A Good Time is Blog Time

Before discussing the advantages Vlogs we should first of all discuss what vlogs are exactly? The general term refers to a number of web pages that choose to use videos as journal entries instead of articles. Presented in a reverse chronological order, they are a great way to supplement or replace photos and text. Depending on the nature of the videos, there may be a need to include additional comments to make the information more relevant.

The great part about vlogs is that they perfectly meet the present-day tendency of communicating via the Internet on a very familiar basis i.e. when you see the person behind the text, the blog seems to actually become a little more personal. It is an enhancement or step up from having an author photo and biography. Of course this is dependent on how they are being used because sometimes you may never see an actual person as an alternative use is to employ them as a video instruction for completing a task or perhaps as an item of entertainment provided for visitors amusement.

Most video blogs use some form of web syndication in order to upload and spread the videos online and at the basis of every transmission lies the RSS technology or format. Presently, vlogs, may even be accessed on mobile devices such as pods and mobile phones. Though, the very vlog phenomenon started as a group effort, things have changed since then and now there are lots of individual video logs that are authored by people who make a hobby out of it. It’s useful to know that content contributors can get paid for their share in the process: on the sole condition that they upload viable material.

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Social media is a relatively new phenomenon which can appear bewildering to many people, but is it really that complicated?

This is very much dependent on how complicated you want it to be. You can, if you choose, be, totally overwhelmed by the multitude of social media sites there are available and what they offer. Some to be fair are a little more complicated than others, Facebook for example.

The ones I am referring to here are the social bookmarking sites that are a little less complicated in nature; good examples are Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon etc.

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It may sound like a little bit of a privilege, selecting the best affiliate marketing programs. But once you have an established web presence in identifiable niches and with traffic coming in; that is exactly the position you will find yourself in.

The problem then moves from one of being accepted by an affiliate marketing program to programs that work for you, your niche and your audience. I was listening to Simon Cowell of XFactor fame being interviewed on UK TV and it was interesting to hear what he had to say about what contributed to his success and made his TV programs so successful. His insight was basically that he went with his instinct, if he liked a program and could sit through it without being bored for the duration of the program, then he considered that the audience would feel the same way. Or at least the majority of the audience, you should never forget that you can’t appeal to everyone.

So how does that translate into blogging rather than making TV programs?

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If you have noticed that I have not been posting for a few days, the reason is I have been moving my WordPress blogs from one host server to another. You would think this should be pretty straight forward and to be honest, once you establish the steps you need to take, moving a WordPress blog using CPanel is relatively easy. This is the method I used successfully for 5 blogs, so if you need the detailed version you can now click on the eBook image for a .pdf version of the instructions.

Or if you are already familiar with CPanel the summary sequence is below.

• Using CPanel for the existing account, make a compressed file of the domain directory in file manager
• Download the zip file to a suitable location on your PC
• Go back into CPanel and using the back up Icon create a back up of the database for the domain being moved, and store it on your own PC
• For the new server, create the domain name either as a separate account using WHM or as an add on domain using CPanel
• Using CPanel for the new domain, go to ‘backup’ and restore the database downloaded earlier
• Go to file manager via CPanel and upload the zip file created earlier from your PC (note if the file is too big you may need to break it up into smaller files). Then extract all the directories and files making sure the directory structure is exactly the same as it was on the original host’s server
• With all the files reinstated on the new server, including .htaccess you will now need to re-establish a connection to your database,
• In Cpanel go to ‘MySQL databases’ and create a new user, the name and password can be anything you like as it is a temporary name and password you will only use once
• In the same panel add the user to the database, and assign all roles to the user
• Now you need to configure the database using the new users details
• Go to file manager for the new domain server via CPanel and look for the ‘wp_config.php’ file in the main directory. Select it and use ‘code editor’ to edit the file. You need to change the server name to the new name on the new server, change the user name to the temporary name you just created (including the automatically assigned prefix) and change the password to the password you created for the temporary name, then save the changes.
• Your website should now load using the temporary URL that allows you to view the files e.g http://123.456.789.10/~username But there will be an Error-404 page not found. The reason for this is that the ‘wp_options’ calls up the actual URL not the temporary one. So to view the website you need to go into wp_options find the 2 instances where the URL is defined and change it to the temporary URL. These are ‘site URL’ on the first page and ‘home’ on the 2nd page. The ‘wp_options’ tables can be accessed via ‘phpMyAdmin’ in Cpanel.
• Check the site loads properly using the temporary URL, and if it does you can then go back into ‘wp_options’ and put the site URL’s back to the permanent format. You will also need to update the file ‘upload directory path’ while you are in there to reflect the new server directory structure
• Now all you need to do is go to your domain supplier and change the named server to the new server and wait for it to propagate
• The end

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So this is the dilemma, we all love to see comments on our blog posts. If you are saying you don’t then I don’t think you are being completely honest either with us or yourself. The reason is pretty obvious, blog comments mean attention, interaction with an audience and evidence that you are getting traffic to your blog.

The temptation then is to accept any old rubbish that is placed in your blog comments box and leave it in place. Looks good if every post you have published is showing multiples of comments; or does it? There are problems with allowing comment spam to sit on your blog posts.

The first obvious one is that they drown out the real comments by real people that are actually trying to interact with you and establish a sensible dialogue on the subject being discussed. Anyone visiting your blog and finding the comments filled up with comment spam are highly likely to assess you as someone who doesn’t care about their visitors or have a real interest in discussing the topic content. End result of that type of conclusion is that they leave your site never to return and all the hard work you put in getting them to read your post in the first place is completely wasted.

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There are many people on the Internet who claim to have expertise in SEO Search engine optimization. They range from self-proclaimed gurus, some of which, to be fair, that have taken the time to learn their trade, to people who may have only just started publishing on the Internet and actually have very little experience in promoting websites or blogs.

Many of the SEO techniques that actually work are available on the Internet totally free. You do of course have to find them and somehow you have to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to focus in on the techniques that work versus the ones that are absolutely wrong. This process can be extraordinarily time consuming and burn up hours of your precious time.

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Sorry about that, but I needed to get your attention and being downright rude is just one of the ways of doing it. Of course there are other much nicer ways but if you are reading this then it did the trick this time and makes my point. I once saw a sign outside a public house in the UK that said ‘filthy ale and awful food’ everyone welcome. You just know that at some point you are going to have to go in and find out what its all about and whether the sign is true or just a very clever marketing ploy.

Well blogging is about clever marketing as well, without marketing your blog in a way that people actually take the time to stop and read it you are never going to convey to them that you actually know what you are talking about or give them the chance to find out that you are actually producing some great content worth reading i.e. you know how to write a good blog post.

Assuming that your main objective is to gain readership for your blog then writing a good blog post is all about 3 things: Read the rest of this entry »