LOL - I checked my Akismet Spam killer today to see if I have managed to attract any scum spammer yet. The blog was only launched at the weekend, so I expected a few. (more…)

This is exactly the reason i have this blog. So’s I can speak my confused mind. Digg’s a “social” site, right? Everybody wants to be a darling of Digg these days because successful exposure in Digg means a traffic bonanza. (more…)

I’ve been having a wee look about at the best Wordpress Plugins I can add to this site to make it a bit more visitor and search engine friendly. I want to do this but not go over board.

I kicked off of course with spam killer Akismet (pre-installed these days) and thought I would give Snapshots a try too (although I’m a bit concerned it might be a bit to distracting for the user long term). Subscribe to Comments of course was another no-brainer as the Americans say.

For a bit more help I looked in Delicious & Google (guess which one returned better results) and found these:

1. Andy Beard Top Wordpress Plugins April
   
2. DesigBit Excellent Wordpress Plugins
3. Jon Chow: My Top 10 Wordpress Plug Ins
4. PingMag - Top Wordpress Plugins
5. Top 30 Plug-ins For Wordpress - Staska
6. Top Wordpress Plugins - TheBlogJoint

Advertisements? I’m having a look at AuctionAds after listening to an excellent interview with John Reese had with Shoemoney, but that’s not really the aim of this blog for now. I also like the “sound” of the audio plugin (but only for use my first post)

I also like the look of Related Posts. I’ll need to get my Feedburner RSS / Subscription plugin up and running to for all those future readers (but as yet I don’t have much a clue about the subscription device I used subscribing to Andy Beard’s site recently - but I definitely want one).

By BlogLog Community Roll and Bumpzee buttons will need to go in as well at some point.

Any help anyone?

Jim I will pay you $720 in free ads…..if the first time we meet, you strike the pose for me that’s greeted me every time I visit your solo album
Shaun

OK now my blog is set up. I chose to use Wordpress which is free and simple to use. I used my trusty host at Rochen and using a script it took me about 5 minutes to install the whole thing.

Add a couple of hours configuring the template I nicked from the corporate site and modified. Throw in 5 hours staring at the screen wondering what to do next and hey presto - live and launched to the world.

First thing first. I want to get my new blog into Google, Yahoo and MSN. How will I do this? Actually it’s very easy.

I could submit my content to Google but I would prefer G to FIND my site rather than me telling it anything (old habits die hard). Google finds your site by links - so I will get a few links from sites I know are in Google’s index.

Firstly Wordpress makes it easy by “pinging” a lot of services which are in fact on Google’s menu so Google might very well know about my site right now with these first posts.

Second I’ll add one or two posts to a few bookmarking sites: Stumble, Delicious and Furl will do for now. Google also has a look at these pages too so it gives G another way to find my new site.

Lastly I’ve asked a few pals to drop me a couple of links from their site. Doing just these few things ensures I should be picked up by Google within a week or so.

Good. That’s taken care of.