Sep 20
One of the biggest reasons I moved over to WordPress from Blogger is that I found joining the I Follow Movement did very little good in Blogger’s format: the rel=”no follow” attribute is taken down, but comment links are led back to Blogger profiles, not to the blog. Fat lot of good that does to spread link love!
I realize that my blog is by far not one of the biggest or even all that popular - the highest number of hits I think I have ever gotten in one day is in the neighborhood of 250 unique visitors. This isn’t a niche blog by any means - I write about whatever moves me at the moment! - which often makes it harder to get a strong readership. But the idea of giving my readers and commentators a little reward in the form of link love very strongly appealed to me. Andy Bailey’s Commentluv WordPress plug-in gave me the opportunity to do exactly that.
When I posted about my favorite WordPress plugins, Andy left me a comment about his new AjaxCommentluv plugin and I ended up being the first beta tester for it. For this, Andy gave me link credit on the AjaxCommentluv plugin page.
As if that weren’t enough, this morning I discovered that I am the very first Featured Site at Commentluv!
Those who are registered at Commentluv will be able to select from a number of their last posts (as opposed to their last post only) while leaving comments on other Commentluv enabled blogs, have access to a lot of fascinating statistics, have the ability to change your feed URL and a lot more!
If you do not have Commentluv - people, what are you waiting for! Besides spreading link love to your readers and commentators, you will “be in business” with one of the friendliest plugin coders on the web.
Thank you, Andy for all your link love. I’ve sincerely enjoyed working with you. When you need future beta testers, do not hesitate to contact me!
Also, thanks to Sire for a very lovely review!
Sep 05
Posted by tata on Friday Sep 5, 2008 Under websites
I’ve heard lots of things about Entrecard about the interwebs and finally went over to have a gander myself. It seems like a really great program if one has the time (I do).
The premise is fairly simple: you are, more or less, swapping advertising space with fellow bloggers. You drop your card on blogs participating in the program to earn credits, which you then spend to advertise on a blog of your choice (obviously, it must also be participating in the program). You also earn credits when others advertise on your blog.
I’m finding quite a number of new (to me) blogs that I’m really interested in. And hell, I did just eliminate some of my Google Reader subscriptions, so now there’s room for some of the blogs I’m encountering that I think are pretty swell. I’ve already subscribed to a few! Even better, some participators of the program have I Follow policies! There are even several blogs that have impressive Page Ranks.
Some of the bloggers on Entrecard take Entrecard very seriously, dropping the maximum 300 cards per day, and/or posting monthly about their Top Droppers, etc. There are contests where the prizes are X number of Entrecard credits, “slots” to play, and a number of other ways to earn extra Entrecard credits. It’s been very fun exploring and dropping my card around. I’ve “purchased” some advertising space on a few blogs and some has been purchased from me.
Take a peek over in my sidebar for Today’s Featured Blog and if you can, click through to visit!
Entrecarders, don’t forget to leave a comment for some link love!
Sep 05
Posted by tata on Friday Sep 5, 2008 Under web tools
One of the reasons I moved over to WordPress was to get CommentLuv. What a great concept! It is by and far my favorite plug-in. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and don’t use CommentLuv, than you are just a big, fat meanie! To further spread the link love, I have used the NOFF plug-in so that when you do leave a comment, you get a link that follows back to your site. This is what it is all about! I Follow! I got these two plug-ins immediately after installing WordPress.
More recently, I have found a most excellent plug-in: Micro*Kid’s Related Posts Plug-in. It’s ridiculously easy to use and looks quite fabulous, too. It does not find related posts automatically, so I have had to go back and edit some of my posts to link them to related posts, but it was worth the effort, particularly that it reciprocates (link Post A to Post B, Post B is automatically linked back to Post A as related).
I also use the All-in-One SEO Pack. It’s a great way to add meta tags to single posts. I won’t swear to results from this plug-in, but then I haven’t done the research yet.
To tackle the never-ending spam problem, I use Spam Karma 2. It’s done a pretty good job so far, only harvesting one comment that wasn’t spam, but caught every actual spam comment. I know everyone loves Akismet ’round these parts, but it required getting a key and I read that some folks were having issues with that in the Global Dashboard. Best avoid that problem altogether, thanks.
Other great plug-ins I use:
It wasn’t easy finding good plug-ins for WordPress 2.6, since it’s still fairly new. A lot of plug-ins creators haven’t had time or opportunity to update their plug-ins. Too bad for me, since there are a number of them I have my eyes on!
