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!

As you can see, it has been quite a while since I last posted. I apologize for that profusely, but it is not without good reason. I had originally posted a whole long personal story about the some of the personal hardships I’d been through in the past couple of years, but regretted doing so w/in 15 hours, hope most of you didn’t get a chance to read it, and so let’s just say I’d had a lot on my plate and a leave it at that.

Getting back to this blog, right now I need to focus my time that I’m able to be at the computer (which is limited b/c of my back) working. This leaves me with no time to work on How to Blog right now, which makes me really sad. I think it is a wonderful resource and needs to be kept going. So, readers…are any of you interested in contributing to the site with informative posts on aspects of how to blog?? Tips and tricks, guides, walkthroughs, suggestions, experiences, blogging software comparisons, plugins, templates and themes, updates to my comprehensive wordpress theme list, any of these things would be wonderful additions to How to Blog and greatly appreciated!!

Please comment below or email me at howtoblog(at)gmail.com if you are interested in contributing! Help me to help this blog get back to it’s roots of helping new and experienced bloggers alike! Thanks so much in advance!!!!

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

Under the category of more absolutely ridiculous things that current blogging platforms are missing the boat on, I just found out that not only does TypePad not have pagination built in, but there is NO WAY of implementing it even through advanced templates.

By pagination, I mean the and buttons that many bloggers and blog readers are accustomed to seeing at the bottom of a blog page (a feature that is built into WordPress, for example). TypePad gives you the option of customizing how many posts appear on a page, but no way to easily navigate to posts beyond those appearing on the front page. For example, the oldHow To Blog site is set to display 10 posts on the front page. But when users visit the site and read through those posts, and want to see the rest of what I’ve written, they have only 2 options, neither of which is optimal:

1. View each category one at a time
2. Go through the monthly archives

I had put it on my personal ‘to do’ list to figure out how to add Next and Previous links to the buttom of my TypePad pages, and when I finally decided to tackle the project and couldn’t figure it out on my own, I submitted a support ticket to Six Apart asking for help with it. I wrote:

WordPress has built in previous / next page links at the bottom of every page. This makes their blogs much more easy to navigate, especially for beginners. As each page only contains a certain number of posts, without having next and previous buttons it’s hard for people to easily navigate the blog.

In addition to making this a feature request, I’d also like to know what code I should use in my advanced templates in order to implement this on my blog on How to Blog.

Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
Emily Robbins

The response I got back from TypePad Customer Support was astounding (bold added by me):

Hi Emily,

Currently TypePad doesn’t offer pagination (Next Page and Previous Page links), so there isn’t any code that I can offer you to do this.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. We are always looking for ways to enhance TypePad for our users, so we will keep this in mind as a possible future feature for the system.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

Thanks,
Kymberlie

Excuse me for the double-take, but NO CODE AVAILABLE TO DO THIS? How can this be when SixApart themselves acknowledged the importance of pagination features in their own article on Six Apart Pronet entitled “Building on Movable Type Part 3: Creating Pagination Controls”, wherein they say (again, bolding is from me):

Pagination controls are sufficiently ubiquitous that our own developers saw the value in creating a reusable mechanism for creating the links developers should all be too familiar with: “next page,” “previous page,” “last page,” “first page” and “you are viewing results X to Y out of Z.” This reusable framework is not only accessible within Movable Type, but by plugins as well.

So apparently Six Apart thinks that pagination controls are so ‘ubiquitous’ that we’d be ‘all to familiar’ with them, and they are not only built into the functionality of Movable Type but also accessible by MT plugins. GREAT. For Movable Type users.

So how come when SixApart created (and updated and updated) TypePad, this “ubiquitous” functionality was somehow forgotten?

Update: for those of you who click the link to my old blog at typepad to see the lack in pagination functionality, the template for the site has been changed to make it easier for folks to see the full URL for my new posts at the new site, making for a pretty ugly site. It didn’t use to look like that, but it’s okay that it’s ugly – none of you are supposed to be using that site anymore b/c I moved over here, remember

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.