Blog Notes & Tools
Been a while since I have done one of these and I may just have enough information to make a really good long winded post as you all know I like to do. I have several tools that I have been using of late that I really like, a few things to complain about with a couple of tools, and a few notes about blogs in general that I would like to make. First off, my hats off to a couple of different folks (I am sure you know who you are) of late whose site I have visited and I had to ask what they were running as the CMS/backend for the system. In both cases they were running Wordpress and in both cases it did not have the feel of a blog, but rather a really nice full blown site. If you have not heard it yet, my prediction is you will see more and more of that in the next six months and Wordpress itself will evolve into even more of a full blown CMS system expanding much beyond the realm of its birth, the blog-0-sphere.
My first little aggravation is with a plugin I am running called Kontera ContentLinks. In general, I like it. I have mentioned it before – it looks at the words in a post and when it finds words it has ads for makes it a quick link for advertising revenue. It is relatively unobtrusive and when it is on shows several words at most all times in a post. The words do change from time to time on the same post depending on inventory and so on. The problem is, despite configuring it to apply to all my post automatically, it never seems to stick and stay on just exactly right. This post has it on right now according to the little check box I have as I a composing. I would wager that if I published and made another change it would turn off. Further, I have looked in the database, trying to find a place to just turn it on for every post and so far no sign of it in the tables.
…much time has passed since I first started writing this blog back sometime last week…
While I have several more things to write about in regards to blogs, I think I will share two more of them and pick up the remaining ones at a later date. First thing is that I made the choice to launch two other blogs to give an opportunity to really work on SEO (search engine optimization) with an eventual effort toward maximizing the money earning potential of the specific sites. In addition to that I have installed and maintain the back end of several blogs for other people.
The shear number of plugins that are on all those sites, mine in particular, with the frequent number of updates is enough to make a person stay busy on top of it all. New philosophy regarding that effective a couple of weeks ago is to instead just do updates on schedule. Basically once a week on the main blogs I am setting aside a time to run through the updates. On those that see less traffic and have less in the way of plugins I am planning to run through monthly. Now granted, if I get a notice of a major security flaw I will address those immediately.
Speaking of the choice to split out into three blogs, I am starting to have some second thoughts about that. I have plenty to write, but the lack of time that occurs at the same time as the motivation is making me think that maybe a blog on those sites is not the most effective tool. Perhaps a better choice is to continue all the blogging here on mephistos regardless of the topic and when the category is appropriate to push it out to the other respective sites. Of course to really make that happen I have to get busy on those other sites in a major way and at least so far I have not even really been super busy with them as blogs and pushing out the galleries for both the Lance of St. Eligius and Traveller’s Haven Farms. It is ironic given my above comments regarding Wordpress as I am thinking in the direction of Joomla for the backend.
At this point that is just a direction of thought – it is not a done deal at this point. Until the work noted above is at least started I do not anticipate any changes. And even after that it is just an idea. Anyone have comments?
** – Image from theblogtool.com website, but that is all there is at the site, so have no idea what they do.
August 30th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
I thought I wasnt going to like this blog but more I read the more I liked it.