Posts Tagged with “blogging”

I published something on ClickWP that I think will be helpful to many bloggers.

Best related posts plugins to replace nRelate

On 1 December 2014, nRelate announced that it would be switching off its related posts recommendation service. Their Related Posts plugin and service for WordPress was an extremely popular plugin because of its ease of use and many options. So now that they are shutting their doors, many WordPress site owners are looking around for a replacement. Here is what I am recommending to my WordPress tech support customers at ClickWP.

IMPORTANT: Choosing the wrong related posts plugin can severely slow your site down. This is because calculating the related-ness of posts is a resource intensive process. For sites with more than 200 posts, I recommend off-loading the computational work to an external service.

The best plugin to replace nRelate is… it depends.

tl;dr Summary

If you use Jetpack and don’t care about customization, use the Jetpack Related Posts module.

If you don’t want to signup for other accounts & services, Contextual Related Posts is a good option for sites with less than 200 posts. Another to consider is Related Posts for WordPress which claims to be able to handle a lot more posts.

If you don’t mind or need an external service to compute your related posts, Shareaholic and AddThis are the best options. One thing to note is that AddThis settings are controlled outside of WordPress, so you must signup for an AddThis account to use this option.

If you’re a publisher who’s willing to pay to increase your audience engagement with your content, Contextly seems very promising.

Want more options? Read this post by Followistic: The 10 Best Related Posts Plugins for WordPress

My thoughts on each of the above options: Read More »

Ben Brooks writes about a problem that many blogs and news sites have – too many things that distract the site visitor from reading. I share a similar opinion which is why I have removed all the ads from my site and reduced the design as much as possible. It’s a good read if you are considering a new design for your blog.

From Little Things BIG Things Grow – sparks flying at #pbevent 2012

A week ago, I had the pleasure of soaking up the excitement and creative energy of 300 bloggers who descended into Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia for the ProBlogger Training Event aka #pbevent. It was the first ever blogging conference that I’ve ever attended and I must say that I wasn’t disappointed for shelling out the cash and traveling all the way for it.

Personal Highlights

#pbevent was put on by Darren Rowse and his team who help him manage ProBlogger and Digital Photography School. Speakers included top bloggers from all over Australia and they even brought in Chris Guillebeau all the way from Portland, USA as a keynote speaker. I’ve been following Darren’s work for a long time and when I learnt that Chris, another role model of mine, was on the speaker lineup I immediately decided that I would attend.

Side note: I’ve never really talked about Chris Guillebeau but he’s someone I really look up to in the way he approaches business and living the life you want. I will try to expand on this when I get around to reviewing his book.

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I'm attending the ProBlogger Event 2012! Psst.. there's still a way to get a ticket, details here

Next week, I’ll be flying to Melbourne, Australia to attend the ProBlogger Training Event (#PBevent). I’m going to have a blast meeting with other bloggers, and learning to build better blogs and how to build revenue streams through blogging and other online income streams. I’m really looking forward to meeting up with Darren Rowse – Mr. ProBlogger himself, and Chris Guillebeau who was a major inspiration when I decided to go into business for myself.

Needless to say I’m really excited about my first major blogging conference. Some of the sessions that I’m most excited to attend are:

Check out the schedule here.

As you can see, this isn’t a dodgy “make money blogging” or “sell your eBook for $999” type free seminar. All of the speakers are successful bloggers and have used their blogs to launch their unconventional, new economy careers. You can bet I’ll be soaking it all up.. although I will probably feel like I’m back in my uni lecture hall (hope I don’t fall asleep!)

 

Tickets are sold out but you can still attend – virtually!

I bought my ticket the moment they announced it on 11 May. That got me early bird pricing of USD249.99. Early bird tickets were gone in a flash and full priced USD299.99 were sold out less than a month later. On the Facebook event page, we have people asking every week if there are more tickets available.

Selfish me doesn’t want any more tickets – I don’t want the event to be too crowded after all! However Darren has come up with a fantastic alternative. They are now offering a virtual pass for #PBevent. This gives virtual attendees audio recordings and slides of the sessions, access to a live webinar with Darren Rowse for a post-event Q&A session and access to a private Facebook group for networking with other virtual and live attendees as well. And you don’t have to spend the extra money for travel and accommodations!

The virtual ticket is available for an early-bird price of USD149 until 9 Oct 2012. From 10 Oct, the full virtual ticket price is USD199. Quick! Buy your virtual event pass now. Read More »

ProBlogger.net published my guest post today. Guess that officially makes me a professional blogger 😀

Sensationalist Headline of the Year – Berita Mingguan: Blogger Earns RM1 Million

Berita Minggu 23 Jan 2011

The weekend pullout of Berita Harian called Berita Minggu ran a huge headline titled “Blogger untung RM1 juta” which loosely translates as “Blogger earns RM1 million”. Fiona has kindly reproduced the article on her blog.

Pish pash! No mention that blogging is hard work (and not just writing too). No earnings breakdown like Darren Rowse – watch out Darren, I’m gunning for you.

To make money online, you can’t just blog. You need a plan. A business plan. Because a blog that makes money isn’t a hobby, it’s an online business. This is what I’m blogging about at The ClickStarter (it’s stalled for the moment while I’m working on my secret launch..)

Well anyway, that’s the state of blogging in Malaysia – it’s all about the money. Quick, easy money that doesn’t exist.

P.S. Bloggers can’t escape taxes too. See the accompanying story in the sidebar, LOL

Here’s a guest post I contributed to the Headway blog:

Recently I launched a redesign of my personal blog (blogjunkie.net) which essentially turned it into a tumblog. I achieved the look and functionality with the Headway theme and the WooTumblog plugin. I received a few questions about the redesign so here is a tutorial on how you can do the same with your Headway blog.

What is a tumblog / tumblelog?

Some people were confused with the concept of a tumblog so I thought I would explain it first.

A tumblog is a publishing tool that is in between Twitter (140 characters) and full-blown blogging (500+ words). It’s great for times when you have more to say than what Twitter will allow, but not so much that it deserves an entire blog post. I simply wanted to post a link / image / video and add a comment to it, without worrying about the post formatting. A tumblog is perfect for that.

Five Nerds and Projectionist are typical examples of tumblogs–short form snippets of content with occasional long posts.

WooThemes has released a new plugin that turns your regular ol’ WordPress blog into a tumblog. All that is required is to install the plugin and change a few lines of code in your theme’s templates. I’m using it now on this blog and found it pretty straightforward to integrate.

Do your friends bug you with blogging questions? Please send them my way

Dear blogger friends,

I’m sure that many of your friends and family has asked you “What’s this blogging thing?” or “Can you help me with my blog?”

And then.. you want to help them but sometimes they have so many questions and you need to go off and do your own thing but you’re paiseh to say no to them because this is your friend / favourite auntie…

If that’s ever happened to you before, I’d like to ask you a favour. Please send your friends and family with blogging questions to me, or more specifically my upcoming workshop called Blogging Your Way To Success. Here, I even made a video to explain what the workshop is about.


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