Sueblimely - Discovering Blogging

It is now a week since I launched the new blog on Wordpress but I kind of missed this one, which I had lovingly tended for over a year.

In case you have not found your way to Blogging Sueblimely I will give you an update. I have been visited and listed by Google, Yahoo and Altavista but the latter is the only one to display that blog rather than this one first in a search. Not surprising at all, it is too soon for that. I still have to add the blog to listings with social networking and blog list sites .

Topics being covered by Blogging Sueblimely for the next little while will be:

• How and why to move to your own domain.
• Reasons to move to Wordpress on your own domain.
• How to set up Wordpress
  
• Which plugins/widgets are useful for all Wordpress users to add.

Ongoing topics will be the same as this blog. Including:

• Designing a theme/template. These particular tutorials will not be specific to Wordpress so they would be useful to anyone wanting to learn some basic styling techniques.
• Social Networking and building personal blog communities.
• News around the Blogosphere - new sites, blog add ins, blog tools
  
• Help tips and advice for bloggers.
• Aspects of blogging my visitors express an interest in learning.

Come and visit, I would be very pleased to see you there.

Labels: Wordpress

Colin from Life has bestowed this delightful award on me. Thank you Colin, you are a star.

‘Shibumi is a Japanese term which used in the following context is a noun. Its meaning refers to a ‘particular aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty” which can be applied to almost anything.’

The ´ shibumi’ award was originally created by Hawk - (beautiful design, Hawk)

Labels: Awards

I suspect some of you may laugh when you first see my new Wordpress blog, considering the amount I have talked about it, the time I have spent working on its design and layout and what I posted last week about transferring my posts from Blogger to Wordpress.

The Blank Canvas:

I thought I would explain the method behind my madness. Being concerned about so many duplicate links created by transferring over all the posts here to the new blog and kind advice from Mihaela Lica (Mig) from Pamil Visions, who is well experienced in Search Engine Optimization techniques, I decided to change tack and start afresh with my new blog. Thanks Mig. Mig also has a very informative free book you can download - The SEO Book of Wordpress Blogs

I deleted my installation of Wordpress, as a quick way of ridding it of all the posts I had transferred over, and reinstalled. As I used Fantastico, a free service provided by my host, Hostgator, installation was really quick and simple. Fantastico automates the installation of a whole range of scripts and programs. Take care if you are signing up with a hosting company that includes Fantastico, that its installation is up to date - so that you are not installing old versions of programs.

That explains the lack of posts over at the new blog but why the plain default template you may ask. I had designed a theme that I was mostly happy with and was going to install that. Then I had a brainstorm, which I may very well live to regret.

• Starting from scratch means that I will have to promote the blog all over again, adding social networking widgets, subscription buttons etc. You can join me in learning what I do.
  

• What a wonderful opportunity to blog about the process of styling the template/theme from scratch, so that anyone who wishes to learn about it can do so. So, the blog you see is Mark 1 of many marks - an unblemished blog perhaps?. Although I will be working with a Wordpress theme, what I will post will, in the main, be relevant to bloggers using any platform - because it will be covering CSS styling in general.


• I will be able to rewrite some of the still relevant and more useful posts from this blog.
  

So the new blog is a virgin blog, a blank blog, an unblemished blog, a spotless blog. . The blog is in fact a blogspot-less blog. (The Monty Python Parrot Sketch was my favorite). The new blog:

• Has no Google Yahoo, MSN, Alexa, Technorati .... rank. It is rank-less. I suppose that means at least it does not smell badly :-)


• Is not submitted to any social networking sites.


• It has no subscribed readers


• In fact it has no readers at all!


• It resides in no browser favorites or bookmarks.


• Unlike this blog - it has not been Ratified, it is nowhere among the Top Australian Blogs or the Top Australian Women's blogs


• It is award-less, meme-less, post-less, and category-less


• It has had no stumbles, diggs, fames, fuels, bumps, reddits ....


• It has no MyBlogLog, SpicyPage, Bumpzee, del.icious, friends. Poor lonely blog, I feel really sorry for it. (Oh dear, it is a worry when I have feelings for a blogging platform)
  

This situation will be gradually altered. I just hope it does not take too long!

So here it is folks - the blog with one post: Sueblimely Blogging . I would be delighted it you would 'christen' it by leaving a comment and helping its journey in life from being a brand new baby blog to an adult (although not always mature) blog. Ya boo sucks to the new google pagerank changes - see what I mean :-)

Any ideas for the blog will be very welcome.

PS - Do you think I should call it Sueblimely Discovering Blogging, Sueblimely Blogging - or something completely different?

Labels: Wordpress

Mimi of Mimi Writes and founder of the "Peace Globe Movement ~ Dona Nobis Pacem ~ BlogBlast For Peace" has asked bloggers to join together today to blog about peace.

I hope that the participation rate is huge and that those who would not normally divert away from their topic areas make an exception for this. A wish for world peace is not a controversial topic. I know some bloggers fear losing readers if they touch on subjects that may cause readers to disagree, not return or unsubscribe. Surely this subject is not one of them. Some bloggers do participate but, to keep on topic, their posts on the subject in question are about minor issues which relate to their own subject area.I think this minimizes the importance of the message that most bloggers are trying to send.

I regularly take part in united blogging efforts on areas I feel passionate about. I am sure my regular readers will not take offence by this even if I do divert from my topic. To be honest if I were to lose readers because of it, this would not stop me. I would take the attitude that I was losing traffic rather than readers; traffic I did not particularly want anyway. I would feel that my integrity had not been compromised by not being influenced by my blog statistics. Back to today's blogging subject itself:

The idea was to choose one of the Dona Nobis Pacem designs created for the day and to edit and personalise this .

The image I created above is based on one of Mimi's images combined with my blog logo.

In my ideal peaceful world, nations would come together to solve our global environmental problems. Therefore the countries in my image are all green and pleasant lands. The polar icecaps are emphasized to indicate a return to a clean sustainable world. (I am sure Australia would not want the Antarctic quite so close though - please forgive my 'artistic' licence here). The Himalayas and all other mountain ranges will have the 'correct' amount of snow.

I think well written, succinct quotes contain immense power and speak volumes so here is a list of quotes that sum up the importance of world peace far better than I can:

• Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only one day, of modern warfare.--Peter Ustinov


• Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.--Max Lucade


• Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.--Martin Luther King, Jr


• If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


• Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.--Martin Luther King, Jr


• I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace. Muhammad Ali
  

Is it a pipe dream to expect a peaceful world. Very likely, but I do believe that it is possible and that we start from a very tiny part of the world first - ourselves:

• Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.- Mahatma Gandhi


• I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love and abundance. Then whenever doubt, anxiety, or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal and soon they'll forget my number.- Edith Armstrong


• For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.- Eleanor Roosevelt


• Am I not destroying my enemies what I make friends of them? - Abraham Lincoln


• If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.-Thich Nhat Hanh


• Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile--smile five times a day to someone you don't really want to smile at all--do it for peace. --Mother Teresa


• Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.--Buddha


• I think this sums it all up - "Be the change you wish to see in the world”…Gandi
  

This thought should be a real incentive for all the world to attempt to achieve peace:

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.- Albert Einstein

Note - A good method of discovering who else has joined in today is to do a Google Blog Search for Dona Nobis Pacem or Dona Nobis Pacem Mimi. If you are searching today then choose 'published in the last day' from the left hand sidebar. This will ensure you are reading the entries rather than posts that are reminding us to join in.

Thank you to Colin for reminding me about this via his post at Dona Nobis Pacem - BlogBlast For Peace

Labels: Blog in Unity, Group Writing Project

While I was writing a recent post it occurred to me that although the content was not specific to other bloggers, references in it made it appear that it was. I am now going to try to be much more aware that not all my blog readers are bloggers themselves, although, because of my subject area, the majority are.

We often acknowledge and thank other bloggers by creating links to their blogs, adding them to blogrolls, subscribing to their community pages.... You can give your non-blogging readers some recognition from time to time too.. You could for example include something in a post about a comment they have made, thanking them for feedback, ideas, suggestions etc. If they are a member of such sites as Flickr or YouTube you could link there, as they may be trying to develop friends and a community in this way. If they run ordinary websites you could link to those.

Although we may not get reciprocal linking or social networking kudos from non-bloggers they are as important a part of our personal blogging communities as our blogging mates. Such recognition may even encourage non-bloggers to return to your site and to leave comments!

With this in mind I would like to thank the following people for their support in my blogging efforts:

• David my parter who is always supportive in whatever I do, (and despite what I do at times too). His business site, not yet complete is at DC PC Solutions - I promise to finish the web site very soon, David.


• My daughter who's intelligence, determination and intrepid nature is just about to see her head off to work in various, often remote, places around Australia. If you are looking at weather reports for Western Australia the information may well have come from her. Please don't blame her if she is wrong though :-) Her fascination with sunsets and clouds set her off on the path of being a Meteorologist from the age of about 12. She does not have a public blog but you can see her puppy at Introducing Amos. He is a few months older now and has been living here for a few weeks. Despite him eating my furniture, insisting on sleeping across my chest, licking me continually and chasing the cat, I will miss him when he goes on Friday.


• My elder son who puts up with the time I spend blogging and does not complain, although I know he would like to! As a Software Engineering/Commerce Uni student his knowledge comes in handy. His honesty and down to earth opinions help me see my blogging and web building more objectively. He has been YouTubing some of our visiting dog's antics. The cat gets her revenge- Amos and Pearl as do our curtains - Revenge of the Drapes
• My younger son who is so impressed by my awards - because of suffering from Fragile X Syndrome he cannot read my posts, but as with all things in life he has a positive cheerful attitude and does not let this phase him. I have learned a lot from him on how to have a positive attitude to life.


• Keef whose sense of humor and travel experiences, as an international coach driver, would make fascinating blog reading but I have not yet convinced him to give it a go. I will give a plug here to a website I created but was Keef's idea. An organization that he is an active member of, as a coastwatch volunteer and committee member. Ingoldmells Point National Coastwatch . This site was created with a Content Management System called Joomla which I am planning on writing about soon.


• To those who have left comments on my site with just a name and no indication of whether you blog or not. I thank you.

If any of you reading this are not bloggers yourselves please remember that leaving comments on blogs are welcomed. We bloggers enjoy getting feedback and like to build a community of readers..

Oh I feel a meme coming on! On second thoughts I am going to wait until my blog is active on my own domain :-)

Please excuse me if you are not using blogger as this will be of no interest at all to you but I know some other people are keen to make the move over to Wordpress and I want to let them know how I am going.

On changing to the 'new' Blogger I used a default template because all the alterations, hacks and workrounds I used, to add the features I wanted, broke my original template completely. A quick way round this was for me to copy all the sidebar content and put it in one of the html/javascript page elements. As I will keep this blog going in one form or another for a while, until the new one takes off, I thought I should make at least some effort to make it look reasonable.

Not being satisfied with anything quick and easy, which is quite normal for me, I set about completely altering the template to try and match it to my original. I also added a third column because I thought that the long long sidebar I had meant certain things were not in prominent enough positions. When viewing an individual post the sidebar extended far beyond the post itself and some items were probably never seen by those entering via a post rather than the main page.

I am not so sure about it though. Until I fiddled with the column widths and added the borders, the blog looked far too crowded. It is looking better now but I would appreciate your feedback on this as I have been working on a three column template for the new Wordpress blog too.

I could not resist adding another hack too - Recent Comments by Ramani of Hackosphere at Customizable recent comments widget (using JSON feed). It is nowhere near as complex as it sounds - just a matter of copying and pasting a script into the head of your template and adding another to a page element. Ramani also has a good explanation of how to add a third column to an existing 2 column new Blogger template - 3-column templates for new Blogger

After recently changing this blog over to the new Blogger system (from the classic Blogger to what used to be called Beta Blogger), I was able to copy all my posts and comments across from this blog to Wordpress on my own domain.
This was done with an extremely handy inbuilt Wordpress feature (Manage/Import in Wordpress Admin).

If I had been using the new Blogger, categories would have been imported too. The classic blogger system I have been using does not support categories so I had used a workround instead. I now have 249 posts to add tags and categories to and 249 posts that have tags that will lead back to blogspot posts. The workround came back to bite me!

I am keeping this blog in place until I am happy that the move is complete. This involves:

• Working on my template to transfer what I want to keep from this template (images etc) and adding a favicon image. I want the new blog to be recognizable as being mine although I am not sure about keeping the notebook spiral affect?
  


• Adding the correct categories/tags to 249 posts (I am tempted to delete some I am not happy with!)


• Deleting the old 'in post' tags that point to this blog via a Google Blog search (the work around mentioned above).
  
  
• Fiddling with my Wordpress template until I am happier with it.
  
  
• Pointing multitudes of Social Networking sites to the new location.


• Have a break to celebrate Christmas and talk to my family who have lost me to Wordpress for weeks.


• Adding the necessary plug-ins. I must remember the word 'necessary' here. If I am true to form I will instead trial lots and lots of them and then delete those I am not happy with and non vital ones that cause the page to load too slowly.


• Google stuff - although I am a bit teed off with the big G for downgrading pagerank on some of my favorite blogs. Anyone not understand the phrase teed off - not sure if its only a UK/Aussie expression?


• Creating and adding a Google Site Map to my site (where else would I add it!)


• Adding the blog to my Google Analytics Account so that it tracks stats.
  


• Setting it up to use Google Webmaster Tools.
  


• Fiddling some more with my Wordpress theme. By this time should have got used to not calling it a template .
  
  
• Pointing my Feedburner feed to the new blog rather than this one. This way those who have subscribed using the feedburner feed will not be affected by my move at all.


• Let in the New Year - 2008 hopefully


• Inform my readers and contacts about the move although I reckon after reading my posts about it for months they will already know and be well and truely sick of it all.


• Deciding what to do about the posts on this blog so that Google does not penalize me for having duplicate content. I could delete the majority of each post, just leaving the first paragraph with a 'read more' link to the post on Wordpress. Then Google would consider me abusive for having too many links to an external site.! If I turned no-follow back on for this site they may forgive me. Maybe I should transfer this blog to a subfolder of my new site (using Bloggers publish to custom domain feature) then Blogger will just divert the site there and my links will become internal? Any suggestions would be gratefull received and acknowledged.


• Start shopping for Christmas 2009

Of course I do not really expect this to take anywhere near as long. A week or two is enough surely!

Labels: Wordpress

I left my daughter to my main PC this weekend - being in transit from living in her flat in Melbourne to various places in Western Australia she has not had internet access at home. I shudder at the thought of not having internet!) I managed to share my Thunderbird mail with my bedroom PC (usually just used for recording and watching TV shows) to attempt a catch up on reading. Not being able to access my email for a few days, because of running out of download limit I was well behind. As usual links in emails sent me off to the web where I dallied far too long to read much of my mail.

Enough twittering. Instead I am going to share some information I discovered in these web wanderings:

• Meg from Dipping into the Blogpond alerted us to the fact that Google Webmaster tools now allows us to geographically target blogs that have a generic domain suffix (eg .com, .net). This is relevant to all bloggers who reside outside the US and have a local Google search engine. Now I have set this blog as being Australia based I hope to appear more in google.com.au. If you use Google Webmaster tools then head over to Meg's post at Attention Aussie Bloggers and find out how to do this. (The post does not just apply to Aussies)
  
  
• Mashable have published a list of major blogging events with excellent descriptions - Top 10 Events for Bloggers.
  
  
• Peachpit Press explains how to integrate image software 'Gallery' into a Wordpress Blog Customizing WordPress: Integrating Other Apps.
  
• Romlet is a new stats and social networking tool. I have just added their widget to my sidebar and will let you know more about it once I have had time to monitor the results.
  


• HelloTxt is a time saver if you use a variety of microblogging services. Hellotxt lets you post one message, via their web site, and send it out to such services as Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce . Other services it supports to date include meemi, and yappd , which is closing down tomorrow (for a little while?) after being bought out. I have not tried these last two.


• Voting for the 2007 Weblog Awards is now open. I will be voting to show appreciation for my favorites.


• Aboogy is a free bookmark manager and personal startpage which you can make public. It may be good to use for linking to the places you can be found on the internet (social networking, bookmarking, microblogging sites etc)

Labels: Social Networking

I am finally taking the plunge and starting my move to Wordpress on my own server. It is hardly a plunge really considering how long I have been planning it, more like a tentative step into the shallow end.

Apologies to those who do not use Blogger as the following is not relevant to you.

The first step I have to take is to change over from the old (classic) blogger system to the current system. I had not done this before, despite its improved features as I found it quicker and easier to tweak the template using the old system.

Rather than creating a new template for this move I am going to use a pre-made one, temporarily at least. I will keep this blog active in some form or another, mainly because I do not want anyone to take the sueblimely name. Someone may turn it into a splog (spam blog); shudder at the thought.

I will first copy and save the contents of my sidebar. Then I can delete this from the original template as I am unsure how the change will affect it. Once the new template system is in place I will copy what is needed from my old sidebar into a html/javascript page element.

The reason I have to change to the new Blogger is because this will allow me to import posts and comments from this blog into Wordpress.

Here goes - I have no idea what the move will do to my current settings so please excuse any hopefully temporary hiccups in the page display.

Labels: Wordpress

Tax returns done, I can at last allow myself some time for blogging and browsing. Using up our internet download limit for the month, two days early, was actually helpful for a change as I did not get sidetracked from my task at hand.

In normal circumstances I would be ranting and raving about the restrictive broadband service in Australia. We are on a, so called, unlimited broadband plan but this means we have a certain download limit and then get speed restricted. The restricted speed was so slow that I could not download email without timing out nor get into web mail.

The current top plan with my ISP allows 30gb of download/upload a month for A$109 (US$102). With 2 adults and 4 'grown' children being regular and active internet users this is just not enough for us . I do not know of any Australian ISP that offers truly unlimited downloads. Until recently uploads were not included in the allowance. Our service is deteriorating rather than improving! I guess I had a rant after all.

Apologies from those whose emails I should have replied to earlier. I will have to have a catch up now and try and wade my way through the spam to the real emails.

Labels: Australia

In case my last post brought in some Australian readers I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about a Facebook group I have set up for Melbourne bloggers. The idea is that we can keep each other up to date on events of relevance within Melbourne - conferences, meet-ups etc.

If you live in Melbourne and want to find out (or tells us about) what is happening in the blogging scene here (or if you are outside of Melbourne but know of events that we would be interested in) please feel free to join us on the Melbourne Bloggers Facebook Group.

I thought this useful not only to learn about events which teach more about blogging and related areas but to give people an opportunity to extend their online blogging community into making real life connections. Do any of you take part in any real life blogging gatherings?

Labels: Social Networking

My last post reminded me that I wanted to mention the "All Women blogging carnival". The carnival is run by the All for Women blog, the same site that created the top 50 Australian Women blogger list. The aim: to create "a weekly roundup of the best of women blogging from all over the blogosphere".

Carnivals are a good way to help develop your personal blogging community although I recommend you stick to those that are of most relevance to your interests or blog topics. If you are participating in carnivals merely for the backlinks they provide, whatever the topic, you have to be careful that your posts are of interest to your readers.

The reason I like the All Women carnival is that you do not have write about a given topic nor divert from your normal subject area. You submit one of the blog posts you have already written. This can be a particular post you have written for the carnival or a favorite from the prior week. You can experience the link love without compromising your blog. There is one condition to entry - you must be a woman. As if you did not realize that without me telling you!

Because entrants choose their best posts, they make for good reading. As well as submitting posts you can also volunteer to host the carnival. A different blogger hosts the carnival each Monday. For an example, here is the latest hosted by Imaginif
All Women Carnival - Why the Blog Not. I wonder if hosts are expected to be women too?

Leigh of All for Women and crazy meezer and Patricia at Mad Goat Lady have just started a novel site Aussie Swaps - a swap is where people secretly send a gift to each other. They plan to have several swaps throughout the year to mark special occasions, such as Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, and are starting off with a Secret Santa. This is a site for Aussies but I thought some of you may be interested in the concept.

Imaginif runs a carnival very similar to All Women although the stipulation here is that you must be an Aussie - Carnival of Australia

Labels: Social Networking