Blogging

[Advanced] So you’re planning to launch a new blog but don’t want to reveal it to anyone quite yet, for a variety of reasons. You want to be able to view individual posts as they would normally appear, but neither want them indexed nor visible to anyone. Or you want to test some themes on an existing blog without your visitors having to see.

There are a few ways to accomplish either, and it’s relatively easy. Just make sure you take precautions to back up your existing blog and database. (I’ve wiped out a few sites. Fortunately, they never had more than about 9 posts, and could be fixed manually.)

Subdomain Method for Existing Blogs

This method is useful for testing changes to a blog that already exists. It amounts to creating a test blog on a subdomain. Your hosting account must allow you to not only set up a subdomain for your, but also access the existing database. You should know that many hosts do not allow this. And as I’ve only tested on WordPress this method may not work for you on other blog platforms.

1. Create a subdomain. So if your blog is at http://www.myblogdomain.com/, then create something like test.myblogdomain.com. You’ll need to do this in your hosting control panel, not your blog platform control panel.
2. Install your blog platform on the subdomain. If you have “one-click” blog setup through your host, just make sure that you specify the subdomain during installation, else you may wipe out your existing blog.
3. Tweak the test blog’s configuration to access the real blog’s database. If your hosting provider does not allow this, you will need to backup the main database and import into the test database.
4. Turn off access to your test blog to search engine bots. Newer versions of WordPress have a “privacy” setting. For older versions, look under the “Writing” options of “Options” and get rid of the entries in the “Update Services” section that “ping” one or more blog pinging services. For other blog platforms, you will have to look for something similar.
5. Make your changes and test them. No one will know that the test blog exists, provide you don’t click on any links to either the main blog nor outside your domain. Also make sure not to change the database or you may affect the main blog. (That is, if the test blog is accessing the original database.)
6. When you’re done, just get rid of the test blog and apply changes to the main blog, if desired. Just make sure you don’t get over-zealous and delete the wrong database. [I would highly recommend backing up the main blog’s database before starting this process.]

This method is good for when you have an existing blog and want to test a few themes and plugins before going live. But what if you want to launch a new blog and don’t want anyone to see any of the content until you’re done tweaking?

Hide Your Home Page Method

This method is ideal for a new blog. No one knows your URL yet, and posts and pages are not indexed.

Last year, I came across a WordPress plugin that disallows access to the home page, unless you are an admin. However, I never managed to get it to work, as simple as it was. My method requires no plugin, but does require a bit of code tweaking. The general essence of it is to tweak your theme’s main page code. What you’ll do depends on both your specific theme and your blogging platform. My specific instructions will be for WordPress’ “default” theme, for simplicity. Here is the general procedure:

Whether your theme uses a single template file for rendering the home page, post (permalink) pages, and archive pages, the process is the same. Note that for most themes I’ve tried (a good several dozen), all had a different template file for “page” pages. (That’s “pages” in the blog sense, where the page is not part of the reverse chronological bunch of post pages.)

1. Backup your theme’s files.
2. Tweak your home page’s template file.
1. In WordPress, that file is called index.php but in your WP panel’s Theme Editor, it may be labelled something like “Main index”. Select that file for editing. and look for the conditional code that determines whether the URL being rendered is the home page, a post (permalink) page, or an archive page. [Not a “Page” page, though.] Note that even if you have a theme that uses a separate template file for the home page than for post pages, the process is the same.
2. In the conditional code of the template file that checks whether the URL being rendered is the home page, remove any code that displays post content.
3. Replace that code with a message or graphic stating that the blog is “in beta” or whatever you like.
3. Remove all links in the sidebar template(s).
4. Remove any advertising in all templates, in case having ads on pages with no content violates some network’s TOS.
5. Turn on the privacy setting to block search engines. In some blog platforms, you may need to disable the “ping” settings. That way, when you post a new article, the URL will not be sent out to various blog pinging services. If that happens, then your whole effort is pointless.
6. Tweak themes and plugins, add new content. You’ll be able to access specific posts and pages from your blog platform’s control panel. However, if you try to view the home page, it’ll be blank except for your message.
7. When you’re ready to go live, just replace the template files with your backup copy. Remember to turn off privacy settings and add any pinging services you want to access.

There’s generally no need to do anything to the “page” template because it will not affect the home page. We also don’t need to do anything to the post template, only the code that renders the home page.

Keep in mind that both methods above fall apart if you click on any link to an URL outside your domain, since those sites could have a list of referring URLs. This of course exposes your otherwise hidden blog

In the last month I’ve fired a client, turned down several projects, dropped three of my blogs and brought in writers for another one.

The upside? I now have more time to concentrate on my main project, more time to blog here at Performancing and most importantly, zero stress about work not getting done.

The downside – none, actually. I’m making the same amount of money as before (a bit more actually), am stress-free and have been able to put more time into the projects I really care about, allowing me to move them along at 3 times the speed than I would have otherwise.

In short, doing less work will actually make me more money this year.

But it’s not all about the money – even though many of us slave day and night for it (or used to) and worry about it all the time.

By consolidating and concentrating your efforts on fewer, more important things you’ll be able to grow your blogs faster, build a bigger community of readers and have more fun while doing it.

However, before you jump to the comments to argue or (worse) go delete all your blogs, I should point out that there is clear-cut right or wrong between having 20 blogs or 2 blogs.

The key to all of it is you, and how you manage your blogging.

I wrote about this dilemma in more detail last year, but in a nutshell:

1. Don’t launch more than 1 blog per month if you are the main blogger for that site.
2. Don’t be involved full-time in more than two blogs at a time – this involves blogging, marketing, participating in comments, strategizing for future growth, etc.
3. In the beginning, your blogs won’t be earning you enough to live on. Instead of starting new blogs:

   a) Find a system that works and helps you make money online (such as PLRPro – (disclosure – I’m a member)).

   b) Hold on to (or get) a real job.

   c) Get hold of freelance projects (what I did).

   What type of projects? Writing, programming, consulting, designing, whatever suits your skillset – and if know nothing, you can still probably write – otherwise you wouldn’t be blogging, right?

4. Blogging isn’t just about posting articles on your blog, it’s about finding out what people want to read about and then writing about that. It’s about networking with fellow bloggers and leveraging those relationships to help promote your blog. It’s about marketing your blog, because let’s face it, you’ll need to get links to your blog one way or another.

   It’s also about planning ahead, so that you know when to take your site in a particular direction, when to grow it and when to split off a section into a new site.

   If you do all of the above, two things will happen – one, you’ll have time only for a couple of blogs and two, your blogs will grow much faster.

If you are spread out too thin, you’ll lose money and traffic and stress yourself out.

If you are too focused, you’ll lose money and traffic and (almost) never make it big.

To find a balance, you need to maintain enough focus while constantly working on growing your sites.

Part of that means hiring designers, programmers and writers to work for you.

Part of that also means that you should know when you’re just churning out articles and not putting enough effort into growing your site – usually that point comes when you’ve been blogging for a while and your site’s traffic numbers have been stagnant over 2-3 months (once again, this applies more to new / young blogs).

So where do you stand? Are you spread out too thin? And are you stressed about your blogs?

Good news. Viewing your data in pMetrics from more than one day at a time has finally arrived. The calendar icon in the top right corner has been replaced by a new drop down menu that you can see in the screenshot directly to your right. The default options should please most of you, although we’d like your feedback definitely. It is still a work in progress but is well enough along that we want everyone to start using and enjoying it.

More “full months” will be available once that data has been fully summarized, which happens about every 8-10 days. May’s data actually isn’t quite finished but should be by the end of today (June 19). We also plan to add in a “More…” link right below “Two days ago” that lets you select a specific date, maybe the old calendar will popup when you click that? Not sure yet. There will also be a “Custom…” link at the bottom which will take you to a page and let you select your own date range. URL hax0rz should be able to create their own custom date ranges already, no problem, but currently data is only available back to April 25 or so.

This feature works great with the dashboard. For example, try selecting June 2007 on your dashboard, and the range of dates shown for visitors, actions etc will change to the selected range, and the “top 10” will change to the top 10 for that time period instead of just one day.

The only thing you CAN’T do (yet) is filter your visitors by referer domain or search query from more than one day, as that is not fully optimized. So if you’re viewing your dashboard for June and click “digg.com” from the incoming links list, the visitors you see as a result will only be for the “latest” date in your range, in this case that would be June 19 instead of June 1 through 19. This should be fixed in the near future, we hope.

Multi-day viewing is available to everyone right now, but in a few weeks or so it will become a premium only feature. Do enjoy, and we welcome your feedback.

Sometimes, no matter how strict and disciplined our posting schedules are, there are events that will forcibly push us out of our rhythm, such as family tragedies and emergency out-of-town trips (to places without good Net access, to boot). The longer the event, the more work gets piled up, and the greater the disorientation upon our return. That said, count me as one disoriented blogger. (I have been one for the past two weeks!)

In response to this problem of mine, I cooked up a list of activities which helped me ease myself back into the numerous problogging tasks on hand. Hope these can help future bloggers who’ll unexpectedly get yanked out of “the flow”.

Reading old blog posts – Days or weeks without blogging can dull your writing voice, as well as your vocabulary and wordplay. Sifting through your old posts will serve as the sniff of that familiar perfume that brings back the good ol’ memories.

Commenting on other blogs in your field – Well-written comments are like microcosms of blog posts; the views and thoughts contained within them can stand on their own for their author, and they elicit comments from other people as well. As such, writing comments can serve as an excellent warm-up drill. Go around a couple of good blogs in your niche and chip in your thoughts. This can be applied to other forms of online discussion, such as forums.

Randomly surfing the blogosphere – How many times have we posted about the blog posts written by other people? Other bloggers’ opinions are a potent fuel to fire up the hibernating blogger in you. Take a stroll around the blogosphere using Technorati, BlogExplosion, blog directories like EatonWeb, or even Blogspot’s Next Blog feature.

Why the “randomly”? Often, we are already familiar with the way of thinking and tone of the bloggers in our feed subscriptions and blogrolls. Random surfing can introduce us to something new, something that can shock and awe and draw forth the emotions, something that can trigger a blog posting frenzy, never mind the blog-rust.

Reading offline sources – Before going on blogging hiatus, I talked about getting blog content from offline sources. Whether you’re nicely tucked into your blog posting rhythm or totally out of it, offline material such as newspapers and magazines can provide the ammunition. If you’re having trouble consciously looking for something bloggable, you might want to try this: don’t actively look for what to blog. Just let it jump at you.

Managing blogs before writing – For your own blogs, do some blog management first before doing some blog posting. Doing those little design and SEO tweaks will get you into the doting-blog-owner mode fast. Don’t forget to check your visitor stats and ad revenue – if there’s a dip in either of the two, then you’ve got further reason to be inspired and blog again!

P.S. You might also want to check out Raj’s What To Do When You Lose Your Blogging Mojo. This related article dealt more with writer’s block than rustiness, but many of his tips can also be applied here.

I’ve been thinking about adding forums to a couple of my more successful blogs. The thought is that while blogs allow for commenting, they aren’t ideal for reader-generated content.

My worries about introducing forums are:

1. Too much moderation work
2. I’ve had too much experience with forums that get overridden with spam
3. Unlike with choosing a blog software, I don’t know the killer app for forums

So let me ask you the following questions:

1. What forum software do you recommend for both its ease of use and its rock-solid security?
2. How do you handle moderation?
3. Do you think that discussion forums can compliment a blog and help create a larger regular readership? Or do the blog comments suffice? Is there too much overlap in functionality?
4. Do you think that adding a forum is worth the effort for bloggers? Some of the time? All of the time?

If you take a look at some blogs, you may notice that they have their search bar in some odd places. Some put it in the header, some put it in the horizontal navigation bar, some in the sidebar. I personally like to have it in either the header or in the navigation menu. It seems like that’s always the first place I look when I want to find the search bar.

But getting the search bar positioned correctly can be frustrating, especially if you are using the entire header area to fit your logo.

So today, we’re going to position the search bar absolutely, within the header. I normally don’t recommend absolute positioning, because much of the time it’s not necessary, and if you can avoid it, definitely try to keep your positioning normal. But in this case, I think an exception is in order … so let’s get started!

First, let’s look at the header. For this article, I’ll use the a theme I created a while back called RockinSuckerfish (the 2 column version). Let’s look at some of the header code:

<div id=”header”>
<div class=”rss”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”feed:<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”>posts feed</a></li>
<li><a href=”feed:<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>”>comments feed</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class=”search”>
<form method=”get” id=”searchform” action=”<?php bloginfo(‘home’); ?>/”>
<input type=”text” size=”15″ value=”Search” name=”s” id=”s” />
</form>
</div>
</div>

For the time being, we’re going to ignore the “rss” div, although it is also positioned absolutely. As you can tell, the hierarchy of the markup goes like this: “header” > “search”

So let’s style the header, and position the search bar. The first thing to do is get our header styled correctly:

#header {
height: 123px;
padding: 0px;
margin: 15px 0px 0px 0px;
background: #9AB6CA url(images/header.jpg);
position: relative;
}

Your header may be different, but the one thing that you definitely need for this to work is the last style, position: relative; Without this, our absolutely positioned search form will position within the browser window instead of its parent element. By adding the position: relative; you allow a child element to be absolutely positioned within the parent.

Now, we need to position the search form. Here’s the code, then we’ll go through it:

#header .search {
position: absolute;
top: 50px;
right: 20px;
}

Now, obviously you can add whatever other styles you want, but you need to have at least this — position: absolute; — distance from either the top or bottom — distance from either the left or right. Notice I said “either/or” on those last two. Don’t do both … it probably won’t work 🙂

As you can see, I decided to position mine 50px from the top, and 20px from the right, within the header div. You can put yours anywhere you like… it’s really up to you.

Like I said, this is a neat trick when you have a pesky element that you want to position accurately and easily … but definitely don’t overuse it.

For more on absolute positioning, check out this article. It goes far deeper than this article, so if you’re interested in learning more, that’s a good place to go.

Enjoy!

Last week, Barbara Whitaker, who writes Fresh Starts, a monthly jobs column for the NY Times, contacted me about a blogger jobs listing I had posted somewhere. We had a conversation over the phone, and I sent her several URLs for her research. The net result is that I have a one paragraph mention in the NY Times’ article Can blogs be a big source of jobs? [May require free subscription]. No link, unfortunately, and not much detail, but it’s still nice. To be fair, there aren’t many outbound links in the article, period. But I’m mentioned amongst such blogging dignitaries as Robert Scoble aka the Scobleizer, Jeremy Wright/Ensight of b5media, Steve Rubel/ MicroPersuasion and others.

If you’re interested about what else I said in my conversation, here’s a synopsis, followed by a list of tips for pursuing a blogging career.

1. Blogging can be a full-time career.
2. The opportunities are out there, but true full-time positions are often part of PR/ communications jobs. Those are typically the ones that pay a nice salary – or can.
3. Freelancing can be full-time and beyond, if you have the writing and blogging skills and are willing to hire yourself out. As a long-time programmer/ consultant/ technical writer who has worked for both employers and clients, I have no problem with this. Others may feel differently. In which case, you’re best to build your own blogs.
4. I’m currently hiring for both myself and clients, and while I’m looking mostly looking for junior bloggers at present, there are positions for more advanced bloggers coming up – both from my clients as well as other sources.
5. The blogging opportunities are increasing in general. I’m bootstrapping very cautiously for my blogs because past entrepreneurial endeavors have sunk me when I expanded too fast. But there are other network owners or corporations that will likely decide to hire, either internally or on a contract basis.

I also mentioned to Barbara Whitaker the blogger jobs listings at Performancing Jobs and Problogger Jobboard, which she mentioned in the article. Consider that about a year ago, I was only working part-time on a couple of blogs. Since then, I’ve had more more work than I can handle and have ended up neglecting my own blogs as a result. It’s not hard for me to choose, though: go with what pays right now, and build up my sites on my own time.

Overall, it’s an excellent starter article about the trends of blogging jobs, and if you’re considering a full-time blogging career, you should read it. As well, here are a few tips:

1. Browse the job boards.
   Especially keep an eye Performancing Jobs and Problogger Jobboard, not to mention regular job sites. (Positions may or may not mention “blogging” in the job titles.) Also make sure you read Jim Turner’s and Tris Hussey’s One By One Media and Bloggers for Hire – the latter mentions the NY Times piece.

2. Read to keep up with the blogging industry.
   Read Performancing, Blog Herald, ProBlogger, Copyblogger, Daily Blog Tips, Dosh Dosh and so many other good ones that I apologize for not mentioning them all.

3. Be free.
   Sometimes, blogging for free could be the best thing you do. Take opportunities as a guest blogger, if they come up, and if they suit you. I started off contributing free at Performancing back in Dec 2005, and it has brought me so many opportunities that I actually often feel guilty being paid for writing here now – it’s partially why I don’t write that often. But I’ve gained nice links back to my sites as a result, and is part of what keeps me writing despite the guilt.

4. Build your brand.
   If you plan to be in this game for a long while, go register a domain in your name and build your blogging brand. Typically, first and last, followed by .com. However, variations such as Scobleizer, ChrisG, and Pearsonified work, too. Even if you don’t feel like you’re ready to maintain such a personal site, hold the name for when you’re ready and feel “expert enough”.

5. Improve yourself.
   Keep trying to improve your writing. It seems that the blogosphere is mostly forgiving of typos and the occasional poor grammar, but future credibility relies on good communication skills. While I never managed to fit in the journalism degree that I once long wanted, I did try various journalistic and storytelling exercises over time, in hopes of bettering my writing. I still occasionally suffer from weird grammatical quirks, which are likely due to English not being my mother tongue.

6. Write.
   This should be obvious, but while you’re looking for paid opportunities, you need to keep your writing up by actually blogging somewhere. While I always recommend getting your own domain, for many reasons, this isn’t always an option for everyone. So you could try a hosted platform such as LiveJournal, WordPress.com, or Blogger. Some of these do not allow you to run advertising.

7. Be equipped.
   Make sure you have a good blogging editor and that you have at least the most basic of blogging skills (researching, writing, applying hyperlinks, posting ability on the blog platform of choice). Obviously, you need access to a computer and the Internet – preferably high-speed. When you feel up to it, you might want to start learning more about link building techniques and other facets of SEO/SEM.

8. Explore alternatives.
   Remember that there are alternatives to earning a living that are indirectly related to blogging. This includes selling ebooks, giving workshops, consulting, and more.

9. Be persistent.
   If it’s important to you, don’t give up. Building your own blog takes time, promotion, networking, and persistence. If you prefer to write for others, it also takes time to establish yourself well enough that you can gain the equivalent of full-time work. Yes, there are some bloggers who earn $40K, 60K or 100K from a single blog, but they are rare – and they’ve become expert at their topic. Still, persistence might take you there someday.

10. Be yourself.
    Write in the style(s) that you’re good at. Everyone cannot be a Jack of All Blogs blogger. I made the huge mistake of thinking I could be snarky and provocative. As a result, I’ve offended a few people. Not everyone can be both publicly serious and simultaneously snarky. If you want to be both, do so anonymously. And more importantly, get your facts right – a problem I have due to a frustrating illness that causes both short-term memory loss and juxtaposition of facts and contexts. I seem to be safe if I stick to technique posts, not so much with opinion posts. My blogging takes twice as long as it probably should, but I love it anyway.

I’m sure I’ve left out a lot of tips, but those are the ones that come to mind. Blogging will open up many opportunities for people, including those that are unable to work a “regular” job. I wrote about this in a self-indulgent post, blogging can be a real job – which was inspired by Performancing alumni Chris Garrett’s Get a Real Job post. As I’ve surely said multiple times, blogging is an ideal career for me for many reasons. It could be for you as well.

Are you planning to port (move) your blog between blogging platforms. It’s no easy task under certain circumstances. Eric Giguere offers some great general tips for moving your blog.

I have a large port of seven sites from Typepad to WordPress that I’ve been putting off since last December. WordPress to WordPress is relatively easy, even between versions. However, between platforms often means a change in URL/permalink structure. In this case, I cannot just add WordPress to the existing hosting because of how Typepad works – AFAIK. So the blogs have to move to new servers.

I’ll catalog each step in the process, and will post some tips here when I’m finally done. I’m hoping to also offer a couple of free web-based tools that will help generate the necessary URL redirect rules for your .htaccess file. That means no ridiculous manual tweaks. That’s handy when you have several hundred blog posts.

If you cannot wait for my tools, however, here’s a general algorithm for redirecting your URLs (note that I’m leaving out a lot of technical details):

1. Build a list of existing permalink URLs a la the current blog platform.
2. Build the same list but with each URL paired with the post title. This is primarily for your reference.
3. Create the URL redirect rules for your new platform’s .htaccess file using the first list. (This will be the same .htaccess file you have now, if you are not moving to a different server.) Keep this list in reserve. (This is a tedious a step to do manually, but many blog platforms do not help you generate this. Unless you have a tool – such as the ones I’m working on – the only choice is manual generation.)
4. When you have time set aside for the porting between platforms – and possibly web servers – turn off commenting on your blog and stop posting. I prefer to do this sort of thing on weekends.
5. Backup the current posts using your standard method.
6. Export the content into a format that the new blogging platform can import.
7. Set up the new platform.
8. Import your old blog posts to your new platform.
9. Add the URL redirect rules to your .htaccess file.
10. Test at least a dozen old URLs and see if they redirect correctly. Use the list you created in step #2. Category pages may give you the greatest problems. In fact, some blog platforms may not have categories, so if you’re moving in that direction, your URL redirect rules may have to be manually tweaked no matter what. Either that or leave the old blog and start a new one.

There are other ways to do the redirecting – including tweaking your platform’s code – but they tend to be more complicated. Of course, if you’re fortunate enough to be moving to a blog platform that can preserve your exact URLs on it’s own, then you can ignore this list altogether. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to come across such a platform.

Eric points out that if you can keep the old blog up, do so. For example, some of my old blogs used Blogger but the .html files were hosted on my own domain. When I switched over to WordPress, I kept the old blog and just started posting new content in WordPress. It means building up a new blog from scratch, but it’s less hassle for some people. So you have to weigh the consequences of either decision: fresh new blog, with all the work that goes with building it up, or port the old one and preserve posts, authority, etc.