2008 April | Technically Easy

Developing a Blog Process

Posted on Apr 18, 2008 in Blogging | No Comments

For many individuals blogging is like a full-time job, in fact there are many who have made a career from blogging. They rely on their blog for their financial stability and livelihood. For those that are in this category, updating the design of a blog can sometimes be a headache if something goes wrong, as potential new visitors are turned away.

I have changed Technically Easy many times in the past year, and each time it could have been difficult, except for the fact that I have developed a process. This process involves using two blogs to help ensure updates to the design of the one blog goes smoothly.

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Performing Searches in Google

Posted on Apr 16, 2008 in Technology, Web Site | 3 Comments

I recently wrote a post titled Using Google Alerts to Track Copies of Your Web Content. In that post I mentioned using Google search results to watch for duplicate copies of your work showing up on other Web sites. The example I used was a common Google search term used by probably many webmasters, but may not be known by the general public.

In this post I will explain some of the search terms that you can use in Google that can give you interesting results outside of just simple keyword searches.

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Review: Tetsujin’s Blog

Posted on Apr 14, 2008 in Web Site - Review | 2 Comments

I have read many personal blogs. These are the blogs that don’t have any true focus since the posts are what the author has felt like writing at a specific time.

I enjoy reading some personal blogs as they can provide quite a break from reality. This week I review a personal blog, that is geared more towards the college crowd.

Web Site: Tetsujin’s Blog

Description: It is about college life, general life on the internet, and random technology, it is a lot of personal blogging fun.

Design

When I read the e-mail requesting the review I never clued in that I have seen this blog before. When I viewed the blog I instantly recognized the image in the header of the blog. The header takes up quite a lot of real estate on the blog, but the image will be associated with this blog.

Below the image is a menu consisting of links to a forum, suggestions, the “about me” and “contact me” pages, and a “One Buck Review” page. More on the “One Buck Review” later.

The actual content portion of the blog is split into three columns. The left column contains the Entrecard card, the BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, and recent posts from other blogs. The content is in the middle with another navigation bar on the right.

The right navigation bar contains the subscription link, sponsors and category links, favourites, archives, a calendar of post dates and other personal links.

The columns should be switched, with the blog related links on the left so the visitors can easily navigate the blogs. The BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog widgets, as well as the advertising should be moved to the right navigation bar. The personal links could be placed below the links on the left to make the left navigation bar a one stop shop for the links.

I’m not a fan of the green coloured text, especially against the light background. A darker colour would make it easier to read, especially if the text was also larger.

The design could use a few modifications to make the blog better to allow visitors to easily navigate and read the blog.

Focus

It is always difficult to rate the focus of a personal blog because there usually isn’t one. That is true in this case. There is no true focus of Tetsujin’s Blog but it seems to be more geared towards college life.

Content

The content of Tetsujin’s Blog ranges from long posts to relatively short posts. The author doesn’t post on a regular basis and can sometimes leave large gaps of time between posts.

The author does include some appropriate pictures to enhance the point of a post. Some images, however, can be quite large and take some time to download. For the most part the images are small and download quickly.

In the top menu there is a link for “One Buck Reviews”, which I’m guessing means you buy a review from the author for one dollar. The reviews are small (about three paragraphs), but for one dollar it is a good investment if you want a backlink.

I did enjoy reading some of the content, which has a college feel to it. If you do like reading these types of blogs, then you may like reading this one.

Spelling and Grammar

There are a few spelling and grammar mistakes that did cause me to reread sentences a few times. All posts don’t contains sentences like this, but those that do definitely take away from the readability of the post. A spelling and grammar checker would help in such cases.

Overall

Tetsujin’s Blog is a standard personal blog in which the author writes about anything they are thinking about at the time. There are several issues with the design of the blog that could make it difficult for visitors to navigate or read.

The focus of the blog, like many personal blogs, is almost non-existent, but the content is interesting. It would be better if the author wrote on a more regular basis as large gaps between posts could stop people from subscribing to the blog.

A spelling and grammar checker would help correct some of the errors that appear in some of the posts.

Overall the blog is a good blog with a few minor flaws that could be easy to fix.

How to Create Static Pages in Blogger

Posted on Apr 11, 2008 in Blogging | 82 Comments

Note:

Blogger now supports static pages. To learn how to create pages in Blogger, follow the instructions outlined in What Are Pages?

With some coding, you can easily create static pages in Blogger. For many blog authors, Wordpress is the management system of choice. It provides the most flexibility and options for managing blogs. For those that are not using Wordpress, Blogger is a good, free option. Blogger, however, is not nearly as flexible to use as Wordpress. There are fewer options and templates for that system. The one drawback of using Blogger is the inability of uploading, and using static HTML pages.

There is a simple workaround that you can use to create pages in your Blogger blog that will mimic static pages. I will discuss how to create and use those pages in this post.

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How To Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics

Posted on Apr 9, 2008 in Blogging, Web Site | 2 Comments

I use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on Technically Easy. It is a popular, free tool that provides a wealth of information about the visitors to your web site. The problem that I find with Google Analytics is that it doesn’t track outgoing links to my blog. I would be interested to know how many of my visitors click on some of the provided outgoing links, such as my RSS subscription link.

I recently found the answer to my problem, and how I can use Google Analytics to not only track links to other pages in Technically Easy, but also the outgoing links to other sites.

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