Weekly Digest: Floods, Harp Guitars, WordPress 2.4 News, and Improving Your Blog Tips

I’ve been back for a week and already have been snowed, hailed, rained, frozen, and flooded. The electricity held but the Internet was down most of four days, so I got a lot of behind the scenes work done, as well as unpacking. I’m playing catch up as fast and furious as I can amidst all the busy holiday activities.

I’m really looking forward this weekend to the John Doan holiday concert in Salem. John is a friend of ours and one of the most entertaining storytellers and performers, specializing in the harp guitar, and we’re really looking forward to celebrating the holidays with he and his wife this year. I recently wrote about John on the Blog Herald in Three Lessons That Will Change Your Blog.

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 on the Road, Reports on Conspiracy Theories, With More Challenges and Struggles.

What’s Happening with Lorelle on WordPress

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

Blog Challenge: Write a Political Post challenges readers to get a little political with their blogs and experiment with the art of political writing and commentary.
Staying on Track with WordPress 2.4 News is a quick introduction to Westi’s weekly reports on what’s happening with WordPress 2.4, and where to find more tips and news on the next version.
Weekly Digest: Lorelle Back Home Finally, Conspiracy Theories Everywhere, Will You Go Naked, and More is the last weekly digest.
Ask Yourself How You Should Get Me to Read Your Blog asks an important question. What would it take to get me to read your blog? It also offers tips for what it takes to have readable and interesting content.
Are You Willing To Go Naked For One Day For Akismet? covers the interesting proposal Akismet asked: “Would you be willing to turn off Akismet’s comment spam protection for a day?” The responses have been very interesting.
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

Improving Your Blog Tips on the Blog Herald: The series I started this past week on the Blog Herald, Improving Your Blog Tips, is getting a lot of attention and getting people thinking about what they need to do to improve their blogs.

Lorelle on ProBlogger: I recently published Readers Versus Visitors: Whose Needs Are You Meeting, an article that looks at how to not let your interpretation of your blog stats, or assumptions about your blog readers and visitors, get in the way of serving and meeting the needs of your visitors and readers.

I Need Your Blog Conference Expertise and Help: On the Blog Herald, in Which Blogging Conference Would You Go To?, I’m asking readers to help me create a big list of all the blog conferences around the world coming up next year, including why we must go and what benefit these conferences offer. Help add your favorite to the list.

Blogger and Podcaster Magazine: This month’s issue is on creating a blogging editorial calendar to help you find, build, and plan your blog’s content. The last issue of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine featured 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. December’s issue on blog writing tips and how to improve your blog writing skills. I’m working on January’s issue right now, but expect to see me as a regular on this hot new magazine next year!

Among the Must-Read Blogs: Damien Riley published a “Must-Read Blogs This Season” which included me, but also a lot of other interesting blogs worth checking into.

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

It appears my book, “Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging” is a hot item for giving to your favorite blogger during the holiday season. Sales have kicked up and I’m barely able to keep up. I’m still sending out autographed copies at the introductory price – while supplies last (sigh) – so get your order in soon before I run out before the holidays. You can order a copy from SplashPress or the new Blog Herald Bookstore. If you would like to order multiple copies, please email me first as that requires special handling.

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

From the response to Staying on Track with WordPress 2.4 News , a lot of people are very excited and looking forward to the next version of WordPress. I’m very excited about the improvements to the administrative interface, something that has needed help for a long time.

I was also surprised to see so many interested in this week’s Blog Challenge: Write a Political Post. There have been some interesting blog posts from those who accepted the challenge.

The most popular posts on Lorelle on WordPress the past week were:

Blasts From the Past

Here are some blasts from the past I’ve written that still are interesting today:

Blog Herald Columns

Recent articles on the Blog Herald included:

I started a new series on the Blog Herald that covers the basic tips I redundantly give my web consultant clients that should know better, but don’t. So far, the ongoing series includes:
- Improving Your Blog: Clarity covers the number one think lacking in many blogs and websites: a clear purpose, identity, and content which supports the design as well as the intent.
- Improving Your Blog: Clean It Up overs what it really means to clean up your blog’s design and content.
- Improving Your Blog: Consistency looks at how to build trust and integrity with consistency in your blog.
- Improving Your Blog: Creativity covers how to break the same old song blahs to make your blog really interesting and attention-getting.
When Your Blog Forces You To Keep Your Commitments got a lot of people thinking about how a personal commitment to a project can be enhanced by incorporating a blog. I heard an interview on NPR with a Seattle journalist who used a blog to keep his commitment to learn how to cook as he cooked a meal for each weekend’s football team, using a recipe and information about the Seattle Seahawk’s opponent’s city.
Which Blogging Conference Would You Go To? invites you to help me create a calendar list of the “must attend” blogging conferences next year.
What Makes Bloggers Want to Link to You? Do you think you know or do you really know? I list the tips you need to know that make bloggers really want to link to your blog content, and to your blog.

Some recent weekly WordPress Wednesday News reports included:

Lorelle’s Linkworthy Links

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

Freelance Switch – Focus on Actions to Get More Done in Less Time is a “can do” method of cutting through your procrastination habits.
Business Pundit – Management by Semantics is a great look at how knowing the words doesn’t mean you know anything.
HBO, NBC, ABC, FOX – PLEASE Take My Money! is a great rant against the extreme dullness of what’s on television today.
Kevin Allison/Financial Times – Apple’s rising popularity lures hackers is a great warning to all Apple users who’ve been bragging about security.
Business Pundit – Dirty Tricks of Viral Videos looks at viral video marketing, what works and what doesn’t, and how easily we are sucked into this “new” advertising slime.
Business Pundit – Does Teaching Sell? looks at Brian Clark’s new online teaching method as a good idea, but not the end-all-be-all of a long term educational and money making method.

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.

5 Comments

Aizat

Posted December 11, 2007 at 11:55 pm | Permalink

How I gonna get your book as I am in Malaysia?

Lorelle VanFossen

Posted December 12, 2007 at 11:24 am | Permalink

@Aizat:

The same way the rest of the people in Malaysia get it. Order it. 😀 I send a lot of books overseas, especially to the Philiphines and Malaysia. It’s so exciting to see so many bloggers from those areas.

sciencegto

Posted January 25, 2009 at 2:51 am | Permalink

How many weeks usually the book will arrive?

- Lorelle VanFossen
  
  Posted January 25, 2009 at 3:18 am | Permalink
  
  My book? Depends upon where it is going. If it is within the United States, it can be from 3 days to 2-3 weeks. Depends upon how the US Post Office is handling media mail at the time of shipping. If sent internationally, it can be 3 days to 6 weeks. It depends upon all the mail services and how they handle the process. Is that what you are asking about?
micropile

Posted March 29, 2010 at 5:18 am | Permalink

without a timely topic with meaningful content, a blog is worthless.