Category — Blogging

Over on the Budding Bloggers Network, there has been a lot of discussion about helping fellow bloggers achieve their blogging goals. A couple of suggestions have been put forward including cross blog conversations (something I am yet to be convinced about) and a pro-active approach to encouraging comments. My latest suggestion is one that I have borrowed from my day job, the concept of peer reviews.
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I recently installed the WP Comment Remix plugin and was stunned to see how often I had been neglecting to respond to comments left on my blog. While replying to a comment by ShriNagesh I was reminded of the Top 10 reasons why you must comment on blogs over at SmartAdvi$e.info.

If readers have a duty to leave comments then bloggers have a duty to respond to them. Here are my reasons why:

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I’ve made some behind the scenes changes to my blog. Most of these will be invisible to you, the reader, but they should help me keep things up-to-date and respond to comments more efficiently.

• Moved theme to subversion repository (link on request)
• Using subversion to keep blog & plugins up-to-date.
• Now using the WordPress Plugin Competition 2.5 Winning, WP Comment Remix to manage and respond to comments.
• RSS Feed switched to Feedburner to allow me to track statistics.
• Using Google Analytics to track comments.

Hopefully these changes make it easier to stay on top of my blog in the limited time I have available. I’m hoping that the next major update will be a multilingual version of the site.

Updates:
Here are a couple of screenshots showing what I consider to be the two key benefits of the WP Comment Remix plugin.

1. Screenshot 1
2. Screenshot 2

The ever popular blogging engine Wordpress has an accompanying iPhone application. Now at version 1.1 the application remains free and open source. It is well written, runs smoothly and has some nice touches that inspire confidence during use. It is a shame then that the focus of this application is on a task not suited to the mobile environment.

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So, here we are on the first day in 2008 with a new theme and a fresh outlook for my somewhat neglected blog. I’ll start by wishing everyone 新年好 (happy new year).

During the latter part of 2007 I began to neglect my blog. So much so that I have slipped on to the second page of everyone’s popular vanity search. The pressures of a new job and a new home meant blogging fell to the bottom of a seemingly endless list of tasks. And besides, if writing a blog becomes a chore, reading it can’t be anything short of sheer boredom.

I’ll keep this first post relatively short and use it to let you all know that I am still alive and will be keeping my blog updated more frequently this year - this wasn’t a new-year’s resolution as such, but the 1st of Jan seemed like as good a day as any to get started.

With the new theme comes a couple of subtle structural changes. I have attempted to simplify the layout and add some more structure to my blog. My aim is to post less-frequent but more substantial entries - we’ll see how this pans out over the coming weeks. I’ll package up the theme and give credit to all those who’s code/ideas I have used in a future post, but in the meantime I’d be interested to hear any initial thoughts on the new layout.