Archive for the Category »Free and Easy Finds «

Aug

What an exciting week it’s been. We just concluded the second round of interview topics with Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress) and learned:

1) Revisitng old posts can provide fresh content

2) How to Manage our feed readers

3) And then we Wooped it up.

4) On Tuesday we welcomed our first teenage blogger to the NBOTW series

On to the Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds (FEFF).

If you didn’t follow the comment thread on Wednesday’s post, Lorelle stopped by and shared a link for anyone who uses Firefox and the Greasemonkey Scripts Extension which will help speed up our reading/commenting time. I used it last night while visiting blogs and estimate I shaved 20 minutes off of my visiting and commenting time. It’s fabulous.

Lorelle has written a post detailing the use of this script.

I’ve also been cleaning house (no, not my home, although that needs it, too). I’ve been tidying up my blog by removing the monthly archives list (it was 17 months long), taking off all affiliate ads (In over a year they haven’t made me a dime), and for my recent commenters, I removed the snippets. My “Recent Commenters” now shows your avatar and name with hopes of giving you more name recognition and traffic to your blogs.

Although it’s my blog, it’s all about you!

I hope you like the changes.

Have a great weekend!

Photo Credit: MGShelton’s photostream

Category: Archives, Free and Easy Finds, Save Time Tags: Avatar, Blogging, Blogs, feed reader, feed readers, google, Gravatar, WordPress 40 Comments

Jul

Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds – Blog Protection

Barbara Swafford

Having finished the first three interview questions with Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress), I reread the comments from Part Two. Her answers got us thinking, didn’t they?

Most bloggers are not using a copyright license, privacy policy, and/or disclaimer. List below are several free resources that I use.

Priority Digital.com offers a privacy policy and a disclaimer (see their free services)

Creative Commons (.org) offers a copyright license, along with a badge that can be included on your site. (see mine at the bottom of my left sidebar)

Copyscape.com is a great service to check with to see if your content has been plagiarized.

More information can be found by checking the links Lorelle provided in Part Two.of our interview series.

Remember: You work hard to produce quality content and share beautiful photographs. Protect what is rightfully yours.

Today’s Questions

Are you protecting your writings? Your photographs?

Has your content been plagiarized? If so, what did you do?

Is this an issue that concerns you?

Do you have other concerns you’d like to discuss? The comment section is open for all questions.

Photo Credit: laihiu’s photostream

Category: Archives, Free and Easy Finds, Protecting Your Blog Tags: Blogging, WordPress 43 Comments

Jun

FEFF – How To Get More Hits On Old Posts

Barbara Swafford

It’s Friday, and I’m adding another great freebie to my “Free and Easy Friday Finds”(FEFF)

Last week I found a new plugin called “Random Posts”. It’s quite slick.

Via the use of a plugin (link to follow), you can display posts from the past. What this plugin does is extract random posts which will change each time your page is loaded. So what you see now, will be replaced with new random posts on the next click.

To see it in action, I’ve installed it in my left sidebar below “What Others Are Reading”.

What I like about this plugin is that old posts are now revived without having to manually link to them. Granted, some may not be your best work, but it may get them some attention. (The plugin has options where you can block posts you don’t want displayed)

To use this plugin, it requires downloading TWO plugins.

The first one is called “Post-Plugin Library”

And the second one is obviously called “Random Posts”

Just follow the instructions and you’re set to go.

The plugin author is Rob Marsh. Let’s all give him a round of applause for these great plugins. ///clap, clap, clap\\\\ Also, please note, Rob offers several other plugins on his site, as well.

By the way, next Friday is the Fourth of July holiday here in the States, so I won’t be posting, BUT, on Thursday, I’m publishing my second Monthly Mini Meme (MMM), so start thinking about that one random thing about yourself you would like to share with the BWAB community. I have mine picked out, and it’s rather funny.

Mark you calenders, and have a great weekend.

Photo Credit: Robbie1′s photostream