Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’
EntreDroppers
Have you heard of Entrecard before? If you are a blogger, its one of those sites that makes you excited like when you were in high school and found the best acne treatment ever. Seriously, Entrecard drives a fair amount of traffic to your site. However, they recently have gone through some changes that all the users don’t agree with. I won’t get into that since everything can change again in a day or two.
Instead, this post is about Owen and how awesome he is. Owen has written a plugin called EntreDroppers for us WP users. You can see it working in my sidebar (Its called Latest EntreDroppers). All you have to do is input your RSS feed from your Entrecard inbox, and that’s it! You can tweak it to look like you want — descriptions after blogs, number of blogs showing, etc. I have mine to show the last ten blogs to drop on me.
Give a shout out to Owen and let him know he rocks and download his plugin!
Blogging, Hosting, and All That Jazz
Once people find out that you do blogging and sometimes even get paid for it, they all seem interested in finding out how you do what you do. The hard part for me is taking almost two years of knowledge and condensing it down to a five minute synopsis and still have them understand what I am talking about. I try to hit the major points and let them make their own decisions from there.
One of the first things I tell them is that they should get their own domain. If they just want to try it out, yes, a free platform is okay. However, if you are truly serious about blogging, you really need to be on your own domain. If you want to make any money blogging, it is almost a requirement that you are on your own domain. Most advertisers do not free platformed blogs. Having your own domain shows that your serious. Would you trust an expert whose domain ended with blogspot.com? Most people would not.
After you have your domain, you have to host that domain somewhere. There are so many sites out there to choose from it can actually make your mind spin. There are sites out there like Web Hosting Bluebook that really can help you make your decision. They have everything from a hosting glossary to reviews on each of the services, so you understand what each one is offering. You have decide what company works best for you. I personally use Bluehost and love them (which is listed on their list!).
Once you have your hosting, you also have to decide which blogging platform you want to use. There are several platforms to choose from: everything from Typepad to WordPress. I personally use WordPress, and I love that too. Once you figure out how to use it, it really is easy. There are thousands (yes, I said thousands) of plugins that can do almost everything you want them to do (now, if you could get one to clean my house I’d be in seventh heaven – lol).
Once you have done all the above, you really need to figure out what you are going to blog about (though you may have figured this out before you bought your domain). You can have a niche blog or just a general one. Niche blogs mean that you only talk about one topic whereas a general blog pretty much covers everything under the sun. This post is on my general blog. However, I have 3 niche blogs also.
I guess my last piece of advice I can give to you is that you need to have fun with it. If you dread blogging each day, it will show in your writing. If you feel like you are burning out, take a step back. I love all the people I have met blogging, and this is something I will never regret doing.
2 Comments »
Chocolate Meditation
Did I ever tell you how much I love chocolate? It ranks as number one for favorite foods for me, so when I came across these instructions of how to do Chocolate Meditation not only did I have to try it, I had to blog about it.
- Get yourself a nice bar of chocolate (I prefer dark chocolate) and cut out three pieces.
- Take one of the pieces and just look at it. Study its color, its shading, its size.
- Now feel the chocolate — feel its texture. Imagine the process that it took to create the bar of chocolate — from melted to solid bar.
- Smell the chocolate; take in its fine aroma. You are absorbing its essence into your body. What does the smell remind you of?
- Now, place the chocolate into your mouth. Let it sit there and melt. Savor the chocolate — is it too sweet? Is it just perfect? Feel it dissolve in your mouth and into your being. The chocolate is now a part of you.
- After you are done, reflect on the experience. Had you truly enjoyed a chocolate before? Have you truly savored anything in that manner before?
Granted, I mostly like to just shove the chocolate in my mouth. These instructions slow you down and you actually get to enjoy the chocolate too. This just makes you step back and reflect. You can do this with other foods or aspects of your life. This should come in extremely handy in the next couple holiday stress filled weeks.
Off to go find chocolate!
5 Days Left 