Weekly Digest: Great Reviews on My New Book, WordPress.com Get Verified, and An Introduction to the Web Browser

The Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress this week features amazing reviews and recommendations of my new book, a lot of attention for the recently discovered ability to get your WordPress.com blog verified by Google Webmaster Tools, and another article on comment spam reaches the top posts and blogs on WordPress.com. And on the Blog Herald, I’m reintroducing bloggers to their most important blogging tool: the web browser.

Exciting Lorelle on WordPress News

Blogging Tips by Lorelle on WordPress: My new book, Blogging Tips, What Blogger’s Won’t Tell You About Blogging, is getting great coverage and is flying out the door.

The book contains hundreds of tips on how to blog, blog promotion, networking, building, development, design, comments, comment spam, link building, administration, and more. All the things you wish you knew about blogging before you started blogging. Even those who have been blogging for a while may be still missing some of these crucial steps to help make your blog the best it can be.

Released during the SOBCon07, the Successful and Outstanding Blogger Conference, for a limited time, the book is USD $12.95 (plus shipping and handling) while limited quantities last. Buy it within the next week and you’ll get an autographed copy! You can buy the book through the publisher, SplashPress or through the new Blog Herald Bookstore.
Currently, the books are still available for the reduced price from the SOBCON event, and if you order by next Friday, I will autograph your copy. You can read a sample chapter excerpt on Blogging Tips Book: Blog Branding and Identity.

The reviews have been amazing. Chris Cree of Success Creeations wrote:

Lorelle is one of those folks who has probably forgotten more about blogging than many others have learned yet. She’s been writing and running her own web sites for over 10 years, since long before there was such a thing as blogging software to make it easy for us.

…Let me just start by saying that Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging is a must read for every business blogger. At $12.95 (plus $3 shipping in the US) this book is a steal.

There is more high quality information crammed into the 98 pages than any book I’ve yet seen on the subject. And very little of the information is WordPress specific.

You can read the book straight through or use it as a reference guide. Lorelle laid it out with short sections with lots of headers and tons of short bullets points to make the info easy to find. And all of the information is incredibly useful.

Kamigoroshi of Footsteps in the Mirror says:

…what she writes about blogs and blogging is a crap load more than any one person would know. She’s written about our plan, our purpose as bloggers. She’s written the technical details like blog administration, spam prevention and SEO. She’s even written about ways to market one’s blog via social networking as well. I can’t possibly put everything here because in the time that Lorelle started Lorelle On WordPress, she’s written what amounts to an infinite bundle of resource on blogging.

The good news is that now you can read it all in a book.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s new to blogging or even remotely serious about it. Heck I’d even recommend this book to anyone who is interested about it but don’t really have the time to learn all the details about it with years of experience. This book should be the years of experience in a cover. Something you should read to give you the low downs of blogging, even if you think you know everything there is no know about it.

I’m blushing!

Some bloggers are having fun with my book. Working at Home on the Internet is starting a home/blogging project Saturday with a signed copy of my book as the reward. Participants are required to write and subject a blog post about how you think “blogging and working at and from home can meld together to enhance your business success”. Oh, good topic.

Reviews and announcements are still coming in and include:

Listed in the WordPress.com Most Popular Blog and Post of the Day: My article Get Your WordPress.com Blog Now Verified, linking to the fabulous discovery by Jalaj P. Jha on how to verify your WordPress.com blog in Google Webmaster Tools so you can monitor stats and search engine statistics, made it into the WordPress Blog of the Day list as a top post, which means Jalaj’s post must have gone through the roof with everyone linking. Thanks, Jalaj, for the great tip and discovery.

Also, Comment Spammers Never Stop, Even When Your Blog is Down, my post on recovering quickly from comment spam after an upgrade, made it into the lists, too. While I knew the first post would be a bit of an attention-getter, I had no idea the second one would be even more popular. For some, the issue of battling comment spam never dulls.

WordCamp 2007 will be July 21-22 in San Francisco: There is an “unofficial WordCamp 2007 Upcoming Events page but the new official site is at http://2007.wordcamp.org/ and Matt says it will be at the same place as last year, the Swedish American Hall on Market Street, and that there may be a small fee for attendees, probably to help cover costs of the hall and event.

What’s Happening with Lorelle on WordPress

This past week’s articles from Lorelle on WordPress included:

Linking To and From Lorelle on WordPress

Jalaj P. Jha – Get your WordPress.com Blog Google Verified from my article Get Your WordPress.com Blog Now Verified got a tremendous response. We’ve been trying to figure out how to verify a WordPress.com blog for a long time, so this was very exciting. There were a lot of incoming links to this post, too, as fellow WordPress.com bloggers spread the word.

I was also really pleased to see the clicks through to the new Blog Herald Bookstore featuring my new book was also in the top outgoing links. Thank you again for your interest and enthusiasm.

Other popular destinations and recommendations from this blog elsewhere included:

Blog Herald Columns

This week, I started a series on the Web Browser Guide for Bloggers on the Blog Herald and the response has been amazing. The idea was to introduce a few topics to help bloggers and blog readers learn a little more about how to use their web browser, your gateway to the web. I thought this would be an insignificant topic as everyone should know how to use a web browser. Planning this for over a year, little did I realize that “should” was the imperative word and that most people don’t know how to full use their web browser. They learned what they needed to learn to get by and then put all their energy into learning about the web page and not the web browser.

Thornley Fallis wrote:

Firefox and IE7 are the first applications I open when I turn on my computer every morning. And they are the last applications I close when shutting down at the end of the day. I use them far more than any other software on my computer.

Yet, like most people, I didn’t read any help files for these applications. I relied on intuition and trial and error to learn how to use them.

What began as a five or six part series is now expanding and I will need your help. Let me know what it is you would like to know or what frustrates you about your web browser so I can help answer those questions in this ongoing series.

Web Browser Guide Article Series

Recently weekly WordPress news announcements from the past few weeks include:

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

For my linkworthy links this week, I thought I’d showcase some of the brilliance around WordPress.com that I’ve found recently:

Web Worker Daily – Web Worker Head to Head (to Head): Google Reader, NewsGator Online & Bloglines – on life being a feed addict and which feeds work best
CNN Money – Engadget’s (mostly) convincing Applegate response – While I have a problem with a lazy blogger who still subtitles their blog “Just another WordPress.com blog”, I liked this article about the ongoing issue over a fake email reported by Engadget as “real”, claiming that Apple had delayed the release of their iPhone without adequate verification…um, while CNN Money is reporting on this issue, someone needs to tell them to verify their tag line. 😉
Engtech – Internet Duct Tape – WordPress Tips – Alt V – a good look at the WordPress Rich Text Editor advanced editing features often overlooked.
Venture Skills – Top 5 CSS Layout Tips – an amazing collection of five resources for web design layouts.
Writing English – When You Can’t Get Started Writing – I’m often locked up, believe it or not, at my keyboard with no idea of where to start on the next blog post. This is a great kick in the butt post for how to get started writing. I’ve come back to it several times.
Lightspeed Venture Partners – Time Rich or Time Poor? – are you time rich or time poor in how you use your time and the things you do with it, especially online?
Engtech – Greasemonkey Script: Find images that are too wide and break your blog template – I just started using Greasemonkey Scripts for Firefox and I’m on the hunt for new ones – this is a goody for web designers.
Web Worker Daily – Five Tips for Moving Quickly from Task to Task – don’t we all need a little lesson in improving our productivity? I certainly do.
Writing English – Ten Ways to Become a Better Writer – The content matches the title. We bloggers need all the writing help we can get.

Blasts From the Past

In keeping with my WordPress.com link theme, here are some WordPress.com specific blog posts I’ve written:

This is the Weekly Digest of Lorelle on WordPress.
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Lorelle VanFossen is a member of WordPress, WordPress.com, and the 9Rules Network.

8 Comments

J.T Dabbagian

Posted May 26, 2007 at 9:31 am | Permalink

Will you be putting your book on Amazon or BN.com (Or is it already there? I couldn’t find it.)

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted May 26, 2007 at 2:30 pm | Permalink

The first release is a special edition especially for the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference held a couple weeks ago. Thus, the extra copies are being released via the publisher, SplashPress or through the new Blog Herald Bookstore while supplies last at a special price. After that, we may be distributing it through other venues at a higher price. Details are being worked out.

If you buy it before this coming Friday, June 1, you will get an autographed copy.

Does it mean something special if you buy it from Amazon or direct from the publisher? Just curious if that adds more validity to the book, since it really doesn’t matter where you buy it from, does it?

J.T Dabbagian

Posted May 26, 2007 at 8:42 pm | Permalink

Well, it’s just that I only trust certain websites with my card. Nothing special.

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted May 26, 2007 at 9:29 pm | Permalink

The order is handled through PayPal, which most people trust. 😀

Anonymous

Posted May 27, 2007 at 2:38 am | Permalink

the work that you do is exteremly good, may give all the goodness to the works

stewart allan

Posted May 29, 2007 at 5:58 pm | Permalink

I think i will get your book my commision at amazon keeps me in books. The difference to book to online. It’s like day and night. You take a lot more in.

what about the pic though if i seen that in a library i wouldnt have a clue.

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted May 29, 2007 at 8:37 pm | Permalink

The picture on the cover? That was a last minute moment of brilliance. We wanted the book to look totally different and I think we’ve succeeded. Besides, we did a lot of research into blogging book covers and a lot of them feature globes and graphics that really don’t say much, in orange and yellow and black colors with the occasional splash of red. We wanted to be different and I think we succeeded. Some say that they like the feeling of stepping down into the dark reaches and mysteries of blogging. 😉

oliver

Posted June 6, 2007 at 11:33 pm | Permalink

Thanks for the information