Entries Tagged 'Weblogging' ↓

With this one my IE links bar is full. Now I see why Opera and Mozilla use panels.

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Originally posted 2002-12-31 17:28:47. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I’ll trust that no one who sees this will think I’m flattering myself. It is an oddly common exchange I have with folks that come across my personal weblogs. A quick reply to an email.

Thanks for the compliment on my writing. I flinch at it myself. I’m too lazy to revise and rewrite. Sometimes I’ll see something and find all the errors MS Word didn’t know to point out.

Trying to sound sophisticated is a dangerous wish. Simple, direct plain speech is always the best start. Strunk & White’s “Elements of Style” says everything a person needs to start writing clearly. Whenever I look at something I’ve written I mostly try to eliminate useless words and simplify my sentences. If anything I write sounds sophisticated either I didn’t do a good job of cleaning up what I wrote or it reflects some of my more academic interests.

I think the best things I’ve ever posted to my weblogs read like a letter to a friend. I like it when it reads the way it sounds when I talk without being unclear to strangers.

Nothing beats being straightforward and friendly.

Originally posted 2003-12-01 18:30:30. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Dean Allen clarifies TextPattern’s license:

As of version g1.19, Textpattern is free, open-source software.

It is also available under a commercial license which permits proprietary usage, free of any obligation to release changes to the source code under an open-source license.

This dual-licensing model (similar to those used by MySQL, Trolltech, and others ) is intended to keep options open for everybody who wishes to use Texpattern, from an individual weblog publisher to a multinational corporation.

Textpattern is Open Source Software

Originally posted 2004-05-23 07:58:15. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Entry edited since LJ no longer has the codes system. I’ve never used Dead Journal.

Live Journal was my entry into what has since become known as weblogging. Despite the weblogs on Edifying Spectacle I keep a couple of Live Journals going and renew my paid membership every year. Giving out a code so some one can get started for free is a way of spreading the gospel as it were. I hadn’t heard of Blogger at the time and mightn’t have started writing an online journal if I’d had to pay. I don’t know what weblog software was around. Radio Userland maybe.

A free Blogger blog is always an option. But without work to setup comments and ping Weblogs.com you are lost in the blogosphere.

DiaryLand is free but the membership seems to make Live Journal’s look mature. Without a paid DiaryLand membership what you get is minimal.

There are plenty of free weblog tools that are free for use if you are willing to exert yourself to set them up: MovableType, b2, Bloxsom, new ones every week. I think a weblog on your own space that you can completely control, maintain archives of and makes commenting easy is the best choice.

That I recommend MovableType can’t be a surprise since I have several MovableType weblogs running on Edifying Spectacle. While I’ve paid for four MovableType keys you can run it without ever giving Ben and Mena Trott a nickle (which I assume is what most people do).

When I was looking at weblog software I chose MovableType for three reasons: it supported comments, had a heathly user support forum, and it looked like the authors would be in business for the foreseeable future. Each version has added more to the wealth of features and Ben Trott swats the stray minor bug quickly. The freebie addons, MovableType plugins, have appeared at a surprising rate. I’m glad they are there even if I only use MT-Textile to handle character entities.

I suspect many of the other weblog programs out there offer strong benefits on their own. All it takes is a Google searcht to discover them. If you are (perhaps overly) ambitious you can setup MyPHPBBS, PHPNuke or any of wealth of free PHP programs that let you create a community supporting you, your friends and anyone else you’d like to have post.

Originally posted 2003-05-19 15:49:45. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Christopher Collins :

Not one person has rated by blog at Blog Hot or Not in months. I could swear someone is intentionally trashing my rating at BlogHop.com. Now, the images from Eatonweb Portal no longer appear. With many signs that Blogshares is the way to rate sites, and have some filthy Capitalist fun to boot, there is one less section to the sidebar.

Back when I was watching these ratings for my weblogs I was always surprised that the ratings on BlogHop and BlogHotorNot were considerably higher than on Eatonweb. It didn’t seem likely that people who clicked on the last’s rating bar were more critical (well it could easily be imagined that sniffish people simply wouldn’t clicked on anything that used a phrase like “hot or not”).

During the short time that I watched my weblogs fate on Blogshares it seemed that their value was inverse to their readership. But I don’t know anything about the real stock market (although I think the need to satisfy stock speculators has poisoned many corporations). But Blogshares seems more a product of a latterday Milton Bradley or Brothers Parker than systemized way of expressing esteem.

A few months ago I practiced the inverse snobbery of removing the links to the ratings systems. The only worthwhile expressions of value someone can make about a weblog is to leave a comment or link to it.

Originally posted 2003-09-01 06:00:41. Republished by Old Post Promoter

All sort of folks are indignant about the silly Bloggies awards.

I just discovered The Anti-Bloggies.

The Anti-Bloggies are basically another B.S. awards ceremony. Getting one won’t make you cool or get you dates.

Originally posted 2003-01-22 18:52:40. Republished by Old Post Promoter

I get referrers from Linked, maybe you would as well.

Originally posted 2003-01-22 16:40:12. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Just discovered Tangent, yet another attempt to automatically link websites.

Tangent is a centralized Web service that takes the content from your Web site and sends it back with links to other sites in the network. If Web sites had sex, Tangent would be how they’d do it. If your site likes to get around, it can link to everyone and everything.

The default setup causes sites containing words appearing on other sites to be highlighted. Words like January, store, car. Clearly the default arrangement is darn near worthless.

For Tangent to work users will have to specify keywords intelligently. Better yet key phrases. Queer, unless you want to see every queer person’s website, isn’t really a worthwhile keyword. But ‘queer theory’ or ‘queer politics’ could narrow the matches down nicely.

All of this is processed by a central server; hobbyists interests, priorities and finances change. If a thematic linking scheme ever catching on there’ll have to be more than one server and backup servers.

Originally posted 2003-01-20 13:37:17. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Hi yourself!

OK, you have a couple of free Blogspot blogs in which you quote long stretches of CNN and wire service news stories. Why write to me and say you are the “links manager” and invite me to exchange links?

It isn’t just that I don’t have a blogroll. But you formatted your email with HTML and when you inserted my website’s name you used a different font each time making it clear the invitation was created by software.

I get the same offer from makers of penis enlargement pills and porn site managers. At least the latter would pay me money if I answered. And they don’t pretend that it isn’t a form email.

Originally posted 2004-02-12 17:17:16. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Comment spammers may be working harder.

Someone calling himself both “ebaydough” and “axzar” both at axzar.com left four quickie comments. Sample:

hmm sexblogs..gonna go google that…sounds like a very good niche of content
THX for the heads up..

The entry actually said sex blogs, two words. Another comment, posed as a question did use a word not in the entry but would’ve been on topic in a real reply. Perhaps MT-Blacklist is forcing comment spammers to actually manually enter their spam comments. Not that I haven’t seen junk weblog comments with thinly veiled commercial intent entered manually before. But not four in such quick succession.

Perhaps Mr. Axzar has yet to learn of robots that spam weblogs.

Just in case he was nothing more than a tedious imbecile I did go to his link. It was a typical almost zero cost shopping site. Nothing for sale but affiliate links to more substantial merchants who’ll give him a minute cut of whatever sales he may bring them.

I like the image of comment spammers feverishly typing away, giving themselves carpal tunnel in an attempt to earn something for nothing.

I’d wonder why they come to my minor niche in the web but I’m sure the famous webloggers implemented comment moderation long ago.

A variation: Religious comment spam .

Originally posted 2003-11-07 17:16:08. Republished by Old Post Promoter