Apologies if you have been visiting here in the last week looking for new posts. A website I am working on has been taking up a fair bit of time. The site is powered by WordPress but I have had to create a theme with quite a few tweaks to turn it into a CMS system that does what I want it to do. It has been a good learning experience and I am now getting my head around PHP – the simpler WordPress sort at least. However much I have enjoyed this, it has not stopped me getting regularly sidetracked and wandering around the web looking for things of interest. Here are a few things I thought you too may find of interest.
Reading
- 20 Myths About Blogging That Many New Bloggers Actually Believe
- Windows Live Search Tricks You May Not Know Aboutby digital inspiration. What interested me most in this was the ability to subscribe to searches via RSS. I use Google alerts which sends me results by email but wanted to display a feed of specific search results for a website that I am building. I am going to compare the results for a particular search term from Windows Live Search RSS feed with Google Alerts.
- Learn Illustrator CS3 in 30 Days
– Vectordiary has just finished posting 30 days of tutorials teaching beginners the basics of Illustrator. If you would like to learn how to create your own illustrations, design your own logos and create special effects these will be very useful to you.
News
- Google’s own browser. Chrome, not an unexpected addition to their suite of services has just been released. I will likely write about this further once I have had chance to look more closely at its features and had longer to try it out. The fact that each tab is isolated to prevent one tab from crashing another appeals to this multi tab browsing person. Multi tab bars in Firefox 3 do tend to keep me in check though – when I get to the third I realize it is time to start closing some tabs. Google’s cartoon announcement is a good place to start to find out about Chrome. My son read this yesterday and reckons it was really effective as he was able to remember and reel off its contents to me hours later. Even if you do not want to use the browser it is wise to view your blog in it as the Tech Herald reports that there is at present an issue with some fonts not displaying correctly.
- Yahoo Buzz – has just been opened to all publishers, six months after initially launching. Buzz, with its wider subject areas, will produce serious competition for Digg which still appeals more to those interested in technology. I am working on a tutorial, which I will publish soon, giving you more information and details on the various methods of adding Buzz buttons to your blog.
- Something For Your Time – Monetizing Video Phil Butler reviews Zadby on Online Public Relations . Zadby is an "online marketplace where advertisers, marketers, and brand managers can connect with freelance video producers to create innovative product placement videos tailored for sites like YouTube, AOL, and MySpace". If you already create videos for your blog perhaps you may consider taking more advantage of your talent.
- HowToBlog has come up with an innovative idea for members of its site to promote their own sites – a Review Exchange System. Add your website to the review directory and review other blogs. Those that review the most appear higher in the directory, giving more prominence to their own website.
- The HowToBlog also alerted me to news for those using Google Adwords that Landing page load time now affects keywords’ Quality Scores- This may be old news for some but, not using Adwords myself I was not aware of this.
- What’s new in Picasa & Picasa Web Albums For those who use Picasa for your photo albums or because you use blogspot you may wish to check out the new Picasa interface and features, which include adding name tags to photos and adding photos via email. Picasa Web Albums (the desktop image managing tool) has a new etouching tool and new Sync functionality.
Blogging Tools
- Mozilla’s Snowl — A Unified Messaging Interface – rj3sp from ClipsToNote reviews an experimental firefox extension that gathers all your inbound communications from email, RSS, Twitter, social network updates ….
- If you use IE, Opera or Safari and would like some of the editing features allowed by the Firefox Firebug exension then the new Firebug Lite is for you.
- Text Link Checker Tool by Bad Neighbourhood scans the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, alerting you to possible problem areas which may affect your standing with search engines. The scan will bring up some sites that you do not need to worry about because of keywords it discovers and the number of links to blogs etc so please read the Bad Neighborhood Clarification post in conjunction with the first search you do to set your mind at rest.
Blogger
- Followers is a new graphical Blogger Widget that is being rolled out to all users as from the end of August. It allows people to follow your blog and for you to see who is following you. A new "Blogs I’m following" tab on your Dashboard allows you to read the posts of those you follow. I will be looking out for it on the blogspot blogs I visit and will add them to my follow list. I will start off with blogspot users who comment here – hopefully a bit of encouragement for you to talk to me:-) Thanks to Tech Flaps, who wrote a post which alerted me to this new feature.
WordPress
- Yoast Breadcrumbs pluginConstructs customisable breadcrumb navigation for single posts and pages. This allows “ease of navigation for your readers as well as providing an additional way for search engines to determine the structure of your site”. Yoast also has an extensive guide on WordPress SEO Tested up to WordPress 2.6. Review on Blogging Tips
A couple of question for you – do you think I should date these news posts or give them a number? Do you think having multiple posts with the same words in the title could be bad for search engine purposes? Would Google bot get all confused and think it was spammy?
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Wow, great links.. I’m glad I landed up here. I have been fooling around with WordPress for years and I just started using Revolution Themes from Brian Gardner. I bought the developer pack they were sooo good. I am not an affiliate for their site but I should be at this point anyway. If you find any theme anywhere that is better please let me know.
date these news posts? Use some form of “permalinks”… I use:
/%post_id%/%postname%/
SE’s like real URL’s
Do you think having multiple posts with the same words? Use “All in One SEO” and “SlugTrimmer” plugins to make it easier to manage. Each post acts like it’s own web page. It should have a unique title with a relevant meta description and probably a meta keywords list too.
Regards, CD Junior
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The Revolution theme is superb – very flexible. I also like Branford Magazine and WyntonMagazine by derPrinz – colors may need tweaking to your liking though. I do have All in One SEO and will check out Slug Trimmer. Thanks for that suggestion.
The link checker is great and I have been looking for a decent illustrator tutorial for ages!
I’d been holding back on downloading Chrome since I’m quite happy with FireFox
I’m newly arrived here, and I like what I see!
I’d been holding back on downloading Chrome since I’m quite happy with FireFox … but I hadn’t thought about the need for testing my site with this new browser. (Slaps head in amazement and frustration!)
Thanks for the tip.
I have been finding some uses for Chrome and will write a post about it too – have not noticed any font problems as yet
just got done installing breadcrumbs and it looks way cool
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It is almost worth you not posting so regularly to get such a fantastic post of resources.
The link checker is great and I have been looking for a decent illustrator tutorial for ages!
Thanks very much for taking the time to get all these together in one place!
Nice work!
Thank you olly – the time taken is worthwhile when I get feedback like this
just got done installing breadcrumbs and it looks way cool
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Been hearing about Chrome and waiting to hear if add-ons are coming out.
Thanks for the news about all the other goodies
thanks for the link to snowl, that’s really an interesting firefox addon, i will give it a try on the weekend.
Whoa— thanks a lot; I also have to go check to see how my sites look with/in Chrome also— what has it been, 3-4 days and the thought hasn’t even occurred to me! Embarrassing!
Thanks, and also for the list of blogging myths too.
Good overall write-up and thanks, always so much new in the blogoshpere hard to keep up.
Thanks for the links – very helpful! The text link checker tool is really great.
great list thats very useful me.
I need to DL chrome, if only to check is my site renders properly.
I [yes i know this is 1980's of me] ws only using IE for months, and once I switched to FF I saw my site was a hot mess, and waas horrified I let it go like that for months
Good overall write-up and thanks, always so much new in the blogoshpere hard to keep up.
Good luck with your new website, learning PHP can be a lot of fun if you’re into that type of thing.
some really great links here to good resources thanks a lot
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I downloaded Google Chrome (Beta) browser, I find it user friendly because the interface is very simple. But I experienced some tab crashing and flash not working. But of course, I am not expecting too much yet because it is still a Beta version.
I have had no problems with crashes and flash has been working fine. A flash site I use which has not allowed me to view certain larger sections in other browsers works beautifully in Chrome.
I really liked Chrome. I have read reviews of it from “professionals” and it’s a mixed bag. Some say it’s slow, hogs memory and others say it’s better than FF and IE.
Personally, I found it to be fast and I loved the sleek simplified design. But then again, my preferred browser is K-Meleon. It’s an extremely lightweight browser if I just want to browse. I am hoping Chrome will remain speedy but with the plugins. It’s disappointing that it doesn’t even offer the Google toolbar…
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Yes, I was very surprised there is no Google Toolbar available. Apparently the new FF version to be released later in the year is going to be faster than Chrome.
Cool i tested the addons it`s really nice.
Im not that familar with Chrome yet..hm still beta but working
I cab agree to John.
chrome is working great, less bloated than firefox for sure. usually firefox can take up to 400mb of memory on my comp.
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i rather enjoyed the 20 myths article. enjoyed it but found it sad as well since it really is easy to fall for some of the myths because you want to believe in shortcuts and silver bullets.
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I saw the news about Blogger followers but wasn’t sure how it worked.
I better look into it further.
Thanks for the links to all the latest tools and news.
Thank you so much for sharing links. You remind me my task that I need to do.
I should download Chrome! I am not familiar but I will check it out.
Please, let us know what you think Betsy
Hi! I just found your blog and this post was great. Thanks for the info and the links.
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Thanks Vicki – I am now going to be getting back into posting my news roundups regularly again.
were u learning php on your own or is it something u need a tutor/mentor?
Learning on my own – I have always found it easier to learn through reading, trial and error.
You are right but it does not take too long to see the error of your ways. Good content and hard work are the keys along with some patience.
I just saw your new site but there is no way for me to add a comment there. By the way, I love the design. It was simple but it stand out. Keep it up.
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Wow! Outstanding post. Thanks for sharing.
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thanks…great job
I just saw your new site but there is no way for me to add a comment there. By the way, I love the design
I am trying out Yoast Breadcrumbs plugin for my wordpress
Yoast Breadcrumbs looks good…
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Out of the many posts, this one attract my attention. I believe it is possible for anyone to make money online too.
Can you provide more information on this? I am doing some extra research on online business and this post is really what I want to see.
Thank you, that is very informative. So I am right to say that social networking is more of gathering a group of individuals with the same interests to form a community.
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Thank you, I really need to know this before buying it.
thanks
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Nice writing style. Looking forward to reading more from you.
. I like reading your post from beginning to the end as I found it very exciting to read. Especially if you are searching something unique and different to inspire your ongoing project.
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lol. I guess it’s time to be more careful now. Thanks for the share!
Well executed information. I would like to get this info saved. Thanks
Great post..thanks for sharing…
thanks for sharing..
Yes, I was very surprised there is no Google Toolbar available. Apparently the new FF version to be released later in the year is going to be faster than Chrome.
@generic, I am pretty sure there is a Google Bar available for download.
Till then,
Jean
The link checker is great and I have been looking for a decent illustrator tutorial for ages!
very useful thanks. laptop
Thank you for nice informations they are too neccessary for me !
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As for site speed tests, you can do it on Firefox too, once you install Firebug (add-on) and install Google’s site test tool.
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I like Chrome. Do feel it is faster and downloads on it better too, but am never sure how to save favorites. Will check out speed test option though
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I’ve tried Chrome, it’s good, but I prefer Mozilla
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just got done installing breadcrumbs and it looks way cool
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