I have previously written about how useful the Wordpress “read more” teaser is. It enables the reader to “scan” the first few lines of the article and then make the decision to read the rest of it or not.
WordPress makes it easy to break up long posts so you can save space on your home page. Simply insert the ‘more’ tag while editing a post, and WordPress will display the text that comes before it as a “teaser” followed by a link to the rest of the post.
By default, when a reader follows the link, the single-post page is loaded and the browser “jumps” to the next piece of text. This jump can be disorienting, and some bloggers prefer to link their teasers to the full post instead of the anchor. I certainly prefer to do this. Read more…
Are you happy with the pics on your blog?
I have used many different photo programs over the years and as a web designer (another hat I wear) manipulating images is very important to me. Adobe’s Photoshop is widely regarded as the “king” of all digital imaging programs.
I believe that accolade is totally justified, but Photoshop comes with a very hefty price tag. A price tag I’m not prepared to pay.
My personal choice of software is Serif’s PhotoPlus. A brilliant product at a very affordable price. Read more…
Have you set yourself any blogging goals?
If you have, great. If you haven’t, I’d suggest you should.
A common blogging goal is to reach the milestone of X number of followers. Aiming for 100 initially, then 1,000, then 5,000 and so on.
Many Twitter users, perhaps even the majority, strive towards achieving a specific ‘followers’ goal.
Yesterday (May 13th 2009) Xavier Lur had 66,988 followers on Twitter! Read more…
What do Bloggers and blog readers love?
Their partner? Perhaps.
Their Children/Parents? Probably.
Lists? 100% guaranteed.
What about a list of lists? Absolute utopia!!!
Here’s a top 40 list of lists for you to dribble over, all related to building, managing and marketing a website.
They have been grouped in to categories to help you find the juicy bits you’re interested in easily. Read more…
OK, it’s time to ‘fess up! Since starting Blogging Crew I’ve pretty much ignored the Drupal platform and I need to put that right.
Don’t know much about Drupal? Here goes…
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize content on a website. Drupal powers a wide variety of websites, including… Read more…
Premium WordPress themesters WooThemes have added another gem to their portfolio.
Aperture is a multi-functional photo-blogging theme with a unique home page, consisting of a latest posts slider, a visual category display, a blog module and lots of stylish widgetized spaces.
With 12 alternate styles and a very visual archive system any keen ‘photography blogger’ should be able to house their photos/portfolio in a theme that specifically caters for their needs. Read more…
Tinyurl.com is a brilliant service. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know anything about it, tinyurl.com allows you to transform really long URLs (Unique Resource Locator – or the web address to you and me) into shorter and user friendly ones.
As an example, the ‘real’ URL of this post is http://bloggingcrew.com/2009/05/short-url/ and by using tinyurl.com the shortened version is http://tinyurl.com/cjbtxo. Reducing it from 42 characters to 25.
In situations where you have a limited space or characters to use, in Twitter for example, where there are only 140 to play with (20 less than a standard text message), it becomes very useful.
A couple of months ago I came across an even better URL shortening service called bit.ly. With bit.ly you can track the stats behind the short link, like how many clicks it got, where the links came from, which country the user was in when he/she clicked and so on. If used with Twitter, the service also tells you if your message has been re-tweeted. It’s all updated in real time too!
If you’re curious, http://bit.ly/psIFY (only 19 characters) is the shortened version of this post! 
This is a VERY short post!
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By default, WordPress installations use the ‘admin’ username. The admin account provides access to the WordPress backend such as the blog’s theme, pages, posts, plug-ins and so on.
As it is common knowledge “admin” is the default username, the security of a Wordpress blog is vulnerable, particularly when a large percentage use passwords consisting of part (or all) of the blog’s title! Any hacker worth his salt can attack this kind of weakness. Read more…
It took me some time to realise that there are a number of significant differences writing for the web when compared with conventional writing. In fact someone else told me my online writing style was pants. He was right!
I was over-elaborating, writing in long sentences and even longer paragraphs. I needed to learn the fundamental differences, and thankfully a very experienced freelance copywriter I’ve known for years steered me in the right direction.
What’s so special about writing for the web?
Reading from a screen can be hard on the eyes. This may explain why ongoing research (which started as far back as 1997) consistently concludes people rarely read web pages word by word. They scan pages for key words and phrases. Only 16% read word by word. Read more…
