Here is a short list of useful reading for those of you just dipping a toe into the blogging waters, or for those of you who are looking for some new tips for bettering your blogging experience. I will possibly be updating this list as new resources emerge.

What Makes a Good Blog/Good Writing

What Makes for a Good Blog? by Merlin Mann (Aug 19 2008) – Merlin’s Blog is a good one to have on hand for your “inspiration” list. Start with this post, which is pretty self-explanatory.

How to Blog: Video - An hour long presentation and accompanying slide deck of a talk given by the aforementioned Merlin Mann in September 2008. (Skip to 00:04:00 to avoid the “housekeeping” junk) Some great stuff about motivations, authentic voice, “niche”, audience, and quality of content) “What is the one thing that only you can do/say?”

Bloggers Beware? (My Post – 7/21/2008) – A post I wrote several months ago about best-practices for citing other websites in your blog posts.

Monetizing Your Blog

Review of Blogging to the Bank 3.0 by Rob Benwell (My Post – 11/4/2008) – A quick read, basic e-book about having a monetized blog.

How to Make Money From Your Blog by Steve Pavlina (5/3/2006) – Though this post is a few years old now, it has some great info. Read it more for the strategy and general tips, rather than as an exhaustive guide to every possible blog income stream.

ProBlogger.Net Darren Rowse’s Website all about blog monetization

Blog SEO, Promotion, etc

How to get your blog posts onto Facebook (My Post – 11/11/2008) – Step-by-step instructions for getting Facebook to pull your blog posts onto your profile.

In support of an article I wrote for my e-zine today, “The Problem with Flash” I have compiled a few sites that show excellent graphical design without being constructed entirely in Flash.

 

Examples of What Can Be Done Without Flash:

http://www.insuranceofcharleston.com/
Shows what can be done graphically with a traditionally conservative business industry.

http://www.keithkent.ie/
Click the links. You probably won’t believe this is done without Flash, but it is. Those effects are created using JavaScript and JQuery.

http://www.ndesign-studio.com/
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
Gorgeous use of background images by talented illustrator and designer, Nick La.
(in case you can’t get enough - a whole gallery of these full-bleed background designs: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/80-large-background-websites/

http://www.csszengarden.com/
A classic of amazing CSS design. (Click through all the designs in the right-hand menu.)

http://www.dantestyle.se/
Another portfolio that proves Flash isn’t necessary for sexy effects.

http://www.floggedmagazine.com/
Shows the limitless design options of HTML.

 

Galleries of Great Non-Flash website design:

http://www.cssreboot.com/

http://designshack.co.uk/gallery/layout/other/

http://www.cssimport.com/

http://www.cssbeauty.com/gallery/

An Example of a Hybrid Site

Lest you think I detest Flash in all its incarnations, a sensible example of using Flash elements in an otherwise standard website.

http://www.dev.bumpnetworks.com/
Only the top graphic of the logo and lizard is Flash on this site.

I love Content Management Systems and now always use them for my clients’ websites – no matter how “small” their site is. 

If you are thinking about moving to a CMS for your website, I say GO FOR IT! The flexibility it offers is totally worth it. There are a lot of options, both free (usually open source) and paid. If you want to research different ones, check out this site: http://cmsmatrix.org (ugly, but useful – though keep in mind that not all the listings are updated frequently, so you should check the CMS’s website for the latest info.)

The CMS I personally use for all my client’s websites is called umbraco (http://www.umbraco.org) My experience is with .Net (Microsoft) programming languages, which is why having an ASP.Net CMS is important for me, as a developer. This would be less an issue from a content producer’s/site owner’s view point.

The things I like the best about umbraco:

• free and open-source
• allows for ANY visual design (including those using JavaScript and Flash)
• extremely flexible and easy to develop for
• it’s very simple to build a site using search engine optimization best practices
• adding Google Analytics and other services is super easy
• can integrate any other .Net system in one way or another (most useful for more advanced applications)
• friendly and responsive community and core developer team
• attractive and “modern” looking backend (what the content producer and developer sees and works with)
• basically ANYTHING can be done with an umbraco site with some more advanced programming

The things that would be important to a content producer are somewhat different. Take a look here: http://umbraco.org/tour and click the big life vest (“For end users”) for some examples.

The only thing I would caution about umbraco, is that due to its flexible and customizable nature, setting up a website in it is somewhat more complex than some other “just install it” systems (and if you are not that technically inclined or want an exact conversion of a current website to umbraco, some professional developer assistance is required), but once your site is set up, it’s very easy for the content producers to use.

If you have a current website and plan to keep the same visual design and content layout, you will need to select your CMS carefully, since some of them have limited design options (frequently using a concept of “modules”, which is essentially little boxes of content), or insisting on 2 or 3 column design, or forcing you to use a certain “template” design which has limited customization options. So keep that in mind.

This is one of the big things I like about umbraco, since it doesn’t limit your design in any way and can produce web standards compliant code. (Which helps your site look similar in different browsers, and allows for better SEO indexing, etc.)

If you’d like to get an idea of the variety of sites that can be designed using umbraco, you can see sites I’ve done in it:

Generous Orthodoxy – a content-rich site I implemented for a minister

The Heart and Soul Fund – a non-profit website

Booker T Washington Learning Center – another non-profit organization website

Floyd Innovations - my consulting website

Whole Web Impact – my online marketing for independent professionals website

And also there is an international portfolio of umbraco sites by different designers.

So, I just figured out how to get the new version of Facebook to “import” my blog posts. The key will be to see if it will automatically update when I post a new one.
UPDATE: 11/25/2008: I have been watching this, and though there might be a slight delay, the posts do automatically show up on my Facebook “Wall” – with a nice little excerpt and a link to the whole post.

In case you want to know how to accomplish this with your own blog and your Facebook profile, here are the steps:

 

1. You need to know the RSS Feed URL for your blog. If you don’t know this, go to your blog and look for an RSS icon:
    
   The link associated with this would be your RSS feed URL.
2. Log into your FaceBook profile.
3. On your main profile page, click on the “Settings” link above your “Wall”:
    
4. Click on “other services”:
   
5. Click on “Blog/RSS”:
   
6. Put your RSS Feed URL in the box and click “Import”:
   
7. Click on the “Wall” tab to see the results:
   
8. You should see a list of your imported posts:
   
   

 

If you plan on having a business based solely online, Blogging to the Bank 3.0 is a good, quick way to get started with a proven business plan. At only 58 pages, it is a quick read, but everything is presented in a step-by-step manner which even a technology novice should be able to follow easily.

If your business is only partially based on blogging (as a marketing supplement to your website, etc), some of the additional monetization strategies Benwell outlines might not be completely appropriate, unless you can add them subtly to your blog, but all of the other content is relevant for any type of blogging.

One strong point of this e-book is the simple WordPress installation instructions, which detail getting a hosting account setup and WordPress loaded. (Benwell believes as I do that it is essential for you to fully control your own domain and web space.)

For those who might already have a blog, or are not using WordPress, the chapters on “Content” and “Web 2.0 Strategies” will be useful.

For those of you who are just getting into search engine optimization (SEO), the chapters on “Market Research & Keyphrase Lists” and “Advanced SEO Techniques” will get you up to speed quickly.

Many of the techniques I advocate, including building backlinks through article syndication and forum participation are mentioned.

Overall I reccommend this to anyone interested in using a blog for business.

You can get your copy here: Purchase Blogging to the Bank 3.0 online

Yesterday's On the Media program had a fascinating segment about the Associated Press cracking down on bloggers who post excerpts and link to their content. Here is a summary of the story. You can read the transcript or listen to the mp3:

Unfair Use?

July 18, 2008

When the Associated Press busted a little-known website for posting excerpts from AP stories, the blogosphere responded with indignation. After all, appropriating content with a link back to its source is common practice. Media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan looks at the ongoing battle between blogs and the mainstream media.

Source: On The Media: Transcript of "Unfair Use?" (July 18, 2008)

So what gives? And should YOU be worried about blogging for your business? First of all, I don't think you should be giving up blogging just yet. You just need to be conscious of the best ways to go about it.

In regards to the Associated Press, perhaps your best bet is to link to the article in question in a smaller, local paper's website. These local newspapers are AP's customers and will appreciate the traffic your post will bring them.

The most important thing is to follow the basic blogging best practices as elucidated in the OTM story by their guest Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, and a professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia:

You pick up enough text to get to the gist of the story to which you’re referring. You pick up the controversial part of a statement that you want to criticize. You make sure to embed it within a larger conversation of commentary. And all of that is classic fair use.

So most bloggers in most situations are actually, whether they know it or not, behaving according to the core principles of fair use. And that’s because fair use really does ultimately depend on common sense industry standards.

So, some quick tips:

1. Don't copy & paste and entire story - Not only is this considered copyright infringement, but it makes for a really dumb blog post. You are supposed to be adding something to the conversation, or just pointing out something to your readers. There is no benefit to reposting content available elsewhere.
2. Always include the relevant links back to source articles - so you needn't worry about #1, above.
3. Include appropriate credits when applicable - the source, author, etc, can all give context to your citation.
4. Have something meaningful to say that relates the content to yourself or your business - your readers are reading YOU for a reason. They will get more value if you can make it relevant to them.

So, keep blogging!

 I just read this little article about some new studies about choice (emphasis is mine):

New research shows that such daily decisions eat up limited mental resources, ultimately rendering our self-control into mush. Which means making too many decisions might be why many people can't stick to a diet, finish a big project or even complete simple daily tasks.

"It's a strange paradox because human beings are drawn to choice," said study co-author Kathleen Vohs, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "We love having more choices, but at the same time the human psyche is easily overcome by them."

So, how does this relate to your business website? If you don't yet have a business website, or if you are dissatisfied with your current site, quite possibly the reason you haven't made any progress on this important project yet has to do with the number of choices you face: 

• HOW to get your site up (DIY, Sitebuilder software, professional developer...)
• WHAT your site should look like and contain
• HOW it should be organized
• HOW to promote it effectivly

Each of these choices requires huge amounts of mental energy, research, comparison of this option vs. that option. These are not simple choices and frequently include a feeling of permanance - once you make a decision, it is expensive and difficult to change it - if possible at all.

No wonder you haven't tackled this yet!

If inertia is gripping your business website project and keeping it from getting off the ground, I hope you will consider contacting me. I want to help you understand the various options in simple terms, without any research on your part, and guide you through a step-by-step process that will take your big website project and reduce it to very do-able easy actions. 

The article's conclusion:

Choice strategies

Vohs said deferring decisions you don't really care about to someone or something else is a good idea to reserve brain power to stick to your guns on things you do care about.

"If you're on a diet, follow a dietary plan to limit your choices. If you don't care what you do with your significant other this weekend, politely defer that decision to them," Vohs said. "Putting the burden on someone else seems might seem mean, but if a goal is really important to you, it's a fantastic idea."

Now, doesn't that sound like a good idea?

Source: Daily Decisions Make Mush of Your Mind | LiveScience

Still questing for the best in desktop blogging tools...

ScribeFire installs into the Firefox browser, which is interesting because you can click between tabs in the upper area, while editing your posts below:

But this means you are dealing with a squished web browsing experience as well as a squished editing experience. Opening a new Firefox window for ScribeFire would take care of this, I imagine.

Account Setup

Setup using the account wizard's "Custom Blog" options was pretty straightforward. I didn't encounter any errors.

Post Editor

The WYSIWYG editor includes the expected basic options (no tables, etc, though for blogging that isn't necessarily a bad thing), with the ability to switch over to HTML view or "Live Preview" as well. (It doesn’t preserve your location in the document when switching to HTML view and has no syntax formatting/highlighting, however.)

Due to the limited WYSIWYG options, the code stays pretty clean. I noticed that if you copy and paste HTML into a post (from a webpage, for instance) it preserves the HTML associated with it (h1 tags, etc.) There doesn't seem to be CSS integration, so you can’t easily assign your own classes (without editing the HTML), though you can set formatting changes to be saved in CSS rather than HTML (in the Settings).

It had problems with code - if I pasted HTML code into the WYSIWYG editor, it correctly encoded it and showed the code, but after publishing, it had converted it so that the HTML output was displayed instead. This is actually a HUGE shortcoming which will make this software useless to techie-bloggers.

Images

You can easily copy & paste images directly into the posts, however I found that upon publishing, the images were not automatically uploaded and resulted in missing chunks (represented by little grey boxes):


So, you can upload an image via FTP or the API while adding it to your post. No fancy formatting or cropping options (or alt tags/captions either).

Spell Checking

Inline spell check is provided by Firefox:

Posting

Clicking the "Publish to " button results in some nice easy to understand options:

("View this Blog" opens your blog homepage in the web browser area above.)

But the problem I noticed was that if you "Keep Content" and make changes and then "Publish" - it creates another post rather than overwriting the existing post, which is really annoying. However, if you DO NOT choose the "Keep Content", and instead just click on your new post in the "Posts" list in the right sidebar, you will have the ability to "Publish as Edit" or "Delete Post".

Working Offline

Though you can easily access and edit existing posts by choosing them from the "Posts" tab:


I couldn't locate any offline saved post files which might be accessible while not connected to the internet.

Blog Options

I was able to check off my Categories (called "tags" in the software, which seems to have eliminated the actual "Tags" (aka keywords) which were nowhere to be found.)

Interesting Features

There is a button to "Save as Note", but I was unable to figure out what that might be, other than kind of like a draft of the post accessible from the "Notes" tab of the right sidebar.

Final Opinion

For Firefox lovers, ScribeFire is a nice and generally bug-free tool. For those looking for a more robust blogging tool which can also be used offline, it might be less ideal.

How to Get It

Name: ScribeFire
Platform: Any with Firefox installed
Version Reviewed: v. 1.4.2
Price: FREE
Website: http://www.scribefire.com and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730

So, here is another desktop blogging tool I am testing. Let’s see how it stacks up.

Account Setup

To use with BlogEngine.Net, you need to choose "MetaWeblog API" and I had a bit of trouble because it asks you to point to a file called XML-RPC:

Setting up Post2Blog for use with BlogEngine.net

And worse, suggests that it will be in a php file. So, if you put in a link to "metaweblog.axd" as is suggested by the BlogEngine.Net documentation, you will most likely get an error (at least I did). Here is how to get around that - put in "rsd.axd" instead. This should allow you to finish the New Account Wizard. Of course, then you will possibly get another error when you actually try to connect to your blog (to "Update Blogs and Categories", for instance) so this is where you Edit your profile and change it to "metaweblog.axd." At least these gymnastics worked for me.

Post Editor

The main workspace is a full-featured WYSIWYG editor, with the ability to switch over to HTML view as well. (Unfortunately it doesn’t jump to the current area in the HTML file when you switch over.) It includes all the goodies you’d expect and works well. Keep in mind, though, that as with most WYSIWYGs, the generated HTML can get unwieldy with extra tags and things like unexpected font tags, etc. There isn’t any CSS integration, so you can’t easily assign your own classes. Also, there isn’t any syntax highlighting or formatting in the HTML view.

Images

A very convenient feature (especially for people grabbing screenshots or pieces of larger images) is the ability to just copy & paste images into a post. When you click in your post and Paste, you get the image properties dialog box:

Image Properties Dialog

Which allows you some nifty options like automatically converting the image to a web-friendly type, assigning a caption, creating a linked thumbnail, and adding a (sort of ugly) drop-shadow. Some caveats - in order to have the caption show the way it does, tables are drawn around images along with some extra font tags, etc.:

Spell Checking

Inline automatic spell-checking (like in MS Word) is a great feature for those who like it (and can easily be turned off for those who don’t), and you can also set an option to run the spell checker before you publish your post.

Posting

I encountered some problems while posting, which might be due to some of the more crazy HTML, or maybe the problem with categories, or who knows what... It deleted the post title, which I had to restore in BlogEngine.Net. 

Working Offline

There is a nice interface to view & select the current posts:

But when opening posts, it seems that the images were all broken - they were pointing to local temp files rather than the published online images, which I think would be more correct, especially once a post has been published. There is an option under the Tools menue to "Download all images as local images", but clicking that didn't seem to do anything to fix the issue. 

Blog Options

Post2Blog didn’t read my Categories correctly - it shows the descriptions rather than the category names (which also means that any categories which don’t have a descriptions are totally missing). I’m not sure if this is an error with the program, or with the implementation of MetaWeblog that BlogEngine.Net uses...

I didn't see anywhere that Tags (aka keywords) could be assigned to a post.

Interesting Features

"Portable Version" allows you to create a version with all your settings that can be run from USB flash drives etc.

Firefox & Internet Explorer Add-ins for fast blogging from webpages.

"Quick  Snippets" allow you to define chunks of text/HTML which can be quickly inserted, and you can setup abbreviated text which when typed will be automatically replaced with the defined text/HTML. This is a good way to add support for additional HTML tags, or speed up the inserting of common stuff (for instance, a link to your company website whenever you mention your company).

Integration with popular online services includes special support for Flickr photos, Amazon, Adsense,Chitika eMinimall, and Tagging Services (Technorati, Del.icio.us, Buzzwords, 43 Things, etc)

Colored Syntax highlighting for various programming & markup languages. Just select some text and choose Insert > Highlighted Code... You can choose the language and font:

Keep in mind that the code isn't perfect - see my syntax highlighted HTML, above (also, I added the tabs & line breaks - it doesn't preserve them when you paste the code in)

Insert > Current Music exists, but when I attempted to use it, it insisted on opening iTunes, even though I already had Windows Media Player running, so I guess it only works with iTunes. 

Final Opinion

Generally there is a lot to reccommend this software, but it's implementation in relation to BlogEngine.Net isn't that great. There are some very basic things that hinder using it, specifically, how it handles images and categories and its lack of support for Tags/Keywords. Since this used to be a fully-supported paid product and is now in the unsupported freeware category, I have some concerns that it won't soon be updated or enhanced.

How to Get It

Name: Post2Blog [Bytescout]
Platform: Windows
Version Reviewed: v. 3.01
Price: FREE
Website: http://post2blog.com