Jake’s Life

I’ve watched bloggers turn from hobby enthusiasts, eagerly sharing their words and thoughts with others through their blogs, to businesses as their blogging changes once they put ads on their blogs.

Some say their blogs and writing doesn’t change with the addition of the ads. But it does. We’ve all seen how income from your hobby changes your hobby’s intention and purpose. It becomes about the money, not about the fun.

Lorelle posted this not too long ago in a piece on blogging for money and I couldn’t agree more. I often think about my blog, its semi-low statistics compared to others (almost 1,000 this month and has been between 800-900 the last few months), and the blogs I read about blogging and other topics. Many are commercial blogs or blogs written by those with others which are commercial.

My blog was started to share some of my life with those who want to read about it. I want to make connections with other bloggers that I can share with, learn from, and teach things to in the process. My blog is about me and my interests (jumping from topics like guns, criminal justice, and blogging tools) and I aim to keep it that way.

Could I take one of my topics like Wordpress, Windows Mobile, or even a specific gun manufacturer and focus on it to gain commercial support? Sure. I could have the latest demo Smartphones and shiny new tactical pistols at my door step to try and praise through widely syndicated reviews. My stats would raise immensely, my blogging network would grow, and my bladder would begin to emit champagne. Okay, maybe not champagne but it would be more valuable in some way.

I enjoy blogging. I enjoy Wordpress and web design. And mobile technology. And web applications. And I love guns. These are hobbies and I aim to keep them that way. To help raise money for tuition I freelanced web design but didn’t do it full time because I didn’t want to get sick of it. It would be as if I built custom models out of enjoyment then became commercial, all by myself, and had way too many orders to fill in not enough time. I’d be making money, gaining prestige in that community, but also stressed out and eventually dreading doing that “chore” that I used to do out of pure enjoyment.

I will continue to blog about random topics that I enjoy writing about, providing obscure how-to’s on tweaking a Pocket PC and making homemade night sights for a hand gun, and making connections with fellow bloggers out of our similarities being bloggers, being gay, or just being on the right web site at the right time.

WP Themes Gallery has a running list of the top 40 (okay, actually 43) blogs about Wordpress, among them some of my favorites like Lorelle, Weblog Tools Collection, and WPDesigner. Whether you use a Wordpress install on a shared hosting plan like I do or your Wordpress blog is hosted through Wordpress.com, you’ll definitely find something useful in these blogs. If you need to start somewhere on that huge list, instead of starting at #1, skip down to #6 and start with Lorelle’s blog.

[Top 40 Blogs About Wordpress at WP Themes Gallery]

Let me preface this post by saying that both of these blog tools have served me well in the past. When I first began using Wordpress on my hosted server I found w. Bloggar to be the best tool available for me to use: It was fast as hell, advanced, and did a great job. Then came Windows Live Writer (which I have previously posted about) and I switched to this. Lately I have been going back and forth using both since w. Bloggar had an update last month, but it’s time to choose. Hopefully my fellow bloggers can learn a few things as to maybe which blog tool would serve them best.

I won’t be covering installation and setup as they are both equally simple. I’ll be covering options and tools which I use most often (and I see others using most often), such as general formatting of posts, editing of previous posts, drafts for later publishing, inserting media such as screenshots, images, videos, and photos, and using features such as categories, tagging, etc. I’ll also be covering some annoyances I find in blogging tools and how both of these apps stand up.

Layout

As said above, w. Bloggar is fast as hell. Its layout is simple (but then again I’m using Windows Vista, so anything can seem simple if it’s not transparent and shiny). It’s layout is also pretty advanced in terms of functionality, putting many options at your fingertips. Any text formatting (bold, italic, strike), inserting (links, photo links, uploads) and coding needs (Javascript, code commenting, HTML code insertion) is all immediately available for your mouse to click on it.

Windows Live Writer’s layout is very simple and direct, with everything you need right up front as well. The sidebar holds information on your blog (in my case Wordpress) and links to the Dashboard and main site. Underneath it are sections containing your drafts, previous posts, and commands to insert items into the post you’re working on. The user interface blends well with Vista (it matches the rest of the Live family), and you can even change the colors of the menu interface to match your specific desktop theme.

Composing a Post

Composing your post in w. Bloggar is fairly simple, but I will say that you have to know at least some basic HTML to be on top of what’s going on. Any formatting that is controlled by HTML on your blog shows its code in the main window of w. Bloggar. For example, a link in your post will not appear as linked text, it will show all of the code.

All commands are executed with a button on the menu bar (or you can enter the code yourself), but either way the code is displayed. This is not to say that you only have to look at your post littered with HTML code. There is also a Preview tab in the main window that you can use to view it as it looks without the code. It’s important to note that this is not true WYSIWYG due to not being able to edit in the preview tab.

Live Writer gives you a WYSIWYG editor, letting you compose and edit your post using a word processor approach. You don’t see your HTML code as you format your writing, and it even offers you the option of downloading your site’s template to view how it will look after you post it.

Inserting Media

Inserting media into your post is easy with w. Bloggar, although there are some extra steps involved for inserting images. To insert an image file into your post you can choose one of two ways: (1) insert the code for an image already on the web, or (2) upload the image from w. Bloggar and choosing to insert it into the current post. While uploading the file then inserting it may not seem like a huge deal, it can only be done one at a time.

To insert media like YouTube (or other) videos all you have to do in w. Bloggar is choose Insert HTML Code, then paste the code from the media’s web site.

Live Writer, in a lot of ways, was made for bloggers who use a lot of media in their posts. In fact, it has an entire Insert menu on the sidebar where you can choose to insert any number of things.

When you insert photos into a post you choose them from your local hard drive and when you publish the post it automatically uploads them for you. With its video insertion menu you can type the URL of YouTube videos and it will post them, as well as other video providers. If you have a Soapbox account you can insert those videos. The Insert Website Image feature allows you to input a URL and Live Writer will grab a screenshot of it in your browser.

Other Features

Windows Live Writer allows you to postpone your posts depending on whether your blogging platform supports it, which makes it easy to keep a steady flow of posts on your blog by composing posts when you get those bursts of inspiration. w. Bloggar doesn’t support this.

Live Writer also allows you to post entries into multiple categories much easier than w. Bloggar, which allows you to post in one from the main window (to post to multiple categories you must open a menu and check the boxes for the categories you would like the post in).

Live Writer allows you to tag your posts for several social bookmarking platforms by default, and lets you add others to use in the future. In w. Bloggar you must use the standard insert HTML code feature. Live Writer also shows your previous posts in the sidebar, waiting to be edited when you realize you’ve messed up a link, fellow blogger’s name, or were just way too drunk to blog. Live Writer presents them visually in a WYSIWYG manner, whereas w. Bloggar shows them in robotic code view.

Windows Live Writer is also extensible, allowing you to install plugins which provide additional functionality. You can check out the entire gallery of plugins to see what kind of tools are open to you when you use Live Writer.

Conclusion

Both of these tools have their pros and cons, strengths and limitations. They both support a huge variety of blogging platforms such as Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger, Mambo, Drupal, and Live Spaces. They both provide most of the functionality a blogger would need from their go-to application, but one of them provides this functionality in a more straight forward and simpler fashion: Windows Live Writer. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if you run XP or Vista, or what blogging platform you use (as long as it is a widely used one of course), Windows Live Writer would serve you well as your main blogging app.

What app do you use to post to your blog? Windows Live Writer? w. Bloggar? Ecto? Word? *shudder* Your blog’s administration interface? I’d like to know!

[Windows Live Writer] [w. Bloggar]

The 2007 Blogger’s Choice Awards were announced, with categories including Best Blog About Blogging, Best Corporate Blog, and Freakiest Blogger. Thank god I’m nowhere on the list!

The web design stud at Pro Blog Design recently posted about the top five mistakes on blog’s he has seen recently (a few weeks back he offered five free design tips to anyone who asked for them). He found that blogs had common mistakes, and now we get to learn from them.

[Common blog design mistakes via Pro Blog Design]

ProBlogger recently smacked me upside the head with a marvel idea: the “Vanity folder.” Not the folder on my hard drive with pictures of me, but a folder in my RSS reader that is all about me.

Darren outlines that having such a folder is important to your blogging methods to help strengthen networking ties to other bloggers, track the success and (hopefully) widespread reading/posting of your blog, as well as finding those who decide to be less than creative and take your work. He details how to create a vanity folder by subscribing to RSS feeds of search terms you dictate which means that essentially when someone posts about your blog (or a link to it or any content you’ve posted) you know as quick as your feed reader aggregates. I usually Google my full name, my blog name, and URL rarely, but only because I like seeing what is on my background and may come out in my career field. I never actually thought of subscribing to these searches.

Reasons to Have a Vanity Folder In Your News Aggregator via ProBlogger.

Click my rating for your own. And just a note, if you use Wordpress or Blogger when you enter your URL it only takes your first page of words, so if you have a category that covers most of your posts use that link.

Readability of a blog or other web site is what I believe to be the main way to keep readers, aside from content of course. Pro Blog Design has listed 30 things you can do now to increase readability of your blog, including underlining your links (and saving underlines for them only), posting pictures at the beginning of the post (pictures help grab attention to the post, so why do it any other place), and restyling the CSS of your theme to make owner comments stand out.

Something else I want to bring up, which is also found in this article, is the wall of text. That is, a huge block of text in one paragraph with no life, soul, or end in sight. Truthfully, this is the only thing I can think of that would make me skip reading the post. I use Google Reader to catch up on all of the blogs I read, and when I expand that post to find one huge block of text I don’t even bother.

[30 Ways to Improve Readability via Pro Blog Design]

My only goal for this month’s visitor traffic was to beat last month’s. Even though I’m right down tot he wire here, and I know that I haven’t been browsing around and commenting much lately, I’m only 33 hits away from it. I hate to micro-manage, but shit people come on!

For those of you who use Wordpress I found a great plugin called FireStats that lets you view your visitor stats right from your Wordpress backend. It covers the total page views, views today, visits, visits today, top ten of referrers (thanks Troystopher for being my number one this month btw), recent visitors’ IPs, search terms (why does Google tell people about my blog when they’re looking for A Boy’s Life…in Utah?!), popular pages, countries, OS, and a detailed hits table. It won’t break down daily, weekly, or monthly detailed stats like virtually all web host backends do, but it’s nice to have nonetheless.

These few tricks don’t take much time off of your site’s total loading time, and they don’t take much time to start using either. Many people who surf the web with high-speed connections and fast computers won’t notice much of a difference, but if you’re anything like me and load ten pages at a time in different Firefox tabs or check your favorite blogs from your mobile device it can make a big difference.

Check your loading times

Go to Self SEO and check how fast your site loads. This should be both your first and your last steps in giving your blog a check up or after applying a new template or design.

Add a slash

When linking to other sites (or even putting your link somewhere like a comment field) add a slash to the end of it. For example, type http://www.jakeslife.net/ instead of just http://www.jakeslife.net. When you don’t add the slash the web server has to figure out which directory to dump you in, but when you do you get that extra second.

Optimize your images

I’m definitely bad about this. Often in Windows Live Writer I add the image and set the size, but do very little beyond that. Unless you’re showing off photography or some high-res imaging go into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor, I use Paint.net) and scale it down. Web Resizer is a free online service that allows you to optimize images for your blog to reduce size and increase loading times.

Check dead links

Dead-Links.com asks for your web site’s URL and shows you all of the links which are now dead, both on your own server space and external links. While it doesn’t do much for loading time it sure as hell helps with frustration in the long run.

Check other browsers

Using BrowserShots.org (site seems to be down right now, but there are similar services available) you can check to see how your site looks in other browsers. Sure it’s great if you use a tricked out Windows XP Pro box with Firefox after you’ve modified it for your needs, but what about the new users who just bought a notebook and are still stuck with IE? How about those who check your posts on vacation from their parents’ old first generation iMac? How will it look to them?

Make a mobile version

If not for me, then for everyone else out there who gets bored at work, the bus stop, Starbucks, stuck in traffic, or waiting at the doctor’s office for their appointment. Most blogging engines have a plugin (or their own extension naming) to help render your blog on mobile devices, whether it is a Java based browser on a standard cell phone or a Smartphone or Pocket PC running Pocket Internet Explorer or Opera Mobile. Go a step further and make sure that they can add comments from their device. Their hits and comments only help you in the long run. If you use Wordpress check out WP-PDA.

What other ways do you give your blog a check up?