The Teen Forums - Chat and more: Forum: Blogging Tips, Tricks & Advice

The Teen Forums - Chat and more: Forum: Blogging Tips, Tricks & Advice - Recent Posts http://mycyc.com/forum/ The Teen Forums - Chat and more: Forum: Blogging Tips, Tricks & Advice - Recent Posts en Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:49:47 +0000 admin on "Adding a profile pic/avatar" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/adding-a-profile-picavatar#post-1446 Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:45:28 +0000 admin 1446@http://mycyc.com/forum/ To add your own profile pic (for the forum) or avatar (for blog comments) you need to do the following: Visit <a href="http://en.gravatar.com/" rel="nofollow">http://en.gravatar.com/</a> and register, be sure to register with the same email address that you used when you registered with mycyc.com. admin on "Blogging: How Do I Get Started" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/blogging-how-do-i-get-started#post-1443 Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:32:59 +0000 admin 1443@http://mycyc.com/forum/ you do it via <a href="http://en.gravatar.com/" rel="nofollow">http://en.gravatar.com/</a> Anonymous on "Blogging: How Do I Get Started" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/blogging-how-do-i-get-started#post-1439 Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:31:41 +0000 Anonymous 1439@http://mycyc.com/forum/ Plzz helpp :( its drivin meey cRRRaZZZZYY :@ Anonymous on "Blogging: How Do I Get Started" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/blogging-how-do-i-get-started#post-1427 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:00:15 +0000 Anonymous 1427@http://mycyc.com/forum/ hello :S can i ask yuuh sumet how do, you upload your profile picture Anonymous on "Blogging: How Do I Get Started" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/blogging-how-do-i-get-started#post-1426 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:28:52 +0000 Anonymous 1426@http://mycyc.com/forum/ elo0o xx :) admin on "Blogging: How Do I Get Started" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/blogging-how-do-i-get-started#post-594 Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:21:02 +0000 admin 594@http://mycyc.com/forum/ Starting blogging is like creating a new website, before you begin you need to have some idea of what your blog is going to be all about, what kinda content your gonna post about, who your going to target and what will it look like. [u][b]Creating A Plan[/b][/u] Before you start, grab a pen and piece of paper, write down some ideas for the blog and think about whats gonna go where. You specially need to think about what are you going to blog about, even just an online journal of your life needs some sort of structure. Your blog could have the best posts ever, however if the posts are not easy to find, no one will ever be able to read them. Another big part of blogging is deciding what blog software you are going to use, and whether or not it is going to be self-hosted (costs money) or hosted at a site like wordpress.com (more on these later). [u][b]Choosing The Right Blog Software[/b][/u] There are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog_software#Examples">untold list of blogging software</a> available to you, what you choose is down to you, however i have taken the time to review the top 2 blogging platforms for you (<a href="http://mycyc.com/blogging-wordpress-vs-b2evolution/">Wordpress Vs b2evolution</a>). If you can afford web hosting i would suggest that you go with a self-hosted blog rather than a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog_software#Developer-hosted">blogging service</a> such as blogger, as with self-hosted blog you have more control over the entire blog, where as blogging service often don't allow you to use plugins or manually edit themes or skins. [u][b]Installing Your Blog (if self-hosted)[/b][/u] If your going self-hosted i would recommend that you install the blog manually rather than using a 3rd party script such as fantastico because you learn a lot more from installing manually and 3rd party script do not always offer the latest versions and can be a pain to upgrade. Each software should come with there own installation instructions, however, the general install usually requires you to set-up a mysql database, upload the files to your web site and then running the install script. The wordpress docs gives you a good overview of <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress">whats needed to install</a> (even if you don't use wordpress its worth reading). [u][b]What To Blog About[/b][/u] If your planning on blogging about your day-2-day life in an online journal, the stuff your gonna blog about is pretty self explanatory, however if your stuck for ideas you could check out <a href="http://technorati.com/">technorati</a> and see what other bloggers are writing about. Whatever you decide to blog about, remember to keep it structured, and remember if its not easy to find from the blogs homepage, will your visitors find it? You need a nicely structured navigation menu, along with a search bar, if visitors come to your blog and end up stuck on the homepage because they cannot find any navigation, how will they get to read your blog? You should also try and keep your content focused, keep each post structured, if you have 5 things that you want to update your blog readers about would they prefer to read about it in one crammed-up post or in 5 single posts that are sorted into categories? [u][b]How Much & How Often?[/b][/u] A common question is 'How often should i blog?', that all depends on you, your audience and what type of blog your running. For e.g. a personal blog may be updated daily, but a news blog would be updated 4-5+ times a day, a film review blog may only be updated 3 times a week. <a href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/01/06/about-darren/">Darren Rowse</a> at <a href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/03/01/34-reasons-why-readers-unsubscribe-from-your-blog/">problogger</a> has compiled a list of reasons why people un-subscribe from your blog (defiantly worth a read), the top 2 n the list are very interesting, the first is because there are too many post (overwhelming), the second is because your not posting enough (blog seems dead). The main thing is that if your going to post to and update your blog often, make sure that the post is worthwhile and has valuable content and if your only going to update your blog every now and then, make sure that your posting is something unique, interesting and only available at your blog. [u][b]Blogging Off-Line[/b][/u] Damn. I just thought of a great blog post, just as my Internet went down. If your ever in a situation like this you could try writing your post off-line and then posting it a.s.a.p. software such as <a href="http://get.live.com/writer/overview">Windows Live Writer</a> allows you to write your blog post off-line and then publish it to your blog whenever you are ready. [u][b]Conclusion[/b][/u] Thats pretty much the general outline of everything you need to know to get your blog started, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. <h4>Further Reading</h4> These are articles from other blogs that may also interest you; <ul> <li><a href="http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/04/how_to_start_a_.html">How To Start A Blog</a></li> <li><a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/29/learning-about-blogging-and-how-to-blog/">Learning About Blogging</a></li> <li><a href="http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog-anonymously.php">How To Blog Safely</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050714gardner/">Are You Using The Right Blog Tools?</a></li> <li>Got an article that should be linked here? Let me know via a nice comment :D</li> </ul> admin on "Blogging: RSS Feeds & Feed Readers" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/rss-feeds-more-about-rss#post-571 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:32:53 +0000 admin 571@http://mycyc.com/forum/ A big (but often over-looked) part of blogging is RSS feeds, firstly i will start of by saying that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is used as a way of publishing frequently updated content. (note: RSS feeds are not just limited to blogs). As a blogger i want to make it as easy as possible for you to stay updated about new stuff that is posted to this blog, however not all the time is it possible for you to visit the site, find out whats happened since your last visit and read whats been posted, thankfully RSS feeds can make it a whole lot easier and quicker to stay updated. note: a lot of website owners tend to be against RSS feeds as they think that it drives traffic away from them, however i disagree, if your posting good quality content then regardless of how people find it (either via RSS or via the site itself) they will read it. [b][u]How To Use RSS Feeds[/u][/b] Most of the time blogs that offer RSS feeds will display a link to there feed, 99% of the time that link will also be accompanied by an image that looks similar to this one <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/mycyc">[img]http://mycyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/feed-icon16x16.png[/img]</a> (may come in a slightly different size or variation but should be easy to spot). If you click on the icon it will take you to a page that will look similar to this [img]http://mycyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/rss-feed1.gif[/img] As you can see it shows the title and post summary of the most recently made posts, now just by browsing the page you can instantly see if there is anything that would be valuable to you and worth reading, if theres not you can then carry onto the next feed (or whatever else it was you was doing). Wasn't that a whole lot quicker than browsing and searching the site for new posts? Also if there is anything interesting that you wanna read, you just click the link and you will be taken to the blog post within the site. Note: some sites (including mine) use a 3rd party (such as feed burner) to aggregate their feeds, the page that you go to when you click the RSS link will likely vary from site to site. [b][u]Making RSS Feeds Even Easier With A Feed Reader[/u][/b] You have just seen how much quicker RSS feeds can make it when searching for new and updated posts, now would you believe me if i said that it can be made even quicker? There are many feed readers available, some can be used whilst browsing the Internet, some you can download. Online Readers Sites such as google, live and yahoo all now let you have your own personalised homepage, all of which also allow you to add RSS feeds too. <ul> <li>Windows live - Go 2 live.com, login, click add stuff, advanced, copy and paste the feed URL into the second box and then click subscribe.</li> <li>Google - Go 2 google.co.uk (or .com etc), login, click on accounts, then reader, then add subscription, copy and paste the feed URL and then click add.</li> <li>Yahoo - Go to yahoo.co.uk (or .com etc), login, click on my yahoo, click personalise this page, click add RSS feed, paste the feed URL and then click add.</li> <li>There are a lot other online feed readers including Firefox's live bookmarks, however if i listed them all i would never get this posted :)</li> </ul> Downloadable Feed Readers These are feed readers that you can download and install onto your computer (download at own risk!), the advantage of this is that you can instantly check whats news directly from your desktop. <ul> <li><a href="http://www.feedreader.com/download">Feedreader</a> - The most robust, highly-functional personal aggregation solution on the market today.</li> <li><a href="http://www.rssreader.com/download.htm">RSSReader</a> - Free RSS reader is able to display any RSS and Atom news feed (XML).</li> <li><a href="http://www.awasu.com/releases/">Awasu Personal Edition</a> - For casual RSS users, this edition is fully-functional and completely free!</li> </ul> admin on "Wordpress User-Permissions Fix" http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/wordpress-user-permissions-fix#post-570 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:31:26 +0000 admin 570@http://mycyc.com/forum/ Not sure if anyone else was having this problem, anyway here it is: whenever a subscriber logged in they would be redirected to their profile, however if they clicked onto the dashboard tab it would spit out the following error message <blockquote>You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.</blockquote> I believe that in Internet Explorer it was giving a internal server error :| I managed to fix this by installing the <a href="http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/">role manager plugin</a> (yes it seems compatible with wordpress 2.5), i then used that plugin to change the user level of my subscribers from 0 to 1. Now its fixed :) annonymousgirl on "The Pencil Joke." http://mycyc.com/forum/topic/the-pencil-joke#post-403 Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:46:00 +0000 annonymousgirl 403@http://mycyc.com/forum/ i thought it was rather funny katie :P x