They say that bloggers should never apologise for not publishing regularly but I’m about to break that rule - my writing and twittering and commenting has dropped significantly recently and I want to offer you an apology and an explanation.

Over the past few months, I’ve been gearing up for the launch of a significant new project.

This has meant that I’ve not had quite as much time to spend on producing the kind of content that I think my readers want and deserve. I want to assure all my subscribers (both of you) that I will continue to blog and produce fun little mashups like my twitter map.

I hope that you will forgive me the recent drop in posting frequency.

So what of the mysterious project that has taken up so much of my time recently?

Well, launch date was the 5^th December 2010 and the days since then have been a whirlwind of rapid development, scheduling changes and priorities that change daily.

I can’t understate the importance of this venture - I am 100% committed and consider it way too important to fail.

But, I’m still teasing you dear reader - I haven’t given away any details yet. So here we go...

His name is Marcus and he’s my son:

So there’s been a lot of hype around the announcement that vb.ly has had its domain confiscated by Libya’s domain registrar for breaching T’s & C’s.

Ben Metcalfe broke the news, declaring the .ly ccTLD unsafe and the blogosphere circle-jerk started a panic about a number of completely unrelated domains - including the very popular bit.ly.

Despite the sensationalist attention-grabbing headline, Ben’s piece was well researched and explained that vb.ly is an extension of sex-educator Violet Blue’s online presence. Whilst no pornographic content was hosted on vb.ly itself, it was made expressly for shortening links to sites that were decidedly against Libyan law (prurient as that may be).

I’m just surprised that vb.ly made it for so long without a slapdown.

I suspect that naïveté might have been the reason behind Violet using a .ly extension for her URL shortener but even if that’s not true she has certainly gained a load of publicity from its shutdown.

bit.ly Is Safe

Sure, Libya does not have the safeguards for freedom of speech that we enjoy in western democracies, but who is to say that a HTTP 301 represents freedom of speech? I don’t think that our lawmakers have got that far yet. NIC.ly it has been pretty happy to accept a slew of short domain name registrations and I think it will keep the biggest .ly on-side as it makes for a fantastic advert.

So even though anyone can create a bit.ly link to a page that the Libyan lawmakers might find offensive, that is not the primary purpose of the service and that, coupled with the Libyan ruler, Gadhaffi, gradually making friendly noises towards the west in recent years, means that bit.ly will be around for a while yet.

The Echo Chamber Is Annoying

I salute those who first broke the story, I really do, but do we bloggers have to go overboard?

There has been a lot of discussion covering why URL shorteners are bad, much of it focussed on the damage done to the web if a popular service were to disappear (as tr.im did last year).

Enough with this bandwagon of doom - the overwhelming majority of short links are used on services like twitter, which is about immediacy not perpetuity. Let’s have some common sense and original writing.

If you’ve made it this far through my rant, here is your reward:

This remains the best post on URL shortening I’ve ever read:

http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/put-an-end-to-uri-shortening/

Blogging inspiration can hit at any time, but spending a little extra time and thought will make the difference between a also-ran and a hit. Don’t let the rush to capture your muse overshadow the need to create quality content.

There is a simple formula to introducing a great, lasting blog post: describe it in just two sentences. The first sentence must say why your a casual reader should click on your post. The second should summarise the content.

The process of turning an idea into a blog post takes time: only when it can be summarised in two sentences can you say that the post is ready for release. If your idea is too woolly or incomplete, you’ll be proved wrong by your commenters. If your post has no obvious benefit to the casual reader, they’ll skip your blog after reading the first paragraph in their feed reader or social network.

Great Ideas

Most good posts come from the metaphorical lightbulb appearing above your head. DING I should blog about this!

Turning that initial revelation into an effective dialogue with your readers takes a bit more careful thought. The steps for creating a good post go like this:

1. Something happens to you
2. You think “I’ll blog about this!”
3. You put your ideas into a post in 20 minutes
4. You post it
5. You respond to comments

The problem is, someone takes your good post and turns it into a great post. So how do they do that?

Hard Work

Sadly, a bit of work is needed to move ahead of all the other bloggers.

You must read and re-read your entry. Ideally, read it aloud to yourself and others. Get someone to check for spelling errors. Move paragraphs around. Check for false or libellous statements.

You must be your own copy editor.

How To Make A High Quality Post

Just as before, it starts with an initial revelation:

1. Something happens to you
2. You think “I’ll blog about this!”
3. You put your ideas into a post in 20 minutes
4. You put in your “drafts folder”

Most bloggers have a drafts folder (I use the drafts facility of GMail) but Wordpress has its own facility. Just take a deep breath and don’t post immediately - unless you’re breaking news with competition from other bloggers.

A break of a couple of hours should give you enough time to consider whether your post is really as good as first thought. If you still love it, research whether your idea has already been discredited, embellished by others, needs more work or is good to go. So, you think you can publish? Then, follow this plan:

1. Read through your post from start to finish
2. Check for spelling and grammar mistakes
3. Verify any assertions, and if possible, provide citations
4. Can the post be improved by inserting pictures or graphs?
5. Consider the best time to post - is it likely to get buried under items from your rivals? Lost because your audience is asleep? If you’ve posted on a similar topic before, check your statistics
6. Come up with ten alternative titles, choose the best
7. Post
8. Publicise your post. Tell your friends, social networks, similar blogs
9. Ping all of the usual services, Technorati, Pingomatic etc
10. Comment on other blogs using the URL of your new post to fill in the homepage field

As you can see, there are a load of stages to making a successful blog post and writing it is just half the battle. That’s why I recommend taking a break in between writing and reviewing/posting.

Lots of bloggers talk about how they get inspiration for their posts, but the hard work afterwards is too often ignored. Do a little hard work and watch how your statistics climb.

A new service, called Skribit provides a blog widget to allow readers to suggest topics that your blog should cover.

It’s supposed to go in your blog’s sidebar, but since I am incredibly picky about my sidebar it’s going to get embedded into a blog post, for now. It uses an IFRAME so RSS subscribers will need to click through to the original post, sorry.

So, I am sure you all want to know my opinions of this widget...

Well, I can’t furnish them until you use it and suggest topics. If you don’t, well then it is useless. So, up to you lot then - does Skribit succeed or fail?

Wordpress is the most popular blogging software in use today and a new release is scheduled for March.

Version 2.5 has been eagerly anticipated by many bloggers, especially as release 2.4 was abandoned to concentrate on improving security in the existing codebase. I predict that there will be a lot of early adopters for the 2.5 release - will you be one of them?

Gather Information

If you are going to upgrade your Wordpress installation, you need to make a plan. It’s a fairly complex operation so invest some time in learning what you need to do and what can go wrong.

Make a list of the important information about your current blog:

• The FTP address, username and password for your web host
• The database connection name, username and password for your Wordpress database
• The software version of your current Wordpress installation
• The name, version and author of your blog’s theme
• The names, versions and authors of all your installed plugins

I recommend maintaining this list over the lifetime of your blog. You are likely to upgrade several times over the years and collating all this information can take up valuable time. Do it once, really well.

Ask Some Questions

Go through each of your plugins and check that they will work with Wordpress 2.5. You can find most information in the codex. Don’t forget to check the version numbers too.

If some of your plugins are not listed or have been found incompatible, it’s time for a little detective work...

Find out:

• Is the plugin redundant? Maybe 2.5 includes this functionality by default
• Is it still in active development? It is probably worth waiting a week for a popular plugin to be fixed and re-tested
• Is there a (better) alternative? Google around for recommendations

You might need to go through a similar process with your Wordpress theme. Theoretically, few changes have been made that affect the theme engine and all those tested have passed but its worth a check.

Practice Makes Perfect

All professional bloggers should practice the upgrade procedure on a private copy of their blog - and most amateurs probably should too.

Putting together a private copy of your blog is pretty straightforward. Get an old desktop machine and install Ubuntu Linux on there. Hook it up to your home network, install Apache, MySql and a backup copy of your live blog.

Having a private copy of your website is invaluable for testing large upgrades, new themes and its well worth the effort spent.

There is a great resource taking you through a Wordpress upgrade by Blog Herald which covers pretty much everything you need to know. Keep a pen and paper handy in case something non-obvious crops up, so you can refer to your notes when you do the installation for real.

Everything OK?

So you’ve upgraded your private copy. Is everything working?

Go through the site with a fine toothed comb. Check every single form twice - once as a logged in user, once as a browsing guest. Post an entry. Delete it. Post a comment. Delete it.

Testing exhaustively on your private copy means you don’t have to do so much on the live copy. Make a list of any issues you find and keep testing - do not get distracted trying to fix the problem, that comes later.

When you have tested as much of the functionality as possible, it’s time to run some qualitative checks:

• Is the site valid? Use the W3C Validator to check
• How fast does the page load? Time it in a variety of browsers, about four seconds is an acceptable time over a fast connection
• Is it optimised for search engines? There are lots of great tools that can help you
• Does it display OK in all the major browsers?
• Is your site easy to use? Count how many mouse clicks a reader must perform to post a comment

Don’t be disheartened if you end up with a long list of issues to fix from your testing. You need to prioritise by decreasing order of importance:

1. Security problems - increased liklihood of your blog being hacked
2. Fundamental problems - if you cannot post or your readers cannot read your posts, that’s a showstopper
3. Functional problems - search not finding the right pages, or readers unable to comment
4. User Interface Problems - if you want cosmetic changes or ease-of-use improvements
5. SEO Problems - a low priority because search engine placements are very fluid

Any problems in areas 1 or 2 should be fixed before upgrading your live blog. As for other areas, check against your live blog, is the new functionality worse than the old? Use your analytics to find how many users actually use the affected functionality. Make a judgement call.

Upgrading The Live Blog

Find a quiet time for your blog (2am perhaps) and pick a date a few days from now. Tell any other bloggers that contribute to your blog that you are planning to upgrade on that day and ask if it will cause them problems.

When zero hour comes, follow the upgrade instructions from earlier together with your notes. You should find that the process is a lot easier second time around.

Don’t forget to blog about your experiences and ask your readership to contact you if they spot any problems.

The best of British luck to anyone upgrading!

Blogging - everyone else is doing it, should you join the throng?

The answer is probably yes, as this article will explain by answering the most basic questions about blogging. Don’t know what blogging is? Then read on, as we answer...

What?

Wikipedia defines a blog as A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. That’s a very precise definition.

For the layman, it means a rapidly updated website that is a journal over time. A blog is a website that readers want to come back to, to see what has changed, to follow a story or to interact with.

Blogs are easy to update and appeal to the non-technical. They require an investment of time, not money, so they hand the advantage to the underdog. They give a global voice to people and companies that might struggle to find the cash to buy a national newspaper advert.

A blog levels the playing field.

Why

The last sentence of the previous paragraph said “A blog levels the playing field”. This is demonstrably true when you Google for a solution to a well defined problem, you’ll find that amongst the BBC, Yahoo Anwsers and pages of other giant corporations, there are some blog entries right there on the first page of the results.

Of course there are a million blogs that are much further down in the listings, but if your business can meet three of the following four criteria, your business should have a blog:

• Your business is cyclical - from toyshops and Christmas to garden centres to recruitment agencies dealing with the February blues, most businesses are cyclical.
• You get the same questions over and over again - your potential customers are curious. You can bet that the internet-savvy ones have searched for answers first. Either, they don’t trust the results, or they want to hear what you have to say. Both are great opportunities.
• You want to get noticed - there are no shortcuts to business fame, but joining in a global discussion is easy. If your contribution is inciteful, you will get noticed.
• Your marketing budget must stretch a long way - very few things in life are cheap, fast AND good. Try blogging.

Who?

The trite answer to this is “everybody, except the marketing department”.

Whilst a blog forms part of your marketing effort, it is much more of a conversation than traditional marketing. It is a means of answering questions from your customers and, more importantly, potential customers. It can show off your products by highlighting unusual ways in which they can be used and real, not perceived, differences compared to competing products.

Many successful company blogs are written by the product engineers, testers and designers. This helps to create a more honest, down-to-earth feel than a bland regurgitation of the same marketing slogans that appear in your other advertising. The marketing department should not be shut out of your blog altogether, since blog posts must not contradict your traditional marketing.

Try getting your marketing department to draw up a list of topics for posts and determine when the post should be published. They should also be involved in measuring the effectiveness of your blog publicity.

If the marketing department is holding a particular initiative - say a competition - then definitely get them involved for cheap easy publicity.

Where?

There are lots of places that will host your blog for you, Blogger and Wordpress are both very popular, and of course MMMeeja can help you too.

If your company already has a website, it makes sense to host your blog on the same domain. This will save problems later, since moving blogs can be a lot of hassle.

How?

I’ve mentioned earlier that blogging software is easy to use. What is harder, is to keep up the effort and discipline required to make your voice heard - there are some simple rules of thumb than can help you:

• Assign one staff member to be responsible for the blog, its contents, comments and promotion.
• Post three to five days per week.
• Encourage every staff member to think of ideas for blog posts and let them see them through to fruitiion.
• A successful blog will have its detractors, they may be unhappy customers or even rival businesses trying to make you look bad. Determine a strategy to deal with this before the problem arises - but be honest and open.
• All blogs start slowly - keep going!
• 99% of your readers will just read so commenters may not be representative, find out what they like by analysing your statistics and experimenting. Get a strategy in place to do this from day one.

There is a lot more to learn but you’ll pick it up along the way. That’s the beauty of blogging - experimentation is very, very cheap.

When?

Now.

Seriously, start today. Are you chicken?

If you want help starting a blog for your company, contact MMMeeja today.