Facing Off with Brian Gardner

Daniel of Daily Blog Tips invited me to face off with my friend and fellow WordPress designer Brian Gardner.

Check out our answers ….

April 10, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging, Blogging Tips

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6 More Benefits of Being a Blogging Preacher

This is a guest post by pastor Mike Ballard who blogs at Running for the Prize.

For the past year and a half I have enjoyed reading a few blogs and even began toying with the thought of starting my own blog. Naturally, it raised some of the basic questions that most bloggers ask before they start their first blog, like: “How do I start a blog,” “What template should I use,” “What should I write,” “How often should I post” and the list goes on.

Reading Cory’s Blogging for Pastors 101 series was a tremendous blessing and he answered all of those questions plus many others.

I have been blogging regularly since January 2007, and I have since realized several benefits of being a Blogging Preacher. Read more

April 5, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging

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Using Blog Feeds to Communicate With Your Church

Cody over at Church Marketing Sucks has a good post on how churches could use blog feeds to communicate with their church … in brief, he says, churches could use them to:

  • Announce Events
  • Announce Prayer Requests
  • Send Out Devotions
  • Weekly News Updates
  • Series Announcements
  • Encouraging Messages

I’ve been working on porting our church website over to WordPress to take advantage of not only feed options like this … but also local search engine visibility.

March 28, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging

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Finetuning Your WordPress Blog as a Content Management System

Raj at Performancing has a nice post about using WordPress as a content management sytem.

He lists these benefits as reasons to use WordPress as a CMS:

  1. Undated URLs — Change the permalink structure. Click on the “Options” tab then “Permalinks.”
  2. Posts vs pages — On most of the sites I do with WordPress, the permalink structure looks pretty much the same for posts and pages.
  3. Contact forms — I use Chip’s contact form and love it … I think I’m getting more response from people as you don’t have to copy and paste an email address, etc.
  4. About Us page

See also how to finetune your WordPress blog with this excellent article.

You might also check out the whole series on using WordPress as a content management system I did recently …

March 17, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging, WordPress

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The Droughts and Downpours of Blogging

If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you’ll know I’ve only been blogging since July 2006.

It’s been such an absolutely wild ride and I have enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.

As far as “success” goes … my headline should say it all. There are times of drought, when you blog like a wild, crazy person who doesn’t need sleep or food but could simply live off coffee and your feedreader … and nothing happens.

In fact, the crickets chirp so loud that sometimes that you wonder whether you should be committed because, admit it or not … we all want people to read our stuff!

And because you simply love doing it … you continue blogging like a lunatic. You invest tons of time into it. You obsess over it. You review your stats every 5 minutes to see if anybody found you. Or discovered you … or accidently typed in a wrong word or clicked on the wrong link.

Then …

Then … just when you least expect it … something happens.

A tidal wave… a downpour … a flash flood … a [insert your awesome watery word here] happens.

One HUGE blog links to you and sends a ton of traffic your way … some of them actually become feedreaders, or make a comment.

Switching metaphors like none other … I think … blogging MUST be like farming.

You work and work and work that old brown soil … then months later stuff starts popping up.

Today … well, I had a watershed moment.

Yeah, Lorelle of Lorelle of WordPress fame, who writes for the renown Blog Herald linked to Church Communications Pro. (In fact, she even commented on one of my posts to “correct” me in such a polite, awesome way.)

I have no idea who might actually want to click on a “church” blog like mine from her post. But all I know is … a bunch of those nights where I had “idea insomnia” paid off in part today.

To be linked from someone like Lorelle, who is a WordPress guru, is like being validated in some way … it’s like being told, “You actually exist on the blogosphere … and you have interesting, useful content.”

These downpours after the drought are confirmations that somehow, in some way, you’re doing something worthy of being read.

It’s a nice feeling … especially when you’ve had those lonely nights of seeing nobody visit your site and those annoying crickets chirping.

My good friend and WordPress mentor Brian Gardner gave me a good word today about blogging: Persistence.

When people ask me advice about blogging or I do consulting … I always tell them … dig in and put up good content.

I think good writing, especially blog writing, should be practical. It should give value to your readers (if, that is, you actually want to be read).

And yes … you gotta be persistent.

Because you never know when the flash flood is coming!

March 14, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging

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One Rockin Site Map Generator WordPress Plugin for Your Blog

Check out this rockin plugin for your WordPress-driven blog or church website called Really Simple Site Map.It lists every post and page you’ve ever published and a solution to a more polish sitemap than the Google Sitemap Generator plugin (which still rocks).

See how it works by looking at my site map — and every post I’ve blogged about here.

I get dizzy looking at it … lots of sleepless nights!

[Found via Weblog Tools Collection]

Update: Lorelle of the famous and insanely useful Lorelle on WordPress blog stopped by to correct some things about this post. She gave me an education … and I’m just honored she stopped by! Here’s what she said in the comments that I don’t want you to miss:

Just a little clarification is needed here. There is a LOT of confusion between the terms “sitemap” and “site map”.

A “site map” is a listing of your blog posts on your blog, like a table of contents. This is what the poorly named “Really Simple Sitemap” does. It should be “Really Simple Site Map”.

A “sitemap” is a hidden XML file that is read by Google, Yahoo, and other search engines as a guide to all your blog posts. It isn’t “readable” by humans since it is inside a bunch of code. That’s what the Google Sitemap Plugin does. That’s correctly named.

You might want to fix your post to correctly label what does what. You offer such great information, I’d hate to see this confusion be perpetuated.

Thanks and keep up the great work.

March 12, 2007 · Filed Under Blogging, Blogging Tips, WordPress

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