Blogging Sueblimely

Welcome to Blogging Sueblimely. To keep up with my posts you can subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Imagine my shock when I was directed to this page on signing in to my blog admin area:

Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /wp-login.php on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: …………

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact “my email address” and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

However the panic was short lived. I copied the first sentence, did a search on this and found the answer I needed.

The cause was an error on the Bad Behaviour wp plugin server. Installing the new version of the plugin fixed the problem.

Thanks Meg for alerting me to this (Meg was informed that she was blacklisted too when she tried to comment on my site)

If you have been the victim of this too head over to Bad Behavior 2.0.11 and install the new version.

And DON’T PANIC!

(My heart rate has now returned to normal, just)

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You may be wondering why I made the move over to Wordpress rather than just transferring my blogspot Blogger blog to my own domain.

Certain things bugged me about Blogger. Some of these have been solved by the new Blogger but it only possible, at this stage, to use classic blogger on your own domain.

Disadvantages of using blogspot Blogger:

1. I did not have as much control over my site as I would like. I enjoy tinkering with the coding and page customization.
2. I wanted to add features that were not available to Blogger.
3. Some features available to other blogging platforms are only possible by hacks which are sometimes difficult to implement.
4. Bloggger templates tend to lack sparkle. Unless you have the knowledge and inclination to style your theme yourself your blog will not have a distinct look.
5. The comments page cannot be edited and I wanted the ability to style it to match my blog template.
6. It is not possible to remove nofollow from comments.
7. The Blogger navigation bar that runs at the very top of the page is unattractive and identifies it as being a blogspot blog. Most people would not care if you were using an online blog platform or not but some see this as being unprofessional.
8. In classic blogger there is no ‘previous/next post’ link at the end of the page. This does not encourage readers to linger and find more to read.
9. Classic blogger does not have a built in post categorization and I did not find the work rounds satisfactory.
10. When leaving a comment on another blog, using your Blogger name, the link that appears on the comment is that of your Blogger profile page and not your blog page. I wanted to have the choice of which blog I am leave a link to.
11. The user profile page is a default Blogger page which acts as an about page. There is no control over the page design or the styling of the content you add.
12. You cannot add a static page to a blogger site. The only option is to write a post that acts as a static page by creating a ‘menu’ link to it.
13. If you create code in an html editor and copy and paste to the blogger post window line/paragraph breaks do not transfer correctly. Futher editing is needed to delete extra space.
14. Adding the captcha code feature for comments means that, even though you are already logged in to the dashboard, you still have to type in the code before publishing a post. This code times out quickly.
15. The Blogger site was often down. This does not happen if you publish yourself - using a reliable host.
16. Wordpress offered me the extra features I wanted.

Wordpress Features and Plugins not available to blogspot.

1. Static Pages
2. Recent Comments
3. Related post feature
4. Creating posts that belong to a series
5. Top Commenters list
6. Sticky Posts
7. Read More feature
8. Subscribe to comments
9. Automatic tag creation.
10. An archive list
11. Social networking plugins rather than having to manually code/use 3rd party widgets
12. Spamming protection plugins
13. Pagination for long posts
14. Site map creation
15. Ability to style main page and post pages differently (eg a different sidebar)

Please keep in mind that these are my reasons for using Wordpress, based on my own requirements.

Before considering a move of this kind it is a good idea to think about why you need to. Consider:

• What features are not supported by your current blogging platform that you really need?
• Can these features be added to your current blog with add-ins plugins, workarounds or 3rd party sites. (e.g. Feedburner)?
• Your level of skill and motivation to change - Wordpress is not quite as easy to operate as Blogger and there is a learning process involved in setting it up and managing your own domain. Do you have the time or inclination to go through this?
• Would other options suit you better? For example, if you are currently using Blogger classic - would a move over to the new and very much improved version satisfy your requirements? If you are happy using blogger classic consider moving this to your own domain name.

Some of the advantages of hosted blogs :

1. Quick and easy to setup.
2. The software is updated automatically for you.
3. Access to pre-installed themes/templates, plugins/widgets.
4. No costs involved.
5. No coding knowledge needed - although it is still handy to know how to do some styling.

NB - I am referring to Wordpress as installed on your own server not that hosted by Wordpress. com. The hosted Wordpress does not have the same number of features,  has only a default set of plugins and does not allow you the same level of design customization.

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I now have faces to accompany comments with my addition of the MyAvatar plugin which uses MyBlogLog avatars. This is not a vital plugin of course but I like it
(You do not need to be a member of MyBlogLog to use this plugin)

You can view all the plugins installed on this blog on my Plugins page

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It occurred to me today that I may be putting people off moving to Wordpress by talking of all the plugins etc that I have been adding.

Wordpress is a good complete blogging system without any of this. You can just install the program, choosing one of the multitudes of templates available, and start blogging straight away. You may want to add some plugins later, once you are more familiar with the system. If you are not at all familiar with Wordpress, but are keen to move across to it on your own domain, you can always practice first with a ‘test’ blog on Wordpress.com. This will help you get used to navigating around the Dashboard. You can do some test posts, change templates etc. Once you feel comfortable with this you can then start making a move to your own domain.

(I did a Google search for this blog earlier today and there it was. The big G has been visiting me. Pretty good really considering I have only been here a few days. I did leave an invitation though, via a sitemap which shouted out “I’m here, come and see me” but the G bot does get around impressively fast - must have been taking lessons from Santa. I would have left milk and a cookie out, if I had known how, with thanks in advance for some pagerank. Those of you who have linked to me have helped too and I thank you.)

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I am listing the plugins I have implemented for Wordpress in the order of my view of how I rate their importance/necessity. In some cases there are alternatives based on personal preference. I will detail these in a separate post.

Important Plugins

Akismet a tool designed stop comment and trackback spam is built into Wordpress. To add to this protection I installed Bad Behaviour - which is designed to complement other link spam solutions. It’s aim is top prevent spammers from even delivering their unwanted offerings, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. Bad Behaviour is available for other PHP based sites too.

All-in-one-SEO-Pack - a powerful plugin that takes the hard work out of optimizing your blog for search engines. I will describe this one more soon as some customizing is needed to take advantage of its full features.

Google Sitemaps Generator - to help this blog get listed and ranked. Here is some info on sitemaps in case you want to find out more.

Dofollow - Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin I wrote a guest post on the subject of nofollow on Blog-Blond a little while ago.

Andy Beard has published a list of utilities that remove nofollow from Wordpress, Blogspot, Movable Type and Typepad - Ultimate List of DoFollow & Nofollow Plugins - Banish Nofollow From Comments and Trackbacks

ShareThis - a compact little share this button to allow readers to subscribe or favorite your post on various social networking and bookmarking sites. A simple plugin to implement. This feature is available for other blogging platforms too ShareThis for Publishers. I have been using it on Blogger for a while.

There are other such bookmarking plugins, which you choose is really a matter of personal taste.

Subscribe to Comments - To allow readers to subscribe to post comments by email. (I personally use CoComment to keep track of comments.)

Feedburner’s Feedsmith
- Very handy indeed. I have used Feedburner instead of the default Blogger feed for a while. I created another Feedburner feed for this blog. The plugin helps you set it up within Wordpress. Through the Blogger Dashboard I was able to divert the feed from the Blogger blog to this blog’s feed. Anyone currently subscribing to my old feed will now get the new feed instead.

Related Posts by Wasabi

- I am going to find this really useful especially while writing this series on Wordpress.

Handy but not vital plugins:

Auto-Social - as I use del.icio.us as my main bookmarking service this is handy. All posts are automatically submitted to del.icious. All you need to do is point the plugin in the direction of your del.icio.us account.

Previous Posts Picker Allows you to see previous posts, related to the one you are writing, in the post editing window to make adding links to your post easier.

In Series - Adds a set of controls to the post editing window that lets you create a series of posts without having manually writing up tables of contents or “next” and “previous” links in each post.

Plugins useful for this blog:

Plugins Used - Displays what plug ins are being used on a blog. I thought this may be useful for you. You can view the page which lists the plugins I have installed and enabled from the Pages menu currently residing in the right sidebar.

Code Auto Escape - to allow me to easily display html and css code in posts. This will be useful when I start talking about designing themes.

To maybe add later:

More spam protection Recaptcha , Did you Pass Math or similar annoying feature those leaving comments have to fill in.

Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter to help discourage content thieves

I will cover some of these plugins in more detail later but in the meantime documentation is available via the download site and sometimes within the downloaded plugin folder itself.

If you want to browse for other plugins take a look at Wordpress.org plugin directory. There are other directories but this one can keep you amused for hours (you may not use the term amused in this context!)

Wordpress.org plugins documentation - explains how to install, activate and maage plugins.

I have run out of steam now and will add more later. (I am also heading out soon to meet people at a restaurant with the wonderful name of Wagamama’s)

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One of the reasons it took me such a long time to make this move to Wordpress from Blogger was that I wanted to share with you what I was doing, how I did it and why. I could not write about this, presuming to teach others, without doing some thorough planning and research and trying things out first.
Instead of, for example, posting lists of plugins I wanted to find out which were the most needed and the most useful.

I first installed Wordpress and started experimenting with it in 2005 just because it was there. I have installed and designed Wordpress sites for clients and friends. Over the last couple of months I have been studying in more depth to make sure I was fully up to date.

I am creating a series of posts listing the plugin, widgets and features that I add and the styling changes I make. These lists will be added to as I go along. If I think any need further explanation I will create separate posts that contain more detail.

My priorities include:

• Protection against spam
• Search Engine Optimization - so that this blog can be found.
• Giving those who comment, have helped me in my research and who create addins recognition for their support and contributions.
• Creating a site that is easy to navigate and where relavent related posts, categories and tags are easy to find.
• Adding elements that will be handy for my own blogging needs.

Once I have implemented these aspects I will concentrate on the visual aspects of the design. I am itching to do that first but resisting until other things have been completed.

If you find anything I write is hard to understand, you require more information a topic or I miss something you wish to learn about, please let me know. If you would rather not leave a comment you are welcome to contact me via my Contactify account instead.

If any of my visitors are cluey about Wordpress/SEO/design please feel very welcome to correct me or let me know what I should be adding. (Accuracy is more important than my pride).

Other wonderful sources of information on Wordpress and SEO are Andy Beard, Mihaela Lica and Laurelle and Alex King.

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What are the less interesting but necessary blogging tasks we need to complete? I will be taking you through them over the next few weeks. For those of you who are saying “but I only want to write” and not do any of this stuff” I promise to try and make it as painless to read as possible. Some of it you may already be familiar with this of course but others may be starters on the blogging path (anyway reminders do not go astray from time to time).

I spent quite a while yesterday writing a post which contained a list of things that I am going to do and then scrapped it. My idea was to create a list type post, I am sure you have seen the sort I am talking about - e.g. 30 Must Have Tips on Removing Dog stains from Carpets*. This type of post tends to score well in the rankings. The post ended up too detailed and I thought I would lose you after about point 15 so I ditched it. I did attempt to add some relevant keywords to the first paragraph of this post though so I did do a little sucking up to search engines. Instead I will just do a summary of the main areas I will be covering over the next weeks so that I can share with you the experience of moving from a hosted platform to my own domain.

Setting up the blog:

• domain names and domain registering
• hosting
• ftp (how to upload, download from your blog hosts server)
• learning to use Wordpress

Introducing my blog to the WWW

- submitting it to:

• social networking services
• bookmarking sites,
• search engines,
• directories
• commenting on other blogs
• doing a little begging, requesting some help from blogging mates.
• link building

I will not be spammy or use what I consider unethical techniques under any circumstances - no leaving comments of no value, no blatant asking for links from strangers nor any ” I’ll pat your back but only if you pat mine” kind of thing.

Make the blog Search Engine Friendly

- help the busy little Google bot and other crawlers find all the things they need to find. (I think it will be me crawling to them though) This will involve among other things:

• Adding a sitemap
• Tweaking Wordpress a little, mostly with the use of plugins.

Making the blog reader friendly

- by styling it so that:

• it is easy to navigate
• visitors can find content of interest
• it is clear, uncluttered and easy to read

The latter is not a chore, as I just love messing around with styling.

I am sure I have missed some things off this list and I will add to it as time goes on. Please let me know if there is something particular, not mentioned here, that you would like to learn concerning starting a blog on your own domain - if you wish to know then I am sure others do too.

*I really do have to do a bit of a clean up now my daughter’s puppy has left with her for their new life at the other side of Australia

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So here I am, the author of a blog with no-rank - unknown to Google, Technorati, Alexa…. Yesterday I was wondering how I would drag it out of the depths of search engine obscurity so that the world would find it. Today I realize that does not matter as I have a huge advantage over new bloggers - this site has already had supportive readers, comments and even stumbles. It is already on its journey. Thanks to all of you who have visited and those who left such kind comments and good wishes.

Whether our reason for authoring a blog is purely personal or we want to make some money online, readers are what blogging is all about. If I can produce interesting content and do some of the less interesting but necessary blogging tasks I know this blog will be fine. If I can help some others along the way, I will be fine too.

What are these less interesting but necessary (sometimes less savory for me) blogging tasks we need to complete? I will be taking you through them over the next few weeks. For those of you who are saying “but I ony want to write” and not do any of this stuff”, I promise to try and make it as painless to read as possible. For some of you it may not be new of course but others may be starters on the blogging path. (anyway reminders do not go astray).

I will also be continuing with my usual sort of posts, keeping you up-to-date with what is happening around the blogosphere and the social networking scene (plus the occasional slight diversions away from topic when I join in with blogging community activities.)

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