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Thread: Technical tips on blogging

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Technical tips on blogging

    I've just started a blog on www.blogger.com (it's in my signature just in case anyone is interested in actually reading it) and have started taking a closer look at blogging in general.

    Although setting up a blog seems dead easy (at least it was at blogger) I'm now looking at some of the technical options available.

    So far I've added the following:
    • an RSS feed widget (from part of The Forum SA of course)
    • Google analytics for tracking as I couldn't find any default widget that does that
    • a label widget

    I was thinking of adding the link back feature, but apparently the blogger one doesn't work that well.

    Are there any other must-have widgets I should be looking at?

  2. #2
    just me duncan drennan's Avatar
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    Dave, if you are setting up a new blog you should seriously consider Wordpress, as the features and add ons are a bit more comprehensive than blogger. As with all things, there are advantages and disadvantages.

    If you stick with blogger you should set up a custom domain rather than use the blog spot domain.

    There is also an SEO hack to swap the page title and blog title on post pages, but there are currently some issues with this (although there is a hack to work around these - see the discussion of the issues). This has now been resolved.

    You can add meta data to each page which will hopefully help the SEO a small amount.

    A nice thing to do is to setup Feedburner for your RSS feed which will allow you to track the number of people reading your blog via a feed. There is also a way to use your own domain for this (I still need to swap mine over). You should make some changes to the auto-discovery feed options so that only that feed is available to users. It also allows adding some funky extras, making sure your feed is readable by most readers, and provides an email subscription form.

    There are also some extra beta features which are available through draft.blogger.com.
    Last edited by duncan drennan; 13-May-08 at 10:39 AM.
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    just me duncan drennan's Avatar
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    I had a look at your comments. I would recommend opening up the options for leaving comments. Currently you only have the google account option, which unfortunately leaves a link to the users blogger profile. If they don't have a google account this means a few steps before commenting (which could mean no comments). If you allow anonymous comments then people can at least put in a link to their site, even though the default is NOFOLLOW. Personally I haven't had spam issues.

    I don't like bloggers commenting system - mainly that it either opens in a whole new page or another window. Of the two options I prefer to have the comments in a pop up window, which at least feels a little like the original site rather than going to a different site to comment. It also keeps your site open and available to continue rather than the commenting page.
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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    I've already registered the "My Business Machine" domain. I was gently thinking of going Wordpress on the domain there, but wanted to lay down some ideas and get some experience at blogger too in the meantime.

    I've made the other setting changes you've suggested - thanks, Duncan.

  5. #5
    just me duncan drennan's Avatar
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    You can add your blog to Technorati and Amatomu. Technorati picks up the blogger labels as tags.
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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    I've just got to giggle at this message that accompanies the photo upload tab when updating your profile on Technorati.
    Tip: Please do us a favor and upload a photo that does not show your very special but also very private parts. When you do that, we have to take time away from making our website faster and better to go find your profile and hide it, and that's bad for you and us. Thanks for helping!
    Reckon they've had this problem from time to time?

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    Its great to get some more people into the local blogosphere, a few trends and a few ideas:

    Recent Comments - promotes commenting on your site
    Popular Posts - nice way to make the posts even more popular
    A big subscribe to RSS button - get the subscriber base
    Social Media quick links - enables you to add an article to your favourite social network, like (local) amatomu, muti, laaik.it (international), digg, delicious etc

    Then a quick tip and a current SEO must do is if you write related articles, put a link to the related article - eg (if you read my post about the person you would know...) and make my post a link to it.

    Last thing to do is network - the best way to boost search engine ratings is links.

    hope this helps, if you need any help in getting a WordPress site going just send me a message - I have about 8 running/being developed now. Also know the big dogs

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    I see you do the social bookmarking on this website. great way to do it!

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    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    I added muti yesterday. Duncan was dropping hints elsewhere

    Which social bookmarking sites would you add to the ones we've already got here, Seagyn?

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    laaik.it and facebook - laaik.it is a local company and facebook - well do i need to say anything more?

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