How Are You Communicating Online With Your Blog Readers?

Blog Herald’s Amit Agarwal reports on “More Ways to Interact With Blog Readers” offering an interesting selection of online communication options that integrate with your blog. The list includes Skypecasts, Gabbly, and Odeo. Are you using any of these on your WordPress or WordPress.com blog? How is it working for you? How are you using […]

Feed Stats Spike: Feedburner and Google Reader Strikes

Before you get too excited when you check your feed stats, whether you are on a WordPress or a non-WordPress blog, including WordPress.com blogs, don’t get too excited. Reports are flooding the blogosphere as people check their feed stats and think “Wow! I’m suddenly popular.” Calm down. It’s not true. Feedburner’s has started reporting how […]

Testing Readers: Survey, Polling, Rating, Testing, and Reviewing WordPress Plugins

Polls, surveys, ratings, tests, exams, and reviews expand the native interactive nature of blogs with collaboration between the reader and the blogger. They help the blogger to ask specific questions and get a measurable response. Ratings WordPress Plugins come in two formats. One which allows the reader to rate a post or its content and […]

Building Your Blogging Audience One Reader at a Time

8 Steps to Growing Your Blog Community One Person At a Time by Ben Yoskovitz is a great step-by-step approach to helping you build a relationship with your readers and audience, one reader at a time. In the first three tips, Yoskovitz points out comments as the top of the list way to encourage your […]

Are You Ready to Abandon Your Keyboard to Blog?

The Writer’s blog reports that award-winning novelist Richard Powers tells the New York Times he’s giving up the keyboard for writing his novels. Have you given up the keyboard to write on your blog? Are you using voice recognition software to do your blogging? Do you think the technology is ready for full-time blogging and […]

Microsoft Vista On Sale in January – Are You Ready and Willing?

This time, it looks like they mean it. In a news article from BBC News, Microsoft announces Windows Vista is due in stores in January and will come in six versions. Ranging from $100 – $399 USD, there will be three versions for businesses and two for home use and one for “developing nations”. I […]

Are WordPress Themes and Plugins Ready for Internet Explorer 7?

In the very near future, you may go to bed and wake up to check your WordPress blog and find the WordPress Theme web design borked or bent. Microsoft is getting ready to force feed Internet Explorer 7 onto Windows XP computers automatically in the next month or so, and your WordPress Theme or Plugin […]

Getting Your Blog Ready for Internet Explorer 7

“Details on Microsoft Internet Explorer CSS Changes for IE7″ from the IEBlog is an updated list of all the supposed CSS bug fixes for the next version of Internet Explorer. In the long list of fixed IE bugs are resources to help you test your web page designs for the next version of Internet Explorer: […]

What Can The Blogger Do to Make Me a Regular Reader?

Pronet Advertising’s article on “Increasing Your Blog’s Readership” sings a song familiar to many of you who read my blog. It’s not just about attracting traffic. It’s about keeping them. Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising explains: When I read a blog, I always think about what the blogger(s) could do to make me a regular […]

Testing the Readability of Your Blog

Juicy Studio’s Readability Test is an interesting tool to test your blog’s readability. It’s more than just a test for keywords. It puts a page from your blog through a variety of tests that is, frankly, rather amazing. The content on your page is run through several reading level algorithms which test your content for […]

Proofreading Your Content and Code

Robin’s Blog article on “Proofreading Javascript”, is a great article on how to not only proofread javascript, but all HTML, CSS, PHP, and other programming codes and languages. A lot of tips she offers also covers how to proofread your content. 1. Proofread, proofread, proofread. Then proofread more. 2. JavaScript is case sensitive, MyVar is […]

Blogging Rants: Tangential Blogging Can Lose Readers

Over the past couple months in my travels, I’ve been interviewing a lot of old and newly found family members on their life and family history for my own needs and my new family history blog I’ll be starting soon. Today, I heard an interesting family story that I want to share with you. When […]

TechCrunch: Review of Online, Web-based Feed Readers

Techcrunch offers “The State of Online Feed Readers”, a look and review at what is available for reading feeds, the features available, and which ones score best. Researching these nine readers further underscores the extremely competitive atmosphere surrounding this industry’s development. On a feature-set basis only, two companies stood out: Rojo and Bloglines. Google Reader […]

When was the last time you read your own blog?

By Greg Balanko-Dickson Often forgotten when writing for your blog is getting the word out and promoting it. Phil Gerbyshak (via Make It Great!) makes five points and states you should: Post Often. Join a Blog Network. Sign your posts in the blog network Comment on other's blogs using your URL and a valid email. […]

What Do Young Readers Want?

Poynter Online recently brought my attention to Readers Don’t Want Gimmicks, We Want News by Taylor Somerville, an article written by a young person on a panel recently exploring how to bring young people’s attention to reading newspapers. Young newspaper readers are no different than older people who enjoy newspapers (aside from being better-looking). We […]