A Good Christian Raisin’ and a Eighth Grade Education
I got an email the other day pointing me to a photoblog of Cartagena, Colombia, the hometown of The Missus. Some very cool photos there, mostly of the older part of the city that is within the walls. Here are a few from our trip in 2006 also.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on Cartagena if you’re interested in more about the history.
On a side note, I’m really loving the ease of posting photos and galleries in WordPress 2.5
According to Gawker’s Nick Denton, yes.
Gawker head honcho Nick Denton explained to Silicon Alley Insider that the decision to sell the sites was based on the economy, lack of advertising, and his desire to get lean before the blogosphere implodes.
Wait. Don’t panic. One prognostication does not a bubble burst. Don’t rush out to the nearest convenience store to trade in your shares of www.itfrom.us for beef jerkey and (used) scratch of lottery tickets just yet.
Any reasonable person knows that the blogosphere is not going to implode, at least not until someone invents a cheaper and more efficient way than blogging to waste time and money.
An NYT article about the dangers of blogging…
Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.
Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.
But don’t these types of things happen to workaholics in any field? I get the fact that if you fall behind one time with a big time blog someone else will be there to fill in the gap you left, and I suppose that’s stressful (for some people), but these people are the .0001%. Most bloggers are doing it just for fun anyway. The few pennies we get on AdSense here and there is more of a justification validation that we’re actually “working” while we do this than anything. Of course, some of us find a way to turn our blogs into a one-stop-shop for aircraft sales. Then we’re talking about some serious money stupidity.
I am a little worried about someone who posts as feverishly as this guy.
With apologies to those who come here only for the ranting…
I have a plan to do a whole series of articles on search engine optimization (SEO) for bloggers. While the topic of full vs. partial feeds may not be directly related to SEO at first glance, I feel that it is in a round about way. After all, the goal of SEO and is to get more visitors to your site, and that is probably one of the goals you’d like to accomplish with your feed as well. I’m by no means saying that partial feeds are bad, and I think they definitely have their place. But for me (and probably most other bloggers) I believe full feeds are a more effective way to drive traffic. While much of what I’m about to say is based on experience, I believe I can back it up with logic and human blogger nature.
So first off, what’s the argument for partial feeds? It’s actually not a bad argument, and I used to subscribe to it myself. When I first set up my feed, I was sure that partial feeds were the way to go. I thought I had to do everything I could to force entice people to visit my site. There was no way I was going to give away all my content through the feed. Only after they loaded up the entire site, ads and all, would I give away my content.
But then it hit me–I’m giving it away no matter what. It didn’t take me long to realize that full posts in my feed were better than partial feeds, not only for my subscribers, but ultimately for me as well.
Anyone who uses an RSS reader is probably addicted to it. One of the first things we do after we read an article we like on a new site (especially a blog) is to look for the feed subscription button. And as a blogger, one of the first things I check every day is my FeedBurner stats, mostly out of vanity, because I’m truly flattered that people care enough about what I have to say to choose to subscribe to my feed. I feel like the least I can do for the folks who’ve paid me such a big compliment is to say “thanks” by making my site as easy as possible for them to read in the way they choose, and that means no ads in the feed as well.
But that means subscribers aren’t going to see any of the ads on my site in their reader, so they won’t ever click on these ads, right? Well…I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.
Think about it…the people who are subscribed to my feed are people who already may be interested in what I have to say. They are also likely to engage me in conversation by leaving comments on my blog. By giving them full posts in the feed, I increase the chances they will read everything I wrote. That increases the chances that they’ll want to comment on something I wrote, and that means they will visit my site. By contrast, a partial feed means that I have three or four sentences to entice them into visiting the site. Frankly, I don’t have enough faith in myself as a writer to accomplish that with every post.
An even more compelling reason–I think it’s pretty safe to assume that many of the people reading my feed are other bloggers. And while comments are great and encouraged, an even bigger compliment from another blogger is a link back from their blog. In fact, I’d much rather have a single link than ten comments. Again, providing the full feed increases the chances that someone will read something they’d like to write about on their own blog.
How do links back to my blog help me so much? Obviously, exposure to the the other blogger’s readers has a lot of value, but there’s another reason, and this is where the SEO part comes in. Search engines (especially Google) see a link as a “vote” for a site. So a link increases my “clout” with search engines, which means that I can greatly increase search engine rankings, which greatly increases my traffic. And I have to believe that the random visitor from a search engine is less familiar with my site layout and less likely to be wise to blog ad placement in general. This means that they are more likely to click on an ad than a regular subscriber who visits my site every day (because I don’t provide full posts in my feed) would be. More search engine traffic also increases the chances that I’ll get even more subscribers–rinse and repeat.
Full feeds reward loyal subscribers with the ability to read your site with ease. In my case, this includes keeping the feed ad free.
Full feeds reward you directly by increasing the chances your subscribers will visit your site and leave comments. One way conversations are fine, but I have those in my head all day, and sometimes I get tired of hearing only myself.
Full feeds increase your chances of getting back links, which increase your search engine rankings, and ultimately your traffic. Back links increase your exposure to other bloggers’ readers, and search engines are an excellent source of readers who would never find you otherwise.
I hope this helps those of you are trying to decide whether to use full or partial links, and I really hope I’ve convinced those of you who to whom I subscribe and are currently using partial feeds to give me the whole thing in my reader!
WordPress 2.5 was released yesterday, and I’ve installed it on all most some of my sites. So far, my favorite new feature is the automatic upgrade of plugins. But…
The reason I need automatic upgrade of plugins is because I’m so bad at keeping my plugins updated. As a result, I didn’t have the newest version of the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin (for the whole WordPress engine) installed, and that caused a problem with the WordPress Plugin Upgrade feature. The problem looks like this:
Cannot redeclare class pclzip
To avoid this problem, follow these three easy steps for upgrading your blog and your plugins:
There are database upgrades with version 2.5, so make sure when you do the auto-upgrade in step 2 that you do the database upgrade, and make sure you reactivate your plugins–deactivation of the plugins is part of the auto-upgrade.
As I said in my review of the release candidate, the tags editor is really nice too, as well as the overall improved layout of the dashboard.
Is anyone else having an issue viewing their WordPress dashboard in Firefox 2.0.0.13? My blogs themselves look ok, but the dashboard is wack. No? Just me?
That may be the last time I take a brand new upgrade.
***UPDATE***
“Wack”= CSS doesn’t seem to be working at all, but only on the WP Dashboard
I’ve already received a few emails about this upgrade and keeping WordPress up to date. First off, the one I posted about last night is a release candidate. I wouldn’t recommend upgrading until the new version is actually released. Example, I’m not running it on this blog yet, only on a development blog.
When you do decide to upgrade, I recommend
1. Back up all of your files
2. Back up your database (there’s a plugin for that too)
3. Download the version of WP you want to install
4. Disable your plugins
5. The only potentially tricky part. FTP the files for the new version to your server…DO NOT upload the wp-content directory and overwrite the one that you already have. It contains your theme, plugins, and images. If you overwrite it they’ll all be gone…good thing you backed them up, right? Only overwrite the contents of the wp-content folder–not the actual folders within it. In most cases, this is an index.php file that does nothing, and you won’t be in any trouble if you avoid the wp-content folder altogether.  You also don’t want to overwrite your wp-config.php file either. This shouldn’t be a problem because there usually isn’t one that ships with the new version, but double check.
6. Go to www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php. I’m assuming here that your blog is located in your root directory. If it isn’t, just adjust the URL. For example, if your blog is in the /blog directory you’d point your browser to www.yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php
7. This will handle all of the upgrades and prompt you if there is a database upgrade (there is for 2.5). It’s a very simple process and tells you when you’re finished.
8. Reactivate your plugins
9. You’re done!
I am very crunched for time today, but tonight I’ll be installing the WordPress 2.5 release candidate on one of my development blogs and give a full report here–probably posted sometime very early Wednesday morning.
From the looks of it, the “Write” section of the dashboard is going to be much improved, which is an area I think WP needed to catch up. Another great new feature will be a customizable dashboard. Both of these features should work out great for me, as one of my projects in the works is going to have scores of contributers. I want to be able to limit the functionality for experienced users and also make it as easy as possible for newer users to contribute using WordPress.
I have just one last thing to say about the axing of Volunteer Voters.
If you own a big chunk of any media market (television, print, web) and it isn’t profitable, you have a management problem. The solution to your problem isn’t to let go of the reigns and crash the cart. The solution to your problem is to hand the reigns over to someone who knows how to steer the cart.
Give me Volunteer Voters’ traffic. I’ll cash some fat checks. But as I said before, I can’t see how a regional media outlet could afford to give up such a valuable asset whether it is profitable as a standalone entity or not.
I continue to be amazed by big media’s short sighted decisions.
This week, Nashville’s WKRN pulled the plug on one of the blogosphere’s dishes I devour daily–Volunteer Voters. This decision was apparently part of budget cuts, which I assume means that the dollars spent on VV were greater than the dollars it generated.
What does it say about the state of news when a regional media outlet can’t afford to be among the leaders for regional political discussion? Does WKRN think this void won’t be filled by someone else? Is that something they can afford?
Here’s a sound business strategy:
ACK, hope you’ll continue to be active elsewhere in the future.
