Blog Exercises: Leave Room for the Reader

“You must leave room for the viewer to rest and breath as they look at your photograph.” These wise words were told to me by a long-time professional photographer, gone these many years. As I studied with her and others saying similar things, I began to understand what they meant and applied it eventually to […]

Blog Exercises: A Link List Post to Dazzle Readers

In blog exercises on making lists and making your lists pretty, we worked on the links, understanding how they work and formatting your styles. In this blog exercise, I want to focus on the content within those links, the real reason people love those link lists. I’d like to cite my friends at Daily Blog […]

Blog Exercises: Choose an Appropriate Gravatar for Your Readers

All WordPress sites have Gravatars integrated into the core. Gravatars are Globally Recognized Avatars, images that represent you in blog posts comments, featured author images (integrated with Gravatars), author images, BuddyPress, and other Gravatar-enabled features. Near the beginning of this year of blog exercises, you were asked to add or update your Gravatar to represent […]

Blog Exercises: I Don’t Have Any Comments

I hear this complaint frequently from new and long time bloggers. “I don’t have any comments. How can I get more comments?” First of all, let me explain something and I want you to read closely. You don’t want comments. Yes, that’s right. You do not want comments. At least not comments from anyone. If […]

Blog Exercises: Are Your Comments Open for Business?

Are your comments closed? Are they set to moderation? Are your comments wide open for all without question or challenge? Are you comments open for business? In “You Must Be Logged In To Comment” I wrote: Why do people turn off open, unregistered comments to require people to login in order to comment? I’m not […]

Blog Exercises: Comments Policy

We started with the Bloggers Code of Ethics in our blog exercises on site policies, starting you off on the right foot by knowing where you will draw your lines in the sand when it comes to your rights and responsibilities as a blogger. In this Blog Exercise, we are going to tackle the next […]

Blog Exercises: Feed Readers

Without the feed reader, my blogging life would be seriously hard work. Feed, commonly misidentified as RSS, is the proper name for the contextual version of your site as distributed through various feed types such as RSS, Atom, XML, etc. They are basically your posts stripped of your website design, read like articles in a […]

Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies

No matter what we do or say, there will always be bullies and mean people. Some are mean intentionally, some can hurt unintentionally. And then there are those moments when we read the black letters on the white screen too much in-between the lines and come away feeling sick to your stomach. Welcome to the […]

Get Angry: Blogger Sued For Comments On Their Blog

When a blogger believes they are alone and the only one, we all lose. In response to my friend, John Pozadzides’ recent experience outlined in “VistaPrint.com Is Threatening to Sue Me Over a Blog Comment. Really???,” I want him and all of you to know you are not alone when it comes to the threats […]

Power Blogging Tips: Comment on Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader

One of the most frustrating aspects of reading blogs through feed readers is the process of commenting on blogs. The typical step-by-step process is: Scan through the blog post titles. Find an interesting title and click on the title to open it and read. Want to respond or read more? Open the post title in […]

What Are Those Unknown Characters in My Blog Comments?

Little squares, boxes, lines, and funky symbols are often found in blog comments. A friend new to blogging called me about these wanting to know if her blog had been hacked or her computer had a virus. “It looks like alien writing from Star Trek!” Those strange symbols and characters in your blog comments are […]

Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas Transcript: 60,317 Comments

The Reader Appreciation Project has a transcript of Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas, along with the video. Her presentation was about the blog conversation and social networking, her claim to fame. She cemented that fame with the number 60,317. That’s the number of comments on her blog. One of the points she made resounded with […]

Reader Appreciation Project: Putting Readers First

Ronald Huereca writes for the Reader Appreciation Project blog and recently caught my attention with My Thoughts on Being Paid to Post. When one starts blogging for money, there are new considerations. Who am I really writing for? Am I writing for my new boss that will pay me per post? Am I writing for […]

Blog Struggles: When Are Too Many Comments Too Many Comments?

Recently, what appeared to be a thoroughly delighted fan went through my blog with a vengeance and left over 40 comments within a two day period. Each were personalized and directed to me, with enthusiastic comments and reflections on what was written. At first I was pleased, as I always am when my blog touches […]

Attack of the Mean Commenter: Blocking Commenters and Comments on Your WordPress Blog

By now, you all should know that you have total control over your blog’s comments, right? You can choose to allow only registered users to comment, delete any comment you want, edit any comment, and do the same for trackbacks. While it helps to have a good comments policy, you still have total control over […]