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!

Reading

• Your turn - if you have written or have read something that may interest readers here or come across a new site worth a look at let me know; by leaving a comment here or via my contact page. (The latter may be best if it is your own post so that others do not perceive it as being spammy) I will only publish comments that include links if the links are relevant and useful. (covering myself here in case I get spam!).

  If you are a regular reader you will know I try to feature posts from some of the lesser known blogging blogs and those who write excellent posts about blogging but do not have that as their main topic.

  You likely check out the more popular blogging blogs yourself but I do also include links to these if the content is of particular significance.

News

• I know a lot of my readers are mums so Moms Group Manual may be of interest. - this blog is a "Mom’s Guide to Connecting with Other Moms" both online and in person.
• Google is partnering with newspaper publishers to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online. Millions of pages of news articles will be digitized. These will be searchable by using Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. This may come in very handy for research purposes for some bloggers. Read more on the Official Google Blog.
• Come On In The Web Is Fine has started a campaign to encourage sites not to play music on loading. I was recently asked by a client to add Christmas music to their site this year and I had to politely say "no way", that is not a good idea. I feel a post coming on about this topic so will say no more for now.

Blogging Tools

• 8 Google Reader Extensions for Firefox 3

Cyclo.psis a stock photo site search engine that "brings the results of the most popular stock sites to one location". Search once. See it all - no binocular vision on this site folks Joking, I think the name clever.

Social Networking

• Sweetcron- I am looking forward to get onboard with Sweetcron, a new lifestreaming application. Similar to Friendfeed in that it collects together your activities on sites such as Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg. The difference is that you install and run Sweetcron from your own server and in a graphical format. A good example can be found on YongFong’s Sweecron site - not surprising as he is the application’s creator. Cha Cha France gives more details at Sweetcron | The Best Automated Lifestreaming & Blogging Software
• CMS Wire discusses whether Jaiku, which now allows its members unlimited invites, has missed the boat in Microblogging with Jaiku: Too Late to the Party? I must check Jaiku out again. If anyone wants an invite let me know, seems I can now invite anyone I like.
• Dwigger - threaded conversations and voting for Twitter. The idea sounds promising although the content does not show this as yet - No breaking news here. Top voted tweets today being largely about Talk Like a Pirate Day e.g." talk like a pirate day? shit, i forgot."

Blogger

• Antonio Lupetti from Woork has published some excellent tips for tweaking a blogspot template in 7 Tips to design professional blog layout using Blogger.

Wordpress

• So you want to create WordPress themes huh? 16 beginner tutorials from wpdesigner - more advanced lessons to come.
• 68 Unique Wordpress Themes from CSS Leak
• wordpress plugin : my profiles download page
• Smashing Magazine have written a great post for those interesting in doing some Wordpress tweaking and coding, with links to articles and tutorials. WordPress Developer’s Toolbox I wish I had thought of that post!!
• Web Tools Collection takes a First Look At WordPress 2.7
• 2.7 brings the option of adding SSL security to protect your blog from hackers. To activate go to Edit Profile in the My Account menu of your dashboard and then to "Browser Connection". Choose “Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages.”

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Please excuse me if you are not using blogger as this will be of no interest at all to you but I know some other people are keen to make the move over to Wordpress and I want to let them know how I am going.

On changing to the ‘new’ Blogger I used a default template because all the alterations, hacks and workrounds I used, to add the features I wanted, broke my original template completely. A quick way round this was for me to copy all the sidebar content and put it in one of the html/javascript page elements. As I will keep this blog going in one form or another for a while, until the new one takes off, I thought I should make at least some effort to make it look reasonable.

Not being satisfied with anything quick and easy, which is quite normal for me, I set about completely altering the template to try and match it to my original. I also added a third column because I thought that the long long sidebar I had meant certain things were not in prominent enough positions. When viewing an individual post the sidebar extended far beyond the post itself and some items were probably never seen by those entering via a post rather than the main page.

I am not so sure about it though. Until I fiddled with the column widths and added the borders, the blog looked far too crowded. It is looking better now but I would appreciate your feedback on this as I have been working on a three column template for the new Wordpress blog too.

I could not resist adding another hack too - Recent Comments by Ramani of Hackosphere at Customizable recent comments widget (using JSON feed). It is nowhere near as complex as it sounds - just a matter of copying and pasting a script into the head of your template and adding another to a page element. Ramani also has a good explanation of how to add a third column to an existing 2 column new Blogger template - 3-column templates for new Blogger

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Widgets, Social-Networking alexa

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Google sueblimely alexa

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Traffic, SEO, sueblimely alexa

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Many thanks to to those who have recently lingered here a while to read and to those who were kind enough to take the time to comment.

A special mention to Erica from Mom’s Journal who took me up on my Altruistic Link Love Challenge to create a link to a cause close to her heart. Erica chose ACLU. I am not going to say what the letters stand for so that you go take a peek for yourselves - (there is method in my madness - although some may say there is madness in my methods)

Thanks to Colin - Life for leaving the most comments.

• Colin - Life
• Erica - Mom’s Journal
• Kuanyin - Who’s Yo Mama
• Sandy Carlson writing in faith
• Anna - Wealth of Women/blog
• R’aquel - aka r’aquel
• Michelle Gartner - Smart Not Cheap
• Saboma - Maryannasville
• Bobby Griffin - Fechr
• Lisa - Lisa Reviews
• Deborah - Life in the Fast Lane
• Pearl - Interesting Observations

commenting, I-follow, sueblimely alexa

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I will say at the outset that I am partly writing this post to enter the blogLOUDER - Blog Consulting Competition on the Blogtrepreneur site. However the consultation services offered by Blogtepreneur are enticing and if you want to spend some cash to save time and effort and promote your blog more effectively then this may be for you.

Services offered by blogLouder include helping bloggers:

• Increase RSS subscribership
• Increase blogging income
• Build a rock-solid community and increasing comments on your blog
• Raise traffic levels through creative writing

This advice comes via two main packages:

• Blog Consulting package - a live chat with me via Instant Messenger for 1 hour ($60) or 30 minute ($40) slots, and a
• Blog Review package - ($95) a full critique of your site, which you can choose to have published on Blogtrepreneur, is sent to you by email.

When I say this will save you time and effort, I am referring to the work you need to put in yourself to research the best way to promote your blog. If you are not an expert on the subject, a lot of this time may also be wasted by going down the wrong track. After a consultation you will still have to carry out the tasks recommended but, in theory, these should be fruitful.

I am not willing to recommend anything just for the sake of competitions or links. The best way I could think of to find out if this service may be of use was to research how successful Adnan, who offers the services, has been in promoting his own blog.

An Interview with Adnan from Blogtrepreneur

Oh dear, my figures do not look at all good compared to Adnan’s. It certainly looks as if he knows what he is doing.

The contest: blogLOUDER - Blog Consulting Competition

The Prizes:

The winner of the contest will receive either a full Blog Review worth $95 or 1 hour of Blog Consulting time worth $60 - they choose!

2 runners up will win 30 minutes of Blog Consulting time worth $40 each.

Traffic, Contest, sueblimely alexa

Popularity: 1% [?]