Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

People preach password protection by citing online resources to either signup or download. Personally, I would stay away from them. A lot of these programs and places require that you put in answers to personal security questions, your birthday, and more. However, as we have seen from time to time, there has been hackings of the best internet companies out there, including the Twitter hacking a couple months ago that TechCrunch revealed to the world.

You should not rely on these services to do this for you, even if it is a matter of convenience. Yes, it is great, but are you willing to still risk your information being blown to bit. Even people are being hacked by their own family and friends. Now, this post is not to make you leery of your own family and friends, but to share with you that it is a possibility as it has happened. Some people literally live online and they have signed up to dozens of different sites: social networking, gaming, shopping, banking, etc. I hear a lot of people every day talking about losing passwords or getting hacked and I guess today I finally decided that it was time to address the matter. Here are some ways to help:

1. Keep a ‘black’ book, some kind of offline written documentations of the sites you have joined. Record username, password, and security questions.

2. Passwords – It may be frustrating, but if you have to make up a strong password. Use a combination of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, and numbers. For those with access to the root of their servers whether it is theirs or purchased through a webhost, you can also include symbols. (cPanel users have this ability.) Make those passwords no less than 8 characters.

3. Security Questions – Even if it says ‘Who is your favorite uncle?’, do not put your uncle’s name. Try a separate type of password other than your chosen password for your account. Make it difficult for even those who may know some things about you.

4. Try to avoid clicking the box that says ‘remember my password.’ Log in each time and remember to clear your cache if you have not set your computer to automatically clear cache (computer cookies – remembers information you send.)

5. Always make sure the service you enter is not collecting passwords. If you are not sure – avoid.

6. Try not to document your passwords to an Excel file unless you password protect that file.

7. Try not to always use the same password for everything.

These are just a few suggestions. What other suggestions do you have?

For those who are not aware Charter is a cable service that includes phone, internet, and television packages – or even bundled packages (for those who do not know what that means that you can get all of those services combined.) I use them for my high speed cable internet.

Recently Charter has been giving daily prizes away like laptops, HDTVs, and even Xbox 360s. Now, they have the Camaro Sweepstakes! This is not just any ordinary Camaro, it is the highly sought after 2010 Camaro 2SS. This contest started September 15, 2009 and ends November 26, 2009 at noon. To apply, simply visit charter.com, read the rules of the contest, and register for the sweepstakes. Just so you know, there is no purchase necessary for the contest, so really it does not hurt to just apply.

Also, Charter is giving gift cards in the amount of $100 for 3 services purchases, $50 for 2 services purchased and $25 for 1 service purchased. The gift cards are from various restaurants, and retail businesses for clothing, home, and accessories.

By the way, Charter is now on Facebook and Twitter:

• Charter on Facebook
• Charter on Twitter

If you like them, check them out, and follow them for more future updates.

Have you used Charter? What do you think of their services? Are you going to enter the sweepstakes contest?

Although some might say it is debatable and say there is no such thing as having a blog post so long it deters your visitors away, the fact is – it CAN be harmful to your site do produce extensive articles. The reason for this that a lot of times your first time visitors may find it daunting to see the majority of your articles go on and on. Some only have so much time, while others are wanting you to go straight to the point. Then, there are those who are your regular followers – some will just skim your article, comment and might even miss the whole point.

You do not want that to happen. You want to be able to influence your visitors enough that they might learn something, or add their own knowledge to the kettle.

On the other hand, if you produce short articles, you could be failing to deliver vital information or even touching your topic so it delivers your message as you want. I have mentioned this from time to time, but articles should be targeted to reach a word count between 200 and 700 words. Any more, and you may need to decide if the topic truly needs all that information you are jamming in it, or consider writing an essay and placing it as a section within your site for those interested. Of course, if you are passionate about it, you could always make an ebook out of it, since that has been the craze these days (that I noticed.)

However, if there is a topic that you could break into several sections to convey each point – you should consider that option. With something like the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress users, it will keep your visitors on your site or they could bookmark the posts and read them when they have time.

How long do you think posts should be? How short?

I have decided to include different types of artwork and some description as there are many types of art out there and not everyone is aware of the different styles. In this entry, it is all about chibi art. Chibi art is a genre of art that some associate with a type of anime drawing. Often the head is large and the body is small and somewhat deformed. No, it is not deformed in a way that is ugly, but deformed in a way similar to that of caricature art. This type is usually digitally drawn, painted (water color) or drawn on paper, scanned, and then colored in whatever the artist uses to edit the piece. Often it is denote cuteness.

Allwords.com defines chibi as:

1. a child-like character with exaggerated features, particularly in anime
2. a style of cartooning in which the characters are drawn to be very small and cute

I went out and found a selection of great artwork on DeviantArt that I think best conveys this style of art.

Queenie by celesse

Mei by Danime-chan

Puffy Puffy by kamiyoshi

Ellen Nightly Chibi by kawaiihannah

Chocolate box II by meago

Chibi by Miriamele

HJ: Natsu Matsuri by MoogleGurl

Sweet Lolita Heetteri by QueenofDorks

Chibi Fruit Ninja-Deidara by Red-Priest-Usada

My Lucky Star by trenchmaker

Cute enough? Have you heard of this style of art? If so, anyone you like that you would recommend to those who enjoy viewing this type of artwork?

I came across the site Spottt and thought that this might be something to share with those of you looking for something that could help. Spottt takes the old idea of the banner exchange and instead of all of the people on the banner exchange eventually being seen, you should only see sites with similar content to yours.

This is idea for people with smaller sites that are seeking more traffic. Although it says it is a link exchange, you are really submitting both a link and a banner, so it really is a banner exchange. Banner exchanges have been a great way to get traffic, but they have usually been very unfocused. Banner exchanges with more than 150 sites with various content, so if you had a web design site, you would have seen sites that had no common grounds with your own.

It is free to use and you can place it on a multitude of sites like:
LiveJournal
MySpace
Xanga

or any site that allows you to insert outside HTML.

Requirements are that you must put the ad above the fold, or by Spottt’s definition, less than 850 pixels from the top of the page. In return, Spottt will calculate your site impressions and how many clicks have gone through so you can monitor your site’s performance.

Have you tried banner exchanges similar to Spottt? Where? And has it worked to bring traffic to your site?

So, I guess I should make it at least official. Blogrity is a social bookmark site built with the WordPress core. Of course, the site is pretty raw on design, but it is functional, and I am hoping that some of you might try signing up and submit your links to the site. I am just at the point that I need people to try it out, feel free to give some imput, and hopefully through that, I can add more features.

One thing on mind once I get to a comfortable point, I develop and will offer up to my own ‘digg’ type button that you can bring back to your website, or perhaps offer it to the other places like Sociable or that like so bookmarking your links will be easier.

For categories, I am not going to get too detailed on the categories. I would like them to not exactly resemble Digg’s categories where sometimes the article might not fit. I will be open to adding more general categories. I want to thank Webmasterish for some of the help provided along the way to get to this point. In fact, I probably should have mentioned the site before.

Do you think you might try out Blogrity?

I blogged back in March 2009 about DandyID Plugin for WordPress. DandyID allows user to share their social network identities on their blog, Facebook, and other places by simply applying their code or widget. This eliminates the issues of manually coding each social identity you have online and placing it in your blog’s sidebar.

Recently, DandyID rolled out a new feature. With their article New Feature: Control the Visibility of Your Identities, you can now select what features you wish to display to your visitors. Along with this feature, they have also come up with a premium plan for users who would like to know how their visitors are connecting. So you can now track what social networks most of your users are coming from when they visit or where they leave. It is a great way to try to understand what your visitors are looking for when they come to your site and where you should work more on your site to attract other visitors from the social networking communities.

I actually am using DandyID on Blondish.net. It is on the sidebar.

Are you using DandyID? If so, how do you like it and what other features would you suggest. If not, are you manually inserting your social identity links or using a different plugin?

Tumblr seems to be a nice little system that you can sign up and blog, share your twitter tweets, and import posts from other services. I recently signed up and perhaps it is because of their recent infastructure work on September 14th, the site loaded slowly, and frankly when it did load, I would have turned people to WordPress.com’s free blog accounts.

I have always expressed spreading out and signing up for different social handles online, but I believe it best that if you have a full blog, to just import your posts to your Tumblr account rather than use it religiously. I found it not as user friendly as I would have liked to see, and that is something I look forward too, not the fact that I was running in circles trying to find out why the places I am importing there did not start posting after the hour that Tumblr tells its users to wait. I got faster cross-posting with my Dreamwidth.org account.

I am sure I will blog more about Tumblr in the near future, but right now, especially for bloggers who are active, it is just better to use as an extra place to spread your blog posts and social network streams.

Have you used Tumblr? What do you think of it? What do you use it for?