Deborah Woehr

As I approach my three-year anniversary with blogging, I realized that I’ve learned quite a bit about the subject and who the reputable people are. But I haven’t mastered everything about blogging because this tool is always evolving. I’ve yet to learn how to set up a video blog or a podcast, for instance.

Darren Rowse has always stood out as an upstanding guy who genuinely wants to help people succeed with blogging. Earlier this year, I signed up for a subscription to Chris Garrett’s blog when I downloaded his free Flagship Content report. Chris also gives very good advice when it comes to blogging. So, when these guys announced the publication of their book, I decided to buy a copy to see if there were any new techniques or tools that I haven’t discovered yet.

I have a varying degree of knowledge of much of the material covered in the Problogger book. What I liked best about the book was the friendly writing style and the short exercises at the end of each chapter. I’ve listed the chapter titles below to give you an idea of what is covered in this book.

• Blogging for Money
• Niche Blogging
• Setting Up Your Blog
• Blog Writing
• Blog Income and Earning Strategies
• Buying and Selling Blogs
• Blog Networks
• Blog Promotion and Marketing
• Secrets of Successful Blogs
• Creating Something Worthwhile

If you are a rank beginner to blogging, this is the book will provide you with a solid education without overwhelming you. I wish this book had been on the market when I first started blogging in 2005 because it would have been a tremendous help. As an experienced blogger, I was hoping for a blook (blog-turned-book), where all of the posts were organized by category that I could refer to when I needed information on a specialized topic. Because I suffer from eye strain (from staring at the computer all day), a hard copy would have been a treat to have. That was my only disappointment with the Problogger book.

I’m sure you’ve heard all about Google’s attack on the blogosphere. If not, read Andy Beard’s Slapped by Google to get up to speed because this effects everyone who owns a blog. As a result of Google’s latest algorithm change, anyone who uses companies like Text Link Ads to monetize their blogs got slammed. Anyone who has one too many links on their blogs got slammed. As a result of this change, I am no longer writing for Syntagma Media, who got hit very hard.

The words Google and Microsoft became synonymous in my mind as I got into my car to go to work yesterday morning. I know what Google is doing, and I was very upset about it. Google has cost me my supplemental income. As the morning went on, I came to realize that I had made the same mistake my father-in-law had with his business. I had placed all my eggs in one basket.

Actually, I came to realize this some months ago and began researching other ways to make a good living as a writer as well as design. Copywriting is very lucrative field, both online and off. It’s a skill that every writer needs to have under their belt, especially if they plan to sell their books and/or services. I plan to do both.

I’ve been taking copious notes from Maria Veloso’s Webcopy That Sells. I’ll post a full review of this book once I finish and apply the knowledge I’ve gained. I’ll also be reviewing other books on the subject that have been sitting on my shelf for the past three years, due to my obsession with blogging and finishing that novel.

Designing books is also part of my plan. Copywriting and book design will go hand-in-hand, especially for future clients who are publishing non-fiction books. Needless to say, my plan of participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo contest is scrapped. I will be studying and building my portfolio instead.

You may have noticed a few cosmetic changes to this blog since yesterday. That’s because I upgraded from 2.0 to 2.3. The makers of WordPress raved about a “kick ass taxonomy” system, which I’ll need to explore when I have more time. For now, I knew this blog was way overdue for an upgrade. So I performed that yesterday morning.

Then I came home and started experimenting with plug-ins. Some of the ones I had didn’t work, such as the Feedburner plugin. Thankfully, my image uploader did. That’s the risk when you upgrade, losing valued plug-ins. I also experimented with widgets because I’ve been frustrated with the clutter on my sidebar. I’ve been wanting to scrunch down the archives for a while, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without breaking the blog. After 2.5 years, the list of archives and the categories had grown very long. I’m hoping someone will develop a plug-in that will collapse the links, but that’s not as big of an issue as the other two.

I decided to test out the Admin Drop Down Menus plugin. It works great on 2.3, but I’m finding that it takes getting used to, as far as looks. I’m so used to seeing the blue navigation bar, which tended to get cluttered.

What do I think of WP 2.3? So far, the only difference I see in the main interface is the Tag insertion box below the post box. I like the idea of having tags versus categories. If you’re new to blogging and would like to know the difference between these two terms, read WordPress.com’s Tags and Categories article. At this point in time, I think I would prefer tags over categories because you don’t have to keep tags in a list in my sidebar. I don’t think I’m going to bother getting the Tag Cloud plugin because I think it’s overkill and it would defeat my goal of keeping my sidebar organized.

I liked the widget interface because I can add and remove items from my sidebar without having to mess with the code. My only gripe is that I wish they had widgets for headers. The list of formats you can import into your WordPress blog has grown to include tagging, such as the popular Ultimate Tag Warrior and Jerome’s Keywords.

Kudos to the WordPress team.

We have the A-List bloggers. Blogebrity has created a list of A- through D-List bloggers. I’ve just learned that Liz Strauss at Successful Blog has created a W-List, for Outstanding Women Bloggers. Do you have a favorite female blogger who should be added to that list? Pop on over to Liz’s blog and post your request.

It’s time to whip out the Neo again because since I’ve returned from my vacation, I’ve gotten very little writing done. Designing my husband’s website and finding a job (any job) were top priorities. I managed to land a 3-day assignment later this week, which eased the stress level a little. My husband assures me that we’ll be fine until the end of the month, which falls on Tuesday. So I have from now until Wednesday to relax before I start stressing again.

Four things made my day.

1. A birthday card from my brother. He and I love to send each other raunchy cards. I’m not sure which one of us started this, but we like to tape the envelope so it takes a lot of effort to open the damned thing. Once I got it opened, I laughed when I saw the dollar bill taped to the inside with the caption that read, “Buy yourself something great with a weekly salary from ______.”

2. My mother-in-law’s compliment about the website I created for the family business. That was a biggie.

3. Knowing that my family and I may never see that stupid Smiling Bob commercial ever again. That was a great prime time family commercial . . . NOT! I found this article after I read Michael’s post about the new WordPress T-shirts. The man in that photograph somehow reminded me poor Smiling Bob, God rest his pathetic and perverted soul. I think it was the pained oh-just-shoot-me-now smiles.

4. Knowing that mindless spam sites like Facebook and MySpace are beginning to lose their luster with the A-List crowd, which means that everyone will eventually shut up and move on to another “innovative” timewaster. Hallelujah and Praise God!

One of my top goals when I returned from my vacation was to crack open this book and take a shot at building my first WordPress theme. I tried to follow the author’s step-by-step instructions but got totally confused and frustrated. This section is not for the complete WordPress novice, especially if they don’t know a lick of php or css. I know the difference, although I’m far from a whiz. Hence, why I bought this book.

In one portion of the exercise, the author blended the css code in the middle of the php code. If you’ve worked with WordPress files, you know that style.css and .php files are separate. I spent at least four hours the Sunday before last, trying to get the code in order and functioning properly. In the end, I set the book down and haven’t touched it since. I’d recommend this book for beginner bloggers because Hayder does cover the blogosphere as a whole. For theme design, fugeddaboudit. Look elsewhere.

Out of frustration last week, I took the files from this theme, uploaded them onto a test file on my server and knocked the hell out of them to see if I could produce a traditional website interface from WordPress. I stopped when the theme started to break and didn’t touch it until today. For some reason, luck was with me today because I got the skeleton of my husband’s website up, along with a Contact and a map page. Step two in this project involves learning how to write exceptional web copy that will draw in some more business. That’s for a later post.

Right now, I’ll put up my feet and celebrate this small victory.

Karen wrote a great post, entitled Delving into the Past of a Blogger which has stuck with me since I read it last month. I have to admit that I haven’t revisited my old posts. I’m not sure why, either. But Karen’s post got me thinking about this enough to look at my Dashboard.

This is the 515th post I’ve written on this blog, however that isn’t as important to me as the 2,100+ comments within these pages. I consider the conversations I’ve had on this blog priceless and well worth reading again.

Is this blog worth turning into a blook? To be perfectly honest, only to me.

I have paper journals that I’d written during my twenties and early thirties. It’s been a decade since I’ve opened them, but it’s nice to know that they are still there, waiting for me to read. I gave up paper journaling a long time ago, in preference to the computer because it enables me to write almost as fast as I think.

After experiencing the loss of an important file earlier this week, I’m reminded of the pitfalls of the digital age. Nothing lasts forever. Having a paper or .pdf version of this blog would be good to have, just in case.

Have you ever considered turning your blog into a blook?

I came up with this story when I was trying to understand the character of Bud Nettleton and the ghosts of Prosperity. Bud is the town outcast who holds the secrets of Prosperity’s past. His mother, Myra, had an obsession with the minister of the town during that time. Her diaries and scrapbooks chronicle her obsession and her role in the lynching of an innocent family shortly after the 1918 Influenza Pandemic broke out.

This story was written two years ago on a blog for the NaNoWri (National Novel Writer’s Month) contest. At one point, I started editing the manuscript based on the flash story I had written last June. Unfortunately, the file I had with the edits got corrupted and I lost everything. So, I decided to publish the original while I was writing for the Lulu blog. I ordered the first proof last night.

Lorelle VanFossen has written a concise how-to book, covering every aspect of WordPress and how you can use it to create and build an outstanding blog. I read a third of this book before I began jumping to the sections that I needed to learn about or brush up on. Some tips I found useful are:

Time Management and Blogger Burnout: These are especially important if you run more than one blog.
Writing: Lorelle talks about how to use keywords and search terms to boost your search engine ranking as well as to draw human readers.
Blog SEO and Page Rank: I’ve tried to digest the information online about these topics only to find myself overwhelmed. Lorelle explains exactly how Google determine’s the page rank of a site and how to optimize your blogs without drowning the reader in geek speak.

Conclusion: I’ve been blogging for two years, so much of the information contained in this book was a review. However, if you are new to blogging or WordPress I would strongly suggest that you buy a copy of this book.

I bought this book, anticipating Chapters 7 and 9. Chapter 7 explains in detail how to construct your own WordPress Theme from a blank page, while Chapter 9 explains how to build plug-ins and widgets. I’ve read through Chapter 7, but have yet to test out the author’s tutorial. I’ll have to give you an update on that . . . or show you the result.

Conclusion: WordPress Complete is better than the Visual Quickstart Guide in that it teaches you the coding that is needed to add more functionality to your site, whether you want to create your own theme, add a photo gallery, create a pod cast, or use WordPress for a full-fledged CMS.

Last weekend, I found myself immersed in editing, rewriting and writing. I edited almost two chapters for Prosperity. The writing “groove” followed me into the week, onto other projects, such as the Lulu blog. I’ll be posting on that site once or twice a week. I had planned to post another article last night, when problems with The Writers Buzz sprang up.

The short version of this story is that I can no longer post book excerpts or much of anything. I’m not sure what happened and am working on getting this problem resolved. I tried upgrading from 2.0 to 2.1.3, which turned out to be a disaster because the MySQL database wouldn’t accept my backup. The same thing happened with WBA, and you all know what happened to that.

I’m not going to let The Writers Buzz die, but I’m giving serious thought into switching to a new CMS. Knowing the headaches I’ve faced with other programs, I’m going to think long and hard about this before I make my final decision.

Update: The problem turned out to be the code written in the mod_security that tripped everything up. My host fixed the code, and now I can post again.