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Review Me Update February 12, 2007

Posted by The Probabilist in : [News], Productivity, Blogging , add a comment

I recently joined Review Me and was informed today that they are cutting down the payment of getting reviewed by 50 % for the end of this month. Normally, given the stats this blog has reached according to Review Me, the fee to get reviewed is $60, but thanks to this promotion you can get it for $30.

For those still new to this concept, Review Me provides a service where bloggers write a post on their blog describing another site or blog about what it’s about and provides a link to get readers to go visit it. Review Me defines how much people should pay to get reviewed based on the Alexa ranking, Technorati rank and RSS feed subscription. I’ve been a bit suspicious about the rates to advertise your blog, but it seems to be working well. If there weren’t a market for this, or the rates were off, it would fail on its own.

To get an idea of what kind of a review to expect, check out these entries that I’ve written previously.

The added bonus for getting reviewed is also that your site/blog will get added to the Recommended Resources section in the sidebar for at least three months from the date of the review. My blog’s description and stats can be found here. To get the 50 % off you simply have to enter: trial into the coupon code at checkout.

If you’re a blogger just starting out and want to drive more traffic, consider this option. I’ll do my best in giving an accurate (not too harsh ) description of your website. Go to the Review Me website, sign up and take advantage of this promotion before it ends. You may also contact me in advance about what you want me to write about and if you’ve got additional ideas of how to get your money’s worth from this.

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How to Blog - 1/8 Start Offline

Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 8 comments

Step 1 and 2 will be the briefest ones. In the first step of this blogging tutorial we’re going to install and use XAMPP and WordPress on your computer. XAMPP enables you to tweak your blog offline and WordPress is the most used blogging platform.

The reasons for starting with this step are several. Firstly, it’s a safe and free environment for you to try the WordPress platform. Secondly, you won’t annoy your readers with downtime, errors or continuous small tweaks every time you decide to implement a change. Thirdly, this reference comes with lots of suggestions so instead of having to upload new material constantly to your online host through an FTP application, you’re testing things out quickly on your own hard drive. And fourthly, whenever you upgrade WordPress to a new version, you’re better off first doing it on XAMPP to see how your plugins and design performs and what has to be done if everything doesn’t work the way they’re supposed to.

Installing XAMPP

First head over to the Apache friends site where you’ll find XAMPP for download. Choose your operating system, then XAMPP Lite and finally download either the .exe or .zip file. Extract it to your desired location (I’m going to refer to C:/xampplite - the installer will create the xampplite folder if you just choose C:).

Go to the xampplite folder and run setup_xampp.bat (press any key when done)
Run the xampp-control.exe file
Click the start button for both Apache and MySql
minimize the window when they both show ‘running’ on a green background
Open your favourite browser and enter http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
Choose your preferred language and click phpMyAdmin on the sidebar
Enter the following exactly as described in the picture and click create:

Installing WordPress

Go to the download section and get the latest version
Extract the contents of the zip file into the htdocs folder
The folder structure should be C:\xampplite\htdocs\wordpress
Download this wp-config.txt file and put it in the wordpress folder
Open it with notepad and rename it to wp-config.php
Enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php in your browser
Follow the guide and save the login details to where you keep your passwords
Go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php to log in to the platform

If you’ve already been blogging online, download your existing online WordPress folder and replace it with the one in your htdocs folder to have an offline duplicate. The posts and categories will not be copied, you have to activate the plugins and you also need to tweak the sidebar widgets if you have any. Remember that you have to change the wp-config.php file to the one that works on the offline version. The login details for your offline version will stay the same.

If you’re an established blogger, then the rest of the advice in this article as well as part 2 will not be of much interest. Steps 3 to 8 on the other hand are for everyone.

Using WordPress

All right, now we’re all set up to start making the essential stuff that makes your blog efficient. First browse through your user interface and check out the different panels and be sure to go to the options panel and change whatever settings you want. Clicking on the (View site) button next to the title of your blog reveals the basic look of your blog and I bet you’re inclined to start off by applying a new theme (a look or style) to your blog to make it stand out. You’ll find lots of different themes available for download here, here, here, here, here and here. Choose one close to your taste knowing that you can tweak every single detail of the theme that you want later on. Extract the theme folder to the htdocs/wp-content/themes folder. Then just go to the presentation tab in the control panel, choose one from the available themes and view the site.

Here are the most important files you need to do know about. Notice that they are all in the folder for the specific theme you’ve selected, which means that the changes you make only apply to the theme you’ve chosen and using.

style.css - Defines every border, colour, background, font, etc
index.php - Defines what’s displayed when you write a post
sidebar.php - Defines what’s found on the sidebar
header.php - This is where the code starts and defines the head
yourpage.php - You may want to create your own php files for pages

More on how to change and use these files is presented in step 4. For now, just take a look at these files with notepad and how they function, write a post to see how it comes out and visit the WordPress support section to browse through more detailed information.

Checklist for step 1 - starting offline

Install XAMPP - Quicker, easier and more secure environment to tweak a blog
Install WordPress - Self explanatory step
Get a new theme - Take a good look around to find one that stands out
Get familiar with the essential files - You’ll need to tweak these in the future

In the second step of this workshop (Friday, February the 16th), we’re getting a domain and a web host, configuring an ftp software to upload files to your host and putting the blog online. It will be quite a short post since the most essential tweaks and upgrades are presented starting next week.

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