As a writer, blogger, and talker, I’m having a terrible time expressing myself when it comes to thanking everyone who came to my two month party celebrating two years of WordPress.com and Lorelle on WordPress. Thank you just isn’t enough.
To all my beautiful and wonderful friends who stopped in to entertain and educate us during the party, my appreciation knows no bounds. This has been so much fun and you’ve helped revitalize me, and hopefully, my readers. You’ve always shown me new ways of looking at things, twists on perceptions refreshing and challenging, and now, as I bid you all farewell until next time and close the door on my blogging house, and turn to clean up all the dishes and trash left behind by the fun, my heart is simultaneously full and breaking with the love. Thank you so much.
Thanks goes to the best of the best guest bloggers any blog could be graced with: Mohsin at Blogging Bits, Otto of Nothing to See Here, Tony D. Clark of Success from the Nest, Phil Gerbyshak, the Make It Great! Guy, Douglas Bell of Webmacster87.info and PreviewCast, Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com, Pelf Nyok of pelf-ism is contagious, J.T Dabbagian of JTDabbagian.com, Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts, Michael Hampton of Homeland Stupidity and Bad Behavior, John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog, Daniel Brusilovsky of Apple Universe, Jan of Circular Communication, Engtech of Internet Duct Tape, Edrei Zahari of Footsteps in the Mirror, and Greg Balanko-Dickson, The Remote Control CEO.
Thanks goes to everyone who attended my two month long party, readers and commenters all. Without your input and feedback, we’d feel like we were partying in a room of statues. Thank you for coming to the party and making it so special.
The Lists of Posts
To summarize up all the fun and activities at my two month party, here is a list of all the articles published the first month, as bloggers from all over the world blogged about blogging:
- If I was to start writing & blogging today I would…: Greg Balanko-Dickson asks himself the question of “what if” and how things would be different if we only knew then what we know today about blogging.
- Sandbox Theme for WordPress Design Competition: Engtech explores and Sandbox Theme Design Competition with great tips and techniques for the Sandbox WordPress Theme.
- Top 10 List: Just Say No To SEO: Greg created another stir as he announced that SEO was dead – well, at least from his perspective – and that we have to start thinking out of the box to promote your blogs.
- Planning Your Entry: A Basic How-To On Brainstorming: J.T Dabbagian looks at the art of brainstorming, mind mapping, and ways to come up with blog post ideas.
- Bringing Personal Blogging To Light: While often scoffed and slammed, personal blogs are the heart of the blogosphere. Edrei Zahari introduces us to the power behind personal blogs, how personal blogs are therapy for both the writer and the reader.
- How to Avoid Mental Gymnastics While Writing Your Blog: Writing blog posts can be difficult, so Greg Balanko-Dickson helps you to understand how to make it simple and easy to convey your message on your blog.
- Why Blog?: When was the last time you really asked yourself why you blog? Abhijit Nadgouda tackles this question and invites you to really look at your self motivation in blogging.
- Battling Referrer Spam: Michael Hampton, one of the blogosphere’s leading experts in comment spam and other blog uglies, helps us better understand the often ignored referrer spam that plagues our blogs.
- Sandbox Design Competition Winners: Engtech of Internet Duct Tape looks at the winners of the Sandbox Design Competition for WordPress Themes.
- Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Still Important: John Pozadzides argues that SEO is still alive and by understanding how search engines and page ranking works – the truth not the myths – we can still use it to help our blogs get found.
- Almost two years now and what have I learned from blogging?: Two years of blogging and what do you get? Pelf Nyok asks and answers the question.
- Lorelle Live at WordCamp 2007: John Pozadzides video taped the entire WordCamp conference in San Francisco and announces one of the first videos published – my program! Wow!
- Observations on The Economics of the Blogosphere: Greg Balanko-Dickson is fearless with what he takes on and he tackles the economics of the blogosphere, the reality versus the myth.
- Why A Link Post Should Be Like Mingling at a Party: In part one of his series, Jan of Circular Communication introduces us to his popular link posts and how he creates these uniquely written blog posts.
- Writing The Picture of a Personal Blog: In the second of his series on Personal Blogging, Edrei Zahari helps us understand how to create the verbal picture of you and your life on your blog.
- What is Podcasting?: New to podcasting? Daniel Brusilovsky begins his series on introducing us to podcasting on our blogs.
- Issues of Podcasting: In part two of his series, Daniel Brusilovsky takes us into some of the troubleshooting issues and things you need to consider when putting together a podcast.
- Keyword Conquering: How to take control of the search engine: J.T Dabbagian tackles how to control the search engines and not allow them to just control you and your blog.
- Learning About the Web in Plain English: There is a lot to learn about the web, Internet, and blogging and much of it is complicated and a little too jargon heavy. Engtech of Internet Duct Tape dug into the web and found some fantastic resources to help you learn, in simple language, about the web, Internet, and blogging.
- Public vs Private: Cryptic Writing For Personal Blogs: Edrei Zahari continues with his series on Personal Blogging with the issue of public versus private writing of personal thoughts, opinions, and disclosures.
- Be Unique, Not Unusual: Phil Gerbyshak reminds us of why he is called the “Make it Great Guy” in this great post on the difference between being unique but not unusual to build your blogging audience.
- Why You Want To Link To Other Blogs: Dawud Miracle discusses why you should link to other blogs and the importance of such links.
- Nine Years Writing: How I Generate Writing Concepts, Tools, and Strategies I Use: When I asked Greg Balanko-Dickson to share some of this tips and tools for how he blogs, he opened up the door to his blogging life and shared with us how he blogs so efficiently and powerfully by using the right tools.
- Starting Your Podcast: Daniel Brusilovsky continues with his series on podcasting with the basics of getting started.
- Terms of Use and Universal Comment Link Philosophy: Creating a bit of a controversy, John Pozadzides slaps us in the face about creating a Terms or Use, Comments Policy, and other legal policies on our blogs to protect ourselves, but also protect our readers and commenters.
- What EXACTLY have I learned, you ask?: In part two of Pelf Nyok’s exploration of “what have I learned from blogging”, she looks at the reality of what she’s learned about blogging compared to the myths.
- Defining The Voice Of Your Blog: In the last of his wonderful series on Personal Blogging, Edrei Zahari discusses how to develop and define the voice of your blog, the voice that speaks to the readers as if they are sitting right next to them on the bus.
- Why Writing a Link Post Should Be Like Planning a Party: In part two of his series, Jan of Circular Communication takes the party metaphor further and explains how the best parties are planned, so are the best link filled blog posts.
- I’ve Learned That Blogging For Money Isn’t My Cup of Tea: What happens when you blog and blog and poke and prode at this blog advertising thing, determined to make your blog make you money, and you find out that blogging for money is harder on the spirit than you thought.
- Feed Yourself To Be A Healthy Blogger: Abhijit Nadgouda reminds us that in order to be a great blogger, you also have to be a healthy blogger, in mind as well as body.
- Ways to Build and Retain Your Podcast Audience: Douglas Bell covers the issues of concern to a podcaster when it comes to building and hanging onto an audience with your podcast.
- What To Write About: How to Get Ideas When You Run Out of E-Steam: Sometimes finding blog topics is hard, but sometimes, blogging is harder. J.T Dabbagian tackle what to do when you run of of e-steam on your blog.
- 7 Ways to Find Your Blogging Muse: Engtech explores the source of blog writing inspiration and motivation: the blogging muse.
- How Do You Find Relevant Blog Posts to Link To?: Finding links to link to from your blog posts can be easy, but Dawud Miracle introduces us to the art of finding the “right” links.
- 16 Tips for Blog Idea Brainstorming: Need some good blog topic ideas? John Pozadzides tackles 16 of them to help you kick your creative blogging butt.
- Never Break the Blogosphere’s Trust: It’s Universal: J.T Dabbagian dives right into controversy when it comes to the truth of the blogosphere: it’s reliance upon trust.
- Why Writing a Link Post May Be Less Like Partying and More Like Work: Jan of Circular Communication continues with his series on link posts, expanding upon his recent post on how a link post should be like a party, explaining that it is also hard work to put all the links and parts and pieces together to make the post work – for you and your audience.
- I’ve Learned That I Wanted to Be a Campaign Blogger: Pelf Nyok did a lot of self-evaluation on her blogging style and goals and discovered along the way that her passion lies down the “changing the world” path with her blogging.
- What is Microblogging or Tumblelogging? Pros and Cons: Engtech of Internet Duct Tape introduces us to microblogging and tumblelogging – the new social blogging and communications styles we may need to be aware of, and how they can help us blog.
- A Virtual Interview With Lorelle About Guest Blogging: In conclusion of his series on creating powerful and unique link posts, Jan of Circular Communication introduces us to his original “virtual interview” technique where he “interviews” a blogger based upon their blog content, not with direct contact with the blogger. He uses me in this wonderful example of the “virtual interview”.
- Blogging and Social Networking as a Teenager: Douglas Bell introduces us to the issues of blogging as a teenager, both from the teenager perspective as well as the parent’s perspective of having a teenager blogger.
In the second month, the party conversation turned to blogging about WordPress Tips, sharing insights and techniques for improving, tweaking, and better understanding how WordPress works:
- Microformats and WordPress Themes: Ever wonder about what microformats are? Otto of Nothing to See Here introduced us to them and how to use and incorporate them into our blogs so browsers and other online services can take advantage of these “address forms” and other embedded information. If you don’t know what these are now, you will have to get to know them soon. Start early.
- WordPress.com Tip: Get Your Own WordPress.com Email: If you have a WordPress.com blog and you want an email address that connects with that blog, I’ve written some tips on creating a “WordPress.com-like” email address and account.
- Understanding The WordPress Post Title and Post Slug: I dig into the post title and post slug issues with tips on how and when to change the post title and post slug of your blog posts.
- Displaying the Date in Your WordPress Theme: The time and date plays an important role in your WordPress Theme. In the byline or post meta section, it tells readers when the post was published. It can also be used elsewhere to provide chronological or date information about your blog and blog post with these tips.
- Write Today, Post Tomorrow: Using Post Timestamp: Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com reminds of us of the powerful “future posts” feature of WordPress, which gives you a ton of freedom with your blog to post blog posts ahead of time so they will automatically publish when you want them to, so you can work, play, and not babysit your blog constantly.
- How to Turn Off Snap Preview on WordPress Blogs: Many find Snap Preview, now called “Snap Shots”, annoying, so I offer a basic guide to help WordPress and WordPress.com users turn it off.
- Using WordPress Categories To Style Posts: Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts helps us customize any post by category, allowing you to change how a post is viewed on multi-post page views so it stands out visually by category “style”.
- Kubrick and K2 WordPress Themes: Collection of Theme Tips: There are a lot of tips around the web for working with Kubrick (aka, Default Theme, K2, etc) WordPress Theme, but I dug up some of the best of the best to help you tweak and customize a Theme based upon the Default WordPress Theme.
- WordPress Tip: How to Display a Specific Post Anywhere You Want: Want to feature a post on your blog anywhere in your WordPress Theme? This tip by Mohsin at Blogging Bits will show you how to do it easily.
- Protecting Your WordPress Blog: I take a look at the various ways you can boost your blog’s security and improve your chances of avoiding being hacked or invaded.
- Is Your Site Ready for the New Mobile Internet?: Douglas Bell tackles the issue that confronts all of us: Is your blog ready for the mobile web? He helps us understand how our blogs are viewed on cell phones and iPhones and how you can improve your blog’s mobile viewing quality.
- Combining Post Authors in WordPress: I found myself with two Lorelle’s on one of my blogs after importing blog posts. This is the technique you use to fix the cloned authors on your WordPress blog.
- WordPress: It Takes a Village: While not a tip, this is a tip to the WordPress Community to remind them that it takes a village to support WordPress and we need to give all of the volunteers and staff a hat tip of thanks for making our blogging so easy and powerful.
- Attack of the Mean Commenter: Blocking Commenters and Comments on Your WordPress Blog: Do you have a mean commenter, one who just enjoys saying vicious and nasty things? There are some easy tips for preventing your vicious reader from commenting, or even viewing your blog, or worse.
- WordPress Tip: Writing Customized Post Headlines, Title Tags, And Permalinks: Mohsin at Blogging Bits covers a top of tips dealing with writing customized post titles and more on using the Post Slug.
- Checking WordPress for Comment Spam That Slips By You: Dealing with comment spam on your blog is tough, but some do manage to slip through. I offer some quick tips on how to search regularly for comment spam keywords to make sure no comment spam reaches your reading audience.
- Fighting Comment Spam: WordPress Comments Mass Edit Mode: More tips for fighting comment spam, I explore the power of the Comments Mass Edit Mode, helping you tackle dozens of comment spam quick and painlessly – at least for you.
- Are You Abusing Your WordPress Pages – and Your Blog? Pages are for “static” information about your blog like who you are, how to contact you, and other information. Posts are for content. This post looks at how people are confusing posts and Pages, turning their Pages into posts.
- Banning a WordPress Spammer With .htaccess: John Pozadzides takes another stab at stopping a nasty commenter and comment spammer with a nice tutorial on blocking users with the .htaccess file.
- 5 Most Useful Administrative Plugins For WordPress by John Pozadizes introduces many to five powerful WordPress Plugins that will help speed up your administrative tasks and movement around the Admin Panels.
- Heads Up News on WordPress 2.3 lists news and resources to help you prepare your WordPress blog, WordPress Theme, and WordPress Plugin for the upcoming release of WordPress 2.3.
- Tags Arrive on WordPress.com Blogs offers tips and information for WordPress.com and full version WordPress blogs on the new tagging feature.
- The 3 Easiest Ways to Speed Up WordPress by John Pozadizes gives some simple and easy-to-do tips to help speed up your WordPress blog.
- WordPress Tips: Previewing Your Post in WordPress takes a look at some options, pros and cons, of how to preview your draft post in WordPress.
- Converting a Newsletter Into a Blog is an article series I did for the Blog Herald on helping a small business women’s membership group make the switch from a newsletter mailed and emailed to members to producing the same content on a blog, saving printing and postage and moving into the digital age.
- When Akismet Goes Bad: What to do when Akismet starts spamming your own comments is another great post by Engtech of Internet Duct Tape covering some of the concerns people have about Akismet’s false/positives, and the issue of having your comments captured by Akismet, as well as features some the powerful Akismet Auntie-Spam Greasemonkey Script which is my life saver when dealing with vast amounts of comment spam in Akismet.
- 5 Advanced Techniques for Creating Plugins and Widgets for WordPress.com by Engtech of Internet Duct Tape lists five great tips and techniques for pushing WordPress.com beyond its limits with Firefox Greasemonkey scripts and so much more. If you think WordPress.com blogs are for the blog-illiterate, his article will turn your head around and please geeks and techies alike.
- Creating a Clickable Header in Your WordPress Theme by me covers the challenge I had of creating the header for this blog, using a background image and expanding the blog title link to encompass the whole header area, not just the h1 tag of the blog title.
- WordPress Themes: The Ignored Footer: The footer is one of the most often ignored parts of a WordPress Theme. In a two part series, I discuss how to give the footer back its power.
- Customizing Your WordPress Theme Footer: In part two of my support of the WordPress footer and its design possibilities, I offer tips on how to put a variety of navigation, images, Plugins, and other information into your blog’s footer.
- The Art of Smilies in WordPress Blogs: Smilies make the conversation have emotion, but they are also often abused, not just by over usage, but design-wise, too.
To celebrate all the wonderful guest bloggers, here is a listing by author of the past two months of posts during the party.
Greg Balanko-Dickson, The Remote Control CEO
- Top 10 List: Just Say No To SEO
- If I was to start writing & blogging today I would…
- Observations on The Economics of the Blogosphere
- How to Avoid Mental Gymnastics While Writing Your Blog
- Nine Years Writing: How I Generate Writing Concepts, Tools, and Strategies I Use
Edrei Zahari of Footsteps in the Mirror
- Bringing Personal Blogging To Light
- Writing The Picture of a Personal Blog
- Public vs Private: Cryptic Writing For Personal Blogs
- Defining The Voice Of Your Blog
Engtech of Internet Duct Tape
- Learning About the Web in Plain English
- Sandbox Theme for WordPress Design Competition
- Sandbox Design Competition Winners
- 7 Ways to Find Your Blogging Muse
- What is Microblogging or Tumblelogging? Pros and Cons
- 5 Advanced Techniques for Creating Plugins and Widgets for WordPress.com
- When Akismet Goes Bad: What to do when Akismet starts spamming your own comments
Jan of Circular Communication
- Why A Link Post Should Be Like Mingling at a Party
- Why Writing a Link Post Should Be Like Planning a Party
- Why Writing a Link Post May Be Less Like Partying and More Like Work
- A Virtual Interview With Lorelle About Guest Blogging
Daniel Brusilovsky of Apple Universe
John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog
- Lorelle Live at WordCamp 2007
- Why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Still Important
- Terms of Use and Universal Comment Link Philosophy
- 16 Tips for Blog Idea Brainstorming
- Banning a WordPress Spammer With .htaccess
- 5 Most Useful Administrative Plugins For WordPress
- The 3 Easiest Ways to Speed Up WordPress
Michael Hampton of Homeland Stupidity and Bad Behavior
Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts
J.T Dabbagian of JTDabbagian.com
- Keyword Conquering: How to take control of the search engine
- Planning Your Entry: A Basic How-To On Brainstorming
- What To Write About: How to Get Ideas When You Run Out of E-Steam
- Never Break the Blogosphere’s Trust: It’s Universal
Pelf Nyok of pelf-ism is contagious
- Almost two years now and what have I learned from blogging?
- What EXACTLY have I learned, you ask?
- I’ve Learned That Blogging For Money Isn’t My Cup of Tea
- I’ve Learned That I Wanted to Be a Campaign Blogger
Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com
- Why You Want To Link To Other Blogs
- How Do You Find Relevant Blog Posts to Link To?
- Write Today, Post Tomorrow, Using Post Timestamp
Douglas Bell of Webmacster87.info, PreviewCast, and phpBB Weekly
- Ways to Build and Retain Your Podcast Audience
- Blogging and Social Networking as a Teenager
- Is Your Site Ready for the New Mobile Internet?
- Douglas Bell Interviews Lorelle – Excellent!
Phil Gerbyshak, the Make It Great! Guy
Tony D. Clark of Success from the Nest
Otto of Nothing to See Here
Mohsin at Blogging Bits
- WordPress Tip: How to Display a Specific Post Anywhere You Want
- WordPress Tip: Writing Customized Post Headlines, Title Tags, And Permalinks
Lorelle VanFossen
- WordPress.com Tip: Get Your Own WordPress.com Email
- Understanding The WordPress Post Title and Post Slug
- Displaying the Date in Your WordPress Theme
- How to Turn Off Snap Preview on WordPress Blogs
- Kubrick and K2 WordPress Themes: Collection of Theme Tips
- Protecting Your WordPress Blog
- Attack of the Mean Commenter: Blocking Commenters and Comments on Your WordPress Blog
- Checking WordPress for Comment Spam That Slips By You
- Fighting Comment Spam: WordPress Comments Mass Edit Mode
- Are You Abusing Your WordPress Pages – and Your Blog?
- Heads Up News on WordPress 2.3
- Tags Arrive on WordPress.com Blogs
- WordPress Tips: Previewing Your Post in WordPress
- Converting a Newsletter Into a Blog
- Creating a Clickable Header in Your WordPress Theme
- The Art of Smilies in WordPress Blogs
- Customizing Your WordPress Theme Footer
- WordPress Themes: The Ignored Footer
- Combining Post Authors in WordPress
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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
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12 Comments
The party was fun, Lorelle, though I was here for only a month, but thank you very very much for having me! =)
My pleasure Lorelle ^_^
Do we turn into pumpkins now?
It was fun, in fact a privilege. I had never thought I would get a chance to write here 🙂
Thank you Lorelle for pouring so much of yourself into this blog. I have learned so much from you and your guests. Thanks. 😀
Good to have you back at the helm Lorelle – they were some great guest posts over the last two months.
It’s a pity I didn’t have time to finish the final chapter of my personal Blogging series. Maybe the next time you decide to have something like this, I’ll have the time to put the finishing touch to an surprisingly fruitful chapter.
Thanks Lorelle for giving us the opportunity to speak out on your blog. It just shows that there are many of us here who are just as inspired by blogging as you are. Giving back to the people (specifically you Lorelle) that gave us great ideas to begin with. 🙂
I probably robbed my own blog of good content, but it has been great to participate with your months of guest blogging and get my work out to many more eyes. Also, thank you again for the interview that we did; I thoroughly enjoyed it!
What a great resource! Thanks for taking the time to put this list together…I’m sure it wasn’t an easy task. I especially like the “Defining the voice of your blog” post because it can be difficult to decide how you want to be with your readers. With the anonymity of the Internet we can be whomever we want. It’s interesting to see how people sound online and in real life.
Thank you to all, and Douglas, I’m sure the benefits outweighed the “contribution” of such great content on this blog. 😀
I didn’t make it. But I wanted to. I lost my internet for a bit so I was screwed for anything.
This Douglas Bell character is everywhere! Look at all of this information on one page, my head is going to explode. Thanks for posting and congrats on your part.
Holey mackerel, I can’t remember when I’ve read a post so chock full of great information. Thanks you so much!
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