Posts Tagged ‘blog’

Twitter, FaceBook and WordPress … Why is it so hard to set up a triangle!

Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Mar 17 2009

Recently I decided that I would give FaceBook a crack. Low and behold I am enjoying it a lot as I am reconnecting with friends and colleagues that I had lost contact with since leaving WA. Further, the Drinking Wars application has got me hooked, yes I know that sounds lame. Anyway, I also decided to delve into Twitter on Saturday.

Now at this stage the jury is out on the benefits of Twitter. As a friend recently put it Twitter is just the FaceBook status update. Essentially he is correct, however there are a few people on Twitter that I would like to keep in contact with. Hell, who knows others may pop up over time.

Taking his comment though I thought wouldn’t it be cool if I could push blog announcements to Twitter and FaceBook. This has been accomplished and works well using established WordPress Plugins (Twitter Tools and WordBook). So I can now announce to both Social Networks that I have published something to read.

I also decided to allow Twitter Tools to construct a daily and monthly blog entry of all tweets. This would then serve as a record of those actions on that site within my blog. Yes this is not necessarily a well structured post, but it is captured a snapshot of my activities. As it is a blog entry it is also announced on FaceBook, good stuff. This will also mean that lengthy times without a post will not occur as I am constantly on the Twitter doing stuff … at least until I get the final leg of the triangle in motion..

I then thought about completing the triangle. That is “FaceBook to WordPress” and “FaceBook to Twitter”. “FaceBook to WordPress” was easily accomplished by the PressThis plugin that interrogates my FaceBook status newsfeed. This is then placed in my sidebar. Brilliant, yes there is a bit of delay, but I can live with that. Heck, I can live with once every 24 hour updates from Twitter, so once every hour for FaceBook updates is brilliant.

So the final part of the triangle is “FaceBook to Twitter”. This is proving problematic as the only available FaceBook application (Twitter Updater) to perform this task seems to not be working for 50% of its user base since FaceBook updated it’s publisher and home pages to the new look. I am hopeful that the developers are working on this and that all should be well soon, however it is frustrating to say the least presently. Something that seems so simple is proving very difficult indeed.

PS: I have also seen that for some reason my Twitter account was receiving over 100 attempts for remote access. Whilst I am hesitant to blame the Twitter Updater it is hard to see what else could be the source of this bombardment.

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Up All Night … The Strange Things You Consider

Geek | Posted by Dean
Jan 23 2008

Well I have been up all night due to managing a work issue. I will be heading into the orrifice a little later to swap some hardware, however will be home and to bed very soon there after. As a result I doubt I will be blogging today, atleast not about anything too meaningful. Anway, in order to keep myself awake I have been hitting both the Aussie Bloggers Forum and the Blog Catalog forum pretty hard.

On the Aussie Bloggers Forum I have been offered moderator status, and have accepted. I am rather excited about this project as it focusses on the Australian blog community that often has little chance to network effectively on the other social networking sites, often due to the time difference between down under and the rest of the English speaking world. I am happy to share my experience with this community as they are with me. It is a great sociable place.

The Blog Catalog forums give me the opportunity to socialise with the rest of the world. Many discussions start up there and I enjoy it immensely. Again, it is another helpful bunch and many great contacts are being formed.

In fact across the night I have been thinking about some off beat stuff and have started a thread on the Blog Catalog forums around what cartoons we all watched, or still do watch. My absolute all time favourite was Battle of the Planets, however many people would know it as G-Force. It was one of the original manga cartoons. You can see the intro in the below YouTube video.

Strange what late nights make you think isn’t it.

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I Won An Award

Geek, Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Jan 18 2008

Commenting on others blogs is a good way to participate in the blogosphere. Most of the time you get some return traffic from an often thankful fellow blogger.

Recently though I participated in a discussion at Space of Reality around whether or not there is a valid reason for white lies. Today I was shocked and thankful to see that this fellow blogger has gone to the extreme of handing out rewards for the commentary. I have thus won an Honest Blogger Award, which is the badge below.

Certified Honest Blogger

This is a great incentive to continue returning to Space of Reality as it demonstrates the willingness of Hye to facilitate a discussion. Thanks Hye.

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How I Managed To Get Traffic

Geek, Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Jan 18 2008

Recently my little blog that was incredibly poorly trafficked and lurked in the mid 5 millions for internet reach in Alexa has made a large jump through the charts. At the time of writing this post it was at 496, 274 and improving steadily as shown by the graph available here. Now without dwelling on the validity of the Alexa measures I can say that based on similar evidence in Google Analytics that this site is exponentially better off than 2 months ago. So how did I turn this traffic strapped lemon into a site that is trafficked?

Transformation of SCHWOIT from a general run of the mill social commentary site that was infrequently updated, to a frequently updated and niche focussed blog was the beginning of turning the blog around. I went from discussing many subjects that enthused me for a week or so, and then they faded into the distance. Now I have a passion for gardening and am more than happy to share my experiences in my developing passion. Whilst I am not an expert by any stretch, I am willing to learn and research. So sharing my experiences, and nifty inexpensive ideas is giving me a constant content source. Content is after all king in the blogging game.

Another part of the transition was to a new clean skin for the site. The new skin is a complete departure from the old scheme that had a black background. The new skin is much more readable and complementary to the content. The old black site was one that I liked and was around for many months, however I am much happier with the new skin.

The second part, and the bit that has seen the traffic numbers is my embracing of some social networking sites. The first being Blog Catalog. A great social networking site that has made many people aware of the sites existence. It is important to be a regular contributor to be seen in the forums. There are a great number of really knowledgeable and helpful people there from around the entire globe. Many topics are discussed from religion (ugh), blogging tips and development, and general idle chit chat. I have found many a useful tip or had a good chuckle.

Site number two is a forum for Aussie Bloggers at Aussie Bloggers Forum. The forums again reward active members that involve themselves in constant communication. Many of the members of the forum are very knowledgeable in the blogging fraternity, and all are friendly. Many of my regular readership are now from the forums and I am happy they are.

The third site is Entrecard. Entrecard is a site that allows bloggers to advertise for free by exchanging Entrecard Credits. A bloggers 125 x 125 banner is displayed on a fellow bloggers site for a 24 hour period. This allows for other people to discover your site. Primarily fellow Entrecard users, but other curious people also can click through to your site. Of late many sites have been discussing the validity of the traffic and the service. However, Entrecard has brought SCHWOIT many new readers and participants. In fact I will credit it with the majority of the credit. I will discuss my strategy for success in a subsequent post.

Another site that I am about to begin partaking in heavily soon is Blotanical. This is a site for gardening bloggers to discover one another and share tips. I have not been too active yet, however will with time permitting be starting to leverage its offerings. If nothing more than to research what others out there are growing and how. I believe it will be a stellar information source that will enrich my own sites content, and thus help keep the interest of the readership that I have built up.

All this took less than a month to achieve and it does require working at. However, this and similar strategies are rewarding for bloggers as we like to know there is other people out there that are listening. I fully appreciate all the traffic, even the chain dropping Entrecard users that many whinge about. The reason is that if I can convert 2% of those users to a regular visitor and contributor then my efforts are worth it.

So now I have done my geek post for the week I will get back to gardening. Time to research the best way to prepare and move worms and plants from the big smoke to the Illawarra. On that the sites tag line will remain, the Gong is still an urban jungle. It is just not an old growth forest!

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The “U Comment, I Follow” Revolution

Geek, Web Sites and Social Networking | Posted by Dean
Jan 07 2008

Recently I became aware that the default installation of WordPress marks all comment links with the rel=’nofollow’ tag. The effect of this tag is that search engine spiders such as GoogleBot will not follow the link to your site, thus the only effect of the comment is if a human follows the link.

The origins of the nofollow tag are steeped in the early days of blogging where spammers were common place, and spam control mechanisms were not. The nofollow thus presented the nefarious activities of the spammer resulting in a profit from the increased sales of whatever product they were pushing.

In the current day however there are multiple spam control options available to combat this disgraceful activity. In fact one is shipped with WordPress by default in akismet. They are very effective and constantly updated. They are not faultless so the blog administrator should review all comments. However, the amount of illegitimate spam is vastly reduced. As a result the nofollow tag is less a legitimate spam control mechanism.

Given the effects of the spam control mechanisms I believe that commenters should be rewarded for their commentary. So I thought I would check the WordPress Dashboard and look for a simple toggle option for enabling/disabling the tag. Unfortunately, it is not a natively user configurable option. I hope that makes it into WordPress 2.5.

As such I have over the previous few days been investigating ways to remove the nofollow tag from comments. After a brief Google search I found the dofollow plugin by Kimmo Suominen. The plugin is highly configurable, but as mentioned earlier an administrator should still check comments regularly to ensure they are relevant and are not some clever spam.

I also found a complimentary plugin called CommentLuv. This plugin will interrogate the supplied URL and if possible retrieve the commenters last blog and place a direct deep nofollow free backlink to it. In this way other blog commenters will see potentially interesting content and visit. Further, search robots will also follow the link to the post.

With these natural advantages I decided to display that SCHWOIT is a proud believer in the I Follow Movement. Again looking at the fiddyp site I found the fast friends follow fair comments post. I liked the design and so decided to integrate it with my design. It is displayed in the header floating over the Bird Of Paradise leaf.

I am a proud member of this movement and encourage all bloggers to embrace the movement.

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