One such tool allows me to blog to my various blogs quickly. I want to introduce you to this tool so that you are quickly blogging from your GNOME desktop.

Compatible blogs

Naturally you can’t expect GNOME Blog to handle every type of blog in the blogosphere. But it does handle:

• blogs.gnome.org
• Blogger
• Livejournal
• Avogato
• Self-run WordPress
• Self-run Moveable Type
• Self-run Pyblosxom

Obviously each type of blog will have different setup requirements. Let’s examine how to connect GNOME Blog to a self-run WordPress blog.

Configuring WordPress

Figure 1

In order to blog to WordPress from GNOME Blog you have to enable remote publishing via XML-RPC. Without this set, you will not be able to blog from outside of the web interface. To configure this option you must first log on to your WordPress blog (with administration rights) and then click on Settings > Writing. In that section (near the top) you will see the spot where you can enable this (see Figure 1).

Once you have checked off the box associated with XML-RPC, scroll down and click Save Changes.

Now let’s install and use GNOME Blog.

Installation

Installation is simple. I will demonstrate the installation on a Ubuntu 10.10 desktop. Follow these steps:

1. Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for the term “blog” (No quotes).
3. Click the Install button associated with GNOME Blog.

That’s it. You will now find the tool in Applications > Internet > Blog Entry Poster.

Using GNOME Blog

Figure 2

When you fire up GNOME Blog click on the Preferences window so you can choose the type of blog you want to write to. From this new window (see Figure 2) select “Self-Run WordPress” from the Blog Type drop-down and then fill in the rest of the information.

You will not be able to select the Blog Name from the drop-down until you have configured the URL, username, and password. Once you have done that click Lookup Blogs and select the blog you want to post to from the drop-down.

Once you have selected your blog, click the Close button, and you’re ready to begin.

Posting

Figure 3

Posting with GNOME Blog is simple. From the main window (see Figure 3) you can enter a title and the body of your blog. You can also add a link into the body of the blog by clicking the Add Link… button and entering the link title and url.

Upon completion of your blog entry, click the Post Entry button and your blog post will make its way through the ethernet to your blog.

Final thoughts

It should be obvious that you can not do much as far as formatting, adding images, and the like. But for simple text-based blog posts, you can’t beat the simplicity and ease of use of GNOME Blog.

The main problem with pagination is that it limits the amount of content on each page forcing the user to click on one of the buttons to be taken to the next or previous page of the website to access new content. Some extensions and scripts are available that automatically load the new content once the user reaches the end of the page.

Another alternative is provided by the SiteFlow bookmarklet. The bookmarklet recognizes the headlines of the active page (which would be the titles here at Ghacks for example) and displays them in an overlay on top. It offers previous and next buttons which will load previous or next pages of the website both in its interface but also on the screen.

A click on a headline will take the user right to the beginning of the article.

Keyboard shortcuts are available to perform the following operations:

• Go to next page [right arrow key]
• Go to previous page [left arrow key]
• Return to first page [Shift Home]
• Skip to last page [Shift End]
• Jump to next headline [CTRL down arrow]
• Jump to previous headline [CTRL up arrow]

The keyboard shortcuts to flip pages come in handy in many occasions as it only takes one key to perform the action. SiteFlow is compatible with many modern web browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.

The search results window is also not the usual top x results. Feedmil (via Make Use Of) provides access to filters, classifications and more sliders. The filters and sliders can be used to finetune the results list while the classifications give an excellent overview of post frequencies, popularity, authority and activity of each of the listed blogs.

The filters can be used to filter by feed type or language and to sort order. Several different feed types can be selected including blog feeds, podcasts, videocasts and microblog feeds. Languages should be self explanatory while the sort order can be changed from Fedmil rank to quality or relevance instead.

The sliders on the right side make it possible to finetune the topic significance to lay more or less weight on specific related terms. Each blog that is listed in the search results is also described by a list of tags.

The idea is definitely interesting. The main problem currently is that the service does not offer a large index of blogs in its database. Site owners can submit their blogs to the search engine to have it included in the search.

Update: Feedmil is no longer available. Alternatives are for instance the feed recommendation and discovery services offered by Google Reader or the desktop feed reader RSSOwl.

Although no official objections where ever made to the companies and individuals selling services like premium WordPress themes I believe there was always a little controversy. Some free software proponents feel the effort put into these kinds of services would do better being put back into the whole WordPress community so everyone benefits seeing as the community was the ones who made this kind of business possible.

Personally I think these services have done nothing but good for the WP community. Better premium themes has inspired free theme creators to release better themes and to give credit where its due, most premium authors also release their themes for free in either basic version, separate complete releases or whenever they retire an older theme.

Interestingly though one of the biggest premium theme creators, Revolution themes, have decided that from now on they are changing their business model and releasing their themes for free.

In a move that would make any free software proponent proud they are instead betting on making their money through service subscriptions which you can purchase for several hundred dollars.

Their latest release of themes, Revolution 2, is a fantastic set of free themes and if you use WordPress for your blog I really recommend checking them out.

Someone who wants to earn money from blogging needs traffic more than anything else. It is not hard to put Google Adsense on a blog and earn money with it. The ad might not be optimized but it will still earn money if the blog receives traffic. Without traffic, there will be no money no matter how optimized or clever the ad units are.

Blogging for a period of three years teaches a lot if you are eager to learn. Bloggers learn about search engine optimization which is a profession in itself, about monetization, about the blogging plattform, how to interact with visitors / customers / fellow bloggers and more.

It’s a steep learning curve but if you master it you will be successful. Here are a few blogging tips that helped me a lot:

• Keep Going: That’s the most important part of it all. Many bloggers give up after blogging for a few weeks because they cannot see that traffic comes in. No visitors equals low motivation and that’s usually the point when they decide to quit.

  Some search engines apply an automatic filter to new websites (some call it sandbox) that prevents them from ranking for popular keywords to avoid spam. It is natural that new sites will not rank well for terms like business or credit cards while they will have lesser problem ranking for long tail keywords.

• Keywords: Speaking of which. Keywords are the essence of a blog. Search engines analyse blog posts and pick out keywords that they think the blog post is about. They then give the keyword a score and compare it to other sites that rank for that keyword and place the new website on a specific rank in the search engine for that keyword. Other factors may weight in like the new blog filter but that’s basically how it works.

  If bloggers are serious about traffic generation they need to understand the keyword concept and how they do keyword research. Keyword research meaning to find profitable low competition keywords that the blog can most likely rank well for.

• Long Tail Keywords: Long Tail refers to keywords that are very specific and usually consist of a few words. Blog is not a long term keyword while How To Create A Blog is. Long Tail keywords receive less traffic than their more generic counterparts but that traffic is usually targeted.
• Build a Network: If you blog on your own you will miss opportunities. It is impossible keeping up with all the news and trends related to blogging. A network of bloggers that target the same niche can help each other in several ways. If they come upon an interesting topic or option they will inform their fellow bloggers about it. They can also promote the blogs of other network members in their own blogs.
• Don’t read the Chows: Don’t read the blogs of those so called probloggers. The only thing they usually care about is their own bankroll. The products that they promote will earn them money because other bloggers will join or buy them because of their recommendations but there will be no or small gain for the little guy who bought the product. Their sites are about an image that they have to keep up and about upselling products to newbies. Stay away from them. Look at my link list for recommendations.

Here is a short link list:

• Make Money For Beginners
• Internet Marketing School
• Seo Zombie
• Google Adwords Keywords Tool (Keyword Research)
• Wordtracker Free Keywords (Keyword Research)
• SEO Quake (Firefox Extension)

If you read the three blogs posted above you will learn a lot in short time. Those are honest bloggers who do not try to sell you yet another “make money in no time” product that only works for them because they can sell it to you.

Seo Zombie is a site that I discovered a while ago and the guy does a good job as well, his Keyword Sniping Case Study sounds interesting and might be a great way to learn if he continues posting updates.

The keyword research tools are essential to discover keywords that can be target that pay well and have enough traffic to make them worthwhile.

Seo Quake finally is a Firefox extension that displays all kinds of “SEO” information like Pagerank, links and domain age on the screen.

If you have any questions about blogging let me know and I try to answer them.

Most webmasters have the decency to cite their source when they write about a topic that they have encountered on another website which is a good and honest thing to do. Almost all of them on the other hand use anchor names like via or sitename to link back to the website which is probably helping a new blog that wants to establish a name for itself and might help experienced visitors identify the source by reading the name.

It is however not really helping the webmaster who is maintaining the source website.Most search engines (still) rely heavily on anchor names. What you do is you tell the search engines that the source is about via or the sitename but do not give the search engine a single hint as to what the article is really about.

Lets take one basic example. Ghacks writes a post about the latest Firefox update. A brand new story that has not reached the masses yet. Instead of linking to that story using via or ghacks webmasters would do me a much bigger favor by using anchor names like firefox, firefox 3 or firefox update because this would give my article more weight in the search engines.

I have therefor decided to link to other blogs that I cite in my articles properly from now on. The link will contain one major keyword (a keyword can be comprised of one or multiple words) that I have identified in the post on the other website. This will help the other website in their search engine rankings in the major search engines. I will furthermore contact webmasters who link to my articles and ask them if they would like to consider doing the same.

Feed Analysis is a online script that analyzes Feedburner feeds. Feedburner is without doubt the most popular service that provides feeds and many tools and add-ons for them. Most of the blogs that I read regularly use Feedburner. The interesting aspect is that you only enter the url of the feed and get detailed information about it. You can select a period of time that you want information for which ranges from 3 months to 50 months.

The feed will be processed and three charts generated that display various information about the feed. Those are named Numbers of Subscribers per Month, Number of Subscribers, Hits, Views and Clicks Monthly & Number of Subscribers on each Week Days. Below are the charts that are produced after analysing the Ghacks feed.

Each chart contains several interesting information for webmasters and other interested users. You can see the monthly growth, see how many new subscribers have joined in a particular month, get information about subscribers & hits and see which day is the best and worst of the week. Some are only available if the blog uses Feedburner Pro.

What I really like are the projections and averages that are displayed. Feed Analysis calculates the gain in subscribers in the next three, six and twelve months. According to the predictions I hit 10K subscribers in less than three months and a whooping 25K in 12 months. The estimated banner ads and blog values displayed are just that, estimates that can’t be right because they only take the feed into consideration.

Those information can be quite valuable if you intend to purchase a blog to verify the feed count for instance.

Essentially, every link in my feed that pointed to my blog was a Feedburner redirect in the form of http://feeds.ghacks.net/~r/Ghacksnet/~3/172961335/ which did not look that nicely. I did find out that it had something to do with tracking the clicks of the subscribers to be able to compile better statistics. This is something that I did not need and I decided to take a look and see if it was possible to disable the redirect.

It took a while until I found the setting that was responsible for this behavior. If you want to disable it you have to go into the Analyze tab of your feedburner account, click on the ‘Dare to be different?’ link under Site Stats and uncheck ‘Item Link Clicks’ there.

The redirection links will disappear immediately afterwards.

I’m however never satisfied until I know them all which is why I decided to make this post. I add five blogs to the list that I read on a daily basis and would like to receive hundreds of comments with tech blogs that you do read on a daily basis. This way we could create the ultimate collection of worthy tech blogs – would not that be fun..

Here we go, my top five technology blogs that I read: (in no particular order)

Connected Internet – one of my favorite blogs run by my friend Everton. He concentrates on Gadgets and Monetization but writes about other techy stuff as well.
Donation Coder – the blog is awesome with great topics mostly taken right from their well frequented forum. They do create applications as well.
Cybernet News – awesome blog with lots of great articles. Writes about the same stuff that I write about.
Download Squad – another great blog that concentrates on software, web services and general tips.
Digital Alchemy – a blog that is a little bit more on the dark side if you know what I mean. I love the dark side, hehe.