Weekly Digest: WordPress Tips, Guest Bloggers Party On, and More WordPress and Blogging Fun

There are less than three weeks left as part of the two months of guest blogging fun celebrating the two year anniversary of WordPress.com and this blog. This month is dedicated to WordPress tips.

This is the Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress. To subscribe to the Weekly Digest category of Lorelle on WordPress, you can subscribe 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.

What’s Happening with Lorelle on WordPress

WordPress.com 2 year anniversary party Celebrating Blogging and WordPress: The first month of the two month-long party celebrating the two year anniversary of WordPress.com and this blog covered a variety of topics with fantastic guest bloggers blogging on blogging.

Our two month party continues with September jammed-packed with almost nothing but WordPress Tips. We started out the first week with great WordPress tips:

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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Microformats and WordPress Themes: Ever wonder about what microformats are? Otto of Nothing to See Here introduces 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.

The guest bloggers have been putting on their best party outfits and bringing forward the best of their best for you and me, and we’re having a great time. Besides you, the party goers so far include:

Greg Balanko-Dickson, The Remote control CEO

Edrei Zahari of Footsteps in the Mirror

Engtech of Internet Duct Tape

Jan of Circular Communication

Daniel Brusilovsky of Apple Universe

John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog

Michael Hampton of Homeland Stupidity and Bad Behavior

Battling Referrer Spam

Abhijit Nadgouda of ifacethoughts

J.T Dabbagian of JTDabbagian.com

Pelf Nyok of pelf-ism is contagious

Dawud Miracle of dmiracle.com

Douglas Bell of Webmacster87.info, PreviewCast, and phpBB Weekly

There have been a few little bits of news and information not related to the two month celebration:

Liz Strauss Guides Lorelle on a Quest To Find Her Passion: Liz Strauss awards participants in a link theming contest with a story using the post titles of all the entrants – an adventure where Lorelle goes searching for her blogging passion.
Blog Challenge: Your Favorite WordPress Tip: It’s WordPress Tips month, so I’m inviting everyone to contribute their favorite WordPress tip.
Blogging Challenge: If Your Blog Was a Movie: What if? There have been a few interesting movie suggestions from this challenge. What about your blog? Would it make a good movie?
Weekly Digest: Celebrating Two Years of Lorelle on WordPress.com With Guest Bloggers and Memories

Lorelle’s News

In Are You Becoming a Little Over-Sensitive Over Comments?, I passed on some interesting statistics about how often I publish blog posts per week, along with some stats about passing the one million mark in comment spam with Akismet:

This past week, Lorelle on WordPress reached the Akismet one million comment spam mark. Akismet began on WordPress.com blogs in October of 2005. I’ve published at least 1200 posts since then, so if we do some tricks with the math, this is what I’ve been inundated with over the past 23 months on just that one blog:

In 23 months, that’s an average of 44,182 per month.

In an estimated 671 days, that’s 1,514 comment spams per day.

Matching comment spam per an estimated 1,200 posts, that’s an average of 846.82 comment spams per post.

I also estimated that I publish about 21 blog articles a week across a variety of blogs. That’s a lot. Without a break. Without a vacation. Without the future posts feature of WordPress, so wonderfully described by guest blogger, Dawud Miracle recently, I might never get out of the house.

Rose DesRochers - Window Award as a great contribution to the blogging community Blog Honors and Awards: Rose DesRochers of Today’s Woman Writing Community and Blogger Talk Blogger Forum recently awarded me two awards and honors. I’m incredibly humbled to be one of the few to receiver her Window Award, honoring my blog as “a great contribution to the blogging community and worthy of many awards”. Wow! She also included me as one of the recipients of her “Love Your Blog” award, which is supposed to be then handed off to five blogs you love. I Love Your Blog Since I can’t choose, I reward all my readers and fellow bloggers, many whom I mention frequently in my blog posts, with the “Love Your Blog Award”. Pass it on as you wish.

Douglas Bell and Lorelle on PreviewCast: I will be interviewed in an upcoming episode with Douglas Bell of Webmacster87.info and PreviewCast where we will talk WordPress and blogging, two of my favorite subjects, with a new favorite friend of mine! Douglas and I met at WordCamp recently when he tried to present a program at the same time as mine. I gave him such grief, he was sweet and changed the time, and fully understanding when no one showed up for his program as it was still during mine! Too funny. But we’ve become great pals and I’m looking forward to the interview. He has a great laugh and I love making him laugh, so it should be great fun.

Virtual Assistants Tackle Blogging Issues and Copyright Violations: I will be leading an online conference with the Virtual Assistant Revolution Forums (VA Revolution) on Thursday, September 13th, as part of their Thirsty Thursday Training. We will be covering the issues of protecting your content from copyright violations, how to find copyright violations, and how to deal with them, as well as any other issues around publishing your content on the web and blogging for virtual assistants. You must be a member in order to participate.

Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging

I will be traveling extensively for the next couple months on behalf of my popular book, “Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging”.

If you will be attending one of the events, workshops, and programs where I’m speaking, you can buy your own copy and save some postage and handling. If you want your own copy now, you can order it still at the introductory price, you can order it from SplashPress or the new Blog Herald Bookstore.

For more information on the book, see the original announcement and a recent update with reviews and other information, as well as the Blogging Tips Book official page.

Most Popular Articles on Lorelle on WordPress

The most popular posts on Lorelle on WordPress these past few weeks were:

Blasts From the Past

Here are a few oldie but never moldy posts from the past two years of Lorelle on WordPress:

Blog Herald Columns

Here are some of the latest articles I’ve written for the Blog Herald:

What’s On Your Blog’s Monthly Maintenance Schedule?: Most people remember now and then to backup their blog, but I ask readers to list which monthly maintenance tasks they do on their blogs. What do you do to keep your blog in top working order?
Are You Using Your Blog as a Note Reminder and Storage?: Many beginner bloggers are using their blogs as storage devices, saving articles, tips, news, and information for future reference, often violating copyright laws. I address this issue with tips on how to store such information on or off your blog, and stay safe.
Does Your Blog Have A Comments Policy?: Does it? I address the tips and things to consider when putting together a comments policy for your blog.
Give Credit When Credit is Due: Skip The Middle Man: When you find a newsworthy story on Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Stumble Upon, or elsewhere, where do you link. To Digg, et al, or to the original article? Skip the middle man and give credit to the original author, with a hat tip (thanks) to the middle man.
Are You Becoming a Little Over-Sensitive Over Comments?: With all the comment spam and trolls out there commenting on our blogs, I ask fellow bloggers if they think they are becoming a little too sensitive to blog comments, and offer a few tips on dealing with it.
Does Dofollow Influence Your Willingness to Comment?: The dofollow/nofollow issue continues to plague bloggers who don’t seem to understand that it’s a moot point. Does dofollow influence your commenting on other blogs? Do you have a dofollow policy?
What Do You Put in the Name of a Comment Form?: With the increased use of keywords and cutesy names in comments, I ask readers what they think of people who do not use proper names in the blog comments – the responses were very interesting.
Reenergizing Your Blogging Spirit: As a sequel to What Is Sucking Your Blogging Confidence Away?, I offer tips and techniques to stay energized and enthusiastic about blogging.
What Is Sucking Your Blogging Confidence Away?: Nasty comments, comment spam, no comments, all work and no play – makes a blogger, and their blog, tired and boring. We explored what is sucking away your blogging confidence.
Is Your Blog Reactive or Proactive?: Do you blog fast and furious, as soon as you get information worth sharing? Or do you think it through, process it, find out what others are saying, and then lend your voice? Which one are you on your blog?
Cleaning Up Old Posts, The Gateway to Your Blog: Old posts are the gateway to your blog, the first thing many visitors see. Are they looking your best? Here are some tips for cleaning up your past post.
When Your Comment Inspires Posts: Your comments are content and they can also inspire the blogger and others to write blog posts based upon your comment. Do you think about this influential power your comment might have when you comment?
What Is the Return on Your Investment in Social Media?: Are you twittering with twitter? Hanging out with buddies on Facebook and MySpace? Playing the social media and networking game? Is it working for you? Some bloggers responded to this interesting question with how well these new social media games are working for them and their blog.
Time Wasting Blog Comments, Comments Policies, and Comment Etiquette: I take a look at the art of commenting, and how to not waste a blogger’s time when you comment.

Some recent weekly WordPress Wednesday News reports included:

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

Freelance Switch has had some great articles recently helping freelancers deal with moving from the corporate world to working for yourself. These also apply well to a blogger’s lifestyle, especially those whose income and career are reliant upon their blogging:
Podcasts Are Not Easily Read, But Easy To Optimize: I’m working on doing some podcasts for Blog Herald and this blog, so this was interesting as I’m always looking to do better whatever I do.
10 Reasons Why Blogging is like Sex: This is light-hearted fun, with some good truths in it.
Mark Jaquith – The Grey Area: Mark’s response to the recent attacks on WordPress and Open Source is lovely and well worth the time to read.

This is the Weekly Digest of Lorelle on WordPress.
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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.

7 Comments

gregladen

Posted September 12, 2007 at 8:11 pm | Permalink

I just finished a listing of all the plugins/widgets that work on my self-hosted (well, at an ISP) WordPress 2.2 site. Some of your readers might find it useful, as not all of the widgets and plugins that worked on earlier versions may work with WordPress 2.2

Enjoy!

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted September 12, 2007 at 8:46 pm | Permalink

Interesting list. Thank you.

I’m sure you’ve also see the WordPress 2.2 Plugin Compatibility List and WordPress 2.2 Theme Compatibility List and heard the news that WordPress 2.3 may break many popular Plugins that use direct SQL queries on the categories, link2cat, or post2cat tables, just to cover all the bases.

Beth

Posted September 16, 2007 at 1:51 am | Permalink

Lorelle, the Weekly Digest email feed seems to be broken. This just happened in the last week, maybe two.

lastwownews

Posted September 20, 2007 at 5:24 am | Permalink

but what’s about Askismet ?

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted September 20, 2007 at 2:43 pm | Permalink

Beth: Thanks. I’ll check it out. There was a glitch in the system when the servers hosting WordPress.com went down in a few places, which might have caused a problem.

lastwownews: What about Akismet? It’s a comment spam fighting tool for bloggers.

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted September 20, 2007 at 2:48 pm | Permalink

Beth: I figured it out. The feed isn’t broken. I am. 😀 We’ve had some “family stuff” and I’ve been skipping a week once in a bit. My apologies. I’ll do better to keep this rocking every week now that I know someone cares and is paying attention.

jenny

Posted October 1, 2007 at 4:20 pm | Permalink

Thanks. I’ll check it