Written on February 21st, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 04:02 am by Darren Rowse
An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs
The following post was submitted by Duncan Riley from the Blog Herald, Weblog Empire and internetusers. I asked Duncan to explore the topic of using Images on Blogs. I think you’ll agree that his article below is a very comprehensive exploration of the topic which I hope you will find helpful.
Any good blogger will tell you that images and imagery are vitally important in the development and rise of any good blog, but they are often also quite often the most frustrating, annoying and time consuming aspect of any blogs life as well. None the less its important that you know about them
Types of Images
For ease of use I’ll categorize images on your blog into two categories: design imagery and content imagery. Naturally design imagery incorporates any images you may wish to use in the design of your blog, be that in the header, sidebar or footer. Comment imagery is photos and images you post as part of, or exclusively as a post to your blog. It’s important to understand the differences between the two because although we will be covering a lot of common ground in dealing with both types of images, there are also some separate consideration as well.
Toolbox
Some new blogging tools (such as Performancing for Firefox) allow you to drag and drop images you see on websites and other blogs into your posts, however they serve this image from the source, and that’s generally considered very poor form by most bloggers. You are going to need to be able to save, copy and edit any images you want to use. To do this I would recommend that you consider using Image Manipulation software to give you the freedom to do as you please to your images.
Free vs Paid
Personally I use Adobe Photoshop for all my image editing needs, however, particularly when you are starting out, it would be not dissimilar to learning to drive on a brand new Ferrari. Photoshop is the industry standard image manipulation tool in professional business and is available on Mac and PC, but it’s not a cheap option. Personally I don’t use the latest version of Photoshop because I’m happy with the slightly older version I use as it does everything I could ever want it to (and a whole lot more). You can pick up older versions Photoshop at places like eBay second hand if you can’t afford to buy an new copy off the shelf.
Other commercial programs that are available include Corel Draw and Paint Shop Pro.
If you don’t want to spend money on image editing software though I’d highly recommend downloading The Gimp, which is available for PC, Mac and Linux. It’s a fully fledged Open Source (free) image software package that many claim is as powerful as Photoshop.
Posting Images to your blog
How you post images to your blog is dependent on what blogging platform you use. Most free and paid blogging platforms and hosts these days provide image hosting as part of the package. What you will need to consider though is how much bandwidth/ or traffic your blogging package will provide, and also how the size of the images affects the loading speed of your blog. This is also another reason to have image editing software because programs such as Photoshop allow you to minimize image file size as well. Alternatively you can use a free, 3rd party image host, which will minimize any potential bandwidth/ usage charges or limitations you may have with your blog.
Each individual blogging package is different in regards to how you upload your image to your blog, and many now have built in features to allow you to get the image into your post fairly easily, however behind any WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) interface, the code is nearly always the same.
<img src=http://www.yourdomain.com/yourblog/image.jpg>
It never hurts to know how the coding works, because understanding it gives you more freedom in editing your image as well.
The html tags work like this:
< > opens and closes the statement in the code
Img src literally means Image on the screen, although it’s important to note that its src nor scr, it’s a common mistake that I still occasionally make today
= is telling the code that the image to the screen equals
“http://……image.jpg” is the image.
That’s the very basic form of image code, and more advanced form is:
<img src=”http://www.yourblog.com/wp-content/image.jpg” width=”400″ height=”201″ alt=”image” align=”right”/>
Some blogging platforms will use code similar to this, others will only utilize the simple version of the code, but no matter what blogging platform you are using, you can use this code to place an image.
width=”400″ height=”201″ tells the browser in which the page is to load the size of the image to load. There is probably some web standards type reason why this is important…just don’t ask me what it is.
alt=”image” The alt tag is very important because it allows readers who are visually impaired or blind to know what the image you’ve posted is about. Only recently Target in the United States has been sued because they don’t use alt tags on their website, on the basis that it discriminates against the visually impaired.
Align=”right” is the attribute to tell the browser where it should place the image, and allows text to wrap around it. If you don’t use an alt tag, the image will appear in the center of your post, and all text will follow under it. Giving it an align=”left” or align=”right” tag, particularly if you are using an image that is complementing your post, as opposed to being a center piece, allows the text to flow at the same height as the image to the right, or left of it respectively.
Copyright issues
Copyright tends to vary from country to country, but in most English common law based societies, the concept of Fair Use or Fair Dealing generally applies to the use of copyright protected images on your site. Basically using an image as an extract/ compliment to a post would normally be considered fair use. Using it as part of your blogs design however would not. Follow the links to the Wikipedia articles for more information on these legal concepts.
Images from commercial sites should always be deemed copyrighted unless it is clearly indicated otherwise, and you should generally consider not using them, unless you are clear on legal concepts of fair use.
There is also another rule in the blogosphere with images, and that’s if you take an image from another blog you provide attribution for that image in the form of a link back to the blog (either within or at the end of the post) attributing the image to that blog.
It’s hard to give a definitive answer on copyright, but I would give this advice: if in doubt, don’t post it.
Where to get copyright free images
The very short answer is Google. Searches such as “copyright free images” and “free stock photos” offer a range of sites you can use, some free, some requiring registration or a small joining fee.
In the past I’ve used services such as Freefoto and Stock Exchange which have a wide variety of images you can use on your blog, both within posts and as part of a sites design.
Free Images Hosts.
Ask 10 bloggers about free image hosts and you are likely to get 10 different answers because there is a huge range of free image hosts out there. Essentially instead of uploading your images to your blog, you upload your images to the free image host and they provide you with the code you need to paste into your post to display the images. Image Host Advisory is the image host directory recommended by Fark and is a good starting point if you are looking for a decent image host as they rank the sites and provide an overview of the various features and limitations.
There is a warning I must give with free image hosts. Although there are a number of free image hosts who have been on the net along time, a lot of these types of services come and go regularly. They may also have time limits on hosting your image, or bandwidth limits as well. They are great to start out with but remember that you run the risk of losing your images from your posts over time, which might not mean much now but will mean a lot in 6 or 12 months time when visitors coming to your blog from search engines such as Google are visiting older posts, and are presented with missing images.
What services are there to help bloggers with images?
There are a number of ways you can make your image experience more enjoyable when blogging.
Forums: if you need help in dealing with images, check out the user forums of your blog provider or host, for example the user forums at WordPress.org are a great resource of information. You can search for people who have had similar problems to you in the past, or you can even post a question.
Support: if you are using a paid blogging service such as TypePad, services such as these market themselves on the basis of their customer support, and since you are paying for it, use it! Email through your questions to their support email address. The may not help directly but they might be able to point you in the right direction so you can find the information you required elsewhere at that service.
Blogs and Bloggers: chances are if you are having a particular problem with images, some one has had it before. Using search services such as Google and Technorati to see if you can find people who have had similar problems, or even solutions to your problems.
Written on February 21st, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
More on Writing Content for your Blog
Much more could be written about writing effective blog posts - but rather than keep this series going for a month or two I’ll break my ‘granular post’ advice and make a few brief miscellaneous comments on writing content to help fill out the topic (with links for most to places I’ve written more on the topics):
- InterActive Blogging - While occasionally I come across a blogger that doesn’t want too much interaction with their readers I get a lot of questions from bloggers asking how to get MORE interaction - particularly around how to have a more interActive comments section. While a major impact upon comments is the number of visitors you have on your blog there are definitely strategies for getting more comments (also check out this post on The Secret to InterActive Blogging). The main tip I’d give on this is to be interActive with the readers you have. Start with what you’ve got and build from there rather than complaining about what you don’t yet have.
- Copyright - This point is so important that it deserves it’s own post (perhaps someone would like to write one and I’ll link to you). But keeping it brief I’ll say this - acknowledge your sources, use quotation marks when you’re writing something that is not your own words, link to those who inspire your ideas or whom you quote and if want to publish something that is longer than a few paragraphs ask for permission first. Use your manners and you’ll also probably be within the law (my lawyer friends will kill me for that one - but in most cases I’ve found it to be true). A little more on this topic at The Etiquette of Linking.
- Names are Important - 42% of SE searches are for product, brand and or company names. If you want to be found by people using search engines you might want to consider your use of names as keywords!
- Quality AND Quantity - Quality of posts is so important - I don’t know any reputable blogger who wouldn’t agree with that, but a little written about tip that I’m also a believer is that most successful blogs also have large quantities of content. I’m not arguing for loads of meaningless and unhelpful posts, but one area to consider in taking your blog to the next level can be how to generate larger quantities of posts on your blog.
- Relevancy - I was speaking with one blogger last week who told me that his strategy for keeping his blog frequently updated was to put a full day each week into writing content for his blog where he’d write 10 to 15 posts all at once. Then he’d set his posts to go off throughout the week - two per day. This is a good strategy on some levels as it does help keep your blog ticking over - but the problem this blogger runs into is that his blog is a news related blog and that writing 7 days in advance means the posts are a week out of date by the time they appear. Frequent posting is one thing - relevant and fresh content is another. If your strategy is to use advance posts it might be worth starting a blog in a non time specific niche and genre.
- Time Specific and Evergreen Posts - Related to this last point is that some posts are more ‘time specific’ than others. Some posts are out of date within a day or two of writing them (and as a result won’t ever be looked at much) whereas other posts are more ‘evergreen’ in nature (ie they will be as useful to your readers today as they will be in a year’s time). It’s worth pondering this topic and deciding what type of posts you’re going to concentrate upon. I’ve written on this further at Evergreen versus Time Related Posts and in a mini series on Increasing the Longevity of Key Posts.
- Establish Boundaries - One of my first ever posts was on the topic of setting boundaries for your blogging. This is both for your own sake (personal safety etc) but also for that of your readers (in that boundaries can cover what is and isn’t acceptable for your readers to contribute to discussions etc and that it’s good for them to know what to expect on your blog in terms of topic).
- Mix up your Sources - A problem that I’ve seen some bloggers struggling with recently (and fall into the trap of myself from time to time - especially when tired or in a rush) is to get into a rut in terms of the other blogs and news sources that are used behind stories. While it will be natural to be linking repeatedly to blogs in your own field it can get to the point where every post you post links to the one place. While the blogger you’re linking to probably doesn’t mind, your readers could well get to the point where they just read the other blog rather than yours. Mix it up.
- Using Story, imagination, emotion - I’m not going to say much in this one except to get your hands on a copy of a book called Lovemarks (aff link) which, among other things, talks about how sensuality, mystery and emotion are being used more and more in marketing. I think there are some great hints in this for bloggers.
I’m sure a lot more can (and will) be said about writing content for your blog - feel free to add your own tips to the mix in comments below.
Read more of my ‘writing good content’ tips in the Blogging for Beginners Series.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 05:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Basic HTML Tags
Most modern Blog Platforms come very well fitted out with formatting tools to help you to make your posts look and feel just the way you want them to. The way I describe blogging these days to people unsure whether they have what it takes is that if they have the ability to send emails and format word processing documents - then they have most of the basic skills to get a blog post ready to publish (ie filling in fields and basic formatting skills by highlighting text and - hitting buttons to format it).
Of course the easy formatting that we enjoy today with most platforms was not always the way.
As I mentioned last week in a post - I still remember 2 years ago when I started blogging having to ask a more experienced blogger how to make a word bold in my post. Back then it was helpful (and with some platforms essential) to know some basic html tags to get your formatting right.
In fact I still use a lot of these tags today out of habit and think they are useful to know even with all the tools at hand.
What are html tags?
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this topic but speaking as someone who picked it up as he went along - a tag is a bit of code that web designers/bloggers put into their site to tell their brower how to display what those tags contain.
I like to think of tags as bookends, they have a start to signal the begining of a certain format and an ending to signal the end of the formatting. These bookends/tags are generally put in the angled brackets (<>). The end one’s usually have a slash (/) in them which differentiates them from the opening ones and signals to your browser that it’s the end. So they’ll usually have this basic format - < > </ >. Hopefully you’ll pick it up as you see them outlined below - the way I learned them was by seeing how others used them and then by imitating what I saw on my own blog.
Here are some of the more common tags and what they mean (keep in mind it’s not my strong area - feel free to add your own HTML tips in comments.
(note: depending upon your blog’s platform and more specifically the CSS template set up that you have, some of these tags will take on different appearances from blog to blog).
Basic Formatting Tags
- <b>bold</b>
- <strong>strong</strong> (usually bold)
- <u>underlined</ul>
- <i>italics</i>
- <em>emphasis</em> (usually italics)
- <strike>strike through</strike>
- <center>This centers text on the page</center>
- <tt>teletype text</tt> (typewriter text)
- <blockquotes>blockquotes</blockquotes> (how this looks will depend on your CSS template but it usually indents your paragraph)
There is a whole debate on the difference between <b> and <strong> tags and between <i> and <em> tags. If you want to see some of the arguements you might like to check out this old WMW thread. There are plenty of other explanations and discussions on the topic going around - but all you’ll probably need to know is that the results are generally the same if you use <b> and <strong> and are similarly the same if you use <i> and <em>. Purists are probably going to kill me for this, but I’m more interested in the results than working out all the reasoning behind it!
Links
- Basic Link <a href=”url”>link title</a> (where ‘url’ is the page you want to link to and ‘link title’ is the word/s that you want the link to say.
- Email Link <a href=”mailto:EMAIL”></a> (where ‘EMAIL’ is the email address you want to be a link).
Heading Tags (vary according to CSS)
- <h1>An important heading</h1>
- <h2>A slightly less important heading</h2>
- <h3>A less important heading again</h3>
- <h6>The smallest heading</h6>
Font Tags
- Font Size - <font size=”x”>text to change</font> - change ‘x’ value to get different sizes. 1 is small and 7 is big.
- Colors - <font color=”#FF0000″>I’m red!</font> (get color codes here)
Font type - <font face=”Arial”>Hello there</font>
I rarely use font tags. I find that there is little need. If you want a tutorial in them you might enjoy this one that expands on these tags.
update: Thanks to those in comments below who have left advice about ‘font tags’ and how people would be better advised to use ’span tags’ (told you this wasn’t my strong point). Here are a few sites that might help with using span tags:
HTML 4.0: SPAN Tag
HTML Span Tag
The Span and div Tags
html tutorials - span tags
Image Tags
- Basic Image tag - <img src=”url”> (where url = the url of the image you want to show)
- Image with sizing <img src=”url” width=”200″ height=”150″>
- Align image left - <img src=”name” align=left> (substitute ‘left’ with ‘right’ to align it right)
- Alt Tags - <img src=”url” alt=”short description of image”> (an alt tag tells the reader what they are missing if the image doesn’t load in their browser.
- Image as a link - <a href=”link url”><img src=”url”></a> (where ‘link url’ is the url of the page you want the image to link to and ‘url’ is the image location).
- Image with border - <img border=”1″ src=”url”> (the larger the number in the border “” the thicker the border)
- Space Around Image <img src=”url” hspace=10 vspace=10> (hspace is the horizontal space and vspace is the verticle space. The numbers are the amount of pixels sounding the image)
Putting it all together might look something like:
- <a href=”img url”> <img border=”1″ src=”url” width=”65″ height=”38″ align=left hspace=10 vspace=10></a> (ie this is an image that is a link that has a border 1 pixel wide, that is 65 pixels wide and 38 pixels high, that aligns left on the page and is surrounded by 10 pixels both horizontally and vertically).
Unordered Lists (usually bullet point type lists)
<ul>
<li>the first list item</li>
<li>the second list item</li>
<li>the third list item</li>
</ul>
Ordered Lists (usually numbered lists)
<ol>
<li>the first list item</li>
<li>the second list item</li>
<li>the third list item</li>
</ol>
A more comprehensive list of tags can be found at Webmonkey
I also just found this excellent HTML Tutorial at Forty Internet which makes my efforts above look pretty basic. Enjoy.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 03:02 pm by Darren Rowse
YPN acknowledge Some Problems with Performance
Some YPN publishers are talking in forums that YPN’s performance has been pretty low over the last few days. YahooSarah (Yahoo’s rep at Digital Point) has responded in this thread by acknowledging the problems and writing:
‘Hi everyone,
I received more information this morning, so I hope I can provide a bit more clarity now. Last Friday we launched some new code into production. Several complications occurred during the launch, and as a result overall system performance was impaired. We’ve stabilized the situation now and expect to continue to make improvements over the next few days.
On behalf of the entire YPN beta team, I apologize for the inconvenience. Please continue to let me know how your sites are performing — your feedback is really valuable to us as we continue to refine our beta program and work through our growing pains.
YahooSarah’
Thanks to tripp for the tip.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:02 am by Darren Rowse
BlogBurst - Should You let them Syndicate your Content?
I’m seeing a bit of buzz around today about BlogBurst, a service that allows bloggers to submit their feeds to top tier news outlets (like Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle) for republication/syndication.
To use it you need to publish full RSS feeds, not have ads in your feeds, produce family friendly content and to be posting at least at a weekly rate.
It’s an innovative service that gives bloggers a chance to promote themselves in new avenues. They are especially looking for blogs on the topic of Travel, Women’s Issues, Technology and Gadgets, Food and Entertainment and Local Metros.
If all you want is to promote yourself and perhaps find new readers then this is a service to consider as when your content is used it will receive a byline and link.
HOWEVER you need to keep in mind that you’re not going to make any money out of it and that others are. BlogBurst charges the people that will be using your content for the privilege - but they don’t put any money into the hands of the bloggers whose content they sell.
I’d recommend bloggers consider their options and go back to thinking about their blog’s goals and objectives. If you’re blogging to raise your profile then this could be a useful service. If you’re in it for money then you might not go though. Also worth considering is the implications of your blog’s content appearing in multiple places online (consider duplicate content), especially on sites that are likely to have a higher page rank than your own.
There are both benefits and costs here (ie you’ll be getting links from highly ranked pages - but you might find that their republishing of your content actually ranks higher in search engines that your own posts do).
I’d be interested to hear whether people are going to give this a go?
Read more on Blog Burst at:
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:02 am by Darren Rowse
Qumana - First Impression Review
Well rather than procrastinating I thought I’d download Qumana straight away and am writing this post from it as a first impression review.
Downloading was simple (is it ever not on a Mac?) with the file only 8.7MB. Installation was a breeze as was configuring Qumana to blog to enternetusers. It, like other desktop editors, has an auto set up where it will search for your blog and settings once you type in it’s URL. I was ready to post within 30 seconds.
My first impression of the layout of the tool is that it looks pretty professional and at a glance seems to have all the features I’m used to using my normal desktop editor ecto. There are also a few extra buttons and features that I’m not used to including the ‘insert Ad’ button which is the interface that Qumana has with Adgenta ads (an ad network run by the same people). Following is a screen shot of the post window that I’m currently looking at
Inserting an image like that is a drag and drop deal and resizing the image can be done either by right clicking it and entering the ‘image properties’ option or by clicking on the image and resizing it by dragging it in a similar way to the way you’d do it in a Word Document.
I’m unsure if this image will appear as a thumbnail in my actual post (I use thumbnails a lot via ecto) and cannot see a ‘preview’ option which is something else I’m used to. update: as it turned out there were problems uploading the pictures so I’ve uploaded the image using another method and have made it a thumbnail. I’m not sure what the problem with the images was - it could have been at my end or theirs.
I’m sure there are many of Qumana’s features that I’m yet to discover but my initial impression is that it’s a good, simple and easy to use layout with all the basic features that I think most bloggers would want.
The WYSIWYG editing mode works well as does adding tags and trackbacks. Also being able to insert Adgenta ads into a post and customize their look on the run is handy if you want to go with them (although I still have a few reservations about using Adgenta personally and use other ads instead).
Source View (ie where you view the HTML) also seems to work well - the coding all looks clean enough and swapping back and forwards between the two modes works well enough.
Another feature I’m notused to but which could be handy is ‘drop pad’ which is a button (it’s own little window) where you can drag and drop images, text and links to and then make a post out of them. I’m not sure I’d use it as I prefer to drag and drop directly into the editing window (which is possible) and see what I’m doing.
One word of warning. This is a beta and it has some bugs. Trying to move images around your editing window by dragging them will freeze Qumana and you’ll loose your post when you have to restart it (I just found that out and lost 10+ paragraphs - doh!). Might be worth using the ’save’ function as you write til they come out of beta.
I’ve also noticed that starting up and opening a new editing window is quite slow for some reason. Perhaps it’s just my computer (although it’s got 2.5GB RAM and is running pretty fast for everything else).
A few things that are either missing from Qumana in this version (remembering it’s in beta) that I use in ecto (or that I just can’t see yet) include:
- Interface with Amazon Associate program (I love the ability to search for and insert affiliate links to Amazon within ecto).
- Extended Entry field - again this is something I use quite a bit of. I guess I could manually include the ‘more’ tag into the source view but having it automated would be nice. For this post I’ll just post it and then go into WP and edit it manually.
- Post as Draft - I quite like to be able to upload a post into WordPress for future editing there.
- Post Preview - As I said above - this is a handy feature, especially to check how images will look.
- Interface with iTunes and iPhoto - I don’t use these much but know some bloggers who do.
- Advance Posting - This may be possible but I can’t find it. This is essential for my style of blogging.
Another small problem I’m noticing is that at times when I scroll up and down while editing (or even type lines of text) I notice that lines seemingly disappear from my window. They are still there when I scroll up and down again. This is probably just a small bug - but can make editing quite tricky as it looks like I’ve deleted parts of my post.
My last pet peeve is the ‘powered by Qumana’ links that are set into posts by default (see below). I’m sure they can be deleted but I think I’d find it annoying to have to do it each post. Perhaps some would argue that it’s the least someone could do to leave the link as the tool is free, but I’m not a fan of it personally and think a blog with 15 or so posts on the front page each with that link looks a little odd and could also impact the SEO of that page as ‘powered by Qumana’ become keywords that are most dense on the page. update: Aaron points out in comments below this can be turned off in preferences. Missed this on my first run through preferences - thanks mate.
Overall I’m impressed with what the Qumana team have done in producing a Mac version of their desktop editor. There is obviously some areas to work on as it comes out of beta, but for a first go it’s got real promise. It’s a very useable and clean interface and I am looking forward to seeing how they take it forward in future releases.
Now - let’s test how this things uploads!
Update: Ok - not quite as smooth an upload as I’d hoped. The two images in the post didn’t seem to upload and I got an ‘Error publishing post’ message (even though the post went up onto the blog). The error was an ‘error decoding XML-RPC response’.
Tags: blog tool, blogging, Qumana
Powered by Qumana
update: Aaron also has a review of Qumana 3 beta.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 09:02 am by Darren Rowse
Qumana Releases Version 3.0 Beta
I’ve been meaning to mention this for a few days but keep getting distracted but the desktop blog editor Qumana has been released in a version 3 beta.
The good thing from my perspective is that version 3 is able to be used with Macs (something many other similar tools don’t have the ability to do).
They list the features of this version as including (in addition to the previous version’s features):
- cross-platform support for Mac and PC
- improved editor with full WYSIWYG capability, plus ability to view and edit code
- a “blog manager” that locally stores your drafts and published posts
- support for trackbacks and pinging
- a “right click” menu on each posted item allowing you to get the permalink for easy referencing
- a way to refresh the editor (’New Post’) - to clear away published material and start a new post instantly
- application-integrated advanced AdGenta ad insertion
- improved image dialogue, including preview and auto upload trigger from Drag & Drop
- drag & drop functionality to the editor, as well as DropPad
- preferences dialogue, including setting timezones & spellcheck
- valid XHTML code generation
I’m yet to give it a run - but plan to download the Mac version this afternoon and give it a spin.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse
Scannable Content
Make Posts Scannable - One of lessons that I would advise all bloggers to get their minds about is that in addition to fact that the average web user doesn’t usually stay long on a web page - they also don’t read much of it As a result, scannable content is a userful strategy to use in your blogging.
One study found that only 16% of people read word for word when they are online and another found that the average person only comprehends about 60% of what they read.
Rather than read word for word - web users ‘Scan’ pages for information - looking for key words, phrases and visual cues.
Here are a few tips and techniques you can use for working with your scanning readers and not against them:
- Lists - This will be no surprise to enternetusers readers - I’m pretty big on lists and my stats show me its my posts with bullet point lists in them that get linked to ALOT more than similar length posts written in of an essay style. Read more on lists in posts at this list on why lists are good.
- Formatting - Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.
- Headings and Sub Headings - Using headings midway through posts helps with post structure (and many believe with SEO if you use <h> tags) but they also are great for drawing your readers eyes down the page and helping them find the parts of your article that will interest them most..
- Pictures - clever use of pictures in your posts can grab attention, emphasize points and draw people down into your post. I’ve played around with pictures pretty extensively on a couple of my blogs and find they add a real air of professionalism and interest to posts - there’s nothing worse than long chunks of text on a page - break it up!
- Borders/Blockquotes - boxes around quotes and key points can similarly get the attention of readers.
- Space - don’t feel you have to fill up every inch of your screen - rather create spaces because they help readers not to feel overwhelmed and again tend to draw readers eyes to what is inside such space.
- Short Paragraphs - Web users tend to get lost in large blocks of text - break it into smaller bites and you’ll stick with it for longer.
- Don’t Bury your Points - Make your main points as clear as you can. One technique to ensure this is to get your main point across in the first few sentences rather than burying it in your conclusion.
Written on February 20th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Format Discussion
There has been a bit of talk in the last few days about the need for new ways of formatting blogs.
Michael Parekh talks On Blogs Stuck in a Rut:
‘I’ve long wondered how great it would be if my current blogging platform Typepad (a part of Six Apart) or someone else like Google’s Blogger, Wordpress etc., offered more flexible and alternative ways to present content in different forms within the same blog. In many ways, the blogging platforms companies have offered blogging templates that have essentially been frozen in time since blogs were first conceived…. For instance, why can’t we have a blog template with the ability to have multiple tabbed pages?’
Jeff at BuzzMachine suggests that it is Time to blow up blogs:
‘Blogs have already become prisoners of their format. Time to light some dynamite…. The problem isn’t the tools, it’s the templates. Blogging tools are merely content management systems without the million-dollar consultants and bills; that’s what I’m telling newspaper folks who complain that it’s hard to put content online. Templates let you format or unformat your stuff however you like and also include stuff of any medium. I’d love to see more clever examples of templates.’
My own reaction is that while most blogs seem to be doing much the same thing as each other there are many blogs doing interesting things with their templates. Most of them are on non hosted options like WordPress, MovableType and Drupal but really the sky is the limit when it comes to creative formats for blogs.
The example that immediately came to mind as I read both Jeff and Michael talk about tabs was my fellow Aussie Yaro with his two blogs, Entrepreneurs Journey and Small Business Branding.
Yaro has tied these blogs together with the use of tabs to the left of this header (screen cap below).
I’ve always found that when I take an idea for a new way to present information in a blog to a blog designer that they are almost always able to find a way to do it, often using a plugin or by writing some custom code.
Written on February 19th, surf Active Apparel website Sell Homemade Video zone.at 10:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Favicon Maker
If you’re looking to put a favicon (one of those little pictures that sites next to a URL in your browser) on your blog but don’t know how to make one you might like to play with the Favicon from Pics tool.
All you do is enter a picture and it makes a favicon from it. Some pictures will work better than others of course but it could work for you. They also give you the option for an animated favicon.
Here’s how a favicon came up for me using the picture of me in my side bar.
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