Archive for the ‘Blogging 101’ Category
WordPress Gravatars: What They Are and How to Install Them
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
Gravatar avatars are small images that represent an email address. Their purpose is to allow for global recognition of commenters and persons on the Internet. Rather than having a different avatar for different sites, people can register an avatar at Gravatar.com and associate it with their own unique email address.
Blog posts in WordPress that have commenting enabled typically require an email address to submit a comment. Once a comment has been submitted with the email field filled in, WordPress sends the email address as a data string to Gravatar.com; if Gravatar.com has an avatar for that email address, the avatar will be used. Often times Gravatar.com does not have an avatar associated with an email address, in which case a default avatar is used.
What are blog tags and what purpose do they serve?
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
Picture yourself: a big time sports blogger at the top of your niche. The AdSense dollars are rolling in. You’ve got more subscribers than Curt Shilling. You’re sensational. Not a care in the world.
Then a problem arises like a pigeon from hell.
You would like to give your visitors the ability to view all posts on the topic of ‘Yankees baseball’ but your a little wary of creating a new category for just five posts. You’ve got about 600 posts categorized in sections like baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball, tennis. What do you do? Create a new category just for ‘Yankees baseball’? Unfortunately you find a few problems with that approach.
Choosing a theme for your blog
Friday, February 26th, 2010
Look far into the future when choosing a theme for your blog
Choosing a theme for your blog is not an easy task. Your theme has to be just right. It needs to have the correct column sizes, font scheme, color pallet and other visual elements to suite your tastes. Your theme should please you first. After all — you will be the one most often staring at it.
Buying a Domain for Your Blog
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
This post is part of a series called blogging 101.
Buying a domain for the first time is a thrilling experience. A domain is something uniquely yours and it is the chief identifier of your site or brand. Your domain is not only the first element of your website brand that makes an impression on your visitors but is also the most recurring. Your visitors will be forced to recognize your domain every time they type it into their address bar or view their address bar while browsing your site. That is why you should carefully consider the following 3 things when choosing a domain:
The Best Blogging Sites and Platforms | Top Blog Sites
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Starting a blog can be very easy considering all of the free blogging sites out there. However, choosing between all of the best blogging sites can seem a bit confusing, especially if you are a first time blogger. That is why I have taken the time, after much research and digging, to compile a list of the top 10 best blogging sites.
How to host your own blog in 5 easy steps
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Using free blogging services such as Google blogger and WordPress.com have only one advantage: they are free. But if you really want to have better customability, the option of placing advertisements in your blog and your own domain — you’ll have to host your blog yourself. This post will walk you through — step-by-step — how to host your own blog.
Choosing a name for your blog
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Never take the decision of naming your blog lightly. You might some day regret it — especially if you are looking to reach a large audience or to earn money from your blog.
The concept you need to understand the most when naming a blog is the marketing concept of branding. Your brand is your everything. Even if you don’t believe you have a definitive brand, visitors begin forming a mental image of your brand the second they first access your blog’s frontpage.
In the blogging world, your brand is heavily affected by the name you choose. Your logo, design and domain will also heavily affect your brand image but I will not go into those three brand elements in this post.
When it comes to naming your blog, the most important thing to consider is what topic your blog will be limited to (if any). This blog is obviously about blogging so, naturally, the title (Blogtap) is representative of that. If I ever wanted to blog about other topics (such as tennis) on Blogtap, I would not be committing to my brand very well and I would most likely be doing damage to my brand.
All blogs that are not personal blogs gravitate around a particular topic or niche. It is this way because of how the Internet works. Sure, you could create a blog about tennis and blogging. But the odds of finding readers that enjoy both tennis and blogging are very rare. So, if you want to reach a large audience, you should be careful about which topics your blog gravitates towards. That doesn’t mean you should always be broad and impersonal; it only means your blog should have an underlying theme that readers can relate to.
I chose blogging because that is one thing I am passionate about. If you choose what you are passionate about, everything else (like the business and marketing aspect) will fall into place.
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