I am!

I actually expected to be in the online encyclopedia for something else, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. It seems that someone felt that my post, the Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul, about how Ron Paul is making strides in the 2008 Presidential Election by grassroots online support, was worth more then just a Digg. The post is referenced in the Ron Paul Wikipedia Entry, under the heading “2008 Presidential Campaign,” and the entry quotes me:

According to Joshua Dorkin at TimeForBlogging.com[26], “As you can see, this candidate (Ron Paul) is fast becoming a real internet sensation, not a manufactured one. He generated passion and curiousity and the people took over from there. I don’t really foresee this guy ripping off his supporters by stealing their MySpace support page (really stupid move for Obama).”

26 ^ “The Real 2008 Political Internet Sensation: Ron Paul” TimeForBlogging.com

I have seen a fair amount of traffic from this new link, but more than anything else, it is a bit flattering (seems like I’m using that word a lot lately . . . see my other post today). I’ve even been contacted by volunteers working on the campaign to get involved more. Seems that my neutral post about the emergence of a candidate has been taken as an endorsement, despite my disclaimer that I am not a supporter.

Back to Wikipedia . . .

Of course, Wikipedia is one of the most trafficked websites in the world, and getting a link on the site is good for anyone’s website. People try gaming the site to put up irrelevant information, but the editors are quite good at catching SPAM. I wonder what it takes for the site to feel that a person, company, brand, or website is worthy of addition. Anyone know?

I do hope to someday soon have an entry in Wikipedia for the website I founded, BiggerPockets® Real Estate Investing Community. The site, I believe, is deserving of being listed. If there are any Wikipedia editors hanging around here . . . please think about it!

Are You in Wikipedia? What for?

I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or pleased . . . I’ll go with flattered, yet bothered.

Someone Plagerized and Translated My Post!

It seems that someone has decided to plagerize my Top 77 Mistakes That New Bloggers Make Post. The catch is that they didn’t simply copy it, but translated the entire thing into Spanish.

Copying anyone’s content without their permission is simply violating their copyright. While it seems that taking a post and translating it would also constitute a copyright violation, I’m left thinking that this is somewhat of a grey area. Normally, when someone steals my content, I go after them with a vengeance, however I’m not exactly sure how to handle this situation. Had the author simply asked my permission to translate my post, I would have probably told him it was okay to do, but he should have asked me.

What Would You Do?
I feel very torn in this situation and would love your feedback here! For now, I’m not going to link back to his post, but I will send a trackback so he knows I’m aware that he took it. What are your feelings on the matter? Should I ask him to take the post down or just let it go? What do you think?

With that in mind, since he was so kind to do the translation, I think it is a must that I share the translated version of my post (which took many hours to write) with my fellow Spanish speaking bloggers.

Los 77 errores que un blogger no debe cometer

Dominios y Alojamiento
1. No tener tu blog alojado como Dios manda ( servidor propio o compartido, pero nada de free hostings)
2. Registrar un dominio para tu blog que tiene copyright o riesgo de entrar en conflicto con marcas establecidas
3. Registrar un dominio largo e imposible de recordar, y sobretodo de teclear.
4. No tener un dominio propio para tu blog

   Estilo, Diseño y elementos basicos de un blog

5. Mantener el diseño original que venia por defecto con el blog
6. Usar un fondo negro, que brilla, tiene lucecitas, se mueve o molesta a la vista de alguna forma
7. Usar musica de fondo
8. No actualizar el blogroll que viene por defecto con el blog
9. No usar correctamente los permalinks
10. No protegerte del spam usando alguno de las decenas de plugins disponibles
11. Desaprovechar el potencial de los plugins que tienes instalados
12. No incluir informacion de contacto del blogger ( si te quiero hacer una donacion millonaria, ¿como te lo digo? )
13. No incluir informacion basica sobre el autor ( a todos nos gusta ponerle un perfil a quien leemos )
14. No crear el sitemap para buscadores ( la de visitas que te puedes perder por ello! :-))

    Comentarios del blog

15. Mantener el primer comentario de prueba que viene con el blog (hay que ser cutre… )
16. Forzar a tus lectores a que se registren de alguna forma para poder dejar comentarios
17. Comentar en otros blogs diciendo solo “que guay!”, “me gusta lo que has escrito” u otras tonterias que no aportan nada
18. Comentar en otros blogs generando spam y llenando el texto con las urls de tus paginas
19. No molestarse en comentar en otros blogs lo suficiente
20. No estar al tanto ni seguir que es lo que se comenta en otros sites o blogs
21. No responder a los comentarios en tu blog
22. Pedir directamente a otros bloggers por enlaces hacia tu blog en los comentarios
23. Recoger direcciones de email a saco e introducirlas en una lista que usaras para spamear a todos (violacion de la privacidad)
24. Usar enlaces de afiliados cuando comentas en otros blogs

    Enlaces

25. Contactar a todo el mundo pidiendo intercambio de enlaces
26. No enlazar hacia otros blogs /fuentes de informacion suficientemente
27. Usar enlaces incorrectos o rotos ( que no llevan a ningun sitio)
28. No usar los trackbacks para saber quien te enlaza y desde donde

    Contenido del Blog

29. Crear SPLOGS ( spam!)
30. Crear falsas expectativas respecto al contenido y calidad del blog y luego no llegar ni a la mitad de los esperado
31. No aprender un poco de la cultura y el lenguaje de los blogs antes de lanzarse a la blogosfera
32. No escoger un buen tema y audiencia antes de ponerse a escribir
33. No mantener el blog enfocado en ese tema y desvariar
34. Copiar el estilo y la filosofia de otro blog ( para eso me leo el otro blog )
35. Bloggear sobre absolutamente nada interesante
36. No revisar la ortografia de nuestras entradas
37. No hacerse un hueco en la red y experimentar el “blogger burnout” ( toy quemao !)
38. Robar contenido de otros blogs
39. Bloggear sobre algo que no tenemos ni idea
40. Copiar posts enteros de otros sitios y pensar que con un simple enlace de vuelta quedamos bien ( eso es robar! :-))
41. No atribuir el credito necesario a las fuentes de donde sacamos nuestras ideas y contenidos
42. Ocultar o modificar nuestra personalidad haciendonos pasar por quienes no somos en nuestro blog
43. Escribir titulos que no tienen ningun interes
44. Escribir interminables bloques de texto sin espacios, orden, negrita, etc.
45. Escribir de forma demasiado irregular
46. Olvidar que escribes para tus lectores, no para ti mismo
47. Escribir cosas en el blog que pueden perjudicarte en el futuro (sobretodo si pones a parir a tu jefe :-))
48. Ser poco profesional
49. Atacar a otros bloggers a destajo solo para ganar atencion
50. Compartir informacion confidencial o privada en tu blog
51. Compartir EXCESIVA informacion personal ( puede ser peligroso)
52. No tener propio criterio y propio lenguaje al escribir
53. No motivar al lector a que participe en los comentarios
54. Escribir mucho blablabla sin llegar a decir nada
55. Escribir sobre lo que todo el mundo escribe ( a no ser que seas el primero en hacerlo :))
56. Crear concursos con premios y no proporcionarlos

    Promocion de blogs y generar trafico

57. Hacer publicidad del blog en cualquier sitio ( hay que saber escoger )
58. Promover un blog que no llega a los 10 posts
59. Usar aplicaciones de trafico (software) para incrementar tus rankings
60. Usar otros metodos dudosos para incrementar tu trafico
61. Enviar tu blog una y otra vez a sitios sociales ( tu blog hasta en la sopa vaya…)
62. Enviar entradas pesimas a estos sitios sociales ( meneame, promoting blogs, etc….)
63. No hacer publicidad de tus mejores posts
64. No participar en Blog Carnivals para atraer mas trafico
65. No incluir un enlace hacia tu blog en firmas de mails, forums, etc
66. No responder a emails y comentarios de otros bloggers

    Generando ingresos con el blog

67. Preocuparte de como generar ingresos antes de tener un contenido de calidad
68. Poner tantos anuncios como se pueda de cualquier estilo, clase, red de anuncios, etc
69. Hacer click en tus propios anuncios
70. Permitir que cualquiera se anuncie en tu sitio ( un poco de criterio hombre! :-))
71. Escribir entradas patrocinadas de cualquier forma ( esta genial sacar dinero escribiendo para ReviewMe o PPP o el que sea, pero hay que hacerlo bien! )

    Feeds

72. Infra utilizar las posibilidades de tu feed
73. No disponer de un link claro desde el cual subscribirse a tu feed en el blog
74. No usar feedburner para optimizar y hacer publicidad de tu blog ( tiene cientos de posibilidades para ello)
75. No uses el contador de lectores de Feedburner si no tienes al menos 50 lectores
76. No sindicar el contenido total de tu blog en las feeds
77. Saturar tu feed de anuncios

I’m a huge fan of MyBlogLog, as it has become a great tool for building blog traffic, but I have one issue with the site that continues to annoy me:

The Problem with MyBlogLog
When you add a friend, the site redirects you back to your own profile. This is extremely annoying! When I find a user that I’d like to befriend, I want to continue surfing their profile after adding them as a friend. Once I’m back in my profile, it is difficult to find these new friends.

My Solutions
I have 2 solutions for this problem:

1. Redirect a user back to the friend’s profile . . . this seems to be the easiest, and most obvious solution.

2. Create a section on our profiles where we can see users we just befriended; there is already an area where you can see people who befriended you. I believe that this is an essential upgrade (by itself or in conjunction with the first suggestion)

How You can Help
If this problem annoys you as well, just let Eric know.

How to Reach Me on MyBlogLog
You can network with me on MyBlogLog. Either add me as a friend (my username is bigp), or join the TimeforBlogging Community!

It is hard to go very far without running into a site with entries in Darren Rowse’s latest group writing project; it was a huge hit with close to 900 entries. While it is great that people are linking to one another from this thing, it seems that many involved in the project are simply linking to the entire list of submissions. While I did participate (on another blog) and don’t ever mind new backlinks, I’m a bit disappointed that people haven’t really broken this thing down a bit.

Why link to every post? While many were good, there were some really bad posts in that batch. Do you really want to link to (and give your support to) blogs that don’t make the cut? I went through the entire list a few times to pull out posts that I thought would be interesting or helpful for the readers of this blog.

Here are a few that I felt were actually useful and worth a read (yes, I actually read every internet related post on the list!):

AdSense
• Top 5 AdSense Boo-Boos
  Blogging

• Top Five Ways Blog Carnivals Make Blogging Better
• Top 5 Tips to be the next Darren Rowse
• Top 5 Methods to Increase Comments on Your Blog
• Top 5 tips for beating blogger’s block
• Top 5 Best and Youngest Bloggers
• Top 5 Tips for a Successful Link Train
• 5 Things You Should do Before Launching Your Own Blog
• 5 Tips to Break Free From The Blogger’s Bubble
  Blogging Tools

• Top Five Little Known Wordpress Plugins
• Top 5 Must-Have Blog Monitoring Tools
• Top 5 WordPress Plugins That Help Increase Comments
• Top 5 Tools Every Blogger Should Use
• Top 5 OS X Dashboard Widgets for Bloggers
  SEO

• The Top 5 Free Search Engine Optimization Tools
• Top 5 Top Blog Posts in SEO
  Assorted

• Top Five Challenges Newbies Face Online
• Five Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network: An Ode to Altruistic Stumbling
• Five Tips for Running a Successful Online Giveaway

What I thought was most impressive was that many of these great posts were written by fairly unknown bloggers. This is another sign that there will always be great new talents emerging in the blogging world and you must keep exploring to find them!

I make it a habit to support my fellow bloggers through both socializing their posts and visiting their advertisers when appropriate. Make sure you do the same! While linking is great, these things are just as important!

Finally, I’d like to mention that many of the blogs I went through were still using Blogger or some other hosted blog solution, and many others were making some of the most basic blogging mistakes. If you haven’t already, read the The Top 77 Mistakes New Bloggers Make so you’re not out there making some of these yourself!

Obviously, color is an extremely important aspect of web design and style. Figuring out the right colors to use is not easy for a lot of people. I put together a bunch of helpful resources to make it a bit easier to find colors and different color schemes. In addition, I explain to those who are unfamiliar how exactly to use the colors you find to change the look of your website.

Color Resources

4096 Color Wheel

The 4096 Color Wheel is where I go when all I need is the Hex code for certain colors. The site is very simple to navigate; just click a color on the wheel that is close to one you want to use, then use the palette next to it to find the perfect shade. Once you click on the shad you like, you’ll see it show up on the leftmost color chart.

The Color Wizard

Looking for a site that makes color matching easy? Check out The Color Wizard This site makes picking out color themes for a website a piece of cake! Use the color sliders to pick a color that works for you, and the site will find color variations of similar Hue, Saturation, Tint, & Shade. Once you’ve found the color you’re happy with, go to the bottom right corner of the site and you’ll see SUGGESTED COLOR SCHEMES. These are generated from the color you’ve chosen, and you can look at different choices of schemes including: Monocromatic, Analugus, Triadic, Tetradic, Complimentary, and Split Complimentary. Personally, I think the Monocromatic palettes are the best. This is my favorite of the bunch!

Color Scheme Chooser

The Color Scheme Chooser is a site I found recently. This site does almost exactly what the Color Wizard does, so there is no need for me to repeat myself. I suppose people might pick one over the other, but it would be soley for personal preference.

Color Theory Lessons

The final resource I thought worth mentioning is a site devoted to Color Theory Lessons. If you’re interested in learning more about color and color theory, this site has a great tutorial that walks you through everything you want to know. Explore things concepts including complementary colors, color & contrast, shades & tints, and much more.

How to Use Hex Colors in HTML

If you’re interested in web design or simply jazzing up your blog, you will need to know how to tell your computer what color you want to use. As a result, you will likely need to use something called hex colors. Put simply, hex color codes represent different colors that we can see. They are codes that make it easy for a computer to understand what color you’re referencing.

Without them, we’d need words to describe every color in the spectrum. They simplify things. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but I’ll give an example that demonstrate the use of these codes:

If you wanted to change the color of text to a color of your choice, all you need to do is use the font tag and place a hex color code in it.
e.g. <font color=”#ff0044″>Text Here</font> will make your text a strawberry red. As you can see it is very simple to do once you understand what you’re doing. You can change background colors, table colors, and much more using these hex codes. For more info on different HTML tags, visit this site.

9/24/08 Update: We forgot to add a resource for Triple Hex Color Codes at the time of writing, but the link will take you to a great resource to help with that.

Blogging is esentially easy. Formatting your blog posts so they have some style and flavor is a bit more difficult. One of the more important elements in blog posts are graphics or images. These serve to both break up the text, and to add interest to your articles. I thought it was important to write a post covering how to place images in your blog posts to help out all those people who have been having trouble doing so (see disclaimer at end of post). This tutorial will focus on WordPress blogs, but it will have alternatives for other blog software as well.

When Should I Use Images in my Posts?

I find that the best use of images are when they are directly related to what you’re writing (e.g. if you’re writing about flowers, then use images of flowers), or when they are somehow metaphorically related (e.g. I wrote an article Are Alexa And DMOZ Down For The Count? and used the image of a boxer to go with it). This is not to say that you can’t use images otherwise, but when these situations come up, I think it is a given that you should.

I discovered a blog a few months ago called DoshDosh that uses images with every post. Maki’s use of manga images keeps his blog colorful and interesting (not to mention his articles are extremly well written and thorough). In this case, placing themed images with all his posts works to build some interest and break up the monotony of the page.

How to Add Images to Your Blog Articles

There are a few ways to add images to your articles using WordPress.

I. Use Image Hosting Services to Host Your Blog’s Images

The first way to add an image to your post is to use some kind of image hosting service. Nirmal T V wrote a great post the other day where he shared the Top 5 Image Hosting Services and gave detailed explanations of each. Any of the ones he listed, including: Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Imageshack, and Yahoo Photos, or any other online image hosting service will work for you.
How to Add an Image to Your Articles with Free Hosting Services

1. Pick a hosting service and register or log in
2. Find the Upload button or link
3. Click the browse button which will allow you to search your computer for images and click on the name of the image you want to upload.
4. Add details about the image as asked by the website.
5. Voila! Your image is now hosted.
6. Click on the image with the right button (or for your Mac users do it while holding control down) and select “Copy Image Location.” Your image’s location will now be in your computer’s memory.
7. Go to your blog post, and where you want to add your image (be sure you’re not using a WSIWYG editor. In wordpress, this means click on the CODE Tab if you’re writing our post with the VISUAL tab active),
   

   enter the following, replacing “PASTE IMAGE LOCATION HERE” with the actual location (use control-v or in your browser’s menu options go to edit, then paste):
   
   <img src=”PASTE IMAGE LOCATION HERE”>

8. Congrats! You now have an image in your article. Click “Save and Continue Editing” at the bottom of the text box where you write your blog entries, and you’ll be able to see your image in the preview window as you scroll to the bottom of your browser window.

II. Using Wordpress to Add Images

Wordpress makes it very easy to add images to your website.

1. Decide where in your post you want your image to appear and click there.
2. Find the following area of your wordpress control panel (while writing or editing a post):
   

3. Click the browse button which will allow you to search your computer for images and click on the name of the image you want to upload.
4. Once you’ve clicked on the file, you’ll want to click the OPEN button in the pop-up window. You’ll see something similar to:
   
   

5. Fill out the title and description boxes and then click on the UPLOAD button. Your browser will upload the image and you’ll see the following:
   
   

6. Click on the button options that you’d like, then click on SEND TO EDITOR
7. The source code for the image will now be set and you’ll have an image. Save and preview your post and you’ll see your image!

Stay tuned for additional posts in the Images & Blogging Series:
Part II - Photo Formatting & Advanced Photo Layouts
Part III - Where to Find Images & Proper Use

Disclaimer: This post is dedicated to my friend Charles Feldman who has been asking me to teach him this for a long time now. Hope this helps!

I’ve been a fan of many of the things that John Chow has done on his blog, however I do have a bone to pick. It seems that at least 1 out of every 2 times I visit his site, my browser (Firefox) crashes on me. If I were just reading his blog it wouldn’t bother me, but it always happens when I’ve got around 5-10 other tabs open in my browser.

At this point, I’ve given up! I’ll read the site, but only through my feedreader.

John - If you’re reading this, please look into this situation. If it is happening to me, then it is happening to others as well. I’m sure it is something you want to fix.

As for the rest of you, are there any sites that do this to you?