Yesterday I wrote on how you can use images to get your best posts noticed by your visitors. If you have too many posts that you want your new visitors to check out, either create many images and rotate them like Cybernetnews does or list out the text links in an organised way like you see on Problogger.net and FreelanceSwitch.

This can be done using DOMTab. There are instructions on the site on how to use it or you could read this post by Small Potato. The one problem I have noticed about DOMTab is that it will list all the links together while the page is loading.

Many of us link to our blog’s most popular posts in the sidebar or in a separate page to show visitors that our blog is worth reading. WordPress users mostly use the Popularity Contest plugin or the Top Posts by category plugin to do this.

But how many visitors do you think will notice these text links on your sidebar? The best way to draw your visitors attention to your best posts is to replace the text links with images.

I have wrote earlier on how using images on blog posts can help grab the attention of people, the same idea can be used to get your visitors to check out your best posts too.

Skelliewag.org and Cybernetnews are some of the blogs that use this technique. They made small images and added the title of the post as text over the image and then linked those images to their best posts. Skellie currently has four static images on her blog’s sidebar with heading ‘Reader Favorites’ and Cybernetnews has many images rotated just below their main menu.

Continue reading ‘Use Images To Get Your Best Posts Noticed By Your Visitors’

Whenever you install WordPress on a blog, you will need to modify the wp-config.php file to define the WordPress configuration settings required to access your MySQL database. However, you will not need to modify the file whenever you do a WordPress upgrade.

Recently I have been seeing strange characters appearing on many of my posts and some of the pages on this blog. I tried many things but could not find out the reason for this. Yesterday after reading this post on QuickOnlineTips, I realized the reason why I was seeing the strange characters. During a recent WordPress upgrade I had upgraded my wp-config.php file too as I had seen some new additions to it.

Continue reading ‘Do Not Upgrade Your WordPress wp-config.php’

Got Banners is a WordPress Plugin that lets you randomize banners like you see on TechCrunch and John Chow’s blog. Unlike other banner rotators, Got Banners displays all the banners provided simultaneously. But, in a different random order each time.

Got Banners will be very useful for those who sell ads directly to advertisers as it will give all advertisers even exposure. Even if you don’t do direct sales you can still use this plugin to rotate affiliate banners from AdSense, Text Link Ads, Chitika eMiniMalls or any other affiliate program.

You can see this plugin in action on this blog by just refreshing the page (125×125 ads on sidebar). Download Got Banners WordPress Plugin from here

found via JohnChow.com

As there are still many people who do not know what RSS is, offering an Email Subscription form on your blog is a good way to get those people to subscribe. For those who have not done it yet, here’s how to do it:

• Login to your FeedBurner account
• Click on your Feed title
• Click ‘Email Subscription’ on the Publicize Tab

Once there choose Feedburner or FeedBlitz to be your feed-via-email service provider. After activating the service, you will get the HTML code for the subscription form that you should copy and paste to your blog.

Continue reading ‘Increase Your Blog’s Subscribers By Offering Email Subscription’

Have you ever been in a situation where you have an idea for a post but then later you don’t remember it when you want to write the post? This has happened to me many times. I mostly get good ideas when I am away from my PC and later won’t remember what it was.

To prevent this from happening, I recently created a text file named ‘topost.txt’ on my desktop and whenever I get an idea for a post I open the text file and write down a rough title for the post and describe the content of the post in a few words.

If my computer is not turned on at the moment I get the idea, I write down the idea on a piece of paper and place it on my computer table so that I remember to add it to the text file the next time I turn on my PC.

Ever since I started doing this I have managed to collect many ideas for posts. Try this for your blog too and maybe you will never run out of ideas on what to blog.

Have you fed your new blog with many quality posts and yet find that your blog is not read by others? Content is surely king but it isn’t enough to increase your blog subscribers. People need to know that your blog exists and for that you need to promote your blog.

There are many ways to promote your blog and get new readers. Some include commenting regularly on other blogs having similar content to that of yours, advertising on popular blogs in your niche and submitting your posts to Digg, Stumble Upon and Del.icio.us.

But one of the best way is to guest blog on popular blogs in your niche. By guest blogging you get visitors to your blog who are already interested in the topic you write and therefore are more likely to convert to regular readers whereas visitors from sites like Digg, Stumble Upon and Del.icio.us mostly will just read your post once and never return again.

Every blog has their own set of readers, and guest blogging on it exposes your blog to them. Though not all of those readers will check out your blog, they will surely notice your blog name and the next time you guest blog on the same blog or another blog they read, they will want to check out your blog.

While regular commenting and advertising on blogs in your niche will help you get new readers for your blog, you can get more new readers if you guest blog as it is the post that readers pay more attention to and not the sidebar or the comments.

Continue reading ‘Get New Readers For Your Blog By Guest Blogging’

WP-Sticky is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to put up a post (or posts) before all other posts on your blog’s homepage. The plugin is a modified version of Adhesive which is currently not compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

WP-Sticky is useful when you want to make an announcement on your blog or when you want to make sure that your blog’s visitors see any particular post.

Installation of the plugin is easy, simply upload the folder ’sticky’ to the plugins folder and activate it. Once the installation is over, configure the WP-Sticky options in WP-Admin -> Options -> Sticky. You can find the post’s ‘Sticky‘ Option under ‘Post Sticky Status‘ Options in the ‘Write/Edit Post Screen‘.

Continue reading ‘WordPress Plugin: WP-Sticky’

Feed Count is a WordPress Plugin that displays the number of subscribers to your feedburner feed in plain text. The plugin allows you to customize the feed count with CSS and I am sure those who don’t like the feedburner chicklet will like this plugin.

I first wanted to use this plugin but then decided not to when it showed yesterdays feed count when tested with EasyPHP.

Update: There is an ‘Update interval’ option that will update the feed count every 60 minutes.

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This is a guest post by Jake Bouma from JakeBouma.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post too, let me know

If the task of developing a successful blog were divided into different phases of growth, it is my belief that the most difficult step for many bloggers is moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2:

Phase 1: 1 - 20 readers/subscribers. This is mostly family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who think it’s “neat” that you have a “weblog”.
Phase 2: 21 - 100 readers/subscribers. This includes Phase 1 people as well as people genuinely interested in your niche who discovered your blog via search engines and/or referral links.
Phase 3: 101 - 500 readers/subscribers. Will not be discussed in this article.

You see, in the bloated world of blogging self-help articles, you will find tons of articles promising to “Shoot your RSS subscribers through the roof”, “Become a world-famous blogger in 5 easy steps” and so on. The reality, however, is that for many people becoming a successful blogger considerably more difficult. Here’s how I moved from Phase 1 to Phase 2, starting with a single post.

Continue reading ‘How To Become A Semi-Successful Blogger’