Feed copyrights as protection against sploggers

1202476_peacekeeping_soldiersI’ve talked before about plugins that are supposed to prevent people splogging your WordPress blog, as this one has been splogged oh so many times. But the very best weapon remains setting your feed to excerpts only. Then sploggers can only conveniently grab the excerpt, and sploggers are notoriously lazy, so they just move on in search of an easier target. The problem is that visitors don’t like summary feeds. And ... READ MORE

Don’t leap into Facebook without a plan

panicIt’s all you’re hearing: Facebook is bigger than Google! You’ve got to get a presence for your business on Facebook or you’re missing out! You need a fan page right now! What do you mean, your website blog isn’t on Networked Blogs? What have you been doing with yourself? What are you waiting for? You’re losing readers/customers/whatever! If you’ve been putting off your big attempt to conquer Facebook, I have good ... READ MORE

Alienate sizable chunks of your audience! It’s fun!

1187148_digital_video_cameraAdults with sight and hearing impairments make up at least 7% of the US population. The most commonly discussed disabilities affecting website accessibility are sight and hearing impairments. These specific impairments encompass 6.8 percent of the population age 15 years and older – and climb to encompass 21.3 percent of the population when you look specifically at the population over 65, according to the 2005 report… The ... READ MORE

Anna Viele’s How to Fire Your Ad Network and Start Making Money from Your Blog

htfyanI’ve been following Anna Viele for a while now, and I enjoyed reading the free ebook she just released: How to Fire Your Ad Network and Start Making Money from Your Blog. It’s about what she learned from getting kicked out of the BlogHer network and having to start selling her own ads. The ebook is totally free, you don’t even have to give out an email address, and no ... READ MORE

Making commenters work for you: beyond deleting and modding

933791_concert_illustrationThe previous articles in this series talked about going beyond a simple anti-spam approach to comment moderation and actually moderating comments so as to shape comment threads into valuable web pages. If you’re convinced you need to do more than eliminate spam and hate speech, read on. Beyond “spam” and “delete” If you don’t want to post a comment you see in your moderation queue, you have two obvious choices: delete it ... READ MORE

Making commenters work for you: the comment policy

905436_audience_at_a_theatreWe talked the other day about how you don’t have to let your commenters run your site. You have the right to go beyond spam-prevention and moderate so that comment threads become a vital part of your website. There’s a temptation for webmasters to think of their commenters as their audience. The fallacy is that there are quite a few readers who don’t comment (“lurkers”) to everyone who does comment. A ... READ MORE

Making commenters work for you: going beyond simple moderation

1032925___retro__Most webmasters – particularly those from the U.S.A. – think about moderating blog comments in terms of only spam prevention and censoring especially ugly language or hate speech. They think it would be censorship to moderate someone’s ideas, even if those ideas are subtly toxic. But as a blog grows, suddenly the webmaster is outnumbered by the commenters, and their voice can take over. It’s your job to determine what direction ... READ MORE

Blog startup checklist

wordpressSo you saw my recent article on a checklist for starting a new domain, and you decided to start yours on WordPress. Would you like a checklist on things to do when you’re starting up a WordPress checklist? All you had to do was ask! Once again, this is my list, and you may do things a bit differently. Just edit it until it works for you. Install WordPress Set ... READ MORE

New domain startup checklist

1277878_check_listSometimes at 3am, you get a brilliant idea for a new website, and you go buy a domain, and you’re getting a little loopy but the domain name was actually available, so clearly it’s destiny, and you build your domain and everything’s going swimmingly. Then the next day, you check out your domain, and whoa, did you forget some key stuff! And now it’s hard to figure out what you did ... READ MORE

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