Link Tips: May 18 2008
May 18, 2008
- Google’s Take on Web Spam: What does Google consider web spam? Check out this video from Matt Cutts to find it out.
- Blogging Boost: If you have no money or experience to start a blog, Alan Johnson is willing to help it out. He will cover all the initial expenses to get you rolling, you just need to write the content.
- Comment Info Plugin: Kevin discovered a nice WordPress plugin that gives you a bunch of information for all your commenters.
- 100 Web Accessibility Resources: If you are trying to make your website or blog more accessible, look no further than this compilation with 100 tools, tips and tutorials.
- How Will Web 3.0 Work?: We have not surpassed the Web 2.0 hype yet and people are already talking about Web 3.0… anyway if you want to know what the buzz is all about, this is a good start.
Partner: MakeUseOf.com Amazing Websites and Tools you Never Knew About Read more
Nuffnang Offers Cost-Per-Clicks = Less Complains
May 17, 2008
A while back, we opened up a Cost Per Click (CPC) option for bloggers with less than 20 unique visits a day (i.e, Band 0). This option was available to them on their blog manager, and allowed these bloggers to generate income with Nuffnang. Read moreAre You Familiar with HTML and CSS? Six Reasons Why You Should Invest the Time to Learn
I had been involved with web design for a few years before I ever started blogging. In my opinion, being able to work with the code of a blog is a huge advantage that many bloggers choose not to pursue.May 15, 2008
Aside form the design aspect of creating an attractive blog, being able to work with the coding will allow you to make changes and adjustments to your blog any time you want, rather than relying on a professional to do it for you, or rather than just limiting yourself to what’s available with the theme you have chosen. Most blogs need a bit of customization from time-to-time, and for someone who has no experience with HTML or CSS this be a bit intimidating. However, if you’re working with WordPress you really only need a basic knowledge in order to make many of the customizations that you would like, and you don’t even need to know PHP in most cases (those who aren’t comfortable with PHP just need to be able to recognize it and avoid it when making changes to the HTML). Read more
Snuggle Up To Your Readers With Comment Info Tip Plugin
Here is a Plugin that lets you interact with your most avid fans by allowing you to see how often they have been active on your blog. The Comment Info Tip WordPress Plugin ads some further usability to WordPress blogs and the way we can connect with each other. What I really like about this is the way I can see as a blog owner who has been a very active commenter. Unless I study the comments physically and take the time to dig deeper, this is quite annoying really. Especially when you areMay 15, 2008
pressed for time as most of us are. Now by using this Plugin we can simply hover over any comment and it will throw back some useful information. For example, we can see:
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- how often the person has commented on the blog overall
- if the commenter has posted more than once, the Plugin will attempt to pull the RSS feed and show an excerpt of the latest blog post
- the Comment Info Tip Plugin will also indicate trackbacks and pingbacks
- if the commenter has posted more than once the Plugin will also display the links to the last three posts they have commented on on your blog
Your Favorite Website Has No RSS Feed? Not a Problem!
This week a came cross an interesting tool called Page2RSS. Basically they will create an RSS feed for static websites, checking it every day for new content, and sending the updates to you whenever they occur.May 14, 2008
Not too excited? Well, there are several things you could monitor with this tool. Check out the RSS feed for Google.com for instance, it will show you whenever they have a new message displayed on the homepage, or whenever they have a new logo to celebrate a holiday or event. Pretty cool huh? Sponsor: Monetize your traffic! Join Neverblue Ads and access 1000's of high quality, high converting offers. Read more
Introducing NewsDen: A Premium WordPress Theme
Our WordPress Themes section is growing, so I thought that adding a paid Premium theme would be a logical extension. We will keep releasing free ones monthly as well, so don’t worry. NewsDen is a theme that I was actually developing for my next blog (the tech celebrities one), so it has the style and all the features that I like in a blog design. The result was a very clean and elegant theme which could be suitable for a wide range of blogs, that is why I decided to release it as a Premium theme.May 14, 2008
Here is a list of the features: Read more
Increase Your Google Juice
If you are at all interested in strengthening your position with Google, then you can do many things that will help you to do so. The first port of call is always on page SEO, where you optimize your WordPress theme with some SEO tips to get noticed better by the search engines. The next step is to use keywords in your posts if you target a good ranking with Google. While it is easy to rank in top spots within hours/days of your post going live, most of the time your ranking will drop after a short while making way to newer posts that target the same keyword. The only way you can hold your rankings is when either:May 14, 2008
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- there isn’t much competition targeting the same keyword/market
- or your blog has become an authority in your niche
Search Engine Optimization: The Title Tag
Welcome to the third video post on Daily Blog Tips (there is a category just for them now). On this video we are going to talk about the most important SEO factor: the Title Tag. If you are using WordPress you can use this code to create an optimal title tag (just paste it in the header):May 12, 2008
<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(‘name’); } elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ' - ' ; bloginfo(‘name’); } elseif (is_single() ) { single_post_title();} elseif (is_page() ) { single_post_title();} else { wp_title(‘’,true); } ?></title>Here is a rough transcript of the video (the blog used for example was PublicRecordsGuy.com): Read moreJust Lucid WordPress Theme
The new Just Lucid WordPress Theme is neat and clean for blogger who enjoy whitish themes. This one has also a nice and nifty looking footer that looks very attractive as it stands out from most other footer designs.May 10, 2008
Just Lucid was designed by DemusDesign and includes some smart navigation. Here is what they say on their site: Main menu expands automatically - The image to the right of the main menu automatically expands to the size of the menu. So you can see what I mean, I’ve included a demo of different header sizes. For the image I have included, it works best to have it centered vertically, if you change the picture you may want to find “.menu” in the css and change the background value to read “no-repeat bottom right” or “no-repeat top right.” Read more
Keys to an Effective Idea Journal
Probably my most valuable possession as a blogger is my idea notebook/journal. Because I maintain two blogs of my own and I write on a regular basis for a few other blogs, post ideas are priceless. Without a constant flow of ideas the results of my writing would suffer and my income would drop. I know just about every blogger out there faces the same issue of constantly pumping out ideas for new posts. For me, the idea notebook is the cure to blogger’s block, and I know many other bloggers use the same approach, or at least a similar one. If you don’t already use a notebook or a journal to keep track of your ideas, I highly suggest that you start one as soon as you finish reading this post. If you do already keep a notebook, here are some keys that I have found for maximizing its effectiveness. 1 – Available When You Need It The main reason for having an idea journal is to get your ideas on paper before you forget them. Most of us have plenty of ideas, they just don’t come at the most convenient times. With an idea journal you can write down your ideas as they come, and then when you have time to write you can refer to the journal for possible post ideas. If you just leave your journal next to your computer it will not be very effective. Read moreMay 9, 2008
