Blogging and Marketing Resources for the Average Blogger and Business
Posts tagged Platforms
Browser-Driven Blog Design Comparisons
Mar 19th
I must thank Emm in London for the inspiration for this post. Without getting too far afield, this is a perfect example of why any pertinent comment is a valid comment – they don’t have to be lengthy. In my post entitled, Blogger in Draft Tests New Template Designer, she commented simply that, “I found it buggy and that it wouldn’t respond in Internet Explorer. I will give it a try in Firefox when I have more time.” This caused me to respond with my own observation and as they say, “the rest is history.” Now, let’s get to our discussion on Browser-Driven Blog Design.
Browser Comaparison from TopTenREVIEWS
- The Good News: There are many quality web browsers from which to choose.
- The Bad News: There are many quality web browsers from which to choose.
This is an interesting predicament for any blogger, but it gets more complicated because browsers must be evaluated through two different lenses. One is how it performs for you when you visit blogs, update your own, and generally scour the Internet for information. The other is through the eyes of your visitors: how do you design your blog to be friendly to say, the Top 10 browsers evaluated by TopTenREVIEWS when you don’t even know which browser is used by your readers? Before we get to how you can determine the most popular browser in use by your visitors, l always like to serve up a Wikipedia perspective.
Wikipedia's Reliable In-Depth Review
Regular readers know my fondness for citing Wikipedia as a way to set a baseline of information. In this example, Wikipedia provides an historical comparison of web browsers. You can see that not only in this graphic, but the entire article, web browsing has some history – and in some cases some baggage. This is not meant to be a debate on corporate politics, anti-trust laws, or the merits of individual selections, but it is a commentary on being informed when you choose a browser or code for it.
Now, back to how you can at least see the most popular browser(s) in use by your readers.
If you are in the least bit curious about how your site performs or interested in knowing more about your visitors, you should be using Google Analytics. I won’t take the time here to tout the merits, except for a specific section, germane to this topic: visitors and their browsers.
When you log into your Dashboard, you will see an option for Visitors. This provides a wealth of information on your readers, their location, and characteristics.
Select Visitors to begin to look into the characteristics of your loyal visitors. For the purpose of this post, take a look at their Browsers.
I can quickly see that over 82% of the visitors to the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit use Firefox. For me, I don’t need to concern myself much beyond Firefox users. Fortunately, since I use Firefox most of the time myself, my situation is fairly simple. But two lessons need to be learned from this exercise:
- Pay attention to the “critical mass” of visitors – they are your bread and butter, and
- Check this on a regular basis. As your blog grows in visibility, the makeup of your visitors may change as well. Adjust your strategies as necessary.
Just as a blog’s content drives the discussion, the browsers in use should drive the design. Give the customer what they want, and they will continue to come back.
Dave
Blogger in Draft Tests New Template Designer
Mar 13th
One could argue that Google’s Blogger has been behind the curve for some time with respect to the flexibility of the templates offered. One reason I use WordPress as my primary blogging platform (I do use Blogger for other projects), is the widespread availa
bility of creative themes and ease of customization. True to its style, Google has not only caught up, but taken a bit of a leap ahead with Template Designer.
Template Designer is an improved, flexible tool to take the few basic templates previously offered, much further into the future.
Here’s how you use it. First, log into your Blogger account and view your Dashboard as you normally would. Scroll to the bottom of the page and in the section called “Other Stuff” select Blogger in Draft in the Tools and Resources section.
Once you select Blogger in Draft, 
you will see the top of the screen change to indicate you are in Blogger in Draft mode. Notice the option to make it your default dashboard. I am selecting it carefully for a while to see how it works before I make it my default.
Now, when you access the Layout tab, you will see the new option for Template Designer. In these four simple, but powerful categories (Templates, Background, Layout and Advanced), you now have an enormous combination of options. As I’ve said before, Blogger is a great tool for use categorized from basic to moderately advanced. Platforms like WordPress extend the flexibility and capability much further. However, Blogger has just narrowed the gap by extending its capabilities much further than before.
I am looking forward to exploring what the new Template Designer has to offer. What’s your first reaction?
Dave
Quality Web Hosting as the Foundation
Jun 28th
BlueHost Hosting is my Choice!
One of the basics I covered early in my blogging journey was whether to use a free blogging platform like Blogger, or to invest in your own hosted space. There are of course pros and cons to each.
In Free Blogging, or Pay to Play?, I touched on some of the decisions individual bloggers need to make about why they are blogging and what they hope to get out of it. I have been clear from the beginning that a hosted domain for the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit (and future projects) was my strategic decision. Now that I have had some time under my belt with a hosting provider, I feel comfortable sharing my views about BlueHost.
Speaking of transparency, regular readers of the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit know that I try to play it straight with you. When promoting something, I’ve tried to be clear as to when I have skin in the game and when I don’t. This time, I do. If you click through any of my ads shown on my blog – and you sign up – I get a commission. But I’ve held off making any assessments until I have had some time to evaluate. After six months, I now feel confident endorsing their services.
In any support role, if it looks easy, it means a lot of work goes into it. That is truly the case with BlueHost. I have been very pleased with the quiet, behind the scenes support the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit has received. There was only one brief outage and when I used their live chat, the agent already knew about the problem and it was corrected in minutes. No song and dance, no excuses, just fixed.
Part of the reason for chosing BlueHost was of course not because they were the least expensive. There seem to me thousands of providers and many are less expensive. I’m taking the long view. My intention is to grow my blogging to a number of projects, and hope they grow quite large. I like the idea that I now have just one provider that can and will provide the support I need – for any number of projects – with any amount of traffic – for one reasonable monthly fee. Paid annually, this is the easiest, safest, most professional, and eventually, the most cost effective solution I could have.
About the endorsement and commission issue. The only area where BlueHost’s process could be smoother is in the affiliate signup process. After signing up for payouts on other advertising, BlueHost seems to be a bit heavy on the forms to fill out. In fact, my PayPal email address wasn’t accepted initially and had to choose “pay with check” to get the affiliate account established. I’ll work on that and the IRS W-9 form they require later.
Don’t let this small inconvenience sway you. Consider BlueHost. They’ve done a great job for me and I expect to be a long time customer.
Dave
Dofollow (No Nofollow) for Improved Search Engine Rank
May 8th
DoFollow Used Here!
A comment offered in a previous post, Entrecard Boosting Traffic, caused me to learn something new, and quite important: the DoFollow / NoFollow dilemma. A new concept for me, but one worth exploring.
First, some background. Blogs and web sites are of course ranked by search engines in a number of ways. One is the number of links from other places on the Internet back to that site. Basically, a show of popularity. The problem with this is the incentive for spammers to comment with nothing but links back to their sites, mostly in automated ways, to simply fill up the comment with opportunities for the Googles of the world to more highly rank their sites. All at the intellectual expense of honorable blogs.
In 2005, Google postulated that if they did not provide any ranking merit when they found the attribute, “rel=nofollow” on blogs, and not follow the link back for merit ranking purposes, bloggers and blog platforms would adopt the setting. The rationale was that it would be a disincentive for spammers and spamming would, well, stop. Right.
WordPress, as one blogging platform, adopted the setting. The challenge for us “average” bloggers on the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is the lack of awareness of (at least for many of us) this obscure parameter.
I am pleased to announce that the Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is now set up to use DoFollow! The good people at Semiologic provided the DoFollow plugin now used here. Anyone familiar with WordPress plugins will appreciate the simple ZIP file download and install. Now, the dreaded NoFollow setting has been disabled!
As an alternate view of this link juice topic, the folks at eVisibility provide an excellent visual example of how the flow of link juice occurs. Their point is different, in that they are discussing the value of using or not using NoFollow strategically – I just like the graphics.
As a topic for a future post, the other shoe to drop on this topic is the management of spam. A great tool in Akismet, coming soon!
Dave
Go With What Got You There
Apr 26th
Posted by Dave in Uncategorized
No comments
Somewhat of an off-topic post this time, but one that provides some balancing perspectives about yours truly. The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is my way of sharing what I’m learning, as an average blogger, with other average bloggers. Usually, the topics are somewhat serious and an honest attempt is made at exploring them. Often, there’s a bit of humor that is enjoyed along the way.
Call it an alter ego, but more precisely, The New Blogged Word is a place on Google’s Blogger where this all began. Technically, there was a slightly different starting point, but I recently exported and imported that information into The NEW Blogged Word to align Google accounts.
Why am I sharing this? It’s important to remember that all our experiences adds to the body of blogging work that we develop. Blogger was a fine starting point for me and in fact, is a very lucrative and successful environment for many people. The seemless integration with Adsense (which has been enhanced recently) makes that a very nice one-two punch. My move to the WordPress platform was not a slight toward Blogger, but simply my way of experiencing a greater body of work – and learn more along the way.
Another reason for mentioning it is that it allows a reminder about staying true to your blog. Interjecting occasional humor in The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit is an extension of how I operate in business: serious about what I do, but have fun doing it. It would not be respectful to my readers if I strayed too far from that posture.
However, The New Blogged Word is just the opposite. That was the beginning. It has pictures of our Bathroom Remodel. It has my thoughts on my Countdown to Retirement. It even has my local area’s Memorable Merchants who have gone above and beyond in their operations. Just I would no sooner show a picture of my bathroom remodel on The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit, I will do everything I can to not get too serious on The New Blogged Word. To butcher an old saying, “There’s a topic for each blog, and each blog should stay on topic.”
Although I’ve added a tag for The New Blogged Word, this may be one of very few times where I pitch it’s merits. However, you never know when something there relates here and here there.
Dave