As a blogger, you almost certainly follow other bloggers via a feed reader such as:

• Google Reader
• FeedReader

And that’s all very well and good - feed readers make it super-easy to see what’s going on out on the big blue marble!

But!  Did you know that feed readers can be used for far more than [Read more]

Joshua Clanton wrote a rather insightful post over at DailyBlogTips, entitled "Become a Blogging Wizard - 6 Lessons from Harry Potter".  It inspired me to comment and also reminded me of the following profound poem that I first read back in 1986…22 years ago.

Life is a four letter word……..
I think you spell it L-O-V-E

It’s really as simple as that……

No, I don’t really think that I can totally describe love
but I do know some things about it.

[Read more]

It started last evening, it certainly did.

I had just returned from my beloved 2.4 mile circle walk with my kids.  Refreshed from the early morning late afternoon air, I was about to shut down my computer and actually (I hope you’re sitting down for this one) rest, when I took one last look at my blog reader.

Well!  Lorelle had posted an utterly magnificent article about Breaking Trust: How Not To Link to a Plagiarist that just drew me in and kept me reading and reading and reading.  Within that article, I found another great resource about personalizing one’s blog by adding a signature image.  WOW!  What a super idea!  I highly recommend reading it - the instructions are spelled out in plain simple language that makes it easy to implement.  I’ve done that for my own blog already.

If you’re of a graphical bent, you can take advantage of all the free software fonts that are available online or even make your own!  Some resources I’ve discovered are:

[Read more]

Ever see those cute ‘lil adorable images at the top of your browser that looks remarkably NOT like the typical IE or Firefox or Opera icon?

Those cute ‘lil adorable images are called Favicons and can be your visitor’s best friend!

Why, I hear you murmur to yourself?

Simple of course - unique, customized favicons give a visual clue to your visitor when they peruse all of THEIR bookmarked sites, and help them zoom back directly to yours. Plus, they look spiffy coolio as well.

Here’s the best part - they’re free to create and incorporate to your site! Here’s a simple guide on how to do this.

[Read more]

If there’s one thing my decades of living has taught me, it’s always to be open to inspiration because it will strike in the weirdest of places!!

Take yesterday.  After vanquishing the Freight Train of Blogging Frustration, it was time for me to take my kids to beginners karate.  Now, we’ve been attending for many months; it’s a superb program!  Phenomenal senseis, excellent class instruction, lots of opportunities for growth and the like…it’s truly a parent’s dream.  And being the hip mom that I am, I choose to walk the walk I talk to my kids…and I take karate with them!  

In the past didn’t bother me to be the only mom in a class of single-digit children.  After all, I had my older kids there too!  But now I’ve  advanced to the point where I’m beyond beginners….so I’ll simply sit out during beginners class and just bring my blog notebook with me.  After all, it’s a great opportunity for letting my mind roam freely and seeing what MacGyverisms might emerge.

[Read more]

You know, I’ve heard of the phrase "hitting rock bottom" - it’s supposed to be that defining moment in your life when your eyes flash open and your very being is suffused with a desire to change your current agonizing misery (or at least run away to the sea in Nebraska where nobody knows your name).

‘course, that’s just too simple for me!  No indeed, hitting rock bottom still assumes you have the ability to vault yourself skywards (or at least, climb whimperingly) from of the pit of doom into which you dug yourself.    Sounds tough enough as it is, but what if you add being completely flattened by the Freight Train of Blogging Frustration into the mix - not only do you have to reinvent yourself, but you first have to piece together the variously-strewn parts of your formerly-sturdy blogging confidence and personal character as well.

[Read more]

 Benefits of this lesson:  You can visually see how your blog will look before posting it.

If you’ve been online now for more than 3 minutes, you’ve probably come across forums and communities that let you post messages very easily.  You can change the color of the text, you can insert pictures easily, you can add lots of smilies, etc.  ie, something like:

Now, wordpress by itself doesn’t give this nifty editor to you.  However, you can easily get it for yourself with nary a problem!  Here’s how.

[Read more]

Benefits of this lesson: 

You can get rid of the "?" that’s the default in all Wordpress installations.

By default, Wordpress will offer links to your blog postings rather weirdly - they’ll look like:

http://www.yourblog.com/?p=1

This is easily fixable, however!  And you really do want to do this - people are more comfortable with site addresses that looks like real words and not punctuation.  You can change the above to things like:

• http://www.yourblog.com/2009/04/21/beginners-lesson-5-add-words-to-your-blog  (this uses the date format)
• http://www.yourblog.com/comments/beginners-lesson-5-add-words-to-your-blog  (this uses an anchor of "comments")
• http://www.yourblog.com/my-views/beginners-lesson-5-add-words-to-your-blog  (this uses an anchor of "my-views").

etc.  It’s very easy to do!  Here’s how.

[Read more]

Benefits of this lesson: 

Shows you the easiest way of getting the word out about your blog without you doing any extra effort.

It’s human nature - once you have a blog, you probably want others to read it and tell their friends about it.  Thing is, that can take quite a lot of of time.  It’s very worthwhile, mind you - you can submit your blog to blog directories, comment on other blogs, write and submit articles to targeted publications, etc. 

But if the above is too alien to you and you’re just not ready for it, there’s one other sure-fire way of promoting your blog with zero effort on your part.

And here’s how to do it.

[Read more]

Benefits of this lesson:  You can customize your blog any way you’d like

Ever say to yourself, how can I change my Wordpress theme?

Ever visit a Wordpress blog and wonder to yourself, gee self, how on earth did they get that super design?

Or perhaps think to yourself, woah, what a great picture, how did they put it on that word press page?

In almost all cases, it was done very easily by simply:

• Downloading the design (called a theme) or images or plugin to their home computer
• Uploading that theme or image or plugin to their Wordpress blog and turning it on or adding it to a post or….

Here’s a basic tutorial on how to do it.

[Read more]