Guide To Blogging

Archive for the ‘WordPress Widgets’ Category

You can quickly turn your readers into listeners with this free service that automatically converts your blog posts, text articles or rss feeds into podcasts.

With Odiogo you can give your readers the chance to listen to your posts wherever and whenever they want. If your blog publishes an rss feed (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad etc) you can use Odiogo convert your written word into audio that your readers can listen to on their ipod, mp3, pc or phone etc.

I’m still waiting to use this service myself but for those that have high content blogs it might come in very handy for you.  If you want a demonstration and more detailed information take a look at the demo page

If anyone has used this service I’d be very interested to hear what you think about it: good or bad

Well it’s been a couple of weeks or so now since Blogrush hit the scene with a big bang, it seemed for a few days there every man and his dog was talking about it - I know I added it to a couple of my blogs pretty quickly but now that all the initial hullabaloo has died down it’s probably time to sit back and decide whether it’s actually working or not.

For me personally I have received traffic via widgets on other people’s blogs (and in my statcounter I know which blogs they are so I can tell if they’re related or not etc) so to that end I guess it has worked as they are potentially people that may have never found me otherwise, so I guess it gets a tick there.

Behind the scenes there’s been some improvements already (and they are still ongoing) with the introduction of the flavours (so we can choose from a selection of colours for our widget - to match our blogs colour theme etc) which is a good thing.

All blogs will undergo a manual approval process - another tick

Those that have been members for a little while now would no doubt have received an email from John Reese (creator of Blogrush) speaking out against the cheaters and what action(s) will be taken to stop it from happening - so another tick from me

Currently the dashboard is partly under construction (though the stats are back) for the new Beta v2.0  so it’s a wait on see for that. But overall at this stage at least I’m glad I joined- if nothing else it has delivered me some traffic which realistically is the whole point of it.

For those that haven’t yet joined or want to know more about it you can find out more here: Blogrush

I just came across another interesting widget (via a group I’m in on BlogCatalog) that I though I’d share with you: FEEDJIT it offers you real-time blog (and website) traffic stats

Taken from their site:

FEEDJIT gives you real-time traffic data on your blog or website. No registration required and it’s completely free. See where your visitors are located in the world, which websites they’re arriving from and what they’re clicking when they leave your site.

I’ve added it to my sidebar for the time being to show you what it is and how it works etc but I may remove it down that track as I don’t plan on using/displaying every widget or plugin I talk about on this blog, I just like to pass the information on.

So for those of you who like your stats this may be right for you.

You can get it from here: FEEDJIT 

When it comes to blogging many people become almost addicted to it and soon find themselves having (or wanting to have) multiple blogs. Because they are so easy to set up it’s not hard to have a new blog up and running within minutes, often the hardest thing to do is to come up with a name and your first post.

Once you’ve used a WordPress blog you quickly decide what works for you and your blog’s topic/theme etc and what doesn’t so when you’re ready to start a new blog odds are you’ll use much the same thing again (the themes may vary, but most plugins etc will probably stay the same) It’s at this point that you realise just how handy it can be to keep a checklist and folders of your most commonly used themes/plugins etc.

While for the most part it’s pretty standard when it comes to setting up a WordPress blog there are a few changes you may want to make and there’s nothing worse than establishing a blog, writing a few posts only to realise you forgot to activate or change a default setting etc.

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Once you have your wordpress blog installed you might decide it’s time to start changing the look of your blog or adding some useful features. With the wide variety of themes and plugins etc available for your blog it’s something you may find yourself doing on a regular basis so it’s good to make sure you understand the basic must do’s and probably wants before you get started.

The first thing you’ll probably want is an ftp program of some sort (while you can upload things to your blog directory via your web hosts control panel/file manager - due to the size or the amount of files you sometimes need to transfer this can be a very slow process)

I personally use CoffeeCup for my ftp but there’s hundreds of free or paid ftp programs available - each with their own pros and cons. If it’s your first time using a program of this sort it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with it as they can all look a little different - but the basics are that once you open your ftp program on one side of the screen you’ll have your files that you have saved on your computer on the other side of the screen will be the directory you want to upload/transfer to. Then it’s just a matter of finding what you want to upload, opening the correct path to the file you want to transfer to and dragging your file(s) across.

When it comes to uploading wordpress plugins or themes etc it all works pretty much the same you but you must make sure you are transferring your plugin/theme to the correct path:

When you open your blog directory you’ll see some folders and files - wp-admin, wp-content etc. To upload a theme for example you’ll need to open your blog directory (via ftp) then wp-content and then the themes folder (when you first open this folder you’ll probably see two folders - default and classic) - then it’s simply a matter of transferring the new folder (and all the files within) containing your new wordpress theme from your desktop (or wherever you saved it on your computer) over to the themes folder in your blog directory.

Plugins work much the same except that you go to your wp-content/plugins path in your ftp program.

Remember too that when you find your chosen theme or plugin etc and download it there’s a good chance it will be a zipped file so you should get winzip etc (www.winzip.com) after you have extracted the zipped file there is often a read me file that will contain any further information or upload instructions, it always pays to make sure you read this as there might be some slight changes from one plugin to the next.

Once you have uploaded your new plugin or them - open your blog dashboard and either go to presentation to change your theme or plugins to activate your new plugin (again with the plugins check for any further information - some might require an extra step once it is activated)

The sidebar widget is something that enables you to easily move or add different things in the sidebar of your wordpress blog from text and html to categories and rss feeds etc- while version 2.2 already has this, earlier versions may require you installing this particular widget.

Rather than having to edit the source of your sidebar file like you have in the past to  make any changes once you’ve activated the sidebar widget you’ll see an extra tab on your presentation menu in the dashboard. Opening this will allow you to drag and drop your chosen items wherever you want them on the sidebar(s) of your blog.

For more information and to download this visit here