When I attended my first blogging conference, every other blogger I met wanted to write a book. They spoke of the blog series they were turning into eBooks, but the dreams they whispered of had phrases like “publisher” and “book contract”. And many of the speakers at the conference were indeed writing books that had…
I did something a little scary on my blog last month: I changed my permalink structure. That means my post links that used to look like: https://gretchenlouise.com/2013/04/ugly-permalinks/ now look like: https://gretchenlouise.com/pretty-permalinks/ See the difference? Yes, I like it, too. Why was it scary, you ask? Because suddenly all the numbers on the share buttons below each post…
The recent brute force attacks on WordPress blogs have brought attention to an important concern for WordPress.org users: security. And it’s not just an issue when there’s a brute force attack going on — security is always an issue. With the great customization options of WordPress.org come great potential for hacking. All you have to do is…
One of the most beautiful thing about contributor blogs is the community found therein. But sometimes, especially if you’ve been managing the blog awhile, the community can begin to feel stymied and in need of being revived. Here are a few ways I’ve used to help foster (and revive!) the community on a contributor blog. 1. Make…
It’s one thing to set up and manage a contributor blog, but when it comes maintaining the excitement and the quality, a blog with multiple contributors can hard to keep going for the long haul. Especially when your contributors are busy bloggers themselves! But here are a few methods I’ve used to help maintain the momentum…
“Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should…
I found myself part of a contributor blog back before anyone really knew what blogs were, let alone contributor blogs! In the beginning, everyone had publishing permission and you never knew whether two posts would go up in a day or none in a week. The team at Kindred Grace has been so patient with me as…
a guest post by Hayley Morgan Facebook. The modern social hive. I’ve been part of Facebook since it’s earliest days, when it required a university email address and a willingness to allow ex-boyfriends to see your every move. Since then, as far as Facebook is concerned, everything and nothing has changed. Facebook has since turned into…
Creating pinnable graphics, composing the perfect Tweets to promote our posts, and then sharing them at the optimum times on Facebook take time . . . It’s easy to get so bogged down in blogging that we lose the joy in writing. If you don’t have time to find the perfect image, don’t worry—spend your…
I don’t know about you, but left to itself, my blog sidebar quickly resembles my kitchen counter: it becomes a catch-all. Every button, link, and feed I don’t know where to put ends up there. And before you know it, the sidebar is so cluttered you can’t see anything! I like clean and simple sidebars…
No Thumbnail? No problem. Ever go to share a link on Facebook and the URL is the only thing that shows up? No picture or summary? Run the link through the debugger and Facebook will update its image: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug. (You can do this whether it’s your link or someone else’s.) Wrong Thumbnail? Get a WordPress…
Social media is not about you—it’s about the people you are following and the people following you. There is no “currency” in social media: it’s all about relationships. Don’t forget the Golden Rule, but don’t promote just to be promoted, either. Having an others-first mentality is the only way to use social media. Reply, Retweet,…
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