Weekly Digest: Lorelle Recovers on the Road, Reports on Conspiracy Theories, With More Challenges and Struggles

I’m finally recovering from an ugly sick and catching up with my behind. SIGH. I’ve got to get healthy as plans are in the works for a very busy schedule next year speaking at a variety of blogging and WordPress conferences and meetings. I’m so excited about getting out and meeting the best of the best in blogging and WordPress.

I started a fascinating series on conspiracy theories and blogs on the Blog Herald, which ends next week with a post on how to get started writing your own blog conspiracies.

And I’m still on the road and hopefully will be home next week, where I’ve heard winter has arrived with frosty mornings. Can’t wait. I’ve missed the cold so much, I’m excited about having a wintry winter this year. Come on, snow!

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.

The last issue of my weekly digest was Weekly Digest: Lorelle Recovers From WordCamp Israel, Sicks, Tackles WordPress.com Marketplace, Content Thieves, and Kicks Blogging Ass.

What’s Happening with Lorelle on WordPress

Here’s the latest blog posts on Lorelle on WordPress.

• WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk is the fleshed-out version of my presentation on WordPress Tips in Israel. It covers dozens of tips, tricks, techniques, features and power WordPress user tools for all versions of WordPress.
• Accepting a Blog Challenge Because… could be called a rant, but I hope it’s an educational one. With so many bloggers offering attention-getting and traffic building contests, often without real value, over the past year and half, my weekly Blog Challenge is to encourage you to challenge yourself and your blogging skills, the reward coming from the doing not the winning.
• Reader Appreciation Project: Putting Readers First looks at an interesting blog that puts the readers first.
• Weekly Digest: Lorelle Recovers From WordCamp Israel, Sicks, Tackles WordPress.com Marketplace, Content Thieves, and Kicks Blogging Ass features a two week catchup of my Weekly Digest.
• Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content is about a new form of splogger which is “spinning” our content and stuffing it with synonyms in a new way to steal our content and try to get away with it. We have to stop them in their tracks, and we can, if we work together. There is no magic pill, no special WordPress Plugin (yet), just us fighting together and believing that our work matters and stealing is not acceptable.
• Blogger’s Choice Award Winners Announced includes a list of some of the top award winners, including WordPress.com as one of the top blog hosting services, and a mention of Lorelle on WordPress winning third place in the blogging about blogging category.
• New Article Series – Blog Struggles: In this new ongoing series, I share with you some of the intimate thoughts, internal debates, conflicts, and challenges I have faced over the past 14+ years of blogging. So far, the series includes:
  • Blog Struggles: The Search for Blog Content: We put so much energy into “finding” blog content that we often forget the best source for good blog content: from within us. I offer tips and techniques for pulling content from your head.
  • Blog Struggles: Ideas and Drafts: We come up with such great ideas and then what? We jot them down, make lists, start post drafts, and they sit there staring at us, as we procrastinate over what to do with all these ideas and how to keep them in check. I offer tips on how to best keep track of your ideas and drafts.
  • Blog Struggles: The Blog Focus: As part one in a sub-series of posts on Blog Struggles, I look at the issue of the blog focus, your blog’s ability to turn you from a blogger into an expert.
  • Blog Struggles: Why Should Your Blog Have a Focus: Your blog doesn’t have to have a focus, but if it does, these are the reasons, and benefits, of why it should.

  Blog Struggles: Finding Your Blog Focus: Continues the Blog Focus theme and offers tips for finding your blog’s focus and direction.

  • Blog Struggles: Changing Your Blog’s Focus: Once you find your blog focus, how do you change your blog? Or should you start a new blog? I cover the tips you need to know to redirect your blog.
  • Blog Struggles: When Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation Interferes With Your Blogging looks at the issues around the impact of poor writing habits and skills and whether or not they impact the success and reading of your blog.
  • In Blog Struggles: When Are Too Many Comments Too Many Comments?, I share a struggle I faced not long ago about an over-enthusiastic commenter who left a ton of comments on my blog within a few hours, making me very suspicious. We are often faced with suspicious comments, so what do we do? How should we handle them?
  • Blog Struggles: Taking The Moral High Blogging Ground addresses the issue of deciding which ethical and moral road to take on your blog.
  • Blog Struggles: Blogger’s Depression looks at the rarely discussed by normal aspect of blogging: depression. When the enthusiasm for the effort is lost and apathy sets in, and how to overcome it.

Lorelle’s News

Lorelle at WordCamp Israel: For those who did and did not attend the successful WordCamp Israel in Tel Aviv (English), I wrote up the notes from my talk with links to all the Plugins, tips, tricks, and techniques I talked about, and more, in WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk.

Lorelle on the WordPress Podcast: I’ve been asked to be a regular on the WordPress Podcast reporting on WordPress.com news. So expect to hear my voice over the air waves again soon!

Blogger and Podcaster Magazine: The current issue of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine features an article I’ve written on the mistakes and overlooked tips that I’ve found some veteran and top notch bloggers overlook, helping you to learn how to do these invaluable things on your blog to help your SEO, accessibility and web standards, and increase your readership and traffic. Next month’s issue is on creating a blogging editorial calendar to help you find, build, and plan your blog’s content, December’s issue on blog writing tips and how to improve your blog writing skills.

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

“Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging” continues to sell well, so we are keeping the book priced at the lower price through the holidays, so if you want to give the book as a holiday gift to a favorite or future blogger, get your order in now.

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 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

A lot of people were thrilled with the WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk post I wrote covering tons of tips for power WordPress users.

The issue of content theft is continuing to fascinate and frustrate bloggers all over the world, which brought a lot of attention to the new spammer in town which I reported on in Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content.

As part of the popular Blog Struggles series, I was delighted and stunned to find so many people understood and connected with Blog Struggles: Blogger’s Depression. I’m glad we are not alone and now we can talk about something that plagues bloggers from beginners to pros.

A few people recently linked to the article I wrote on CSS Bar Graphs and Charts, a method that allows creation of bar charts and graphs using only CSS, which was featured in Smashing Magazine’s Charts And Graphs: Modern Solutions.

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

• Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content
• Blogger’s Choice Award Winners Announced
• Blog Struggles: Blogger’s Depression
• Adding RSS Feeds to WordPress
• Customizing RSS Feed Links for WordPress
• What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content
• Tags and Tagging in WordPress
• WordCamp Israel WordPress Tips Talk
• WordPress 2.3 Tag News
• Monetizing WordPress Plugins
• CSS Bar Graphs and Charts
• Raj Dash – Rethinking Blogging as an Income Producing Career
• HTML, CSS, PHP, and More Cheat Sheets
• Contact Form WordPress Plugins
• WordPress.com Marketplace and The Theme Debate
• Blog Struggles: Taking The Moral High Blogging Ground
• Tags Are Not Categories – Got It?
• Free Photos for Your Blog

Blasts From the Past

Here are some blasts from the past I’ve written to tickle your fancy:

• Abhijit Nadgouda’s List of WordPress Global Variables
• Customizing WordPress Administration Panels
• Creating Multiple Single Posts for Different Categories
• Firefox Bookmarks Help Bloggers Blog
• Genealogy Blog: Blog Contributors – Wanted Dead or Alive
• Getting Started With WordPress
• Give the Gift of Love to WordPress
• Good Reasons to Upgrade WordPress

Blog Herald Columns

Recent articles on the Blog Herald included:

• Is Your Blog a Resource? asks you if your blog provides a resource as a source for content and information.
• Visiting the Web Past: Lillian Vernon, Catalog and Web Pioneer looks at an article written by Vernon on how she turned her highly successful mail order business into a multi-million dollar business online, and the lessons bloggers and online businesses can learn from her.
• Three Lessons That Will Change Your Blog shares one of my favorite stories by our friend, John Doan, a classical guitarist and world renown harp guitarist. The three lessons will not only change your blog, they could change your life.
• Improve My Site: Why I Returned The Money From a Paid Web Consultancy Job
• I started a new series on conspiracy theories and blogs, and so far, the articles include:
  • I Want To Start a Controversy is the introduction and a look at what makes a controversy a conspiracy.
  • There is Nothing Like a Good Conspiracy explores some blogs which thrive on conspiracy theories and controversy.
  • The Economics of Conspiracies takes a peak under the pay check to see how conspiracies work economically. Very well, in fact. A good conspiracy, especially an entertaining one, is the stuff of legends and income.
  • Finding Conspiracy Blogs…and the Truth looks at how many blogs thrive on conspiracies, and how some conspiracies and hoaxes cast a bad light on blogging, and how to find the truth behind the blogs and online conspiracies and hoaxes.
  • On Monday, I cover the last in the series of conspiracy theory writing and blogs with tips on how to write your own conspiracy.

Some recent weekly WordPress Wednesday News reports included:

• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamp Melbourne Sold Out Success, WordPress 2.4 Delayed, Security News, Rumors and Scams, and More
• Censoring WordPress.com, New Comment Spam Fighter, More Blog Security News, WordCamp Melbourne, BlogWorld Expo, and More WordPress News
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress Wins and Loses, WordCamp Argentina Success, WordPressMU, and WordPress Themes on WordPress.com Debated
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.3.1 Released, Get Your Upgrade, WordPress Podcast Speaks out, WordCamp Israel a Success, Argentina is Next, and WordPress Wins.
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps in Israel, Argentina, Australia, and Germany, Tons of WordPress Plugin News and Updates, Beta Security Release Announced, and More

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

As I crawled through the web recently, I ran across some interesting posts and articles you should check out:

• Striking Writers: Use Your Pen To Rewrite The Future is a fairly timely look at the business of writing.
• Adweek Not A Weekly Anymore; Cuts To 36 Issues A Year: Adweek was one of my favorite magazine many years ago when I was hip deep in advertising and publishing. Interesting to see it is suffering the fate of many magazines, and the ad industry as that has to change with the times but isn’t making the switch.
• Your Company Got Blogger-Bashed? Take an Example From NewTek is an interesting article on how to handle a blog bashing.
• Legalese for Freelancers: Creating a Contract covers something many of us online business consultants and freelancers need to know.
• The Power of the Pre-Write: 5 Things to Do Before You Create Your Freelance Business Website is another great article from Freelance Switch with some basic stuff you should do and know before you create your business blog or website – me, I’d start a blog as websites are so…old fashioned.

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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.