub from them. So I went to full feed (I think - feel free [...]

Which do you do?

Until recently, I had just the excerpts, thinking it would drive readers to my sites and give me ad income. Then one day I realized how freakin’ annoyed I am by excerpts in feeds, and how often I unsub from them. So I went to full feed (I think - feel free to let me know if Wordpress has borked up my settings again).

There did seem to be a rise in sub numbers after that. Anyone else tested this out?

If you want to cut out the middleman and sell sponsored posts and paid links yourself, without losing a commission to a text link or sponsored post broker, here are a couple of Wordpress plugins that could help you with that.
WPbankroll lets people write posts for your site and submit them at a price you [...]

If you want to cut out the middleman and sell sponsored posts and paid links yourself, without losing a commission to a text link or sponsored post broker, here are a couple of Wordpress plugins that could help you with that.

WPbankroll lets people write posts for your site and submit them at a price you set. That’s right - not only do they pay you for the linkage, but they write the content for you, too. They can also opt for a featured post, which costs more but gains them a link out on your sidebar. The free version of this plugin has all the features - you just have to leave a link to their site on it.

WPTextAds sells text ads directly to people who visit your blog or who find you on del.icio.us, using a special tag designed just for the WPTextAds market place. The free version allows you a certain number of each type of ad; the paid version allows unlimited ads. Really, if this tool is a good fit for you, you should be able to earn enough from the free version to pay for the paid version in time.