Blogging Tips

One great way to improve the look of your site is to use custom fonts, before we were limited to only a few web-safe fonts. If you wanted to use a fancy font you had to use an image, and the only way search engines would see that text, no matter how important, was if you specified an alt tag. Thankfully,options to replace any text on our site with a custom font we specify.   There are many methods to accomplish this but in this post we are discussing Cufón; which uses javascript to replace the text with whatever font you choose. You can implement this manually or use a plugin.  The plugin I am using on this site is called WP-Cufón and this tutorial is about that plugin.  Another plugin to use Cufon is the All-in-One Cufon.   I have also written a tutorial on using TTF Titles, that method is no longer very efficient or SEO friendly.

This guide is meant for both beginners and advanced users, and many of the steps after the plugin is installed and set up will work with any Cufon installation, as the code to product the effect is the same regardless of how you get the code to your site.  If you are already using cufon and just want to see some fun styles to try then jump to the Advanced Tips section now. continue

Update: My Entry Post is Live

It is sitting there scared and along ready for you to visit and ‘vote’! You can vote by commenting (relevant comments please, no generic “great post” comments- they won’t count- and then you would be ‘That Guy’!) You can also vote by Tweeting the link- simply hit the retweet button on the post or copy/paste the tweet below. You will also be helping me a lot by digging, stumbling, sharing, etc. etc. I am really exited to see how this turns out- I don’t see my entry winning amongst the other entrants, they are much more active in the social media scene than I am so if I can even get close I will feel it’s a success!

Visit my post, titled “Don’t Be ‘That Guy’ When Commenting” and help support me in my quest to become rich and famous! You can easily copy/paste the tweet below to help spread the love too!

Help Eve win by commenting/tweeting her entry at the @FamousBloggers Writing Contest : Don’t Be “That Guy” http://bt.io/FVEG

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WordPress is an amazing program, you can use it as a blog, as a CMS, even as a store, the possibilities are endless.  Part of what makes wordpress so functional and dynamic is the existence of plugins.   A plugin is a set of coding that you can ‘install’ to your wordpress site that adds something to your site- be it functionality, a appearance modification, etc.  You can find lists of the best plugins to have all over the internet, each will have something different.  Your task is to read them over and see what plugins will benefit YOUR site best. Below are my top 10, although it was hard to pick just 10!  Take a look and see if any of these will benefit you, and let me know in the comments if there is something else you use in place of one of these.

1. WP-DB-Manager-  A great plugin for backing up your wordpress site, simply set it and forget it.  The link goes to a great tutorial on getting it and setting it up properly.  You never know when something will go wrong, this way you have a backup handy without having to remember to do it yourself everyday. continue

One small change you can make to a wordpress blog is taking advantage of a custom font. There are several ways to accomplish this, using SiFR, TTFT, Cufon, as well as some other plugins.  On this blog I am using Cufon, which I prefer – we will go over how to use that in another post.   In this article I want to go over using TTFTitles to help a fellow blogger, Cindi from Moomette’s Magnificents implement it in her blog.

To start you need to download and install TTFTitles, you can get it here or search from the “add plugins” page within your admin.  Once you have downloaded and installed it you may need to set certain directories as write-able, and the admin page of ttft will tell you if you need to do so.   Now you need to upload the font you would like to use for your post titles.  Some of my favorite places to get free fonts are DaFont, and Fonts for Peas. continue

There are a number of reasons to use an image on every post; it is attention grabbing, helps with giving the post personality, and so on, but my number one reason: it just looks better.

So many times I have been to a blog where the post was wonderful; funny, informative, easy to read, all the staples of a great post; but with no images the page was lacking something important: beauty. There are so many resources to get images for a blog post now, both free and paid. The number one source is your own camera- if you are writing about your son- include a picture of your son, free and to the point. continue