Category Archives: blosxom

May 29

New Category/Feature on How to Blog: Readers Write In

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I frequently receive email from readers of How to Blog, sometimes thanking me and other times with blogging questions that they have which they hope that I can answer. In many of the latter cases, I am able to answer their questions and get them back happily blogging. But there are times when I just don’t know the answer. So, I have decided to post the support questions that I receive that I cannot help with on How to Blog to see if any of the blog’s readers can help each other out!

I already posted the first Reader Question regarding a problem after a WordPress upgrade.. I hope that you guys are able to help out on that one b/c I’m clueless.

What do you guys think of this new addition to the blog – the occasional posting of Reader Questions or even any articles or opinion pieces? I’m all ears!

May 01

Save the Internet from Mob 2.0 (ISPs slowing down the loading of websites that don’t pay them protection fees)

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Hi Everyone – THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR BLOGGERS (and all users of the internet)

Please read the following and sign the petition to preserve Network Neutrality

Do you blog, buy books online, use Google, or download to an iPod? Everything we do online will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law next week that gives giant corporations more control over what we do and see on the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality—the Internet’s First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. BarnesandNoble.com doesn’t have to outbid Amazon for the right to work properly on your computer. What they’re talking about here is having website owners pay ISPs for the “right” for their sites to load as quickly as their competitors. If you don’t pay a fee to AT&T and other internet providers, they could make your website or blog load slower for all of their customers.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, almost every popular site—from Google to eBay to iTunes—must either pay protection money to Internet companies like AT&T or risk having their websites process slowly. That why these high-tech pioneers and others are opposing Congress’ effort to gut Internet freedom. But ringing even closer to home, individual bloggers and small businesses will likely not have the funds to pay to ensure that their sites load as quickly as other sites. Why should anyone have to pay to have their site load properly???? Its like having to pay a dirty cop to do their job and protect your business. How dare these ISPs think they should be entitled to charge companies and people for the right to have their site load as fast as their own webserver is capable of serving up the page?? What are they, Mob 2.0?

And what about the users of these internet providers? Should they all of a sudden have certain websites load slowly for them because that website didn’t pay a ‘protection fee’?? Every single person’s internet experience could be drastically negatively affected by this, whether they have their own website or simply enjoy surfing the net.

You can do your part today—can you sign this petition telling your member of Congress to preserve Internet freedom? Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/

I signed this petition, along with 250,000 others so far. This petiton will be delivered to Congress before the House of Representatives votes next week. When you sign, you’ll be kept informed of the next steps we can take to keep the heat on Congress.

Snopes.com, which monitors various causes that circulate on the Internet, explained:

Simply put, network neutrality means that no web site’s traffic has precedence over any other’s…Whether a user searches for recipes using Google, reads an article on snopes.com, or looks at a friend’s MySpace profile, all of that data is treated equally and delivered from the originating web site to the user’s web browser with the same priority. In recent months, however, some of the telephone and cable companies that control the telecommunications networks over which Internet data flows have floated the idea of creating the electronic equivalent of a paid carpool lane.

If companies like AT&T have their way, Web sites ranging from Google to eBay to iTunes to your blog either pay protection money to get into the “fast lane” or risk opening slowly on your computer. We can’t let the Internet—this incredible medium which has been such a revolutionary force for democratic participation, economic innovation, and free speech—become captive to large corporations.

Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Together, we do care about preserving the free and open Internet.

Please sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Internet freedom. Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/

Please feel free to forward this on to everyone you know that loves or relies on the internet!

Much thanks,
Emily

Aug 24

Need someone to create a custom template or plugin for your blog? Need help with SEO? Check out Rent A Coder!

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I just found the coolest resource! It’s called Rent A Coder, and you can post any project that you need help with, whether it be as simple as installing WordPress / MovableType / etc for you on your server, or as complex as asking someone to write a custom blogging platform for you. Want a custom template for TypePad or a special WordPress theme and don’t have the time or skills to do it yourself? Just Rent A Coder to do it for you. You can even find people to help you with Search Engine Optimization, people to write content for you, etc.

Once you post the specifics of the project you need help with, coders will then bid on your ‘job’ and you can decide who you want to hire based on their bid, the feedback they received from other users on other projects they’ve completed, etc.

From their website:

Need a coder to help you create the next ‘killer app’ or answer questions? Just post your program or question here and coders from around the world will email you bids on doing the work.

You can review each bidder’s resume and reputation online, and when you’re ready to make your decision, you can rent your personal, expert, coder with just a few clicks! Its that simple!

Posting a bid request is free, and you are under no obligation to accept any bids sent to you unless you choose to. Once you accept a bid, you will place your payment into escrow. The money is not released to the coder, till they complete the work according to your original specification. There are no service charges or finders fees for buyers.

On the flip side, got skills? Flaunt ‘em and earn cash!

Looking to earn extra income using your hard-won technical skills? Rent a Coder lets you locate and bid on coding projects and questions from around the world! By completing a free registration, you can publicize your skills on the online resume system and receive emails as new bid requests come in.

So those of you who are creating all those great free themes and plug-ins (which I hope you’ll continue to offer for the sake of the blogging community), you may wanna consider listing your talents at Rent A Coder and earning some extra $$ through freelancing.

I just did.

Mar 22

BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature-rich interface

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Just came across a very interesting application called BlogJet. Basically, it’s an easy to use Windows program that acts as a front-end for posting to your blog from the BlogJet client instead of from your blog software’s own interface (usually your browser).

From their website: Works with all leading weblog services:

blogger BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Blogger
b2evo BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface b2evolution
blogging BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Blogging.com
blogharbor BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface BlogHarbor
blogware BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Blogware
dasblog BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface DasBlog
deadjournal BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface DeadJournal
deardiary BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface DearDiary
drupal BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Drupal
livejournal BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface LiveJournal
manila BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Manila		 modblog BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface ModBlog
lockergnome BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Lockergnome.net
movabletype BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface MovableType
pmachine BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface pMachine
pushlogs BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface PUSHlogs
squarespace BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Squarespace
typepad BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface TypePad
text BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface .Text
wordpress BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface WordPress
empty BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface Blogger API
empty BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface MetaWeblog API

Right now I’m using it to post to my ‘How to Blog’ blog on TypePad (the post you’re reading right now, actually). You can download a free trial copy of BlogJet here.

I’m only just starting to tool around with it, but my first impression is a good one! Make that great, actually. Because I think it may provide me with the best of all worlds interface-wise. For example, one of my gripes about TypePad is that you have to pop open a new window when you want to select multiple categories for your post (which, for me, is all the time). WordPress, on the other hand, has a bunch of checkboxes and you can check as many as you want w/o having to open another page (it’s just faster, and hey, doing things inefficiently is a pet peeve of mine..). Well, using BlogJet to compose this post, I notice there’s a drop-down box which – surprise – provides checkboxes next to a list of all my categories. One less TypePad gripe. Make that three – I can now change fonts mid post (except it’s a little buggy because I actually changed fonts and switched to BOLD, and clearly this text isn’t bolded when viewed from my actual TypePad site)

and I can(NOT) modify the alignment of the post (or a part of the post) w/o editing the html, so for example, this paragraph happens to be centered – at least in BlogJet, but as you’ll notice when this gets posted (meaning, as you read it), this sure isn’t centered – it’s aligned left just like the rest of the post. Darn. And while I’m bitching, how come there’s no ‘strikethrough’ option for text?

On the flip side, one of my gripes with WordPress is that they don’t have a rich text editor – you can’t just copy something from your browser and paste it into WordPress’ edit post textbox and expect it to preserve it’s formatting (and linking) structure. But BlogJet does have this funcationality – and so now you could have rich text editing and a WYSIWYG display for your WordPress posts. Which might sway me towards choosing WordPress as the ultimate blogging tool (when used in conjunction with BlogJet) because the features, plug-ins and customizability of WordPress are the best I’ve seen thus far.

Initially I though BlogJet had a huge drawback – no place to enter URIs for sites you want to send a trackback ping to. And a search through their online help (at the BlogJetWiki) for ‘trackback’ came up blank. But on a lark I clicked the ‘Properties’ tab at the bottom of the window, and lo and behold, there are all of my advanced post options, including Trackbacks! It’ll be interesting to see if and for how long I’ll actually be using BlogJet to create my posts. As always, I’ll keep ya updated smile3 BlogJet allows Windows users to create and edit posts for any blog through an easier, more feature rich interface (oh yeah – BlogJet’s got tons of built-in smiley’s, if emoticons are your thing…)

It will also be interesting to see how BlogJet compares with it’s competition – w.blogger, which calls itself “The best interface between you and your blog” and is Freeware (vs. the free 30 day trial I’m using of BlogJet). Oh, so much to do, so little time!

Update 3/22 – I’ve done all of my latest posting using BlogJet, and one of the things I’m really liking about it is that I’m not limited to a small edit box for creating/designing my post. Hell, I can go full screen if I want to. On the other hand, I’ve noticed yet another bug in the product — my posts are appearing in the reverse order of when I’ve created them for each particular date. In other words, I publish Post 1, then later I publish Post 2, and then even later that same day I publish Post 3. In the blogosphere, posts that are archived by date should be displayed in the following order: Post 3, Post 2, followed by Post 1. For all of my posts created on 3/22, they’re showing up in the reverse order of when they are published – Post 1, Post 2, Post 3. So my newest post isn’t at the top. That’s no good… Hopefully w.blogger won’t have this little glitch… (I still haven’t had a chance to try it)

Update 3/31 – Inconsistent behavior when dragging and dropping from IE 6 pages – sometimes is retains formatting from original site (and linking), other time not. Sometimes crashes (I was trying to retrieve my list of posts and got the following error, “Access violation at address 00435113 in module ‘BlogJet.exe’. Read of address 00000000 Class: EAccessViolation” — note that this has only happened once in the entire time I’ve been using the software, and shutting it down and relaunching solved the problem..). Can’t create new categories from w/in their interface – must log into your blogs control panel to do so.

Feb 25

HaloScan brings TrackBack functionality to Blogger, Blogspot, and other blogging tools w/o their own commenting and trackback features

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Link: News – HaloScan.com.

Trackback and commenting go hand in hand, especially in the weblog community, but unfortunately, there hasn’t been an easy way for Blogger, Blogspot, Diaryland, Diary-X, iBlog, Newspro, Pitas, and many other weblog users to implement trackback capabilities until now.

HaloScan fills this need by providing you not only with the (free) commenting services we have provided for the last one and half years, but also easy, seamless integration of trackback services (both incoming and outgoing ping support) to all existing and future Haloscan members. All this at the unbeatable price of $0.00–FREE. Getting started requires minimal work–sign up, log in and follow the simple, two-step directions to install trackback and/or commenting into your weblog. We highly recommend that all existing and new users install both the commenting and trackback services but you can also install just one or the other as needed. If you have trouble with any part of this process, we’ll be glad to help! Also, be sure to send a trackback ping to this post if you install the trackback system or write about us in your weblog.

Hmmm — so many things on my plate, but I can’t wait to try out Blogger combined with HaloScan’s free remote commenting and trackback system. Could this make Blogger a true competitor to TypePad (or perhaps even superior – given that its FREE)?

I’ll post my findings soon!

Update: It’s not as simple as it seems. According to their tutorial on sending a trackback ping, each time you want to send a trackback from Blogger (or similar tool), you have to

  1. login to HaloScan
  2. click ‘Manage Trackback’
  3. click ‘Send a trackback ping’
  4. Paste the TrackBack ping URL into the edit box for ‘URLs to Ping’
  5. Fill in your blog name
  6. Paste YOUR permalink URL
  7. Paste a copy of your Post Title
  8. Paste (or write) an excerpt from your post
  9. Click the ‘Ping Now’ button.

Yikes – that’s more work/typing/copying & pasting than I want to bother with.

There’s a thread in their forums about adding some code to your Blogger templates which enables auto-discovery of TrackBack URLs (something that tools like MovableType and TypePad already do), which, if it works, could save some time – but as you’ll see in the thread people have found it difficult to implement. Your mileage may vary.