PureBlogging

I know a lot of us are accustomed to personalizing everything we come in contact with. Things like cars (gotta get that cool stereo system), phones (all the ringtones that are happening), and blogs. When it comes to your own personal space on the tubes, what can you do to personalize your blog?

Well, let’s take my personal blog, as an example. (No really, take it). You can see that I started with Brian Gardner’s “Vertigo Red” theme. Now, I have to say that I really like his themes (all of them) and their simplicity, and they are so clean and not over laced with junk. You could really do a lot with an easy to understand theme and a little bit of knowledge of HTML and/or CSS.

What I did first was to open up the header image in Fireworks and change it around to a color that more suits my style, silver. Thought I’d say pink, didn’t ya? This particular theme had a logo embedded on to the header, so I Googled “R logos” and found a nifty logo for a restaurant with an “R” in it. I blocked out the name of the establishment, changed the “R” color and put my name at the bottom. Not too hard to do in Fireworks.

Also, I changed the hover on the links from a light gray to a dark red. Another thing I wanted to change was the titles of the objects on the sidebar. I am more of a “new stuff/old stuff” type of person, so this reflects my personality.

So, it just goes to show you, I’m a beginner at hacking themes, but look what I did. Imagine what you could do if you know more.

Hack away!

____________________
My name is Roberta Ferguson and I’ll be putting my two cents in here and there regarding the very basics of blogging. Even though a lot of you already know about some of this stuff, some don’t. My normal haunt is music blogging at Earsucker, but what I’ve learned in my journey in blogging, I’ll be telling you here.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Keep Them Coming
Content of course is the driving force of any blog, you either have it or you don’t. No matter what your niche or non-niche is, it is your content that grabs a reader. But do you have side factors that are scaring readers away? With this post I am starting a series called “Keep Them Coming” that dives into this very subject.

Item 1: Do Not Display Skim Stats
If you want to be successful and “make money online” as most say, or just be successful at having many readers, you have to continue to gain new readership. So flat out you have to impress the heck out of a first time reader. Great stats are something that come with time on a blog with great content. Eventually, great content will bring you loyal readers and all of a sudden your Technorati Rank shoots down, your Google Page Rank shoots up, and your RSS Subscriber totals increment like crazy. But until that happens, do not display stats that will scare away new readers! All of these widgets and plugins are very attractive and easy to use, but unless you have stats worth bragging about, hold off and wait until you do.

Your Alternatives
You have to remove those stat items, but those links they come with are very important. I’m sure there are a magnitude of different stat plugins and widgets out there, but here are a few examples with the common ones I see. Instead of the feedburner widget showing less that 50 readers, have an eye catching rss image that links to your feed. Instead of one of the technorati plugins displaying your really high rank , just have a favorite me link. If your Alexa rating is really high, do not even display it at all. My suggested thresholds for displaying this info would be as follows: feedburner [50 or more]; technorati rank [50k or less]; alexa [100k or less]. Anything outside of these thresholds may give an inexperienced feeling to the blog and scare potential readers away.

Conclusion
A new reader came to your site byway of some kind of referral. Whether it just be a link, backlink, or reference on another blog or perhaps a google search result. The door has been opened, and your referred page has been delivered to them. If they like it, and I mean really like it, they still may never come back and be a repeat reader. The post they just read was amazing, but they looked at your widgets/plugins in your sidebar as well and noticed that the reporting numbers are very unfavorable. So in my mind that would say that even though this page or post was excellent, the normal content must not be any good since the stats are not very impressive. So I basically just read a diamond in the rough and there is no need to continue reading anything else. This is where you will see a 1 page visit entry and exit in your reporting logs.

This kind of view of things is used all the time! Ever notice that half filled tip jar at restaurants? Did you know that most places will not start with an empty tip jar. Somebody walking by a tip jar that is already half full, is most likely to sheepishly tip out some themselves, where if it was an empty tip jar, they may not of at all (*after all, nobody else did*).

Always try to look at your blog from an outsider’s perspective and see if there is anything that would make you not interested in it.

____________________
My name is RJ “Bobs” Matthis. David has granted me the great opportunity of guest blogging on his site. I will be chiming in from time to time on many subjects but primarily focusing on an infinite series of “Blog Scare Factors” that can impair and/or delay your growth. My personal blog can be located at blog.ReformatThis.com.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Promote Web Standards by stripping your web site for one day! This Thursday April 5th 2007 is CSS Naked Day, where for one day all sites that signup will remove CSS from their websites.

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your .

We’ve signed up and will participate… have you got what it takes?

Click here to sign up!

Popularity: 13% [?]

If you are thinking about redesigning your blog and need a little a little inspiration, here is a list that may help. Glen Wolsey has put together the “Top 10 Most Beautiful Blog Designs”, and some of these are very impressive.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the list:

What are some of your favorite designs?

Popularity: 19% [?]

Lifebits 1.0 – Minimalist theme designed for WordPress with smart screen-resolution detection and ajax search by GuillaumeB.

WordPress Invaders 1.0 – A new retro space invaders look for your blog by LinksJuice.com.

RockinPaper 3 Column 1 – A blue and grey, clean and simple theme designed with a newspaper flair for reading and customization by Cory Miller.

Spiralk2 1.0 – 2 column gray based, Clean and professional theme, based on the Loop template system of K2 by HostSeeq Designer.

Popularity: 14% [?]