We had to make a quick update today after working on some other plugins. We made a screwup that beginners would make with our function naming. Our only excuse is that namespaces are a lot more controlled in Java, where as PHP is a lot looser.
The changes are checked into WordPress directory and it is a critical update.
The plug page is here.
I like reading about Bloggers and their path to minor stardom and more importantly making a living being a blogger. For everyone who claims to make $100,000 or more (US) blogging, I believe there are actually far fewer people making fantastic living doing independent blogging. When I say independent, I mean people who have developed their business themselves and not by getting $30M in VC funding.
Darren Rowse shares his journey on how he became a problogger:
By mid December of 2004 we had pretty much decided that 2005 would see me go full time as a blogger. I’d already ditched most of my warehousing work as the earnings had continued to rise over the month or so before and the grant for my church work was going to run out early in February 2005 (we transitioned leadership of the church to more of a team thing which I still lead voluntarily).
His golden rules for blogging are:
Darren Rowse is hosting a 31 days of Blogging Course. Darren if you don’t know is the king of bloggers.
You please need to form a line and head over and sign up for the course. It starts on 1st April.
I have signed up and I have been blogging for 10 years. There is always something you can learn.
Uploaded on Flickr by dipfan
We are constantly thinking about what we are doing with our other web properties, but we never have had an issue with Blue Cow. It’s job is to bring together people who want a hosted WordPress solution (because of the flexibility it delivers) but also want to know the people that are helping them host will not leave them hanging in the wind and do actually know how to make wordpress work for them.
The reason we started Blue Cow was because we kept coming across people who want the flexibility of a hosted wordpress solution, but came up against a brick wall working with other hosted service providers who don’t focus on the application but the hosting bits and bytes.
And herein is the sermon for today. You really need to think what you want to and be able to commit it to one or two paragraphs.
Once you do that, it becomes a lot easier to make other decisions.
Herein endth the lesson and we will now provide some linkth goodnessth to the Pajama Professional. Sara has a series on good content and focus.
This weekend is Earth Hour. As you can see from the banner at the top of the page, we are participating.
If you want to participate, you can get the plugin from Brave Code here.
An update of the Date Exclusion Plugin has been released into the WordPress Plugin repository. You can find the plugin page here.
We have added an option settings page, added the ability to remove the date from the front page, the category and tag pages.
Things to Do for Version 1.3
Building traffic to your website/blog is a thankless tedious task. It is definitely less fun than creating content, playing with themes and plugins etc. However, you guessed it, it is a necessary evil and you have to do it everyday.
Create a list
Give and you shall receive. Be generous with backlinking and people will return the favor. Creating lists is a great way to give link goodness.
Comment, Comment, Comment
Set up a regime to comment on at least 10 blogs a day. Don’t comment spam but create interesting relevant commentary. You will be amazed at the response you get.
Submit articles
I Use ezines the top article submission site. It is edited so it takes about 7 days to get an article approved. However once you reach 10 articles you go into auto mode and can post away (within reason).
Social Bookmarking
There are soooo many sites. I use Twitter, BlogLog, Stumbleupon, reddit, Digg and Mixx. Automate the process using Onlywire.
Use Free Blog Type Sites
Use with caution. Do not set up spam blogs with keyword stuffing etc, you will get pinged and all your traffic effort will be for naught. However there are ways to create valuable content using WordPress.com and Blogger. The others, Vox, Squidoo etc are simply a means for the owners to make money on your content. You can safely avoid these.
Find Backlinks
Set up a google alert with the backlink term. In google the command is link: so link:http://www.bluecowhosting.com/
This gives you a good idea on who is linking to you and you can return the favor.
So….get to work….. 
It can be really tough sometimes coming up with content for your blog, but sometimes it isn’t. If you are stuck, then here is a post about lists. However if you are like me, sometimes you just have something to say and you want to say it. That being said, there are some tips to making posts compelling, even if it is about a stitch that you have just learn’t.
I am a big one for images in your post. I invariably have an image at the start to draw the reader into the post. Coupled with the headline, it should be enough to start the reader down the path. My favorite image repository is Flickr. Flickr is super blog friendly. They explictly support Creative Commons License which means you don’t have to look over your shoulder for pouncing lawyers to make your blog look really good.
Every wanted to get that cool lightbox AJAX popout on your blog?
Well now you can. We have the Shadowbox JS plugin working on Kiwibloke (post here). Click on the photo at the top and you get the Flickr Photostream it came from shown here (click on the picture).
Uploaded on Flickr by Seamoor - Click for Photostream
The big benefit is that your reader does not leave your website and get distracted by another site.
Here is a link for a Youtube fullscreen without going to Youtube. Click on photo for Youtube Goodness.
Uploaded on Flickr by studio 520 - Click for Video
Flickr Requirements:
You need to point directly to the Photostream slideshow which you can get from the photoset page thus:
<a rel=”shadowbox” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/seamoor/sets/72157615617675279/show/“>
You must have the rel=”shadowbox” tag in place for the plugin to detect lightbox behavior otherwise it will go to the page in question.
Youtube Requirements:
The trick here is to point directly to the flash file, not the Youtube page. But it is really simple to do.
This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvZOGzfqWU
changes to: http://www.youtube.com/v/6cvZOGzfqWU
to get this link:
<a rel=”shadowbox” href=”http://www.youtube.com/v/6cvZOGzfqWU”>
There are other tricks, let us know if you are having problems with a particular site and we can work on it.
There is never enough time in the day to work on your blog. As I have said before, content creation really only occupies 10% of your time, the other 150% is building a traffic strategy. One of these things is RSS readers. I believe these people are worth 10 times the drive by reader because they are consistent and quantifiable.
That being said, RSS feed management is a negleted part of management. However DailyblogTips has 50 steps to gain RSS subscribers, it’s time to get cracking and work the RSS goodness.