On Blogging

There used to be a plugin that would scan your WordPress blog for posts that were past a certain age and close the comments functionality on them.

Why? Because when the conversation dies down, sometimes you want to move on. Plus, old blog posts are generally a target for spammers.

I'm not sure when this happened, but the ability to auto-close comments has been built into the core of WordPress now, and I'm going to show you how easy it is to configure this feature.

Sputtr is a cool service I've been using recently. It allows you to search across a number of search engines and websites really quickly.

How it works is you type your search query into the big box, then click on the search service you want to use. There's a massive choice: you can search a number of Google properties like news, blogs and Google Groups. You can search across social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. Technorati (if anyone still uses it), Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube. There's a lot of choice.

Better yet, if you create an account with the service, you can take away the buttons you don't want and add searches to other services that you want to query. You can also choose to make the search results open up in a new browser tab, which makes it easier to return to Sputtr and do follow-up searches.

A few years ago, it seemed that there was an endless supply of new and exciting online RSS readers. I started off on Bloglines, then moved with the herd to Google Reader, where I've been happily using their freebie product ever since. Somewhere along the line I had a brief flirtation with the clever hybrid RSS/Digg-style Rojo.com.

Sadly, Rojo got acquired by Six Apart and no longer exists.

Why am I looking around for alternative RSS readers? Well, I'm going through one of those anti-Google phases. I'm getting a teeny bit concerned about the amount of information I'm feeding the company. And so I've started looking around for an alternative.

The thing is, there don't seem to be many alternatives. What's that all about? Did Google get involved in the RSS market and completely obliterate the competition? Looks like it: there's virtually nothing left. Which is weird, considering how RSS once promised to revolutionize how we consume information.

Mozilla FireFox and Opera both have a nifty bookmarks feature which allows you to give a bookmark a shortcut, sort of like speed-dial for websites.

Here’s how it works: Browse to a website you visit often, say this one. Bookmark the site by either pressing CTRL+D or going to Bookmarks / Bookmark this page.

Lifehacker has a post about dragging unlinked URLs to the address bar to navigate.

Let’s say you come across an URL that hasn’t been linked. Select it (careful with spaces at the start and end) and drag it up to the address bar. Release the mouse and FireFox will automagically jump to that page.

In fact, you can even drag regular links to the address bar for the same effect.

WordPress‘ default theme (Kubrick) is great, but I’ve always had a problem with the title tags that the Kubrick theme generates. They could be so much more search engine friendly, don’t you think?

<title>

	<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?>
</title>

This usually results in the title reading like Interweb World » Perfecting WordPress Title Tags, which is fine.

When I started blogging, I wrote using a pseudonym.

Not that I was focussing my writing on fundamentalist ramblings or anything to be ashamed of. I just appreciated that being anonymous afforded me the ability to write honestly and without fear of reprisal. I didn't have to worry about friends, family and colleagues reading my innermost thoughts.

I'm messing about today with doing podcasts. I recorded an interview the other day with the producer of Sofia's Diary on Bebo and here it is.

Unreality Music is currently experiencing a massive traffic spike courtesy of the StumbleUpon community. It's all centered around a post I wrote almost a fortnight ago after Dr Pepper publicly teased Axl Rose about his ability to release an album.

When I first decided to launch a personal blog, I made it my mission not to perform any optimisation on this site.

At the time, my thinking was that I would just run entirely off the Garland theme. I got tired of that pretty quickly, just as I couldn't stand the Kubrick/K2 theme on WordPress.

I switched to the Zen theme for Drupal, but to be honest, that's not personal enough either. I'm starting to hanker after a theme for this site that gives it a personality. Or gives me a personality.

After my rant last month about the scope and limitations of a personal site, I've thought long and hard about how my website should represent me. And probably the best way to do that is to treat myself like a client.