Category: Blogging

Yzabel / August 19, 2005

Passing the word along: Duncan at The Blog Herald is holding a 100 blogs in 100 days projet. Starting Monday 22, he’ll be presenting one blog per day, during 100 days, in order to help promote less known blogs.

Email me at editor@blogherald.com with subject line of “100 blogs in 100 days” with your blogs details (name, url etc..). You also need to include up to, but no more than 100 words about your blog, what it does, what it’s about, or why the readers of the Blog Herald should visit it that will be published as part of the post. In return though I’ll be inviting Blog Herald readers to provide some feedback in the comments here on what they think about your blog.

Feel free to send your blog URL along—or to simply check The Blog Herald, which is an interesting read in itself anyway.blogging, 100blogs

Yzabel / August 15, 2005

Here’s the second installment of my Tips on Starting a New Blog post.DesignThere aren’t many people who like to look at an ugly site, this is a fact—and it’s perhaps worth for blogs even more than for regular pages, as visitors will regularly come to check the new posts! Try to get at least a clear, readable and pleasant template here. Blog services as well as most standalone platforms will provide you with a handful of templates to choose from: Blogger does have a good twenty of them, while platforms such as WordPress can gather an even wider amount, developed freely by other users. After a while, it can be a good idea to set a test blog and learn and tweak templates a little, in order to come up with “your” own design, easily recognizable by your readers; for non-professional blogs, I however don’t consider it an absolute must-do from the start, and contents will here be more important to build a readership.For business blogs, things are a little different: better get someone to work on the design before launching the blog. Templates in this case are more important.Note: If testing new templates, do that on a test blog. At some point, your templates will contain wrong code, styles that display oddly, etc… With a test blog, your readers won’t stumble upon a broken, unreadable page.Read More

Yzabel / August 15, 2005

No, I’m not starting a new one myself; this post actually got inspired by the questions Darren Rowse posted on ProBlogger, and I wondered about how many things exactly would’ve to be taken into account when starting a new blog. Even though I haven’t many years of blogging behind me (I guess you could say I really started in the spring of 2004 only), I think I’m now able to put the finger on tips centered on this theme—I may not always have followed them myself from the start, but now I sure know them.Please note that I’ll be posting these tips in two separate entries, as it is quite a long read.Why blogging?First of all comes the aim of the blog itself. Blogging just for the sake of blogging isn’t going to get you very far, so one should question why they’re doing it. Is it to give news to friends and family by keeping a place easy to update as well as to check? Is it to promote a book, a product, freelance services? Is it to share knowledge and reflexions about a specific field (what one could call “niche blogs”), or to simply gather news about said field? Will the blog have a professional orientation, or a personal one? There are many purposes to a blog, and depending on what you want to craft here, much of what’s going to follow will have to be planned in a different way. One shouldn’t write on a business blog the way they write about their families on a personal page, unless they want their professional readership seriously wonder about what they’re up to.Make also sure that you will know what to write about for a long time. Granted, this isn’t a problem in the case of personal blogs: life will always provide you with events. Things are different for niche/professional blogs: if you’re not sure that in a few weeks from now, you’ll still have material to post about, perhaps focusing on a narrow topic isn’t a good idea to start with. So, make sure that you’ll know what to write about in order to publish at least two or three times a week.Read More

Yzabel / August 11, 2005

Alright, the name of this blog client is nothing short of weird, and not very inspiring (it definitely makes me thinkof “beggar” each time I try to pronounce it, sorry). Going past this uneasy feeling to test it further was however a very good idea, for it turned out to be a pretty interesting tool. Moreover, it’s free.

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Yzabel / August 4, 2005

First in my round of testing (see Choosing a Blog Client) comes Qumana. Why this one and not another? Tough question. There probably won’t be any answer to this, except for « I found the name intriguing ».Qumana is a free desktop client that will allow you to update blogs on the most used blog tools and services (Blogger, Blogware, WordPress, Typepad, Squarespace, MovableType, Drupal, BlogHarbor)—which is probably more than enough for most people and for starters.

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Yzabel / August 2, 2005

Duncan at The Blog Herald posted about it, and John at SYNTAGMA made me realize that it could be interesting to do that as well. So, answering to this indirect invitation from Steve Rubel to share them through the Technorati tag at the end of this entry, here are the 10 blogs I’d take with me on a desert island:Naniwa Spirit — I may not comment often, and I may not have commented a lot in the past, when there wasn’t any feed for it yet and I’d often miss the new posts, but throughout the past years, I’ve really loved reading what Silmy had to say on her life in Japan.ProBlogger — I may not be making any money with my blogs… however, this one is a gold mine for blogging news, advice and tools recommendations on more than one account.SYNTAGMA — Why, yes, I like the tone of your posts, John.Neil Gaiman’s Journal — This shouldn’t come as a surprise, right?Shots in the Dark — Snippets of life and observations…You need to post more often, girl! (I know, I know… Lack of time and opportunities to do so.)The Blog Herald — More about blogs, but I’m never tired of it.Alas (A Blog) — Because Ampersand always has the knack to write about touchy matters with a unique tone.Contentious — Amy Gahran’s topics about online communication are often pretty interesting. Notably her “vermin” series.The Skinny Daily Post — A huge inspiration for me, and part of which has sustained my new lifestyle in the past semester.The New World Notes — That’s about Second Life, alright. Wagner James Au’s views and interviews.Y Tags: 10blogs

Yzabel / July 30, 2005

This will be of interest only to people who can understand spoken French, but I decided to post it anyway. Fortunately for me, I stumbled by chance this morning on a recent entry on Pointblog.com, titled “Questions autour de la Blog-mania sur France Inter”) and pointing to the page of Radio France Inter’s broadcast Le téléphone sonne. On Thursday, July 29th, said broadcast was focused on blogs, and even though I had missed it at the time, it is still possible currently to listen to it on France Inter website.From what I’ve listened to so far, the confirmed blogger probably won’t find there any exclusive information; however, for anyone who appreciates having access to varied points of view, even if this implies going back to the bsis of the phenomenon at times, this broadcast will probably turn out to be an interesting one (it notably raises questions on the importance of comments, or the way marketing talk is perceived here).