An important announcement for everyone participating in Stream of Consciousness Saturday: There are no pingbacks! I have no idea what’s going on with WordPress – I’ve checked my account settings, and nothing has changed. I should be receiving your pingbacks, but I’m not.
Copyright infringement is a serious issue, and one we’re all, apparently, at risk of inadvertently committing here on WordPress. There’s so much more to free usage of Creative Commons material than meets the eye, and no one understands that better than author and blogger, D.G. Kaye.
I don’t get it. Do you? Like I said on the original post, it’s like having spinach stuck in your teeth – nobody wants to talk about the appearance of it, but it’s staring you right in your comments.
…or at least I’ve never seen anyone talk about it. I think of it as something like “tax free” day – the day the government tells you that they’ve collected every cent you’ve earned so far but the rest of the money you make in the year is yours. At that point you can sit back and not worry about losing anything. How in the actual heck does this relate to WordPress stats? Let me tell you.
If you’ve been blogging for more than a year, there comes a point if your second calendar year is better than your first that you hit the total number of views you had the year before. For instance, in my first year I had one view. I surpassed that number in January of my second year. My third year, however, was a little more difficult since in the second I had over 14,000 views. I didn’t get to my “tax free” point in my third year until June. Why in the actual heck am I talking about this now? Let me tell you.
In about 300 views I’m going to reach the same number of total views as I had last (my third) year. After that I’ll be able to sit back, put my feet up, drink a glass of wine and not bother writing another thing on my blog because I know from here on in I’m coastin’. Just soakin’ up the glory…
I’m kidding. Of course I’m still going to post. 😀
Have you been blogging for more than a year? Have you hit your “tax free” day yet? Let me know in the comments!
Okay WordPress, what’s up with the missing “Reblog” and “Follow” buttons at the top of my screen when I’m viewing someone else’s blog? There have been a few instances in which I’ve wanted to re-blog something but I can’t. Am I the only one who’s still seeing (or actually, not seeing) this?
I have looked on the forums and apparently you’re “working on it.” Please “work on it” faster. Thank you.
On a lighter note, I’ve had one visitor so far today. It seems they were careful not to peek though. 😛
For a long time I sat on the fence, wondering whether or not to switch my account from “.wordpress.com” to a “.com” site. In fact, I paid for my own domain long before I actually switched over. I had a few concerns, but my main one was whether or not the links I already had out on the web would lead back to my site after I changed the address. As it turns out, they do. I can still ask people to drop by lindaghill.wordpress.com and they’ll show up here at lindaghill.com. Which is wonderful! But… (There had to be a “but” in there, right?)
When I was doing research for my article about dying before scheduled posts are published, entitled “Blogging from the Grave,” I asked in the forums whether my site would still exist if I failed to pay for it, i.e. if I die. The answer was yes. All of my content will just revert back to my old lindaghill.wordpress.com address and will be here forever as long as no one deletes my account. However, all the links I leave behind which lack the “.wordpress.com” will either go nowhere or they will go to whomever buys the domain after I allow my payments to lapse.
My point is this: if you own your own WordPress domain and you want your links to last forever, don’t leave off the extra part of the address! Just a little thing you might have missed when you paid…
Edit: Now that’s interesting – I added the “.wordpress.com” to my link for the “Blogging from the Grave” post and I didn’t get a pingback on it. Could that explain the mystery of why sometimes pingbacks don’t work? (This edit is also an experiment.)
Edit2: YES! The pingback worked that time. Double the advice in one post – pingbacks don’t work if the address isn’t precise!
What is the key to writing a successful blog? I had a comment on my Priorities post of Saturday which asked, Why do good bloggers always contemplate leaving.. (thank you Celona’s Blog). The truth is, I’m not really sure what it is that makes a “good blogger”.
Although one might argue that a blog is made up of its content, I don’t believe that’s all it is. I think it’s the amount of caring that goes into it. The grammar and spelling could be fair rather than excellent, the photos could be mediocre instead of professional, and the artwork may be less than fantastic, but if there is an abundance of passion, knowledge and love for whatever it is that a blogger does, others can see it.
The secret to producing a great blog is also the communication that goes on between the blogger and his or her audience. The very translation between the blogger’s life and how it relates to the experiences of the reader can make or break the connection that keeps the reader coming back.
As a noun, some of the synonyms of “key” are code, cue, interpretation, and solution. “Cue” is also an important answer to having a successful blog. When we cue responses we keep our readers engaged.
As an adjective we have influential, and leading. How do we influence and lead? With passion and caring.
Do you feel as though you have these things covered on your blog?
Today has once again proven the theory that impermanence is something we can count on. In case you missed it, Doobster–he of proper grammar, eloquent blogging, Oxford comma insisting, and badge-maker extraordinaire–has gone private. His final post said pretty much nothing except that he’s taking a break and that he may or may not be back. He also said that there are things in his life that need his undivided attention.
I have to say his words hit close to home. I spend an awful lot of time here in front of my screen. The fact that real life demands more of my time on a daily basis is evident in that I have only just enough time to post. I’m behind on my comments, and I have little opportunity to visit the posts that are pinged back to my prompts, let alone all of the other blogs I really want to visit.
And so after the April A-Z challenge is finished I’m considering doing the same, perhaps just for a month. I need to get my novel finished – I haven’t touched it in weeks and before that it was weeks and before that… If I ever want to get it finished, if I ever want to sell my mother’s condo which has been sitting empty for over a year (and I’m still paying the mortgage on it), if I ever want to move forward I need to stop stagnating here. Yes, I realize that I’m keeping in practice – I’ll probably keep my fiction blog going for that purpose. It takes up minutes of my day rather than hours.
I sincerely hope that Doobster returns, but I can understand fully where he’s coming from. WordPress isn’t the be-all and end-all of life. At least it shouldn’t be.
I’ll keep you up to date with my decision. I promise not to just disappear.
Okay, my friends, I need your opinion on something. It’s a tough one. I fully expect some of you may even unfollow me over this. Honestly, as I read this over I’m not even sure whether or not to post it. But it’s been bugging me…
My current conundrum started out innocently enough. Looking at the stats on my fiction blog, pathetic as they are compared to last year when I did an A-Z story there, I wondered if it was too late to start a new fiction piece this year. I am, however, stretched thin enough already so I thought hey, why not start now and write a chapter every two weeks to post for next year! And why not schedule them as I write them?
But A-Z 2016, I thought, is a long way off. So much could happen between now and then. What if, for example, I die between now and next April? It would mean that my posts would appear after my death! Would that be really cool for the people who received notifications that I’d posted again? Or would it be creepy? And what if I died just before I finished writing my story? Talk about a cliffhanger!!
So here’s where I need your input. Think about it. Many of us hope to blog for a good long time to come. Some, including me, can see ourselves blogging until we pop off. Each and every one of us has the ability to schedule our posts ahead of time – we can even plan to send out a loving message after we die, by re-scheduling every few month or years. Kind of like those hidden tapes they’re always finding in movies where the character says, “If you’re listening to/watching this, I’m dead.”
Would YOU want your writings to come out after you pass away? And how would you feel if someone you follow, as sad as it would be if they died whilst in the throes of their illustrious blogging career, posted an article after he or she had kicked the proverbial bucket? Because let’s face it, unless someone else has a blog’s password, there’s nothing that can prevent a scheduled post from going live, so to speak.
It’s difficult to say, isn’t it? Or is to simply too morbid to contemplate?
As I sit here with my laptop on this relatively lazy Sunday, (lazy in comparison to the chaos that is Blogging A-Z in April) I’m thinking about how much I appreciate the people who visit me here at Life in Progress, and at my fiction blog, Inspiration in Progress. Over the past couple of years my blogs have grown to what amounts sometimes to a thriving metropolis; a place for like minds and kindred spirits to connect. I write to inspire comments and though I don’t always reply promptly, I enjoy them immensely. What can I say – I love the further inspiration I that comes from your feedback!
WordPress is a huge wealth of entertainment, information, commiseration, and friendship. I’ve talked so much in the past about the sense of community here but it never fails to amaze me how so many people, from so many different countries and cultures can have so much in common. Of course what it boils down to is the fact that we are all the same on the inside. Race has never been, in my eyes, a reason to differentiate, nor has sexual orientation, religious beliefs, nor any of those things which divide our populations. What matters to me is how we behave. Again, it’s all part of being one type of creature – human.
But I digress. Blogging brings us all together. Our lives are intertwined by a platform which allows us to express ourselves however we choose – and I’m grateful for all of those who choose to be part of my community.
Thank you to everyone who has participated in my One-Liner Wednesday and SoCS prompts (even though it takes me a while to read your posts – I really try to keep up!), each of you who visit through the A-Z Challenge, and to all of you who keep coming back. This place wouldn’t be the same without you.
lindaghill.com 