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Ten blogging sites you need to know

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Now that you are part of the blogging phenomenon that has spread all around the world, or you simply aspire to learn something about the online community, there is plenty of assistance you can find online to help you optimize your own blog the best way you want.

For instance, a host giant like http://www.xanga.com provides a great chance to start a blog on your own; it is a good opportunity for anyone interested in joining a world-wide community that shares pictures, videos, thoughts and points of view. Furthermore, you’ll also get precious information from many domains.

Another such great host site is www.myspace.com where you may register your blog under a variety of categories depending on the theme and topic. There is a wide selection of users and definitely good quality traffic if you make the blog worth visiting.

For those who want to make some money with their blogs, by advertising, I strongly recommend www.adsense.com, a Google-joint program that enables bloggers to make a really good income. How come? On this site you closely follow all the necessary steps to choose the ads (both images and text) that best match your blog content.

It is the same business direction that triggers lots of queries in terms of Internet marketing: you may learn more about the bright or the dark sides of the web by having a look at http://www.marketingquickiesv2.com/ionut/first20.html.

Blogging takes time and effort, and you can definitely avoid some mistakes other pros warn against by permanently inquiring on new stratagems to use with Adsense; after all you have to make as much money as you can. Hence, http://www.marketingquickiesv2.com/adsense-adwords-marketing.html is a site that should teach you something.

You should also need to subscribe to one of the many sites that provide blog lists so that you may be more easily found by interested users. http://www.blogcatalog.com/ is a good choice to promote your blog and create traffic.

In the same listing categories we have to mention the giant http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/blogs/ that is one comprehensive directory where you’ll definitely want to have your blog subscribed. The same stays true for http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/ that functions according to the same working principles.

We should also point out to a “blog on blogs” that is definitely worth visiting given the large amount of information on the topic: http://www.problogger.net/. For someone who is just learning the rules of the game, there is much to find out here!

Last but not least, there are all sorts of professional sites that can help you with the tools you actually need for blogging. Here I refer to http://asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm and other similar pages that may guide and assist you in the attempt to find the software that best matches your blog.

Good luck!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With:

The best blogging tools

December 8, 2008 By 1 Comment

Due to the extended dimensions that the blogging phenomenon has achieved, one can hardly image the richness of tools that bloggers may use to improve the performance of their pages in the web circuit.  What tools should one look for?  First of all you need to select a specific platform to set up for the blog, then other tools complete the picture in case you want to include photos or videos.  Last but not least, you definitely need some special software to allow you to easily moderate the comments and fight unwanted mails, labeled as spam.  Let’s take a look at the way some tools can help you post entries on the blog with the help of the platforms.  Due to the wide variety of available software, format may vary, nevertheless the working principle is the same: type the title and the text you want to accompany it in the platform.  Not all tools provide italics, bold and large font sizes, and you may have to get this by using HTML in order to achieve the desired results.  In case you have to copy-paste Microsoft Word text, you need to check whether the blogging platform allows it without interference with RSS feeds.

In order to upload videos and pictures on the blog we have to mention Adobe Photoshop as one of the best tools here; yet, you may have to resize the images in order to make them easy to download by visitors.  Furthermore, such tools enable you to align the photos in the way that matches your entry best.  Embed multimedia files are also widely used by bloggers, mainly with the help of third-hand utilities like those offered by YouTube.  All you have to do is include a JavaScript in the posts in order to allow the blog users to access the photo or video files you upload.

The RSS support may also prove crucial for the success of a blog, particularly since most Internet users are mainly concerned with accessing blog content via RSS feeds.  You can find a variety of RSS formats available, not to mention that most tools include some sort of RSS help.  To make sure you really get what you want, and the blog looks professional to the targeted audience, it is advisable that you should check the RSS formats a special software offers before actually purchasing or installing it.

Filed Under: Blogging, Blogging Tools Tagged With:

Photo Blogging

December 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Just like video blogs or vlogs, photo blogs are born from the need to communicate and integrate in a community that has reached international dimensions. A photo blog mainly relies on photo sharing and publishing, while also using textual support as well. Nevertheless, when you visit a photo blog you’ll understand where the focus really lies; the phenomenon deviated from blogging with the advent of the cameraphones that allow the instant photo sharing between web users. The big advantage of such pages is that they are very dynamic in nature as compared to traditional sites. There are photo blogs that belong to individual domains and others that use larger collective services such as Blogger.  Widely accessible all over the web, photo blogs are managed with the help of specific software systems that enable content control.  Thus, photo bloggers are able to upload materials and manage all posts without any restriction; the same unrestricted form is maintained for the access to photo blogs, since all that is required is a browser and direct online access. There are cases when the transition from text to photo blogs is made with the use of plugins and even code rewriting; thus a combination of text and image is possible when a blogger selects a daily entry option.

Usually photo blogs have a single author, nevertheless it is not uncommon that two or three people contribute to the same web page.  The posts display depends on chronology, with the main page showing the most recent entries, but you may go back to the archives any time you want.  Photo blogs are highly interactive too since users may leave any comments they want for a special entry.  The presence of friendly links is also important in the photo blogging community, given the fact that creators come to move freely between sites.

It is totally incorrect to take pictures galleries for photo blogs; while the former is a simple collection images, the latter is a chronological log that uses categories allowing the user to navigate among them from older to newer materials and vice versa. It is not uncommon to also have photo blogs and moblogs as one and the same unit; though they may also function separately as well. A photo blog that can be updated from a mobile location such as camera phones could be labeled as mob logs. Nevertheless this latter concept could well function without pictures as well. In a nut shell, the composite character of the Internet allows the happy existence of hybrid blog types that enrich the puzzle even more.

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Personal blogging

December 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The variant of the online diary, which we are all used to call blog, goes sometimes well beyond the boundaries of simple communication: there are great articles, essays and a lot of interactive stuff that create a very entertaining environment for any Internet user.  Furthermore, it is not uncommon to even find future brilliant writers who shape their skill online; it all begins with the regular recording of personal thoughts, ideas, comments on books, films or music.  Personal blogs also allow limitless space for the expression of critical opinions from various domains, not to mention that they preserve a record of one’s development.  Nevertheless, what most Internet experts advise is that one should keep personal and business blogging as separate activities, since mixing them can be detrimental particularly for the special online promotion of some products or services.   Many analysts argue that personal blogging is often characterized by an ascending evolution since steady writing develops good thinking and synthesis skills.   However, there are a few rules you must follow into making sure that your personal blog is a good, yet trustworthy mirror of yourself.  The first thing you need to work on is the topic of the articles, essays that are responsible for the overall image of the blog.

There are not few the examples that include very poor personal blogs, with uninteresting topics, grammar and punctuation mistakes and very few substantial links.  Keep in mind that there should be a so-called self-censoring when it comes to exposing all sorts of personal details in the pages of your blog.  Unfortunately, there have been cases of stalking or stolen identity; keep in mind that you can be personal, without revealing anything from your intimate life.  Why this precaution? Because, some of the comments you’ll receive on the blog may truly hurt your feelings and even change your life.

Some bloggers have chosen to limit access to their pages by the use of a digital password; thus, only family and friends are allowed to log in.  People actually consider this a good means of protecting their families from possible external threats when the virtual world may overlap with the real one. Things will stay bright as long as you are able to monitor blog content and information quality on a regular basis.  The good thing about blogs is the fact that you can always go back to a formal entry and make some changes or analyze things from a different perspective and this stays valid for bloggers and users alike.

Filed Under: Blog Types Tagged With: ,
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