Four Island

This post is the fifth day of VisitorGrid Week. For more information, read the post linked to right there.

Continuing along with the blogging theme, now that you know why you should blog and you have a blog, I'm going to make a little reward-type-thing.

You must write a post on you blog relating to the number four. Not just any post, not a spam post, a good post. No wait, a great post. If you do, post a link to it in this post's comments, I'll look over it, and if it's good, I'll pingback it.

So, there are the terms. You write a good post relating to the number four, I'll pingback your blog, providing you with more traffic. I'll generally post the Pingbacks on Saturday along with the weekly poll.

So, like the idea? Well, good. Now get blogging. This offer does not expire.

This post is the fourth day of VisitorGrid Week. For more information, read the post linked to right there.

Now that you know why you should blog, here's a handy tutorial on how to start a blog just in case you decide that blogging interests you.

The first thing you need are some ideas. Like, for instance, what are you going to name your blog? Or, what's it going to be about? Your life? Blogging?

Once you've handled that stage, you need a host. There are many free blogging hosts on the internet (myself included, I'm already hosting two), so this one isn't difficult. We'll assume that you're using Wordpress.com, a hosting service that runs off of the popular Wordpress blogging software. It's fairly easy to create an account on Wordpress.com. It has a large "Sign up" button on the home page, and the forms are easy to navigate.

Now that you have a blog, you should write an introduction post. Explain what your blog is there for, why people should read it. This, and some more self-promoting information should also be inserted into an "About" page.

Finally, you need to come up with a blogging schedule. How often are you going to blog? Are you going to do special things on certain days of the week? Think about this, because when people start to enjoy your blog, want to keep reading some good content, they'll be disappointed when you fail to post.

I know what you're thinking. I'm going to start this post with my "Recently, I....." line that I've completely overused. Well, forget it. I've already written the first line, and it's not "Recently, I....", it's "I know what you're thinking." See? I've outsmarted you. The "Recently, I...." line is in the second paragraph.

Recently, I wrote a post entitled Lorelle Link and Comment Challenge which included a link to a post on Timbo94's blog, Dream Weaver. Timbo94 seems to have a strange habit of including special characters in his blog post titles, which mess up the permalink badly. In fact, when I clicked on the link in my admin panel, it just came up as 404.

Because of this, I decided to change his permalink structure to not include post titles. I discovered Wordpress' page on Permalink Structure Tags, and I was soon messing around, trying to create the ugliest permalink structure I could. In fact, I ended up with the monstrous:

/%category%/%author%/%year%%monthnum%%day%%minute%%second%
        %post_id%/

While that was fun, it made me think. If you're going to have a permalink structure (if you don't, I'll be scared of your blog), make sure it's a good one that you won't want to change sooner or later. Changing your permalink structure can make old backlinks fail, but a bad permalink structure (like special characters in post titles), backlinks will also fail.

In the case of Timbo, he should either have used a different permalink structure to begin with, or simply omitted the special characters from his post titles. And, the latter's probably preferable because, well, fourisland.com/blog/permalink-structure/ is much prettier than, to take the example of Wordpress' default permalink structure, fourisland.com/blog/?p=18 (or whatever this post's ID is).

But, you should also remember, that when picking a permalink structure, if you're going to make it obnoxious like the monstrosity above, make sure you actually like it before setting it in stone.

I've been reading a blog recently called Lorelle on Wordpress. It's a blog about blogging, and it's UBER GOOD. I don't know why, but it's like a jinxed book. I can't get off of it, there's so much good content on it.

Even if you do not have a Wordpress blog (like me), I'd still suggest Lorelle on Wordpress. Not everything posted there is strictly Wordpress related (like the title of this post, for example). A lot of it is just blogging in general.

And that brings me to the second point of this post. Dually inspired by Lorelle's "Blog Challenge" series (a type of post challenging you to post something belonging to some criteria on your blog--besides being fun, it gives you post ideas) and the comment thread of Dream Weaver's Entry 2 - "Are all Angels bad?", I've created a challenge of my own. But, since I don't want to copy Lorelle completely, I've decided I won't do a blog challenge. No, I'll do a comment challenge.

I want you to find a post on some blog (not on your own blog!) with some content that you can really reply to. Write a very long comment on it, like the ones on the DW post. Make sure you fill out the "Post Comment" form with your website's address in it, because when you write your comment, you need to comment on this post with the URL to the blog post you commented on and the username you are going as. Then, if your comment strikes me as particularly well thought-out and long, I'll post a link to your blog on my blog.

This challenge expires in exactly one month. I think it'll be interesting to see who actually cares enough about getting their blog linked to to actually manage to complete this challenge within the time limit. After the 30 days are up, I will take a day to judge, and then I'll post the results the day after. And comments posts exactly 30 days after this post will be rendered invalid.

I've recently started using Entrecard. Entrecard is a service that helps you to advertise your blog in an easy, fun way. And let me tell you, when I say easy, I mean easy.

To advertise your blog, all you have to do is find another blog who also uses Entrecard, click on their "widget", thus "dropping your card". Then, both you and the person upon whose widget you just dropped your card get an Entrecard Credit (ec). These ecs can be spent upon buying advertising on other sites, buying real things from the shop and much more.

And really, it's fast. I signed up for Entrecard, put the widget upon my site, and five hours later five people had already dropped their cards.

There's a good tutorial about using Entrecard productively on CK Marketing called How to use Entrecard to Grow your Blog, and let me tell you, it's really useful. Go read it. Nao.

One more thing before this post is over. If you want a whole ton of drops, you can sign up for U Drop / I Follow. It's an interesting service where you get a drop everyday and a link on a webpage that recieves tons of hits everyday. I you want tons of EntreCards, joining this would be a good idea.

Okay, okay, one last thing. If you decide to sign up with Entrecard, you can post your site's address here, if you like, and I'll drop you a card. 8D

Sometimes, I get a little bored with standard blogging. Like, post a post. Post a post. On and on. Let's try something new.

And the deblatog was born! (Word coined by yours truly) A Deblatog is cross-blog argument in which many blogs can join in and argue senselessly about a set topic.

For instance, say I start a deblatog about "Pie". I ruthlessly argue that Pumpkin Pie is a delicious way to enjoy pumpkin. Then, someone else (say.... Gryphic), posts a post on her blog with her side of the argument. While she does that, she makes sure to Pingback the original deblatog post.

Then, someone else (say.... Timbo94) decides that Apple Pie is much better than Pumpkin Pie and writes a post about it. He then Pingbacks Gryphic's post, but not my original.<!--more-->

All of a sudden, Smiley appears and decides that we're all wrong and pie is disgusting. He Pingbacks Timbo94's post, not Gryphic's or mine.

Smiley's posted some interesting arguments, so I decide to write what I think about them on my blog again. I'll Pingback his post, but not Timbo94's, Gryphic's or my original.

Where this is going is that you can start out at my original deblatog post, read my side of the argument, and then click on the Pingback to go to the second side of the argument. It's a chain, and it allows other bloggers to post on something when they can't think of anything else to blog.

After reading that, you have to decide this. Either, I have an awful ton of spare-time, or I just couldn't think of anything else to post.

The only other random point I should put here is that, if my obsession with Pingbacks isn't obvious yet, I don't know how much better to put it.

I. Like. Pingbacks.

I'm posting this because I often find myself sitting at my computer thinking either, "There's nothing to do, I think I'll just write a blog post." or "There are a whole ton of things I should be doing now but I just can't be bothered. I think I'll do a blog post." and end up sitting, staring at my Admin Panel for minutes on end, trying to think up a good idea for a blog post.

If this happens to you too, why not try out this out?<!--more-->

1. First things first. Open up that Admin Panel, get to your Blog-Post-Writing-Station. If you don't even bother going to your panel, you won't have the motivation to write a post.
2. Don't try to write the post's title first. I've made that mistake many a time, and it's much easier writing a title after there's some content for you to title.
3. Think, what is my blog about? Why do people want to read my blog? What can I offer them that no one else can? People come to your blog because they want something. What is it? Laughter? Debates? Tutorials? Build on that.
4. Does your blog have a theme? Or is it just random nonsense? If your blog is random nonsense it's a little harder to find something to post about, but don't worry. The blogger always prevails.
5. What interests you? You're blog is your vent, talk about what you like on it. (However, remember that blogs and the internet in general is not really a place to talk about inappropriate things such as creation of children)
6. Go read your favorite blogs and see what makes them so good. Any content of theirs that you can build upon? (And Pingback them for? 8D)
7. If all else fails, a 101 posting ideas list never fails to amaze. Try it out, you may be surprised of what you haven't thought of yet.
8. From the same place as the 101 posting ideas, we have the Visitor Grid, another great way to come up with ideas for your blog

I hope that I've just fulfilled the reason I posted this in the first place: To write a good post.