From internals to externals: five plugins to boost your blog readership, posting and appearance

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Quick plugin update: I’ve come across five plugins that I thought might be worth downloading: to increase readership, reading times, and reader retention rates. Then you can improve your blogging speed by using templates, switching posts to pages, and making your first page look sophisticated!

#1. Unblockable Popup

MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup

is a plugin that allows your website to post a popup on your website that can’t be blocked. That, of course, raises questions about whether you should be using such a plugin, but I can imagine some circumstances where it can be used to advertise your mailing list or FeedBurner subscription! It could also be used for advertising purposes as well! I haven’t downloaded it yet, but some of the features used wisely could really bolster your readership numbers without unduly inconveniencing readers.

In MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup 2.0, we have tried our best to fulfill all your earlier requests on how you wanted your popup window to be, and this is what we’ve got: >> Choice of Popup Style- Simple Box or Default >> Improved stylish Text Editor >> Flexible placement of “Close” button >> Easy to spot settings with collapsible blocks >> Choice of showing the popup only in specified posts or pages >> Advanced choice of plugin injecting mode Get more info on how and why MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup 2.0 has accomplished to meet your expectations. Take a short tour of the improved version and see the screenshots that ellaborate the above-mentioned sleek features.

#2… Magazine Style

Magazine style drop caps and first paragraphs come courtesy of this plugin

. Take a look:

magazine-style-posts plugin

It’s good for longer articles and feature articles, too. And can help keep reader’s attention on the page. Some visual variety in your post presentation will certainly retain viewers longer (did I say ‘viewers’?) and increase those important pageview times! This is an aspect that I’ve been working on for some time! Take a look at the plugin by clicking on the image to see the website!

#3. Featurific

… Another plugin that I have been using on my blog to increase pageview times is Featurific. This plugin allows you to have a slideshow presentation on your frontpage. It works on most themes, once uploaded and activated. It takes images from the post (or default images) and uses them as background for each slide.

featurific

The site says much more but here’s an excerpt: “Featurific for Wordpress: * Requires no configuration (although you can tweak nearly any aspect of the plugin if you so desire) * Provides an array of user-customizable templates * Integrates with the Wordpress.com Stats Plugin to select most popular posts * Allows extensive customization of options such as the number of posts to display, post selection type, screen duration, auto-excerpt length, etc.”

#4: P2P Converter

Page2Post (or Post2Page) Converter

. It’s a simple plugin that converts your posts to pages or vice-versa. I know that I had a lot of pages that had built up over the years, and the original hierarchy had got lost. Not wanting to delete them, they were piling up in my ‘pages’ menu, simple answer: convert them to posts, they’re then archived! Alternatively, if you have a post that is a classic or a foundational type post: why not make it a page? You no longer have to copy and paste it. One click! Voila!

convert pages

You can see the button on the far right. It also works well with blogging applications that don’t support page creation. So, simply create a post when you need. Don’t publish, then when you login, convert it!

#5: Template Plugin

Post Templates

is a simple plugin that helps you to create a ‘standard’ post template that you can then use to create a bunch of similar pages. This would be useful for regular report-type plugins or reviews all of which have similar structures or wording. I’m planning to use it on my BlogCarnivals, since there are two of them, but the wording of the beginning and end is ALWAYS the same. In fact, I’ve long suspected that John Chow uses a template for his regular blog income reports (by the way, where is July’s? … Did I miss it?)

post template

There are also menus on post pages, manage post pages and elsewhere. The multiple hooks are quite effective!

templatize

Hope you find these plugins useful. There are dozens of plugins out there, the usual batch of popular ones, but these I thought would help improve your blog, both externally and internally. Post edited for accuracy, errors, and keywords.

Lost Posts: Five Values for Blogging: Learning, Voice, Authority, Integrity and Audience

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Lost Post Series: Posts that have otherwise been forgotten, accidentally deleted or blogged elsewhere are reposted here. Enjoy!

This is a repost from Blogging Charlatans: I re-read the original post and felt the content of this stood better as a single post than attached to that.

Five Values for Blogging: Learning, Voice, Authority, Integrity and Audience

So what should the budding blogger do to save their blog? Actually, it’s quite simple: I think there are five qualities that will ensure you do get back links, traffic, money, and whatever your definition of success is.

1. Learn to Write.

Sounds simple enough. But it’s amazing how many bloggers fail at this first hurdle. Learning to write is a skill that takes time, effort and practice to develop properly. Of course, your average Blog Your Way To Success PDF will not tell you how much of each you will need. It will take you much longer than you first suspect, certainly longer than you hope, and likely will end up being far longer before, as an accomplished blogger, you actually dare to call yourself a ‘good’ writer. I’m somewhere in the second stage right now, most likely nearer the beginning than the end. Where are you?

2. Find your voice.

That’s been the hard step for me. But finding a voice in the hundreds of millions of blogs out there with many blogging on similar themes as I do. How do I define my blog in relation to all the others? By finding my voice. A voice can be defined in so many ways, none of which are exclusive. Your voice could be your blog’s niche, or your blog’s choice of topics. It could be the way you treat your topic. Or it could even be the way you write about dull subjects and inject personality, enthusiasm, and a sense of humor. It could even be as simple as your posting schedule or mix of posts through the week. Have you found your voice yet?

3. Build your authority.

No, I really don’t mean anything to do with another of the web’s charlatan’s: Technorati’s Authority Measure. I don’t even mean ‘pagerank’. Neither of these is a measure of your authority, rather it’s a measure of their decision making vis-a-vis your blog and its readership. As such, it’s subject to arbitrary adjustments up, down and sideways. Your authority is your ability to be thought of as someone who has understanding, insight, learning or skill and which achieves a greater degree of respect from your readership. That is your authority: do people approach you for advice (as readers or as emailers) or help when they come across issues that you have faced?

4. Keep your integrity.

With many companies out their encouraging bloggers to blog for dollars, it’s easy to sacrifice all of these qualities that you need for a few dollars in your PayPal account. Very easy. There have been times when I have sacrificed my own integrity for a few dollars. I regret it now. Now, I don’t tailor reviews to advertisers’ whims and unspecified needs, I try to tell the story as I see it, I try to keep readers informed of my conflict of interests, I try to keep my words honest and pure. I still do reviews, I still do buzzes but I will not write something that is dishonest or shortsells my readers. Do you feel you sold your integrity?

5. Connect with your audience.

That’s always the hard part. Blogging, for me and many readers, started out as an expression of personal and private writing that somehow managed to garner a small audience. If I’m always caught up in my own little bubble, and it’s pretty easy for me living where I live, doing what I do and seeing things from an “Asian” or “European” perspective, I will fail to connect with my readers and their interests. I’m trying to remind myself that I should be striving to connect more with my readers, wherever they are. How do you connect with your readers?

While I can’t guarantee that these alone will lead you to success in blogging, I feel strongly that success in blogging without these values will be fleeting.

What is your data disaster plan? You do have one, don’t you?

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How are you backing up your data? If you’re not, you really need to ask yourself one question: Can I afford to lose everything on my computer? What would happen if I did? Would it be the end of your world? Or worse.

If you are one of the lucky ones, you will probably say: It doesn’t matter a jot. Lucky you.

For the rest of us, we need to devise some way to handle the loss of data. Why? Because in most instances, the loss of data is sudden, unexpected, and (often) permanent. So let’s consider some of the issues now.

Different Media

While we may curse the need to make backups of our data, the reality is that there are many options now available that task much easier than ever.

CD-/DVD-Rom: you can burn your data to CD-Rom and you can pack upto 700MB of stuff onto one disc. With DVD-Roms the upper limits are 4.7GB or even double that. Most new notebooks and pc systems come with at least a DVD burner installed. The CD-rom discs are inexpensive, while DVD discs are not the cheapest. Once your archive is set, you can burn as many copies as you need in a few minutes.

  • Pro’s: cheap, portable and fast.
  • Con’s: discs can get lost or scratched. Sometimes they can be unreadable.

Online Storage: There are quite a few options for storing files online, from your current website host to specific back up companies. Typically, you will pay monthly or annual dues and you can access the files on your desktop (across the network), through a fileshare, or via a webtype interface. You may get additional tools to simplify and speed-up the process.

  • Pros: larger space than any single disc, it’s offsite. Secure, too.
  • Cons: Depends on net access, companies lose stuff, and go bankrupt. Expensive.

207535118Network Attached Storage Devices offer online and immediate access to ALL of the data on the server, they are relatively simple to set up and can back up your entire system as you need. Storage is additional space and NAS is available to all the PCs on the network. NAS systems can be easy to setup, and run like mini-PC systems on their own. You can expand simply by adding extra devices on the network. It’s even possible to build your own system.

  • Pros: typically lots of space, accessible.
  • Cons: It’s onsite, additional electricity needed, they break down.

What else is there? Memory sticks can be used, but the memory can be volatile, easily erased. The sticks can be lost easily, too. External hard drives offer solutions like simplified NAS devices but you have to do quite a lot of your own copying meaning your PC may be backing up when you should be using it.

There are many options now for data protection: none of them by themselves offers a complete, permanent solution to your backup issues. But if you balance effectiveness vs. cost, onsite vs. offsite, and you build in redundancy (ie. having several layers of protection) you should be able to confront most disasters.

Typical scenarios: #1 someone breaks in and steals your PC (AND ALL your discs).

This did happen to a friend of mine. Someone broke in and removed ALL the computer equipment in the room. Everything. He had no backups of stuff outside the room, and lost months of work for several textbooks he was working on. Some form of offsite back up would have helped for sure even if he’d just made copies of his crucial stuff and put them on a server elsewhere or given CD copies to a friend.

Typical scenario: #2 your PC needs servicing or breaks down.

This happened to me on several occasions. Having extra hard disks installed made it easy to whip out the data and start working on another system by putting the hard disk into an external drive bay. I’ve had to do this more than once, it helped to save time by making my data available while my PC was being fixed. Of course, remembering to split the system on Disk C: and the data on Disk D: is necessary.

What data emergencies have you experienced? Were you ready for them? What did you do? How are you backing up your data now? Of course, you ARE backing up, aren’t you? Tell me you have some disaster plan in waiting!