Wordpress.com proves why you’re always at the mercy of free blogging platforms

The news that Automattic has finally rolled out email subscriptions on WordPress.com goes to prove the point that, no matter how good a free blogging platform is, you’re always at its mercy when it comes to features.

That might sound obvious, but it’s something that’s easy for new bloggers to overlook.

While it’s wise to keep a blog simple, features such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email are near essential when it comes to marketing, because many visitors don’t know what RSS or care to learn how to use it.

If you host your own blog, it’s not a problem because you can either find a plugin to handle email subscriptions, or get Feedburner, Aweber or some other third-party service on board, because you have the ability to add custom code.

You might think I’m about to negate the arguments I raised in my “Who is Posterous good for?” post. In fact, Posterous — though socially well-connected — currently offers even less features than WordPress.com, though it’s arguably a lot easier to publish multimedia rich content to.

I think the free blogging platforms are very good for allowing new bloggers to cut their teeth, despite the issues surrounding starting a blog without a custom domain name and then having to migrate later if the blog becomes popular (all major free blogging platforms allow you to use your own domain name, but I doubt many newbies take advantage of that).

Seeing what I consider basic functionality only just added to WordPress.com proves that, if you want total control over your blog, you do need to self-host.

And, if you’re serious about building a business from blogging, but don’t have all the technical know-how just yet, it’s still worth getting help to host your own blog, because it will be infinitely more customisable further down the line when you decide to tailor it to exactly your own needs.

Hats off to Automattic for adding this feature to WordPress.com. Just remember that you can do so much more with your own version of WordPress.

Five Ways to Tweak a Wordpress Theme

Ah, free Wordpress themes. I’m convinced they’re one of the biggest reasons Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform today. From one-column minimalism to grid-based magazine layouts, photoblogging styles to made-for-Adsense themes, there are free Wordpress themes for every taste- just download, install and activate!

But to set your blog apart, you’ll want to tweak that theme- and when I say tweak, I mean make small changes here and there. To make these tweaks to your theme of choice, a tool like the Firebug extension for Firefox can be very handy- but, really, any text editor will do.

1. Tweak your header
   Usually the first place new visitors will look, and a good place to start. Some themes include “theme options” pages that show up when you’ve activated the theme, and others include banner photos or graphics that can easily be replaced with your own. If you’re using the default Wordpress theme Kubrick, the aptly named Kubrickr will automatically find photos on Flickr for you to customize your header with. To get more in-depth, I recommend reading through Wordpress’ official codex page on Designing Headers.
2. Play with your widgets
   Most Wordpress theme designers “widgetize” their themes, and for good reason: widgets are probably the quickest way to personalize a Wordpress theme. Built-in widgets, available in every fresh installation of Wordpress, include widgets for displaying your Archives, Calendar, Recent Comments and so forth- and And if the theme you love isn’t widgetized, you can do it yourself.
3. Experiment with color
   Even slight changes to the colors on your site can have a big impact. Online tools such as the Color Scheme Designer can keep you busy for hours, or you can check out pre-made color schemes at sites like colr.org and GenoPal.
4. Change your fonts
   We used to have just two choices when it came to web fonts: serif or sans-serif. Today, we have methods like sIFR and FLIR, which replace your fonts using Flash, the newish Cufon, which doesn’t require Flash, and CSS3’s @font-face, which works by downloading the specified fonts.
5. Personalize your About page
   This one, which requires no CSS tweaking at all, just might be the most important way of all. Tweaking your About page, the only page that comes pre-built with Wordpress, is where you can truly let your personality shine through. A photo of yourself is always good, but you should feel free to add anything here that shows the world- or your readers, at least- who you are. You can read more about tweaking your About page in a previous post of mine.

Of course, we’ve only barely scratched the surface of the ways you can tweak your Wordpress theme. For more ways, the Wordpress Codex is an excellent place to start, or look through our previous posts on Wordpress here.

WordPress.Com Goes Mobile

With the popularity of the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and other web-capable smartphones, it’s easy to take for granted the fact that millions of people read blogs on their mobile phones. However, not all devices are capable of displaying full HTML. And even those that do, not all screens are large enough for comfortable viewing of web content.

With this in mind, WordPress.com has recently launched several mobile functionalities, namely a few mobile-oriented themes, and (limited) dashboard access from mobile browsers. WordPress.com will automatically detect whether a reader is using a mobile browser, and assuming you have set your site to display a mobile theme when viewed from a phone–activated by default–the reader sees a predominantly text interface, with any header image miniaturized for small screens.

For mobile browsers capable of full HTML, there’s an option to switch to full view. Commenting and limited navigation features are also available on mobile view, making the viewing experience as functional as possible. As for the mobile dashboard, this mostly just involves stats, posting and bookmarking. This is simple enough for those times when you absolutely have to blog about something, but don’t have access to a computer.

This is one functionality I’d like to see built-into self-hosted WordPress installations. While you can usually enable mobile viewing and posting thru plugins, having this out of the box would surely be one good way of expanding readership and giving you a wider array of options when mobile-blogging.

3 Reasons to Blog About Your Personal Experiences

A couple months ago, I was losing motivation for one of my blogs. I was running into writer’s block on a regular basis and I just couldn’t think of compelling topics. I talked to another blogger and asked him for advice. He gave me one of the best insights I’ve ever heard for bloggers. He told me to write about my personal experiences.

I took his advice and it really helped. Since that time, I’ve enjoyed blogging more. My posts per month has gone up. My traffic has gone up. I’m getting more comments.

So today, I sat back and thought, “Why is blogging about personal experiences so effective?” Here are three reasons I came up with.

1. It lets you write faster.

One of the things that would frustrate me is my speed in producing content. Or I should say, my lack of speed. It used to take me over two hours just to create a 500 word post.

But when I started basing my posts on personal experiences, I found that the words would naturally flow. Now I can complete a post in 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

Also, this strategy helps me write longer, more comprehensive posts since there is a wealth of knowledge from my personal experiences.

Think of it this way. Let’s say you have a gadget blog. You can give your opinion on the latest gadget. Or you can actually buy the gadget and try it out. Or least go to the store to demo it. You’ll definitely have more to say if you use the gadget yourself. And you’ll write more efficiently because you have the experience to draw upon.

2. It builds trust.

Trust is one of those things that can be tricky to measure. Especially online, it’s difficult to tell how much trust you’re building with your audience. However, we can look at our friendships and see that self disclosure is one of the foundations to building close, trustworthy friendships.

Consider your best friends. Other than your family, aren’t your best friends the people you know the most? Everytime we share something about ourselves, we

By the way, I think sharing our experinces has to include our times of difficultly.

No one has a perfect life. If you blog as though you’ve got everything together and haven’t experienced hard times, you look like a fake.

Look at the big names in the internet marketing niche. They have shared their struggles.

Darren Rowse, the problogger himself, wrote about his early days when he lost much of his traffic when Google changed their algorithm. Shoemoney is a classic example. He wrote about his projects that flopped and being fat. Aaron Wall from SEO Book consistently writes about his personal experiences including his frustration from dealing with overbearing readers and his struggle with low self esteem.

3. It helps people remember you.

Let’s face it. To succeed in blogging today, you have to be memorable. The blogosphere is a lot of more crowded than in years past. There’s more competition and it’s only increasing.

One of the ways to help people remember you is to share your personal experiences.

Our human minds remember stories much better raw facts. We can recall the plots in the movies we’ve seen and the novels we’ve read, but we have a hard time remembering the facts from our college textbooks.

In their best selling business book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath say that telling stories is one of the best ways to help people remember you. They give a great example of Jared Fogle, the famous formerly obese college student who lost over 200 pounds by eating at Subway every day.

Subway could’ve gone the typical route and advertised their food as having less fat and less calories, but most people would not have paid much thought. By highlighting a story, Subway increased their sales and became part of a celebrity phenomenon.

Performancing offers marketing services to promote your personal experiences.

The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts

Back when I first started using Twitter in 2007, I had become fond of tweeting updates whenever I had a new post on my personal blog. I also tweeted everytime I made a post on several network blogs I edited and contributed to. After a while, it became tedious, and I decided to use one of those WordPress plugins that automatically updates your Twitter status when you had a new blog post.

The concept is pretty simple–the updates could actually go both ways. The plugin will automatically tweet the blog post title as soon as you hit the publish button. You also have the option of consolidating your tweets for a day, and publishing these as a blog post (which I personally find tacky).

For a while, I thought having these updates on auto-pilot seemed good. But when I realized I, myself, ignored automatic update notifications from my Twitter friends most of the time. Unless you run a Twitter account solely to provide updates to your readers about new posts, you most likely run your Twitter account to communicate and connect. And I think it’s best to use this to really talk engage with your readers, rather than blindly update them when you have posts elsewhere.

I guess it’s similar to how I’m not so cool with the idea of cross-posting between Twitter and other microblogging services, such as Plurk. It gives the perception that you’re not actively engaging with your Twitter friends and contacts. It makes it seem they’re not important enough to spend a minute copying and pasting (and shortening) URLs, and typing a few words to introduce your text. It makes them wonder whether you’re actually logged into your Twitter account to read replies and messages, if anyone wants to respond.

Manually posting Twitter updates when you have a new blog post is better, in that you can personalize the message that comes with the link. Sometimes, a blog post’s title is not self-explanatory enough, unless you’re an expert at writing headlines. You can get readers more interested in your blog post if you include a catchy tagline or blurb using your own words, or as an excerpt from the blog post.

Furthermore, when you write about the new post in your own words, it makes it more conversational, and it helps you connect better. For instance, rather than just tweet:

The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts – http://shortenedurlhere

I can perhaps say:

What do you think of automatic tweeting blog post updates? – http://shortenedurlhere

By asking a question, my friends and followers can pitch in. Or perhaps I can write something more retweet-worthy, so both my tweet and blog post get better traction.

People easily get tired of automatic tweets. But if you make your Twitter followers feel important by personalizing your tweet, then that helps in winning them over. Instead of getting a lot of zombies to read your posts, you get real people liking and loving what you write, reacting to these, and possibly helping spread the word.

When you’re in a network environment, with dozens and dozens of blogs and contributors, it can get unwieldy. In these cases, it might be easier to do automatic updates, but only if you intend the Twitter account as an update mechanism to alert readers of new updates to the network or to that particular blog. Otherwise, you can perhaps ask each contributor to be active in linking to their posts on their own Twitter accounts.

Have you tried auto-tweeting plugins? What has your experience been, so far?

The Perils Of Changing WordPress Themes

Daniel Scocco recently answered a reader question which asked, How frequently should we change the WordPress theme that we use for our blog?. In one line, Daniel hits the nail on the head with “As seldom as possible”.

This is a topic I’ve been discussing with others regarding the long term consequences of using and changing WordPress themes. Immediately from a branding point of view, you don’t want to change themes every other week or every other month for that matter. It’s best to find a design you can stick with for a prolonged period of time not only to build your identity, but give readers a feeling of expectation. When your design changes numerous times a year, readers are forced to find bits and pieces of information which becomes a frustrating experience.

Another thing you want to consider before plunking down on a specific theme is the way in which you’ll present content. While that 600 pixels you used to present large images to go with your content looks good now, what if you want to change to a theme somewhere down the road which doesn’t have a 600 pixel wide content area? Thankfully, Justin Tadlock published a trick which can be used to mitigate this issue.

Overall, I agree with Daniel in that you should stick to one design for as long as possible and only do a redesign when it’s absolutely necessary or when it’s in your best interests. People don’t like change so in the end, you probably will never win that battle but changing too often too soon is much worst.

Adding Sticky Posts To Your WordPress Theme

If you’re using a WordPress theme that has yet to be updated to incorporate the newest features in WordPress 2.7 chances are, you don’t have support for sticky posts. Quick Online Tips solves this problem by providing a quick tutorial which explains how to add this feature to your theme instead of ditching it altogether.

Sticky posts are a great way to feature content for a prolonged period of time. You can also use sticky posts to highlight breaking news or special alerts. Just about every theme which supports WordPress 2.7 should have this feature in it.

Reading Books Still Important?

Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips has an interesting question worth pondering, one I’ve been thinking about myself lately and that is, is reading books still necessary? Daniel makes the case that even though there are books concentrated on a specific subject, we now have access to wikis, forums, blogs, and social networks which all provide a huge amount of information without having to turn a page.

I think reading books IS still important. Not only from the literacy standpoint, but also as a form of necessary brain food. Reading a physical object such as a book allows your mind to concentrate on one thing while generally, reading stuff on the web is hard due to the large amount of distractions competing for your eyeballs. The problem I have with reading books is that for starters, I never seem to have any time to dedicate to them. Also, I can’t help but think that I would be reading more up to date information about the particular subject if I were reading about it online. I have an entire bookcase that is filled with interesting books where I have yet to read the first page.

How about you though? Is reading books still necessary?

Free StudioPress Themes And Support

Brian Gardner who is most well known for his WordPress Themes is offering up a special deal for those looking to fight breast cancer while also receiving themes and support for free. Here is the deal:

I am offering a free StudioPress theme + support package for anyone who donates $50, and a free Pro Plus All-Theme package (all themes + support) for anyone who donates $150.

On August 7th 2009, Brian will be walking 60 miles for the Chicago Breast Cancer 3 day walkathon. Before he can participate however, he will need $2,300.00 for the event. So if you are looking at getting one of those sweet themes Brian has developed while at the same time, supporting a noble cause, now would be a good time to act.

What Makes a Good WordPress Theme? Tell Us And Win a Free Premium Themes Club Account

Premium Themes Club has launched, in partnership between Splashpress Media and R.Bhavesh of CSSAce.com.

Premium Themes Club exemplifies an exciting new idea in sharing premium WordPress themes with the community. You don’t have to spend money each time you want to try out a new theme. But rather, by being part of the Club, you get access to a wide array of expertly-crafted WordPress themes for your blog. You can download and re-download to your heart’s content. There’s no limit to what you can do with Club themes, as these are lightweight but powerful designs that can be adapted to any need, whether it’s a blog, online magazine, or even a corporate website.

As part of the launch, PTC is offering Performancing readers the chance to get free Club memberships (worth $150 per year). Simply answer this question on your own blog:

What Makes a Good WordPress Theme? Why?

It’s up to you what you want to answer. Is it browser compatibility? Is it being lightweight? Is it stand-out graphics? Is it the sidebar layout? Typeface? It’s up to you. Just be sure to answer why, as that would help the folks at the Club develop better themes.

We’ll then give the first 10 good answers free Club memberships. By “good” I mean something with substance, and at least an explanation why that particular aspect of a WordPress theme is the most important one.

The only catch is that you’ll need to post your answer on your own blog (do remember to link to premiumthemesclub.com), and then leave a comment on this particular post. It’s up to you how you want to write your answer, and what title to use, of course.

The Club already has about 30+ premium themes available for download (these are also available for individual purchase). Aside from Club membership, the Club also offers an opportunity to earn, through the affiliate program. Do check out updates at premiumthemesclub.com or follow @premiumclub on Twitter.

Folks connected with Splashpress and CSSAce are, of course, ineligible. As are Hive members already given free access.