Where to Find Ideas for Your Blogs

As a new blogger, it is not easy to keep up the routine writings. You may get stuck sometimes and may not know what to write about for your blogs; especially for those who write daily. Where can you get ideas to write about? The following sites list profound information of how you may generate ideas to write about for your blogs:

• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle – Here are 101 different ideas that Philip has listed. Check it out yourself. It is a wonderful list and talks about a lot of things that will give you ideas of what to write on your blog.

• Battling Bloggers Block – Darren has written 25 blogging tips which is a great resource for bloggers. Some of the blogging tips I’ve never even thought of. Hope you can get some of the inspirations out for your blog.

• 10 Web Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas – Rand has provided 10 useful web tools that will inspire you to generate content ideas. Some tools you’ve probably already known are Google group, Technorati, Craigslist, Del.icio.us, and more …

• 10 Killer Post Ideas – Christ has talked about 10 killer post ideas in his article. I have already used some of them. It is really interesting stuff and most importantly helpful for generating ideas for your blog.

• Blogging Tips – Hundreds of Resources for Finding Content for Your Blog – An excellent resourceful site for finding ideas for your blog. Lorelle’s Blogging Tips – a must read tips, provide hundreds of resources for bloggers.

• ^new 50 Ways To Generate Content For Your Blog – Found another great list from this site. Andrew has well put 50 excellent ways together that you can use to generate content for your blog.

There may be more and more good resources on the Internet. I’ll continue searching and add updates to this post in the future.

Update: I added a new resourceful site above to my collection. As you can see it is marked as new.

Using or Not Using Smilies on Your Blog

Yesterday I wrote a post, What Can You Do With Your API Key?. After I published it, I saw this smiley showing up on my blog. I was wondering how I got that. I knew I am pretty new to WordPress.com. Moreover, I did not learn how to use smilies yet. Besides I am not a big fan for using smilies. So I was really puzzled. I checked my editor but didn’t see anything on its toolbar showing us how to use any smilies. I searched the Internet for an answer. From What smilies can I use?, I found out that ‘8)’ was the main reason for displaying this smiley (meaning cool) on my blog.

In my post, What Can You Do With Your API Key? I had a date written as (4/28/2008), but it was truncated to be (4/28/200 and turned ‘8)’ to be . It was all messed up. If you don’t want to use any smilies, then you can turn it off from your admin interface. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Settings/Writings, find Formatting, uncheck Convert emoticons like and to graphics on display. After you’ve done that, make sure you click on Save Changes button to save it. See the screenshot below:

Update: I know many people love to use smilies. I become to like it a little bit better. Occasionally I will use some of them. I guess if you know how to control them, then they will not mess up your blog. You may bookmark this post for future reference. I even come back to check how each similey is represented here whenever I need to use them.

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What Can You Do With Your API Key?

If you have a WordPress.com blog, You can find your API (Application Programming Interface) key by clicking on Users/Your Profile. It says, “Your WordPress.com API key is: ########d#db. Don’t share your API key, it’s like a password,” where ######## should be replaced with numbers. API key comes automatically when you registered a Free blog with WordPress.com. In order to learn more about it, I searched around on the web. Here is the original information I got from WordPress.com. It says,

API Keys

WordPress.com has what’s called “API keys” which allow you to use services and enhancements built on the WordPress.com platform. This allows you to leverage the power of WP.com while still hosting your blog elsewhere.

How do I get one?

When you sign up for a WordPress.com account we will email you an API key. If you already have a WordPress.com account, your API key is listed on your profile page, which you can get to by clicking the “My Account” link in the top right when you’re logged in.

Where will my API key be?

It will be in your welcome email. To make sure you get the email, avoid free services like Hotmail and MSN and check your spam filter if it doesn’t show up in a few minutes. (Also, consider whitelisting *@wordpress.com.)

Can I share my API key?

No, it’s like a password to your account.

What can I do with my API key?

One example is the new anti-spam service, Akismet. Install the Akismet plugin and enter your WP.com API key and your blog will be protected from spam the same way every blog on WordPress.com is.

In the future it will also give you access to stats and other add-on services.

So if you like to have a WordPress.com API key for personal use, then you know what to do now. However, for the purpose of commercial use, check out Commercial Use API Keys here.

How Fast Google and Yahoo! Indexed My New Blog!

Wow! How fast Google and Yahoo! indexed my new blog! I’ve just started on April 13, 2008 (exactly two weeks’ ago). When I typed site: myinternetstuff.wordpress.com in Google Search Engine. I could see a list of all My Internet Stuff sub-titles indexing at Google; see the screenshot below:

Click on the picture to enlarge

Yahoo! also indexed my new blog so fast but did not list as many sub-titles as Google; see the screenshot below:

Click on the picture to enlarge.

I don’t know for sure whether fast indexing has something to do with my submission to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer. Anyway, I am happy about it.

Update: Google just indexed What Can You Do With Your API Key? – a post I wrote today (4/28/2008)8) less than one minute. I am really amazed.

Where Did ‘Possible related posts’ Come From?

Today I found out that something I didn’t write but showed up as Possible related posts in one of my posts. I checked my original post I’d written; but did not see anything showing up like those links there. I was wondering where did they come from. I searched WordPress.com Forum and I found an answer to this mystery: How do I remove something I didn’t write from a post? Actually WordPress.com provides extra features. See the screenshot below:

You can find them by clicking on Design/Extras/ from your WordPress.com Dashboard. If you leave the second one as default, which is unchecked, then Possible related posts will show up in your post. I don’t mind to use it as long as the links to my posts are relevant. However I don’t like the fact that once you chose to use this feature you can’t control what links to be shown or what links not to be shown.

What Is The Difference Between Tags And Categories?

I was always confused tags and categories. I thought they are the same things. Searching the Internet for an answer and I found out that they are not quite the same. So knowing the difference between them can help you build a better structure for your blog or website; and it can even help you optimize your blog/website for search engine purpose.

What is tag or tagging? – Tag or tagging is usually a single word and typically listed alphabetically. It is like a keyword. People can find your blog/site or other people’s blog/site through tag or tagging. Tag or Tagging can be a category; but not vice versa. See some general ideas about tag or tagging from Technorati Tags.

What is category? – Category is something you create to navigate your own site. It will help your visitors to find your related posts easily. Category is searched locally in your own site while tag or tagging can be used to search your own site or other people’s sites. Category can be more than one word. See my categories on my right side bar.

Tag or Tagging can help optimizing your blog or website for search engines while category can’t. I also learned that it is good practice to use both tags and categories for your blog/website. If you pay attention, you will notice that I use both tags and categories on this blog.

Feel free to leave your feedback if you have anything to say about this topic.

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OpenID? What Is It?

I own both WordPress.org and WordPress.com blogs. OpenID only appears on my WordPress.com Dashboard (click Settings to see it). The question is what can we do about it? I searched around for an answer. Here is the information I got so far. Actually OpenID is just the URL (website address) of your blog. If you registered a Free blog with WordPress.com, the OpenID just came with your WordPress.com blog automatically. It permits you to login to other people’s websites as an ID (if those websites support OpenID logins). It eliminates multiple usernames and passwords that you normally have to remember for logins. With one OpenID, it’ll no doubt make it easy for you to login. OpenID is still in the transition of being adopted by the publics but becomes more and more popular nowadays. Big companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, and etc. already use OpenID as a mean to allow their customers to login to their websites.

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What is Your Reaction When Someone Stole Your Content?

Yesterday when I searched the topic – Interested In How to Change Your Header Images?, I found out that someone stole my partial article (the beginning part). My site showed up on the first page at Google 19 hours’ ago; and the perpetrator’s site showed up below mine at Google 18 hours’ ago. That means I published my article one hour ahead of his/hers.

I could not believe that his/her words showed up exactly the same at Google like mine. I checked his/her site. He/She did not quote my article at all and did not refer to it either. Instead he/she stated “Interested In How to Change Your Header Images? Written by on April 21st, 2008 in WordPress xxxxxxx.” I am not happy about it at all. I searched the Internet for a guidance. Lorelle’s What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content showed up at Google search. I got some ideas of how to handle this situation. However, the perpetrator’s site did not provide an email address, his/her About page was not set up either, and his/her contact led to a 404 not found page. So I have no choice but to leave a response in his/her site. Here is the statement I wrote there:

Do you know that stealing content is illegal? Did you see Copyright on the bottom of my site? How can you do that? How can you take someone’s hard work and paste here and claim that you wrote it? You should always ask whether you can cite it or refer to it. Maybe the author won’t say “No” to you. I tried to contact you but your contact doesn’t work. I need you to correct this immediately. As long as you don’t claim that you wrote it then I have no problem with it. It is very unprofessional to do such thing. Imaging how you feel if I copy and paste your information on my site and claim that I wrote it. I hope I won’t see the second time any more. You may want to read more from this site: http://lorelle.wordpresss.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/

Today I checked the topic – Interested In How to Change Your Header Images? again. His/Her site moved to the second page; but it is still there. I found out that search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and etc. can do something about it. Read the article Content Thieves you’ll find out what to do. Hopefully people have the same problem like me will learn something from this post.

Can You Add a StatCounter on Your Blog? How?

The question is “Are you allowed to have a stat counter on your WordPress.com blog?” The answer is “Yes”. You can confirm it from WordPress.com Forum here. Now you find out you can add a stat counter on your WordPress.com blog. The next question is how can you implement it? These are the steps I set up mine on this blog:

• First register your preferred Free stat counter. I heard StatCounter is pretty good. So this is the one I’ve got.

• Second login to your StatCounter account; create My Project for you blog/website and get the code; here you can decide whether you like your stat counter being visible/invisible.

• Third login to your WordPress.com Dashboard; click on Design/Widgets.

• A new window will open; click Add on Text button on the left side; Text button will be added to the right sidebar.

• Now open the Text button on the right sidebar; copy and paste the code you’ve got from your StatCounter account; click Change to close it.

• Arrange the Text button to wherever you prefer; make sure you click on Save Changes button to save it

It is that easy. See mine on the right upper side corner.

Update: The image showed up when I first published this article. However it disappeared when I reloaded the blog. I wonder what the cause is. Although the image didn’t show up, the tracker is working.
Update: The image showed up again after I’d changed my Security Program from my PC.

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Differences Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org

I own both WordPress.com and WordPress.org blogs. The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is that

WordPress.com is different. It’s a web site that provides blogs hosted free of charge. The software on WordPress.com is very similar but not exactly the same software you can download from WordPress.org. It is a multi-user version of WordPress that allows many thousands of blogs to be hosted on a single web server. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, some of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress blog are disabled here. Some of these features may become available in the future as paid upgrades, comparable with traditional hosting fees.

Click on the picture to enlarge – WordPress.com Dashboard

WordPress.org is open source blogging software that is freely available to anyone to download. The software must be downloaded and installed onto a computer. WordPress, being Internet software, must be installed on a web server–that’s a computer that is set up to serve web pages over the internet–and your personal computer probably isn’t a web server. So, to make the free WordPress software work, you have to own a web server or rent some space on one. That’s called hosting and it’s not usually free. There are plenty of good hosts out there who will let you install WordPress on their web servers for a reasonable fee. You can then do anything you like with your own copy of WordPress: install plugins and themes, etc.

Click on the picture to enlarge – WordPress.org Dashboard

So it is your decision to decide using self-hosting blog or a Free blog. For me I’ll eventually move my WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org blog because it will give you freedom of what you want to do with your own blog. I have already had one that is a self-hosting WordPress blog.

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