Weekly Digest: Problogger Guest Blogging, Speaking at WordCamp, Blogathon, Parties, and Blogging Tips

The Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress 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!

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the Weekly Digest category of Lorelle on WordPress by the Weekly Digest feed or by email with the Weekly Digest Email Subscription to stay up to date on what is happening in Lorelle’s world of WordPress and blogging.

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 in the middle of a ten day business trip, connecting via WIFI from any street corner or outside any free WIFI shop or rest stop. I’m traveling in a small motor home, so when I can find WIFI from the motor home, I can sit in my portable living room/kitchen/bedroom and work in some peace and quiet, rocked by the wind of passing cars and trucks.

Guest Blogging on Problogger: Two of my articles have been published recently on Darren Rowse’s Problogger, Telling Your Story With Words and Images, and an excerpts from my book, Blogging Tips: Writing Purposeful Content and Blogging Tips: First Impressions Count.

Interviewed: One Blog A Day published an interview with me, which covers some of the how and why I ended up on Lorelle On WordPress.

Lorelle Speaking at WordCamp 2007: The secret is out. I will be speaking at WordCamp 2007 on July 21-22 in San Francisco. Space is limited and registration is required. With the amazing line up on the WordCamp Schedule, I expect it to sell out fast, so get your tickets now.

Looking For 21 Foot Motor Home Parking San Francisco: I’m still debating whether or not I’ll drive the small motor home south to California, but parking is an issue. I’ll be staying close to the conference with a friend but I can’t park the motor home in the area and leave it. I’d love some tips and helps on finding a place to park it and leave it for three to five days. It parks just barely in a normal parking spot, but it is just under 12 feet high. I got nailed by a tree on my last trip to San Francisco. So all help is appreciated.

Lorelle on WordPress Scrapped and Violated: Some wonderful blogging friends and fans have been alerting me to copyright violations and feed scrapers (splogs) of this blog. THANK YOU. If you find Lorelle On WordPress is being scrapped or the content stolen, please let me know.

I Like It When You Say Nice Things About Me: I was feeling a little blue (family issues, you know them) and I stumbled on Circular Communication’s article on blog post length in which my article, How Often Should You Publish Your Blog Posts is cited with the following recommendation:

When it comes to blogging reason there are few people I trust more than Lorelle. You may have noticed that practically every link post I make feature at least one post from her and that is not by chance, but because she so often hits the nail on the head. This post is no different (just look at the quotation above, which beautifully sums everything up) and in fact you could do yourself no better service than to check out what else she has written (as well as those she link to!).

Wow! That brought the sunshine back into my life giving me a boost in the self-worth butt. Thank you. I just do what I do, but a little thanks once in a while does help me keep doing it.

Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging: I was asked recently the difference between a blogging how-to book and blogging tips book. A blogging how-to explains everything fully. A blogging tips books offers the tips you need, one at a time, to get the blogging job done. In other words, one tells you how to do it in paragraphs and chapters, the other tells you how to do with tips. Short, fast, and easy to read. Lots of bullets.

To put it better, Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts says:

The title does not really do justice to the content, it is more than tips, it is education.

The autographed copies are running out soon as the orders have been coming in fast. 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 Lorelle on WordPress included:

Most Popular Articles on Lorelle on WordPress

WordCamp 2007 Registration and Schedule is attracting a lot of attention as people are excited about the upcoming conference and have been eagerly seeking information on the schedule and activities.

I wrote about the upcoming Blogathon here in Will You Be Blogging in the July 28 Blogathon 2007? and on the Blog Herald with Blogathon Tips: Blogathon 2007 July 28. People are stepping up to the plate for this exciting method of raising money for your favorite hobby and blog for 24 hours for a good cause. Will you be participating?

Two Exciting WordPress Contests is still getting a lot of attention. The Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition 2.0 and The Sandbox Designs Competition are very exciting. Next week, I’ll be publishing a how-to article on using the Sandbox WordPress Theme.

The paranoia of the duplicated content issue for Google PageRank has turned attention on using post excerpts on multi-post page views, which drove a lot of people to my technical article on Display Post Excerpts Only in WordPress. The idea is that you can avoid duplicated content by restricting full post views to only the single post page, and/or how to write explicit excerpts that are different from your post content. For those who choose the latter, I also recommend Writing With Post Excerpts and Feed Excerpts in Mind.

Last week’s most popular posts continue to get attention on the top posts list on WordPress.com. They are WordPress News You Need To Know, Should You Design Your Own Blog?, and Two Exciting WordPress Contests.

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

Linking To and From Lorelle on WordPress

With the Sandbox WordPress Theme Competition on, links to the Sandbox WordPress Theme and Weblog Tools Collection WordPress Plugin Competition 2.0 sites are very high from this blog, and incoming links to Designing a WordPress Theme From Scratch and all the styles for the Sandbox Theme in a CSS stylesheet are many. I can’t wait to see what people come up with for this brilliantly innovative WordPress Theme.

Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent was picked as a thinking blogger, and she referenced my popular The Blog Herald article on what it means to be a thinking blogger, asking herself and her readers the same question. I love it when people think this one through as it helps us to define who we are as bloggers.

BlogHer’s Virginia DeBolt announced that I and Liz Danzico are the only women in the WordCamp 2007 conference, along with some very kind words about us. I hadn’t even noticed. There is a lot of talk about how few women are behind the scenes in web programming, but the majority of web designers are women and there are a lot of coding females out there. They are just too busy coding and not publicly visible. We need to celebrate them all!

In JT Dabbagian’s “Be a Better Blogger: four books under $20 to give you a hand”, he tucks in Blogging Tips, What Blogger’s Won’t Tell You About Blogging as number five. Cute. I have three of the four books he recommends and I recommend them, too. I’ll let you guess which three of the four.

My friend, Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts poked serious fun at me on the issue of misspelling WordPress and Plugins:

Spell it right: It is spelled WordPress, not WordPress, wordpress, WP, wordpres, wordprez, wrodpress, or word press. It’s a Plugin, not a plug-in.

He’s taken a vow to never mizspell these two again. I’ll be watching!

Blogging for Dollars wrote a post about how often you should publish a blog post and cited What Can The Blogger Do To Make Me a Regular Reader, an article that shouts my theme song this year for this blog: content counts.

The Geek’s Blog recommended my article on Problogger, Blogging Tips: First Impressions Count, in a wonderful commentary on the issue of making a good first impression with your blog and the various ways that impression is made, especially on your About Page. Have you updated yours lately?

My article on Blog Herald, What Should Bloggers Apologize For and How, has gotten an amazing response. Some interesting posts were generated such as SEO News with “I’m Sorry This Blog Has No Regrets” and

Who knew so many would be so excited about this week’s blog challenge, Describe Blogging, a challenge to get you to describe what blogging is to others and how you blog, without making their eyes glaze over. Another blogging challenge, Blog Challenge called “What Keywords Make You Number One in Google”, also continues to get a lot of attention. Have you checked out what words put you at the top of the list? Or checked out more of my Blog Challenges?

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

Many people, including Joe of Working At Home on the Internet, really enjoyed my article on the Blog Herald called The Selflessness of Top Bloggers. Many are also excited about the upcoming Blogathon 2007 on July 28. And my two week series on the Web Browser Guide for Bloggers continues to attract traffic.

This week on the Blog Herald, I wrote about:

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

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

Some Writing Tips that I learned at the Book Store Tonight – This is a fun article on blog writing – how to write and how not to write, and what books can teach you about blog writing.
Bloggers Are Not Webmasters – I’ll be writing more on this, but here is a preview you need to read.
Five Guidelines to Guest Blogging – while the author is still new to blogging, this is a great look at how to prepare to guest blog and how to prepare your blog for your guest blogging gig.
WordPress, Duplicate Content, and Wrong SEO Plugins – another one I’ll be writing about soon, this one takes a serious look at the myths that are popping up everywhere on the issue of duplicate content. Folks, your categories, tag pages, and other multi-post page views are normal and you are not penalized for them. You are, in fact, rewarded. The duplication issue looks for splogs, scrapers, and abusers, not normal duplicated content. Relax. A normal WordPress blog works like it is supposed to.
Weak American Dollar: Implications in Blogging – While I’m an American, some of my income comes from overseas. The issue of the dollar around the world and conversion rates are seriously impacting the level of income you can make with blogging. Did you know that?
7 Things That Every Blogger Should Know About Tax – speaking of money, I’ve said repeatedly that if you put a single ad on your blog you turn your blog into a business. Thus you better be prepared when the tax man cometh.

Blasts From the Past

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Lorelle VanFossen is a member of WordPress, WordPress.com, the 9Rules Network, and author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

3 Comments

Abhijit Nadgouda

Posted June 23, 2007 at 12:16 am | Permalink

Thanks, I feel relieved that there will be one more pair of eyes that will make sure I do not misspell 🙂 I have already started looking for capital Ps in whatever I write 🙂

Valeria Maltoni

Posted June 23, 2007 at 5:59 pm | Permalink

Interesting and prolific, too. This is an amazing line up of content. I feel like I should get the supplies in my hotel room (I am also traveling for a more traditional conference) and just dig in. Thank you for the mention, Lorelle. Always a pleasure reading you.

Jan

Posted June 24, 2007 at 10:38 am | Permalink

Curious how some things don’t dawn on you until it suddenly hits you. This is not called Weekly Digest because it is a digest of a week, but because it takes a week to digest 🙂

Kidding aside I thank you for your mention. I am honored and touched. I also thank you for your constructive criticism, which pretty much made me set the whole day aside to work with my blog.

I think I manged to make it a whole lot more inviting without moving too much around (the design is almost the same, but pretty much every link have been changed in some way) and the added functionality and navigational opportunities will hopefully also be welcome. Furthermore did I add the opportunity to rate the posts, which I hope will activate people afraid of commenting.

Once more have you managed to motivate me to do things better and I thank you for that!