ContentRobot

With prior versions of WordPress (2.3.3 and earlier) ContentRobot often installed plugins to assist with advanced WYSIWYG post tools and better image management. We knew that 2.5 had included a newer version of TinyMCE and also integrated the ability to include media (pictures, songs, video, and other file types) into the Write > Post panel.

We were looking forward to seeing if there was a big leap in functionality. We like the new Media Manager because it’s quicker and tidier to add images when blogging.

To add images, click on the add image button, then:

• Enter a title, add a caption, and longer description
• Choose to upload an image, use an image from the gallery (images in the current article) or images from the media library (previously uploaded in any post or page).
• Set your alignment (left, center, right)
• Link the image (none, file URL, post URL)
• Click the Insert into Post button

Note: You can set up various image parameters in the the Options > Miscellaneous panel) to indicate your thumbnail and medium sizes, as well as the ability to store the media in month/year folders. There is also a new Media Library section, where you can view, edit, and delete media files.

While it’s not perfect - you don’t really embed a podcast or a video, rather it makes them links - it makes it much nicer to add different media types to posts and pages.

What do you think of the new Media Manager?

Do you have a hobby that you just have to share with others? ContentRobot would encourage you to get blogging!

Whether you are excited about knitting, gardening, or playing with model trains, we think you should create yourself a “hobby blog!”

As WordPress experts, ContentRobot says click over to WordPress.com and we promise can be blogging in mere minutes upon signup.

ContentRobot’s Hobby Blog

One member of the ContentRobot team has developed her own hobby blog on WordPress.com. The Diamondbacks Rock Blog allows Karen to write about her daughter’s little league team. In a few hours, the blog provided information about the team and the league, and offered an easy way to keep the parents informed about any changes in schedule, upload photos (and videos soon), and publish game-day reports.  Go check it out:  http://dbacksrock.wordpress.com

Why Choose WordPress.com for Your Hobby Blog?

While WordPress.com has some limitations, it’s a real nice, easy, and free way to get blogging. It has so much to offer in terms of both design and functionality.

Themes

There are currently 67 templates to choose from, and many of them can be customized with a graphical header (with its built-in cropping tool, its quite easy to do) and/or implementing a different color pallet.

Before you pick a theme for your blog, consider the following:

• How many columns do you want (1, 2, or 3)? What elements will they contain?
• Do you need to display a menu? A navigation system is nice when you have supporting pages that fall outside of your blog posts.
• What does your blog’s home page contain? You can choose to display a “static page” or your reverse chronological blog posts.

Because the design is separate from the content, you can change them “on-the-fly” to see what look you ultimately want. With a little thought, your blog can look professional at no cost.

Widgets

Most of the themes are considered widget-ready. This means that you can add functionality, often to the sidebars, without knowing much (if any) programming.

Common widgets that are nice to include are:

• Recent posts (while its nice to have people scroll through your blog, it’s nice to give them a bit of navigation to go directly to the post they are interested in)
• Archives (give them the ability to step through your blog by the last 12 months)
• Category Listing / Topic Cloud (another nice navigation option allows visitors to see posts grouped by category, the topic cloud can give a visual view of what you are writing about)
• RSS feed (allow visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive your content in a news reader)
• Other fun widgets are:
  • Flickr (show off your photos by connecting to your Flickr account)
  • Email subscriptions (let them signup to receive your content via email, great for those who do not understand the power of RSS)
  • Social sharing (allows visitors to submit your post to delicious, digg, etc.)

Advantages of Using WordPress.com

• You get a full version of the software
• You’ll always be on the latest version of the software and related plugins/widgets
• Easy to change your theme
• Free* blogging in minutes

Disadvantages of Using WordPress.com

• * Your site will hang off of the WordPress.com URL unless you pay an additional fee (upgrade for $10/year)
• * Lack of flexibility when it comes to design and some customizations may require you to pay additional fees (upgrade to customize your CSS for $15/year)
• * You only have so much storage, going over your 3GB limit will impose additional fees (extra storage starts at $20/yr for an additional 5 GBs)

While ContentRobot encourages businesses to pursue a custom blog strategy, there are times when available free tools can fit the blogging bill - like using WordPress.com to create a Little League blog!

On this day in 2003, Matt Mullenweg announced that first release of WordPress was available for download. Version 0.7 features included:

• Texturize — So good it’ll make your quotes curl.
• WordPress Links — A link manager with everything you’d expect, from Weblogs.com support to a handy bookmarklet. Manage as many blogrolls as you like, and have complete control over their display.
• XHTML 1.1 — WordPress is complaint with XHTML standards up to 1.1, though by default it sends a 1.0 document type to avoid compatibility issues.
• Highly Intelligent Line Breaks — Occasionally called “nl2br on steroids,” this brand new function adds line breaks except where there is already a block level tag or another line break.
• New Administration Interface — We’ve made it as simple as possible, and no more. Everything has been restructured from the ground up in a fully compliant XHTML/CSS interface.
• Manual Excerpts — This allows you to handcraft summaries of your posts to appear in your RSS feed and other places.
• New Default Templates — Again we’ve streamlined theses with the latest in simple, easy-to-understand standard XHTML and CSS. And not a CSS hack in sight.
• Plus numerous behind the scenes code cleanups, making this release faster and more stable than ever.

Thanks, WordPress - enjoy the party!

ContentRobot is pleased to offer our first ebook, which is an excerpt of our collaboration on  The Secret Power of Blogging.

You’ll see:

• Karen’s foreword of the book
• ContentRobot case studies featuring our clients (BazaarVoice, Beneath the Cover / Push the Key, Bite of the Best, GrokDotCom, New School Selling, Shop.org, and Team Timex)
• Outsourcing Versus In-House Blog Development (including design, technical, and marketing issues)
• Benefits of working with a blog development company
• Finding a reputable blogging vendor

We hope you enjoy the ebook - your’s free for the taking! Click here for your copy.

What personality traits do most A-List bloggers have? If you have one or more of them, then you are on your way to becoming one yourself.

They cast a wide net
The A-Listers often have wide social circles. They can truly connect with a number of people on a daily basis and offer them advice, knowledge, and experience.

They like to be early adopters
A-Listers are continually experimenting: new technology, products, places, etc.  They are energized by trying something new.

They are evangelists
A-Listers are blogging about things that they love and just can’t wait to share that with other. They provide sense of excitement for their topic(s).

They are honest
A-Listers will tell you when things don’t work and what they don’t like. While they can get snarky at times, usually are being transparent with their feeelings and opinions.

They draw people in
Because of all the traits above, people are usually waiting to hear what they have to say next. They are often funny, inspiring, controversial, and more.

With the warmer weather hitting the Northern Hemisphere, our thoughts may be turning to playtime rather than blogging.  So, how do you keep that blog stoked?

Blogging can sometimes be as easy as sitting down at the keyboard and start typing and a post appears, but sometimes it’s not so easy. It’s a matter of working on your mindset (as well as your writing skills). Here are some things that can help you, think like a blogger:

1. Have Content Goals

Think about :

• How many posts you want to write per day / per week
• What the topics you want to focus on, push, or get away from

2. Develop a Routine

To get yourself into a rhythm, you might:

• Set deadlines for yourself
• Create an editorial calendar to help you focus

3. Keep Learning

You can never know too much about blogging.

• Read books and other blogs
• Take a course and attend conferences

4. Try Something New

Experiment with your blogging, and consider:

• Using different types of posts (teaching, opinion, etc.)
• Writing in a different voices (mentor, friend, expert, etc.)

5. Mistakes Can Be Overcome

Getting flamed in public is no fun. You’ll be quickly forgiven if you:

• Adjust your stance, your goals, or your mindset
• Learn from your biggest critics

The best bloggers continually find ways to keep it going. You can, too!

Hate seeing trackback spam intermingled with your blog’s comments?

It used to drive us nuts, too.

After some searching, we stumbled upon this great WordPress add-on: Simple Trackback Validation Plugin.

According to the plugin author, it performs simple but very effective tests on all incoming trackbacks to stop trackback spam.

When a trackback is received, this plugin:

1. Checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to. This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.
2. Retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.

There are several options available, including:

• Enabling logging to get all actions
• Selecting how to treat spam trackbacks (do not save in the database or mark as spam or place into moderation, and more)

It’s a great plugin because it makes for a cleaner, faster, better looking blog. We encourage you go try it today.

Today, Jason Calcanis mused that Corporate Vlogs are the future of PR .. Why? He cites his experience with adding Mahalo Daily videos.

Since they started, the videos have gotten four million views. Of those four million, say two million people, have come in contact with the Mahalo brand. And don’t discount the archival value of the shows, where you can add another 2-4m views over their lifetime of the video.

He expects that the videos can pay for itself easily after one year. Consider if you were to pay for four million 15 second spots on the web, the cost would be $25 for each 1,000 views–or $100,000. Their initial $250,000 investment in the Mahalo Daily a year will bring in–if the growth continues–somewhere between 15-30M viewers a year.

Why did they add a video component? The Mahalo team wants to:

1. Entertain people
2. Inform people
3. Represent and build the brand
4. Be a creative outlet for the team

Finally, Calcanis projected that in another three years, every company will have not only a corporate blog but a corporate vlog. The New York Times, JetBlue, American Express, and Apple will communicate with their leading customers with regular videos.

Do you agree with Jason? Will you develop a video-based strategy?

GrokDotCom reports that Google Optimizer has shed its beta status:

Google Website Optimizer can now be accessed by anyone with a basic Google account. Even if you only have so much as a Gmail account, you can start testing your website — for free — regardless of whether you’re running a paid search campaign. (No worries, AdWords users, Website Optimizer still works seamlessly with the rest of the Google product suite.)

Ready to test headlines, copy, images, and other conversion points? Don’t forget to check out:

• GrokDotCom’s free resources
• ContentRobot’s Google Website Optimizer Plugin

PSST! Did you know that up until recently that ContentRobot’s company website had been running atop of *gasp* Drupal? Yes “the WordPress experts” finally converted to this superior platform when we launched our “naked theme” site last month.

While we were hoping to be farther along and show off parts of our new look, we decided to continue to work on the blog-powered website’s underpinnings first. So, we have bitten the bullet and upgraded our site to version 2.5 (and found that the conversion was rather painless).

We are ready to offer upgrades to our clients and feel confident working within the new environment. It does have its foibles, but we are pleased overall with this latest effort from Automattic.

As the weather warms here in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you are also warming up to WP 2.5. Let us know your experiences so far. We hope our lack of design doesn’t leave you cold - the melt comes soon!