Comments have become an essential component to blogging. Comments allow readers to communicate directly with the blog author and the other readers of that blog. They enhance the value of the information provided in articles without authors having to constantly update posts. The Disqus comment system for WordPress takes commenting to another level with a host of great features.
When you integrate Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) with your WordPress blog, you create a new Disqus community that mirrors the post/comment activity on the blog. The blog post becomes the start of a new discussion and the comments are the subsequent thread. Members can also post to the community that you create. This is a great way for readers of your blog to start discussions with you and all of your readers.
Automattic, the company behind the Wordpress blogging platform, currently hosts over 4.5 million blogs. According to their download counter, they have served just over 3.1 million downloads of their self-hosted blogging software. With nearly 8 million blogs in the wild, it’s easy to see that many content publishers have embraced the platform’s ease of use and functionality.
Many content publishers will be interested in how they can serve their content on as many different internet platforms, designing layouts to work in all browsers and also allowing users to visit their sites on mobile devices.
As I’m starting up my own LAN-party, I’ve recently also created my own blog. WordPress in my case.
Of course everyone wants their blog to look pretty. As pretty as possible because looks count. You want your site to look tempting yet professional. You’ll be represented by your site’s appearance.
Perhaps some of you will want to make your own themes. If that’s your thing, Jeffry wrote a great article on how to create your own Wordpress theme here.
If not, read on. Below is a list of some very good places to find your free WordPress and/or Blogger themes.
No one can argue that one of the most popular blogging platforms these days is Wordpress. The solid framework makes it the geek’s choice, but Wordpress further gains its popularity among laymen because of its flexibility for expanding its functions and looks. There are thousands of plugins and themes available to be downloaded and used for free from the official Wordpress site alone which opens up unlimited possibilities of what you want your blog to be.
After using numerous items, I (and I’m sure that most people too) have reached the point where I wanted to make my own blog. While developing your own Wordpress plugins requires a certain level of programming knowledge, building the themes is not.
I was recently away when my blog broke. A plug-in had somehow broken down, became corrupt and an embarrassing PHP error was seen on the top of every page. Worse yet the admin section wouldn’t work period. The solution was simple right? Log in via FTP and delete the corrupt plug-in.
Unfortunately Murphy’s Law was at work. The computer I had access to had no FTP client (I couldn’t install one/didn’t want to take the time). My two options were to wait till I got home to fix it, or I could use an online FTP client.
Call me the upgrade freak as I always have to have the latest versions of everything. But there was one exception: the Wordpress installation on my blogs. The reason was that upgrading Wordpress was not a walk in the park.
If it’s just about downloading the latest version, then there wouldn’t be any problem. Unfortunately, the process also involves backing-up the database, deactivating the plugins, uploading the latest installation files (which could be a hellish experience, especially on an unstable and slow internet connection), upgrading the database, reactivating the plugins, and upgrading the plugins (if needed). Add to that the possibilities of crushing your blog entirely and you have the perfect combination of reasons not to try to upgrade.
There might be several reasons why a reader would want to be able to convert a web page to PDF, such as: to share with a non-online friend, to be able to email it or to put it into a PDF device to read later; while still retaining the original form of the page. That’s why web to PDF conversion tools are gaining popularity.
But if we look it from the perspective of the site owner, giving the readers the ability to ‘PDF-print’ your pages will improve your site likeability by several points, and increase the site’s exposure to new readers.
Having recently joined the Twitter Bandwagon I was happy to see all the tools and software people have already developed to interact with the service. From Twitter trends to inserting ‘currently listening to’, let me show you five of my favorite tools to help you use Twitter more productively than ever.
It’s also a good idea to look at Mark’s Twitter Tools Apps & Bots article as well as Jason’s Twitter tools article.
Twhirl is an Adobe Air application which we have already mentioned here on Make Use Of, and I love it so much I have only used the web interface about twice.
As I started to catch up with more “modern” methods of blogging (so long, Blogger.com!), I realized that I was sadly behind the times when it came to my blogger’s toolbox. Sure, the default Wordpress interface is clean, unimposing, and easy to deal with, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I needed a Swiss Army knife of a blog app, stat!
Since I’m a die-hard Firefox user, I headed over to the Firefox addons site to find a worthy candidate. A quick search turned up a few possibilities, the top two being ScribeFire and Deepest Sender. A quick look at the download stats: 1.6 million vs. 57,000 and I had a pretty good idea which one was going to win.
In my last article, I talked about how you can use NicEdit to add RichText WYSIWYG functionality to your blog comments. Well today I want to talk about a Wordpress plugin that I found which adds a bit of extra personalization when someone leaves a comment on one of your posts. It is called MyAvatars.
MyAvatars was designed by an Italian developer and works using Yahoo-owned MyBlogLog. It simply shows the blog commenter’s MyBlogLog (MBL) avatar next to their comment.
This week on the podcast I am chatting with Travis Quinnelly, an author at Make Use Of and the blog’s Technical Editor. That is the guy who handles the technical end of things and makes sure that everything runs smoothly. This week we are talking about Wordpress, Plurk, Wikia search and other search engines, Adobe Air apps and Portable Apps and a bunch of other stuff, including the weather in Montreal, Canada and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Do you remember back in the days of Web 1.0 before Google was really a verb and before Flickr lost the ‘e’? That was back when static web pages plagued the web. FrontPage and Dreamweaver were the common tools of webmasters all over. However, the world has changed. Programs are more so on the internet these days than they are on your computer. Sites like Facebook and MySpace try to add the most functionality to your online world making actual pieces of local software less and less appealing.
So, you have finished building your first Wordpress blog. Then what? Besides posting, you’ll want to expand the capabilities of the blog by installing some plugins.
Then comes the second question; which plugins exactly? There are literally thousands of Wordpress plugins available out there. Too many options. Everybody has different preferences, different needs. Not to mention that Wordpress users tend to be happy-go-experimenty-want-to-try-them-all kinda people.
So, which one?
Well, there is one plugin that you must install first before you install any other plugins. It’s called Plugin Central (download it here).
The reason is simple; this plugin will enable you to install every other plugin easily via the web interface. No more meddling with FTP clients, no more memorizing logins and passwords to the FTP account.
First of all, what are Wordpress quicktags? You can see them in the picture below, they are the bits of code you can insert when you use the code interface in your Wordpress editor.
The reason they are so useful is that they allow you to insert start and end tags in a unique and easy way. Start writing and when you need the tag (i.e. bold, list etc.) click on its button and the start tag will be pasted. When you are ready to end the tag, just click on the same button and you will paste the end tag.
Wordpress Plugins: Part Two
The past day or two has been a real eye-opener for me as I realised for the first time the full breadth and scope of the features available for Wordpress. Here was me thinking that Blogger was not that bad but now I am starting to realise what I’ve been missing out on in the 3 years that I have been writing various blogs.
Here are some more Wordpress plug-in gems that I picked up today. Again, I have tested some and others I have only looked at. Use them at your own risk.
Wordpress Pluggins: Part One
Last year it sounded all so easy and routine when I said to myself “let’s move my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Should be a piece of cake”.
Famous last words.
One year on and three attempts later, my blog is now finally on the Wordpress platform. I now feel like I need a long holiday.
Keeping an up-to-date blog backup copy, is one of those things that every one would like to do but are either too lazy to actually do it or have no clear idea of how it can be done. I have read at least a dozen of articles about it, but have never really found anything that would provide an all in one guide. So, I decided to share my method, in other words ‘how do I keep a fresh backup copy of MakeUseOf.com’.
I only have a few other plugins running on my Wordpress installation, but these are the most useful Wordpress plugins for a variety of reasons. In addition, none of these plugins ever caused me a problem and luckily several of them are updated often to improve performance. Enjoy and as always, please feel free to comment…
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