Daily News
For The Love Of Commentators – My Plugin
Well as you might know from yesterdays post, I created a nice little plugin. However, I found there was a niggling little issue with it which screwed up the home page. I managed to find what it was that was going wrong (to do with database access), and now it is all fixed, and ready to be used! If you’d like to know more about the plugin, check out yesterdays’ post, which describes exactly what it does. If you simply want to download it, you can do so here.
To view the plugin (and its output), head to the settings part of your wordpress admin panel, and choose ‘FTLO Commentators’.
Hope you guys get some use out of this, and let me know what improvements you might like to see!
Dan
A Plugin For All, And For All A Good Night
Hey all, its Monday again, which means a long week of work. Some of you luckier ones may be on your holidays, whereas I am stuck in the office at work, with actually very little to do! With my bosses away I have had to take on dribs and drabs of work…which ultimately has led to me developing a little plugin for wordpress! For those of you who have read my blog before, its a little bit like the one I had discussed previously, but not as ‘fancy’. It’s taken me most of the day to write it (who knew how fiddly it all could get), but I offer it for you who wish to use it! It is still in the early stages, but preliminary tests show that it is working at its ‘basic’ level.
Stop Yammering On – What Is It?
Well, basically its a plugin which allows you to see all of the people who have commented on your blog so far, along with how many times the individual has posted and the different names (or ‘aliases’) they have used when commenting on your site. I developed it because I was finding it hard to keep track of who had posted a comment on my blog, and when I wanted to visit those sites to say thank-you (or just check on what others had written), I had to look around to find them. This plugin allows you to display them in a (somewhat) tidy fashion in your actual admin console.
My Film Frame Results!
So as promised, I successfully completed my film frame, and have the photographs to prove it! You can see the starting photo here and the completed product here. I would embed the photos into the post, but sadly they are quite big, and quite blurry (thanks to my phone being a bit rubbish), but you should be able to see them ok.
As you can see, I started out with a variety of materials – some of which were standard; sellotape, scissors etc. The frame I bought for £1.50 in a cheap store, and luckily it came with a transparent back, meaning I didn’t have to somehow ‘hack’ the back of a picture frame out. So I decided I would only use one piece of black paper (cost of 20 pence), the film cells, and the postcard that came with them (approximately cost me £1.50). Plus the sellotape I bought, that comes to under £5. Not bad!
The Best Laid Plans of Mice And Bloggers
Yes, it’s me, I’m not dead. Promise. If you hadn’t of read in my little ‘news update’ tab, I have been without Internet now for almost 10 days. It’s a pretty long time, and I have had a lot of time to think about some new projects to get underway, so it wasn’t all in vain. Now I just have to try and claw back my loyal readers’ respect! So let’s start by addressing some things I’ve promised and not delivered (and why) – and things to come for the future of this blog (which I’m not selling, despite the recent trend. Kudos to those who know what I’m talking about).
The Film Cell Frame
Now I know I promised you guys pictures of the finished product I described in my last post (before I went off the grid), and it is all made…I just haven’t brought in the picture of it to work with me today. However, tonight I will get the pictures off of my phone, and put them on a USB drive to upload tomorrow. The results are quite interesting, so I think you’ll be pleased to see what I’ve come up with, and how much it cost me…
My Wordpress Plugin Idea
So I came up with a wordpress plugin idea the other day, which I mentioned in a previous post. So far the work on it hasn’t been going to plan (namely as the key component isn’t compatible over different versions of PHP, which drives me insane), but there is still a part of me that wishes to make it. There is a distinct advantage to having it, but at the same time I think I might be doing work that has already been done – so I wanted to share with you all my plugin idea, and see if it struck a chord with any of you!
Saturday News Update
It’s been a while since I have a done a kind-of ‘update’ post, as I have been trying to keep my posts ‘on-track’ as much as possible. However there is a main reason I feel I have to do this type of post now, and that’s because of my hosting company.
I would like to apologise to anyone who might have encountered errors on my website recently – my hosting company has been shocking in terms of their service as of late. Every morning when I get up I check the site (if I can) to make sure that everything is working fine and if it isn’t I immediately head over their website to talk to their 24-hour support. The support is normally good, but as of late I’ve been getting to know them more and more, as I have had to be speaking to them every, single, day. Now I wouldn’t mind if it was even once a week, but its just not really acceptable is it? Some of things that have happened you would never put up with…
How To Overcome Distractions
I think I’ve set a new record with my posting – 4 days without a new post! Apologies to all, originally I had a post planned for Friday that I was to write up while at work (obviously during my break, haha), however as the day began to end, I got more work given to me – so by the time it came to leave, I had no post to show! Then on arriving home, it turned out my building decided to implement a new ‘gated community’ feature as of that day, and my girlfriend was unable to park anywhere. So I spent most of the night chasing down car parks looking for someway of making her car safe – which kinda killed my night.
Then the weekend came, and as I always do on the weekends, I spent time with my girlfriend. We had a lovely day, and when I had some time spare, I played on the new PS3 release Mirrors Edge. Playing the game saw me into the evening and then my girlfriend returned, and we caught up on some TV shows. Today has been very much similar, spending time with my girlfriend and playing Mirrors Edge.
So why am I telling you all this? Well while all this was happening, something in my brain was screaming at me…
Why Writing Guest Posts Is Good For Beginners
I had a revelation recently about guest posting on other blogs, and am very thankful for it – so I thought I would share the experience with you.
When starting out in the blogging world, you might not know what to expect – some may own blogs for fun, others to educate, and a few(!!) to make money. Yet whatever the reason, the blogger always wants readers to come and read their posts, join their feed, and hopefully be entertained / learn something valuable. Yet how do you know what your writing is actually of any worth to these people? Why would they come to your site over others? More importantly, how are you going to know without any actual visitors?
Guest posting allows you to extend your ‘reach’ onto another persons blog - by writing up a post and sharing it with the readers of that blog. The benefits of guest posting have been outlined many times, in that they can provide you with a new source of readers, and possibly more guest post requests. The larger the blog you guest post on, the larger the possible surge of traffic.
Yet in order to be allowed to post on anothers blog, what you write must be worthy of their standards. You can’t write up a simple ‘i make teh monies lolz’ post and expect it to be placed on some of the high standard blogs that are out there. At the same time you can’t write up an intricate piece on a blackhat technique and try and get it posted on a whitehat blog – just ain’t ganna happen. You need to know a bit about the blogger themselves, and what they like to post about, only then can you make your first attempt to provide them with a post – and this is the advantage for new time bloggers.
You see, when you post on your blog, a few people may read it – a few may even comment on or about it – but you won’t get yourself essentially ‘a review’. By submitting your ‘work’ to another human being to show on their own blog, they will have to judge if it is worthy enough to be submitted. This allows you to get a real review of your writing capabilities, and possibly some helpful hints into how to improve your work in the future. If your post isn’t written well, they’ll tell you; if the subject isnt covered enough, you’ll know – and it will be much more useful than just the ‘post and see’ attitude. A persons’ blog is very personal to them, and therefore you will be able to get a real opinion.
A possible arguement to counter-act this view could be that you could simply ask your commentators to tell you what they think, yet if you look at various other blogs you can see what most comments boil down to. People can happily say ‘Good post man, I really enjoyed it’ because its not on their blog, and they have nothing to essentially gain from it – whereas in creating a guest post you are creating a piece of work that should benefit both you and the blog you are posting to.
Another argument could be that the blog you apply to guest post to might have low standards, yet simple matter to sort out, as you only apply and send your guest posts to ‘worthy’ blogs, bloggers whose opinion you value in this big ‘ol wide world. If you have what you think is a ‘quality’ post, try sending it out to a couple of the big timers out there and see what they say about it!
Now its possible that you could get a response back criticising your work to pieces, and saying that it is awful (its unlikely, but it might happen). Don’t respond out of anger, but rather ask what was wrong with the post (if they haven’t stated) and maybe try to make some improvements. Maybe they will highlight on some real issues and it will help you to learn this, or rather maybe they will say that the post is ‘unsuitable’, in which case you can thank them and approach another blog. If the latter is the case, you can even ask what posts they might be looking for, as if they can give you a post that they want, its more likely to be accepted!
Now I’m not going to get into how you should go about sending your guest posts out and convincing people to show them, as Adam over at Creadiv has already done that for you, so you can check out his rules of guest posting and increase your game to the higher levels!
In summation, I believe that your blog can, and will, grow from writing guest posts – not just in the terms of readers, but in the quality of what you write. Having someone giving you advice and help for ‘free’ is something that should never be frowned upon.
Dan
A Day In The Life Of…
Wow, over 2 days since my last post, and I am feeling terribly guilty about it. You see, I don’t have writers block, and I have some great things to write up, but sadly I lack the real world time to do so. To give you a better understanding, (and myself an excuse) I thought I would show you what a day in my life is like.
Firstly, I have a full time job, which starts at between 8-8:30am (depending if I catch the train) and finishing at 5-6 (depending on how the companies system is currently doing). When I eventually get home from that (which can sometimes be at 7), I head off to the gym to do an hour and a half of various cardiovascular and muscle exercises. By the time I get home, it has most likely reached about 9 at night – about the time when I cook my food!
Now the time I am cooking / eating is essentially where I would write my blog posts up, try out stuff online etc. but I have been finding myself feeling tired a lot earlier than usual, and normally heading to bed at around 10. You see, strangely enough a lot of the work I do with this blog and inventing new ways to earn an income online, starts off at home but progresses while I am at work!
You see, when I don’t have a lot to do at work, it allows me time to do some research, look up my favourite blogs, and lets me type up my posts of the day. Normally this is fine, however if (as has been this week) I am very busy at work, I sadly don’t get a chance to do any of that, and then end up trying to do that at night. Even then life manages to interfere, as now I have various plans over the course of a week where I meet up with friends, which again, diminishes time. An example would be tonight where me and a number of friends went out to have a couple of drinks and a steak (which was mediocre at best!). All these little things sadly add up and I’m sure you have all experienced this in one way or another.
You might be saying to yourself ‘Aha, but what about your weekends Dan?!’. Well the weekends I spend visiting my wonderful girlfriend, as we only get to see each other during this time. Normally I’ll be able to write a blog post, and have a look around, but not having my computer on me (I visit her mostly and my computer is a desktop) hinders me in actually designing what I have planned. Besides which, she might kill me if I was trying to do stuff online all weekend and ignoring her, lol!
Now please don’t see this as me complaining that I don’t have enough time. I enjoy having this blog, and I enjoy attempting to make an earning online (as hard as that might be), but I feel that sometimes I owe an explanation as to why I don’t post some days. I might not have the same amount of readers as some of the bigger blogs (and most of the smaller ones), but I have been among the small surfers of the smaller blogs, wondering why a user hasnt posted for a few days when they usually do every day.
I have some great posts lined up that I will be writing soon, so you can look forward to those – I’ll be using any free time I have to get them done, along with my own efforts to try and start a business in this crazy world wide web (so long as the lions don’t slow me down!). I can sense change…
Dan
End Of October Status
Well it has been a pretty slow month sadly – I have designed and sold one website (which I finally received the money for a couple of days ago) which gave me a little bit of profit, which was then squandered on another couple of website domain names. Damn.
I didn’t achieve any of my goals this month either, all but selling the one website. Sadly, websites aren’t going for what they used to on sitepoint, and the site I sold for only $51. Now seeing as I sold the same website about a month and a half ago (albeit with a worse design), and it went for $150, you could safely say there is something amiss atm.
Mainly the reason for my lack of ’success’ this month is that the company I work for went ‘live’ with a piece of software and we have been racing around to make sure its performing correctly. This has meant a lot of late nights and early mornings and hasn’t really allowed me any time to do what I would have liked to. Its slowly coming to an end now, so hopefully I’ll get back on track this month.
However I can’t really attribute my lack of success to just that, when I have had chances to do some work realting to making money, I have been unmotivated and lazy – my heart just hasn’t been in it. So I’m planning on making a change this month, and going to attempt to ’step up my game’. I do have some big plans, and if I can get them to fruition November could be a very successful month!
So stay tuned, I’m going to delving deep into the mmo world, and uncovering the many ’secrets’ it holds.
Dan
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