WordPress Plugins I Currently Use

As of today, these are all the active WordPress plugins I have here at OSN. Going to give a brief explanation as to what they do / why I use them.

Akismet: By default this is included with the basic WordPress installation. It’s fantastic for blocking SPAM comments and trackbacks.

Broken Link Checker: This plugin checks EVERY SINGLE LINK in EVERY SINGLE POST and sees if it’s a valid link or if it’s “broken” (gives an error message like a 404 for example). It runs in the background so you really can just ignore it for the most part. It’s really good if you’ve been blogging for a few years because that super awesome blog you posted about in 2003 probably doesn’t exist today.

CommentLuv: A great feature for those who comment on your blog, it permits them to automatically link to their last blog post at the bottom of your comment AND it’s super easy to style within your CSS.

Comment Reply Notification: If you’ve ever left a comment at OSN you know I’ll 99% of the time respond to it. When that happens you automatically get an email saying that not only was your comment was responded to but the content of that response as well! You can set it (as I have) so this works only for admins OR works for everyone who comments. Very neat.

Compact Archives: You can see this plugin in action on my archives page. What it does is make a small and attractive year/month display for your past posts!

Contact Form 7: You can see this in action on my contact page. It’s super easy to use, super easy to implement, and I don’t receive ANY spam from it like I used to from other forms (plugins and hand-coded).

Custom Post Limits: A really neat plugin that allows you to change the NUMBER of posts displayed on the index, archives, category, and so on pages.

Facebook Like Thumbnail: This plugin grabs the FIRST image in your post for the Facebook thumbnail (when someone shares your post on FB).

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin creates a sitemap that allows for better indexing and searches from Google and other search engines.

Greg’s High Performance SEO: A really good SEO plugin, has a good amount of options to really customize how it functions for YOU.

Outbrain: Simply put, this is an alternative to LinkWithin.

RSS Footer: I’ve mentioned this plugin before in past posts but it’s really neat! If you subscribe to my rss feed you’ll see at the bottom of each post, a little blurb and my photo. Just a great way to remind people of who you are, include links back to your site or other links.

Twitterlink Comments: Adds an additional input on the comment form for your visitor to enter their twitter handle to be displayed in their comment!

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: A plugin that does what it says! It displays (via a customizable template) links to posts that have similar content to your current post!

Share with me the plugins YOU currently use on your blog platform! Any you couldn’t do without? Any plugins that were an epic fail? Share!

To Monetize or Not To Monetize…

What made you decide to monetize (have ads, sponsors, paid reviews — getting a product in return for an honest review, etc) on your blog? If you chose to NOT monetize your blog, why not?

Very curious to your responses so if you could share/like/stumble/RT all that jazz, it would be appreciated!

Authentic Blogging

Nothing like your server having issue upon issue to make one scared to blog!

Life is slower but more hectic. I’m not exactly busy. Actually, I’m not busy at ALL. My morning consists of hauling my husband to work and then hauling our oldest son to school. The toddler and I come home where he proceeds to sleep until it’s time to pick his big brother up. I usually end up napping with him.

So during all of this downtime, I’ve been a bit stir crazy. I went ahead and purchased StarryMom.com which really just redirects to OSN, renewed the OSN domain name, I even joined a photography project, Family Joy, and purchased a new lens, the Nikon 35mm f/1.8.

I started thinking about how I’ve been blogging for over ten years now and the ten year anniversary of OSN is coming up in November and how I’ve gone from what I consider “Authentic Blogging” to “scared of trolls, scared people won’t like me” blogging.

As a lot of people can attest to, I cuss. A lot. A WHOLE lot. However I try and refrain from posting in my native naughty tongue because I worry I’m going to offend someone. Not to mention avoiding a ton of topics for fear of offending people or coming across like an uneducated dimwit. So am I being authentic when I write only sweet and lovely things? Or refrain from bitching?

I’m told to write what I’m passionate about. Well I doubt my endless morning road rage would be appreciated daily in your reader or my waxing poetic for my love of anything labeled “Pumpkin Spice”.

So how do I get back to the blogger I was ten or even five years ago? How did I go from open, honest, and rambling to shy, quiet, and only telling you how to make your blog suck less?

It all goes back to being your authentic self really. Blogging 101. Write as you speak. Just with better punctuation and shiny pretty photos. I just need to take my own advice.

Do you blog as your authentic self? Do you write as you speak? Or do you try and cater to your niche or to avoid confrontation?

I Don’t Comment Because I’m Scared

After I wrote about my feelings towards blogging and social media, I realized I wasn’t alone! Not only did other people feel the same but we also shared something else. The fear of commenting on other blogs.

For me, I feel like I’m going to say the wrong thing, babble, or have the comment be ignored. That my comment will be taken the wrong way or sometimes, I feel as though the blogger will not care if I comment or not.

So how do I try to combat this? I comment MORE OFTEN!

I also realized that once I became friends with other bloggers, we mutually stopped commenting on each others blogs. Generally because we’d discuss the post over the phone, instant message, or all the other social bits online. That’s another thing I try to work on, making sure to comment on their posts, even if we discuss it at a later time because generally, comments are important.

People have a public blog to get feedback. From something as small as what to make for dinner or as large as a major life change. We all crave that knowledge that we are being HEARD. That what we are saying and doing, matters somehow.

When I wrote my post, Disappearing Socially (online anyway), and discussed how strongly I felt about numbers, really what I want is that connection.

I’ve been blogging for over 10 years now, 9 1/2 of those years here at OSN, before that at a shared domain, SpunkySprite.com (not sure if ANYONE remebers that one!). I started because I wanted to get feedback on what I wrote. To know I’m not talking to the void. That I’m helping. That I’m of use to someone. I’m sure all of that stems from issues in my past. The easiest way for me to see that in action is by stats. My twitter followers, FB fans, RSS subscribers, visitors a day, etc. I can then quantify by that number. The larger the number, the more helpful I feel I am, the more USEFUL I am.

Deep I know.

So I ask you this, why DON’T you comment on other blogs?

Why I’m Not Blogging

It’s difficult for me to blog.

I don’t feel the need to TAKE A STAND for everything I believe in. I am not an activist by any means. I also don’t feel the need for every single post to turn into a debate BECAUSE of what I believe in. So it limits my topics quite a bit because I am not a good day-to-day blogger. I also don’t want every post to be about my hating our house and needing a bigger house but unable to do so because that requires money. Even though that’s pretty much all I think about / talk about around here.

I feel secluded online most of the time too (won’t even go into my seclusion offline). Which isn’t fun. Momma bloggers tend to have little ones, like I have with Tristan, or bigger ones, like Danny, but rarely both at the same time. Turns out, it’s really hard for me to find blogs with OLDER unschoolers / homeschoolers that were screwed up by public school.

Plus, we are stuck at home ALL THE TIME. The joy of a tiny neighborhood without any parks you can walk to that are safe and no sidewalks. We are a one car family (as of today, a PAID OFF one car family, snaps!) and DH works 8 – 14 hour days. Hard to get the kids up at 7am to drive him to work so we just don’t do it.

So that’s why I don’t really blog much. It’s not because I don’t want to, generally I sit for 20 minutes a day staring at my blank WP dashboard, which taunts me. It’s because I don’t like sharing my pessimistic thoughts ALL THE TIME. I also realized that my flower photos… well… not fancy enough to call this a photoblog by any means.

So instead, I just… don’t blog anymore.

Thoughts on Blogging

I really don’t remember WHY I started blogging. When I first started, there were very few blogs out there and to own your own domain automatically made you superior.

A lot of bloggers these days consider themselves “old school” if they have been doing it for more than two years. What about those of us that have been doing it since the late 90’s? OSN itself is nine years old, and I had started in 1998 with a site on Angelfire.

Since there are now millions of blogs created daily how does one stand out? It seems like to be “popular” one must be thin, pretty, and controversial. Or do a lot of fancy giveaways. Blogs these days seem to be about a niche, controversial topics, and a schedule.

Gone is the review of your day. I have a hard time posting if I don’t have a photo to put at the top of the post! I struggle to find a “topic” rather than writing like I used to which, if you ignored the grammar, reviewed how I was feeling that day or in that moment.

It made for a lot of really short posts. A large chunk of my early posts here on OSN are private. 640 of them to be exact. I am embarrassed by the grammar, I never EVER censored myself, and in this day and age, I worry about being judged.

Go figure.

So what happens if you do luck out and become popular? You either become revered and loved by all OR deal with trolls, hatred, and personal attacks constantly. Yet so many of us work our asses off to become part of the blogging elite. WHY?

For me part of it stems from wanting to be a PART of something. To feel wanted and useful. Which growing up I never had. Deep I know.

How long have you been blogging? WHY did you start blogging?

Social Media Woe

Does social media (twitter/facebook/etc) make you feel left out?

I know it does for me sometimes. I know it’s silly, but it drives me nuts when I post a FB status or tweet about something specific and not get a single response!

Do you feel this way?

I’m Not Popular

I get told quite often when I work on a person’s blog, “Don’t look at my stats! I’m so embarrassed, they can’t compare to what YOU must get!”. Ah, if only they knew.

I’ve been blogging here at OSN since November of 2001. Just shy of nine years (I have my archives from 2001 – 2003 private because it’s embarrassing). Here are my stats:

Of course to some of you newer bloggers, my numbers must look AWESOME right? However these newer blogs I work on, blogs that maybe have been around six months or less, have triple my numbers, of which I’ve spent nine YEARS working on.

Now granted, blogging isn’t just about numbers. I am “rich” in various other ways. I am able to help people, I’ve made amazing friends along the way, and I have a full online community that sustains me where my local community does not.

Back when I first started, it was a very elite circle that had domain names because they cost so much and hosting? Oh wow, you were lucky to get 5MB of space and 1 MySQL database for $30 a month! Being “hosted” as a sub-domain was all the rage. I should know as I’ve had my fair share of hostee’s here at OSN.

Now? It’s all about monetizing, ad clicks, page views, sponsored posts, marketing yourself, giveaways, being a brand, and so on. It makes my head spin! People are turning to superficial means to be the latest, greatest, super blogging star with their own book/movie deal.

People have asked me if I’ve ever considered placing ad’s on OSN and for now my answer is no. I’ve never been approached by a company to do a review or giveaway or ad placement. I don’t see that changing in the near future either.

My Questions for YOU!

• How long have you been blogging? Has it been consistently at the same URL?
• On average, how many visitors do you get a day/month?
• Do you feel blogging has changed over the past decade?
• Do you find that it’s easier for bloggers to start NOW rather than 5 years ago?

Building a Better Blog Challenge

At the persistence of my lovely friend Lynda, I’ve finally decided to go ahead and jump into the SITSgirls 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.

Since I’m broke, I didn’t purchase the e-book that is recommended however the steps are outlined at ProBlogger so I’m fairly confident that I will be able to follow along!

To Catch Up:

• read more about me
• check out my list post, 4 MORE Ways to Improve Your Blog
• learn more about photography with my tutorials: Basic Aperture & Basic Shutter Speed
• I also wrote that Bloggers Fear Themselves

Hopefully y’all will appreciate the more frequent posts here and OSN and maybe learn something along the way!

4 More Ways to Improve Your Blog

Awhile back I wrote a post called 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog, and because I want YOU to have the most awesome blog EVER, I will share four MORE ways that will help!

1. Improve SEO

You want search engines to find you, love on you, and lavish tons of traffic your way.

Use “pretty” Permalinks
A lot of times you will come across a URL that looks like this: yourdomain.com/?p=146. That gives us no information, doesn’t even LOOK appealing, and rarely will I click on a link that doesn’t have a descriptive title.

In WordPress it’s very simple to change how our permalinks look! I personally go with just the postname.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> permalinks and change them as such:

Now we have a URL as such: yourdomain.com/awesome-post-of-awesomeness.

Create an Archives Page
This is so easy! You can see how I have my archives page set up.

I use two plugins to achieve it:

• Compact Archives
• Simple Tags

I think the best features to have on an archives page are:

• search bar
• categories
• tags
• organized by month/year

I’m offering up my archives page up for download so you can see how I created mine!

2. Stop with the Sponsored Posts

This may not go over well with some individuals.

It’s one thing to give a specific review that you’ve been paid to do, to wax poetic about the latest and greatest service or product but it’s another to weave it randomly into your post! Here’s an example!

How did that make ANY sense? Weaving the phrase, baby shower invitations, into every other post may give you an extra $3 but at what cost to your readers?

If I come to a blog I want to read about a specific topic or about your personal life. When it’s obvious that you blog only do get those sponsored links in, it’s a big turn off.

Oh and, stop with the sponsored tweets. Seriously.

3. Enhance the Rss Experience

Ah the joys of RSS! Without it I don’t think any of us would be able to keep up with our daily reads!

Get Rid of Partial Feeds
Granted, there will always be the debate between full vs partial RSS feeds. Overall most READERS prefer full feeds. Those who offer up only partial feeds tend to believe that it will encourage click throughs… I feel it only encourages people to unsubscribe.

In your WP dashboard, navigate to settings -> reading and change them as such:

Create a RSS Footer
For this I use the RSS Footer Plugin. This is how I have mine set up:

<div style="border-top: 1px dotted #4f1029; font-size: 11px">
<br />
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/3130420002_60d2d338e7_t.jpg"
style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" />
Thank you for subscribing to my RSS feed at %%BLOGLINK%%! I would appreciate
your comments and feedback on the entry you just read, %%POSTLINK%%. If you
write about similar topics, I would also like the opportunity to
<a href="http://onestarrynight.com/elsewhere">link to your blog
</a> or have you <a href="http://www.onestarrynight.com/guest-post-
guidelines/">write a guest blog entry</a>!</div>
<br style="clear:both" />

Don’t go overboard in trying to cram too much information in your RSS footer, on the flip side don’t have it be bland and boring. When I posted about this before in my post, Answers to Your Questions, I saw a few people had added it to their feed however it actually irritated me! Slapping in one line, thanks for subscribing to domain.com’s feed is a waste of space for me. I personally like to see a link to the original post, a call to action (such as asking people to comment on the post), and a recognizable image such as an avatar or logo.

4. Have a Fantastic Comments Page

We love comments don’t we! People have dedicated entire threads on forums to get comments on their post, heck, people have even quit blogging because they don’t feel they get enough comments!

So here are the plugins I use on my comments page:

• FeedBurnerCount
• Twounter
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
• TwitterLink Comments
• Subscribe to Comments
• Comment Reply Notification
• CommentLuv

I know, seems like a lot but they each have their purpose, so I highly recommend playing around with them!

I highly suggest including Gravatars in your comments. These days we tend to be recognized by our photo, our “avatar”. It’s very simple to include in your theme, just add this snippet to where you want the gravatar to be displayed.

<?php echo get_avatar( $comment, $size = '50' ); ?>

Now, I personally do threaded comments because I prefer to respond to each comment individually. This is how I have mine set up.

In my theme’s functions.php file, I created a custom function called osn_comment.

You can download my custom comment function, comments CSS file and the entire comments.php file to see how I have everything set up. Granted I don’t have the cleanest code since well, I code for myself, but still, it might help!

Be Social
I have it set up so that at the end of the post on the comments page, you awesome folks can tweet, share/like on facebook, and even stumble the post. I’ve found this helps reach individuals that normally wouldn’t come across your blog and perhaps even bring in new followers, subscribers, and friends!

Here are the snippets that can work on any WordPress blog, even without the use of plugins!

TweetMeme

<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_url = '<?php the_permalink(); ?>';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js">
</script>

Share on Facebook

<script>var fbShare = {
size: 'small',
}</script>
<script src="http://widgets.fbshare.me/files/fbshare.js">
</script>

StumbleUpon

<script src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/hostedbadge.php?s=1">
</script>

Like on Facebook

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=
<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>
&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450
&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no"
frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none;
overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px"></iframe>

Hopefully those four suggestions will help!

Based on the recommendation of BabyBabyLemon, I created a “Tip Jar”! Feel free to use or not use as you wish

Lastly, a bonus tip, claim your blog on Technorati! For example, my claim code is: J438MBK99B7Z this says that I am the owner of OSN. I think in general it’s just the smart thing to do and can aide in more traffic!

Share in the comments some ways that you’ve improved your blog!

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