Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

You’ve got a pretty cool blog, right? However, you keep hitting these plateaus and not being able to talk with other bloggers as easily as you would like. What is the deal? Are you snubbing your blog competition?

With 15% of the Internet powered by WordPress alone, and many others hosted on other blog host services or with other content management services, there are a lot of websites that are out there sharing all sorts of information. Each person is trying to gain readers.

Of course, you want your own readers, and there are ways to entice… like writing good content and engaging with others on the social network sites. However, what if the people you are talking to also have topics that you cover on your own site?

Simple – Keep engaging. That is what is awesome about the blogging community. Because each person is different, each person has a different angle on any topic. You can learn and get feedback from your competition.

And you know what… it could even prove to fuel your blog’s future posts.

Now, I know that maybe the issue of copying might come up and really, if you are writing your own articles, you should not have to worry about any complaints on plagiarizing. It is pretty easy to see who is just writing to cover a topic, and who is actually interested in what they wrote.

The most important thing is to make sure your blog is not all about you on a podium. Anyone can do that, but what about the people listening? Your peers in your niche can be the biggest help, especially if you are sharing and commenting on their sites. Most of the bloggers who are top in their niche, despite being busy, try their best to take the time and leave a reciprocal comment or return a share on Twitter, Facebook, other social network sites, or social bookmark sites.

When you are friendly and engage, your visitors and competition are more than likely willing to link you too!!! Free link juice is awesome!

Don’t be a blog snob. You will hurt your site more than anything.

Are you still scared of updating your WordPress? STOP! While you might be afraid of updating, you are doing more harm than good. Not might, some, a little… more like A LOT. WordPress is tested out thoroughly and by the time each version update is available, there are many important areas covered. Glitches/ bugs, security, design, and more are just some of the general updates in each version. The most important: security and bugs. If you are not up to date with your WordPress, not only is your site unsafe for yourself, but also your visitors and your web host. Read More →

The ‘edit this entry’ template tag, or edit_post_link gives the blog owner and any other users with editing privileges to have a quick link to click on that will allow the user to edit an article. Users who do not have this capability, like your readers who are not registered members will not be able to see this link as it is hidden from them. The code is put within the Loop. <?php edit_post_link(‘Edit this entry.’, ‘<br /><p>’, ‘</p>’); ?> Some users find this handy, while others do not. For those who have a theme that has the ‘Edit this Read More →

Sometimes that default Gravatar with the gray and white seems boring. Lucky for you, instead of altering internal WordPres files, you can harness the power of adding a filter to your theme’s functions.php to change your default image to display. 1. Open your template’s functions.php 2. Insert the following code: add_filter( ‘avatar_defaults’, ‘newgravatar’ ); function newgravatar ($avatar_defaults) { $myavatar = get_bloginfo(‘template_directory’) . ‘/images/yournewgravatar.jpg’; $avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = “Your New Gravatar”; return $avatar_defaults; } 3. Change where younewgravatar.jpg to the image you want and change the following text, Your New Gravatar to the name you wish to have your new default avatar be Read More →

Some people might think it is the number of lines you have to define to edit how long or short your excerpt in your WordPress article. It is not. It is defined by how many words. WordPress by default picks the first 55 words as your excerpt. However, if you wish to edit to make it shorter or longer: Please note, this way changes the core files and upgrades will only change it back. (Thanks Mike Little!) 1. Go to your wp-includes folder and find the formatting.php file 2. Look for the group of code like /** * Generates an Read More →

For over two years, Blondish.net has been without WordPress specific topics. After careful deliberation over stats like traffic, keywords, and my brand in general, I decided to close WPAddict.net and move all the articles back over. I also consulted with a couple dear friends who are great marketing strategists before making this decision. What sparked this was that I kept ranking high in WordPress topics, even though my posts were not primarily WordPress based on Blondish.net. I do mention WordPress, but in regards to blogging or applying specific tools. I even had old posts that I removed and put up Read More →

Klout, an Izea property that measures how much reach and influence a person has over several social network platforms recently rolled out a new algorithm. Along with this, an influx of angry users due to their major drops in their Klout scores. According to Klout, they score individuals based on three areas: True Reach, Amplification, and Network Impact. Together these mean that Klout measures how many people you really are reaching, and if you are influencing them to actually do something. For example, doing something could mean retweeting a link or your words, or even talking with you. According to Read More →

I happened upon Gail Gardner of Growmap.com through my connected with Kimberly Castleberry and Kristi Hines, and noticed how she was interacting and putting out great content to her followers. I knew with the unveiling of GrowMap Anti-Spam Plugin, I wanted to interview Gail. The biggest thing that set her apart from other bloggers, in my opinion was her thorough coverage on topics that other bloggers would timidly touch on. Gail focuses on her brand, rather than herself and for a reason most bloggers might shut shop for, and she does discuss valid reasons in one of the questions below Read More →