More on blogging: Blogger vs. WordPress

On today’s show, listener Rich offered the following Top Ten Tips about blogging:

Although I'm far from an expert in blogging, I've learned a few things over the past 4 years of keeping a personal blog and contributing to several others. I've been thinking about offering up a Top Ten list of advice that has worked for me.

1. Platform: To basic types - online blogging service or private server install. This is where Wordpress shines in my opinion since you can start using Wordpress.com free and move it to a private server install -- keeping the look and feel very similar. There are thousands of premade/designed themes available or you can create/modify your own with minimal programing skills. Plug-ins extend the power of Wordpress and make it the prefer platform for most growing blogs. Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla and Drupal are probably better for multiple user and business use, as most of them include full website development along with the blogging components. (all mentioned above are open source and free -- unless you use the extended services available through Wordpress.com)
2. Use a theme with a masthead and fixed items that don't take up all that much screen real estate (particularly vertical pixels). With wide screens and netbooks becoming popular, scrolling down every visit -- especially past ads -- is frustrating for readers. Blogs are a dime a dozen so you want to keep readers not send them to other services. (personally speaking I think that may have been one of the reasons Facebook is moving past MySpace in Social Networking)
   
3. Include reduced sized graphics and photo thumbnails so pages don't contain huge image files that need to be downloaded every time the url is accessed, then use the "click on feature" for a larger view. (plug in for Wordpress is called Lightbox 2)
   
4. Extend the power of the web by hyperlinking where you can. Think of it as if you were footnoting a paper. Another great plug-in that might help with this on Wordpress is Cross-linker.
   
5. Keep posts short, but post often IF you audience is the normal web surfer. Be sure to set up an RSS feed and read up on Google syndication -- have your pages crawled by search engines so content is publicized.
   
6. Most blogs are topical, so work to promote you blog by referencing it when you visit other sites that discuss the same subjects -- linking to particular posts is better than linking to just you home page.
   
7. Consider using Twitter or other social networking sites to connect with people interested so they know when you post new information.
   
8. Credit other people (bloggers, authors, etc) and link to them ... many will do the same for you.
   
9. Consider moderate use of Google Adsense or the like as money can be earned to support your site.
   
10. Moderate comments and use a spam comment blocker like Akismet. Comment spam can be a bigger problem that even email spam.