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Weekly Digest: Guest Blogging on Problogger, Prejudice, WordPress News and Contests, Blog Design, and Special Invitation to a Party

The from this week features guest blogging on Problogger, some great feedback on some posts I’ve written recently, more wonderful reviews and recommendations of my new book (they are going fast – get your order in now!), and getting ready for WordCamp next month!

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Exciting Lorelle on WordPress News

Special Invitation: If you are a blogger and fan, and you live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, or visiting the area at the end of June, first week or so of July, I am planning a blogger party on the farm where we are living. It’s near Hillsboro, Oregon, about an hour west of Portland. If you are interested in joining us, please let me know. I’m putting the final arrangements together, but this is a first come, first serve event. Get on the list early to make sure there is room.

This week has been incredibly busy in Lorelle World. I’m preparing for a ten day business trip, on the road all next week, so the sudden popularity on this blog caught me off guard.

Guest Blogging on Problogger: An unsual article I wrote on Darren Rowse’s Problogger, called Telling Your Story With Words and Images, is getting a lot of interest. It is about the balance bloggers are challenged with by matching words and images within their blog content. How much of the story is told with images and how much needs to be told with words? When can images replace words? And when are words more important than the images?

It’s a topic rarely discussed by bloggers but of critical importance. The assumption has been for years that images are necessary to break up content, and yet that’s been recently proven untrue. When people are searching for information, they want the information not necessarily the picture. It will take a long time to get this point across to the masses. In the meantime, read the article and ask yourself the questions you need to ask when choosing to include an image in your blog post.

I will have more guest blogging announcements in the next few weeks.

WordCamp 2007 July 21-22 in San Francisco: I am planning to be at the next WordCamp annual conference/meeting/get-together. More news will be out soon at the official http://2007.wordcamp.org/ site. 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. There will be speakers and presentations, and probably some exciting announcements about what is happening with WordPress.

Are you coming to WordCamp? Andy Skelton is riding his motorcycle to WordCamp. I’m still debating between driving, motor homing, and flying. What about you? How are you getting to WordCamp?

Among the Most Popular Posts on WordPress.com: Several of my articles made it into the top posts list on WordPress.com, making this blog one of the top blogs on WordPress.com for a bit. I am always fascinated with what attracts your interest and what doesn’t. The articles are highlighted below in the Most Popular Articles section.

Oh, if there is a topic you would like to me cover, or issue to route, please let me know!

Blogging Tips - book cover, copyright Lorelle VanFossenBlogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging: We can barely keep up with the books flying out of the boxes and into the mail. I won’t be autographing copies much longer, so if you haven’t ordered your copy of the limited edition first printing of my new book, Blogging Tips, What Blogger’s Won’t Tell You About Blogging, you better move fast. This limited printing features a reduced introductory price, so get your order in now before we run out of books.

I’ve published a lot of information, reviews and answers to questions about the book in Update on My Blogging Tips Book: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

What’s Happening with Lorelle on WordPress

This past week’s articles from included:

Most Popular Articles on Lorelle on WordPress

Two Exciting WordPress Contests is thankfully getting a lot of attention. The Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition 2.0 and The Sandbox Designs Competition are very exciting and I can’t wait to see the results of all the creativity the WordPress community has to offer.

Wow! Several posts this week got into the top posts list on WordPress.com including WordPress News You Need To Know, Should You Design Your Own Blog?, and Two Exciting WordPress Contests. The three for three boost also put this blog in the Top Blogs on WordPress.com list.

Are You Blogging Your Passion or Blogging to Blog and Blogging Prejudice: Aren’t We Past This Yet? struck a chord with many bloggers, as did Learning Lessons from The Planet Blog, and both are getting more traffic as others think this through and write about it on their blogs.

The Rant Against Multiple Page Posts also caught a lot of people’s attention and made them stop and think about how much they really despise posts or articles broken up into multiple pages. From the comments so far, other than those who understand that this technique can be used as a ruse to expose you to more advertising, most people agree they are a waste of time and bandwidth.

I had to laugh when the first comment on the Blog Herald technical article by Gary King on how to split long posts into multiple pages in WordPress was from Franky: “Gary, Lorelle is going to kill you! :D” Too funny.

Honestly, if the post is too long, and “too long” is not a measurable length, split it into posts as you are probably 1) saying too much and wasting words; 2) making too many points; and 3) not getting to the points you really want to make. By refining your long posts into multiple posts, the benefits of providing indepth coverage on each point improves the quality of your blog content, spreads keywords throughout your blog, and helps people find the information they need in one spot instead of chasing it to page 4 of a 6 page post.

The other most popular posts on Lorelle on WordPress this week were:

Linking To and From Lorelle on WordPress

As you can imagine, links to the Sandbox WordPress Theme and Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition 2.0 sites are very high. I just know some creative folks are stirring up the thought processes and we’ll all benefit from their brilliance.

Wendy Piersall wrote the amazing “Is Your Blog Template Holding You Back” for Problogger and I wrote about it in Is Your Blog Design Holding You Back?, and a lot of people are thrilled with the article and interview Wendy did with two top web developers on the redesign and benefits thereof with her blog. It’s a must read.

My Blog Challenge called “What Keywords Make You Number One in Google” continues to get a lot of incoming links as people dig into Google to find out what combination of words or phrases makes them number one in the search results on Google. Stressed Mum says that “stressed out mother of 2” puts her at the top of the charts. Ndoro Kakung found that “melecut musim” was their top spot contender. And Friedbeef is on top with “decrappifier”, whatever that is (I can guess). Have you checked out what words put you at the top of the list? Or checked out more of my Blog Challenges?

Writing Thoughts wrote “How a Good Headline Can Change Your Writing Success” and included an article I’m especially proud of writing, Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog, on a list of great articles about writing effective headlines and titles for your blog posts.

After some noteworthy posts recently, J.T Dabbagian continues to hit the mark with Blogger Citizenship: 5 things you can do for you, and your community. It’s an interesting perspective on blog community building and includes reference to my recent popular post, Blogging Prejudice – Aren’t We Past This Yet?. And The Blog of Ms. Mercer wrote “Things I’ve learned while teaching black children…”, which brings up the issue of prejudice in regards to children. Wonderful examples!

WordPress News You Need To Know sent a lot of folks to my WordPress Wednesday news on the Blog Herald, which I hoped introduce many new readers to that great resource for what is going on around WordPress published every Wednesday.

Popular destinations and recommendations from this blog elsewhere included:

Blog Herald Columns

After finishing my two week series on the Web Browser Guide for Bloggers on the , and overwhelmed at the positive response that still continues, this week’s posts on the Blog Herald included:

Some other noteworthy articles you should be reading recently published on the Blog Herald include:

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

For my linkworthy links this week, here are some interesting sites I’ve found recently:

Blasts From the Past

This is the of .
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This entry was written by Lorelle VanFossen and posted on June 15, 2007 at 12:10 pm and filed under Weekly Digest, WordPress with tags , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

3 Comments

  1. starleads
    Posted June 19, 2007 at 3:05 am | Permalink

    Great resources on this blog as always.A must for every blogger especially for WP users.

    Reply
  2. peter nicholls
    Posted June 20, 2007 at 12:25 pm | Permalink

    I have to tell you that l really liked your how to find free and legal content for your blog post excellant, finding and using great content for article marketing and in my case blog marketing your resource has become very important to me, keep the posts flowing thanks Peter, articles bring customers and publishers together.

    Reply
  3. Lorelle VanFossen
    Posted June 20, 2007 at 1:45 pm | Permalink

    I didn’t write How to Find Free and Legal Content For Your Blog. That was Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today. He’s a wonderful writer and fantastic resource.

    Reply

2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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