I think most of you who are reading my blog have heard of WordPress. Many know it as blogware (blog software) and some – especially my clients – know it as a full content management solution (meaning you can easily edit your content using it).

But I know there are some people who read my blog regularly who don’t have any experience with WordPress. Perhaps they’ve heard of it and have no idea what it is. Maybe they’ve even used it but haven’t really understood how powerful it can. And yet I know there are others who haven’t heard of WordPress at all.

So I’m going to share a few short screencasts I’ve made over the past year to introduce some of the most powerful user features in WordPress and show you why you want to consider using it for your next website.

[ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]

How often have you seen this in the comment box?

I see it in my comment box and on other blogs enough that it’s in my consciousness. Here, I often just quickly edit the comment to add a live link because it’s quick and easy.

But it’s also quick and easy to show you how to create your own live link that you can use in the comment box on almost any blog. It’s easy to learn and only takes an extra moment to write. And what you get is a real, live link to wherever you’re referencing in your comment.

But one note before we go on. Just because you’re about to find out how to leave links in comments, please only due so when your comment truly warrants it. Don’t add your affiliate links in the comment box. And don’t pepper every comment with 3 self-promoting links back to your blog. Both of these are prime ways to turn off the blogger you’re leaving comments with. Likely, you’ll not end up in the comment box, but in the spam filter. You may even mean well, just remember that spam is in the eye of the blog owner.

That said, let’s get on to it.

All you need to know to create a live link in the comment box is a very small bit of HTML. So, are you ready? Here’s how you create a live text link with HTML:

<a href=”http://dmiracle.com”>link to Dawud’s blog</a>

And here’s what it will look like in the comment box:

link to Dawud’s blog

That’s all there is to it. Really. It’s that easy.

Just be sure of a few things and you’ll be fine:

1. Be sure to open your your HTML tag correctly. Put <a href=”your-url“> just before the first letter of the word or phrase you want to make into a link. All the syntax as displayed is important – the placement of the < >, the = and the quotes around your-url.
2. Be sure you’ve typed a (space) href correctly as show above. I’ve been writing HTML for more than 10 years and I often mistype href or don’t add the space between a & href.
3. Your linked text. What will display, as you see above, is the text just after your > and before the </a>. What you place in that position is the text that will carry the link.
4. Be sure to close your HTML tag correctly. Close your tag means after the last letter of the word or phrase you’re linking, be sure to add </a> exactly as it’s typed – the slash is important. If you don’t close the tag, all text after will be a link. Probably not something you want to do.

So just to review, the syntax for creating a link looks like this:

<a href=”your-full-url“>displayed text link</a>

That’s it. Now you should be able to add links to your comments whenever you like, easily, quickly and without trouble. Just be sure the syntax is correct before you submit your comment. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Also, one further note. Some blogware will not let you add HTML to your comments. So try it and if you get a message that HTML is not accepted, you’ll know. Trying it won’t hurt anything.

Have fun…

How many times have your read a great blog post and have wanted to add a comment, only to get to the bottom of the page and find that you have to login?

I don’t login. Which means, I don’t leave a comment. Which means, no conversation and little chance at building a relationship with that blogger.

I think this is a bad idea. So do others. Forcing people to login to your blog just so they can leave a comment is ridiculous.

Think about it for a moment… If you write a blog post, you want people to read it, right? Otherwise, why write it? And if you offer comments at all, you’re probably interested in getting some sort of feedback, right? Otherwise you’d be like Seth Godin and not do comments at all.

So why would you make it difficult for me to leave a comment on your blog? Why would you force me to register and login? All that does is setup a number of barriers between you and I; your post and my commentary. Your making me take extra time just so I can share my thoughts on something you wrote on your site. Where’s the benefit for me?

If you have a business blog, think about the message you’re sending. If you’re making it difficult for me to interact with you on your blog, how else might you make our interaction difficult? How important will I really be to you as a client if I’m not that important as a blog commenter?

As you can tell, I think it’s poor judgment to make commenters register and login. There’s really no benefit for the commenter. It’s bad enough they have to fill-in a form each time they leave a comment on my blog. But at least they have the freedom to include what they like.

I’ve ranted on about this, what do you think? Do you comment on sites that force you to register? Do you force your commenters to register? I’d love to know why. Maybe there’s a reason beyond what I’m looking at. Or maybe it’s just a bad idea. Let’s talk about it…

I love my blog.

Whenever I have something on my mind, it listens. If I need to explore a business idea, it patiently let’s me fumble around until I get it. If I’m down, it picks me up. And if I’m feeling inflated, I know it will bring me back to earth.

I love my blog. It’s a life-long friend I can really trust. But should I date my blog? Won’t that mess everything up?

Some, like Rory Sullivan, Kevin Mulldoon, George Manty and Google’s Matt Cutts think dating your blog is a necessity. Rory’s opinion is that dating:

“…makes the material seem timeless.The problem is with the word “seem”. Removing the time stamp is a trick, a gimmick.”

Yet, there are some, like Steve Pavlina, Dan & Jennifer, and the folks at Freelance Switch, that feel it’s unnecessary to date your blog. Daniel Scocco quotes Darren Rowse, who recently stopped dating his Digital Photography School blog, as saying:

“If the content is timeless and not ‘newsy’ in nature I think that removing the timestamp from a blog is a very worthwhile thing to do.”

And Maki, of DoshDosh fame, has also removed in the same post is quoted as saying:

“I don’t really have a concrete reason why I removed the time stamp, except that it doesn’t make the blog posts look dated. Going without dates also affects your marketing potential. For instance, it might make it easier to promote material on social voting/bookmarking websites.”

If you take a look at DoshDosh you’ll see that Maki had decided to date his posts on his homepage only. He doesn’t date his individual posts, however.

Personally, I like Maki’s approach. I just wonder – is it fair to my blog to only date it on the homepage?

What do you think?

This has been a crazy spam week for me.

For the past few months I’ve been using Akismet with the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin. The usual number of comment spam I would get was between 25-50 daily, with almost no comments ending up in spam.

Then Lorelle suggested that I remove the Math Comment Spam Protection and install Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior. It made sense. And since I deeply trust Lorelle’s judgment on anything WordPress, I did it.

But since changing, I’ve been bombed with spam comments. Just yesterday I got 1,400 spam comments caught by Akismet – and that doesn’t include the 800 that Bad Behavior says it caught.

What gives? Why am I all of sudden being bombarded with spam?

Lorelle told me, and I ultimately believe her, that the Math Comment Spam Protection didn’t work. So no fault of hers.

Yet this tidal wave of spam hit me when I took down Math Comment Spam Protection and installed Spam Karma2 and Bad Behavior?

Coincidence?

Have I set something wrong with Bad Behavior and/or Spam Karma2? Or did the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin really work for me?

What are your thoughts?

Have you seen a huge increase in comment spam this week?

Any great resources for Bad Behavior or Spam Karma2 setup?

If you use WordPress you likely know who Lorelle VanFossen is. If you don’t know who she is yet, don’t worry…you will soon.

Lorelle VanFossen, of course, writes Lorelle on WordPress (RSS) – one of the best resources for anything relating to WordPress. Need a plugin? Lorelle’s likely written about it. Need to solve a problem? Lorelle may have covered it. Want the latest news? Lorelle’s the one. She even sums it all up with her WordPress Wednesday column on Blog Hearld (RSS).

Lorelle’s done it all. Including make every blogging mistake possible. At least that’s what she said in her interview with Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips (RSS).

Daniel: What is the biggest blogging mistake you did?

Lorelle: Oh, honey, I’ve done them all. I’ve been doing this so long, I’ve done all the big mistakes. When I read through blog posts listing their blogging mistakes, I think, “Yep, did that one in 2001. Oh, that one, I did it big in 1998. Been there, done that in 2004. Won’t repeat that mistake of 1997.”

Is there just one big mistake? Nope. There are only big lessons that come from every mistake along the blogging path. I tend to focus on the lessons learned and not the screw-ups.

Lessons…that’s the perspective I love about Lorelle. Having spent some time with her at SOBCon07 back in May, it was easy to fall in love with her. She’s real, she’s honest and she doesn’t judge. And just like me, she has her opinions…

Daniel: How long should a blogger wait to monetize the blog?

Lorelle: I do not think bloggers should monetize their blogs. I think that people who want to get into the business of blogging must make a business plan on how they will use blogging for their business or as their business, thus creating a plan for monetizing their blogs.

But general bloggers? Why should your hobby make money? If you want to work your way towards professional blogging, then blog for a year or two to get a feel for blogging and make your business plan. Then move towards being a professional blogger.

I couldn’t agree more. Too many bloggers are watching what the business bloggers are doing and think about the “easy money” they could be making off their blogs. But it’s not easy money. It’s hard work.

But so is blogging in general. Some days it’s easy, some it’s hard. Everyday it’s effort. That’s why many blogs aren’t successful.
And that’s what I love about Lorelle, she tells it like it is. She doesn’t sugar coat it. She’s honest about the ups and downs. That why I recommend that everyone read her new book, Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging.

I’ve read it three times cover to cover and it’s full of great advice. It’s literally the first blogging book I’ve read that’s really about blogging. Most blog books spend way too much time covering blog platforms or why to blog. Authors sometimes spend 1/2 to 3/4 of a book getting to the meat.

Blogging Tips is different in that Lorelle assumes you’ll get that type of information elsewhere. Instead, she gets right into meat. I highly recommend her book (and I’m not getting an affiliate kickback to say that).

I also really enjoyed Adii’s interview with Lorelle where they talk a bit more WordPress.

You know, it’s also kind of challenging to find photos of Lorelle. I snagged one with her and David Dalka (he’s on the right, I’m on the left and Lorelle is between us) when we were at SOBCon.

Finding the right domain name can make a difference between a successful website and one that’s stuck in the pit of mediocrity. Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but there is some truth here.

The question is, how importat is the .com? Should you get closetowhatIwant.com or should you get exactlywhatIwant.net or even mybusinessname.biz?

Alex King has been facing this exactly question as he renames his business from King Design to Crowd Favorite. Of course, he couldn’t wrestle crowdfavorite.com away from its current owner. So he came up with either using crowdfavorite.net or crowdfave.com.

Which would you choose? And why?

Alex polled his readers and got mixed feedback with crowdfavorite.net winning out by a small margin. Which was good because he had already decided to use crowdfavorite.net. But as he said it, “the response to crowdfave.com has gotten my attention. This decision is holding up a number of things, but I want to make sure I’ve thought it through completely.”

Personally, I’ve always held the position that the .com was ultimately better. And unless you really couldn’t find one you like, you should always choose a .com.

A couple of the comments Alex got made me think about this position, though. Brian Warren of Be Good Not Bad suggested:

…i’d rather have a .net domain and have it be the name of my company than have a .com and have it not.

Others had similar feedback. And there’s some great advice “out there” on selecting a domain name:

• @ Chrisg: Better Blog Branding: What’s in a Name?
• @ DomainName: Quick Tips on Choosing a Domain Name
• @ Dosh Dosh: 5 Easy Steps to Choose a Domain Name for Your Niche Blog
• @ Quick Spout: How to Choose A Brandable Domain Name
• @ Can I Make Big Money Online: How to Pick the Right Domain Name for Your Blog

But what do you think? Is a .com the only way to go? Or does the extention matter that much today?

This week, usability guru Jakob Nielsen suggested to the BBC that Web 2.0 was neglecting good design. According to the BBC website:

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the “glossy but useless” sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

I’m with David Armano, I agree and disagree at the same time. I think that Web 2.0 sometimes sacrifices good website usability and design for attractive graphics and dynamic effects.

Yet, the trend I see with Web 2.0 designs is that they’re often much cleaner and leaner than most current websites.

Many have opinions on what Mr Nielson had to say:

• Jakob’s Rule for Web 2.0: KISS
• Jakob Needs A Makeover; And A ‘Fun’ Gene Implant
• A Quick Comment on Web 2.0 and Jakob Nielsen
• Web 2.0 Bad for Websites?
• Jakob Nielsen vs. Web 2.0

What do you think? Is Web 2.0 good or bad for websites and website users?

When I find blogs in enjoy it’s inevitable that I want to know more about the person behind it. I’ll read their about page. And I always hope to see their photo. I think the photo helps me connect even more.

Of course I could make it easier for you to find a photo of me on my blog (that’s coming soon, btw). So when my good friend David Airey started his Face Behind the Blog Collection, I knew I wanted to join in.

David writes:

Putting a face to the name of someone you haven’t met helps recognition and adds a more personal feel to your conversations.

What photograph shows you in a light we don’t often see through your blog?

A few others have joined in so far.

• Gayla at Mom Gadget
• Char at Essential Keystrokes
• Robyn at Practical Blogging
• Paul at Reflections
• Rob at 2Dolphins
• Zep at The In-Sect
• Ingo at Stixster
• Stevie at Lost In Cyberspace
• The Paper Bull

So now it’s my turn. Below I’ve placed a few photos of me, my wife and my kids. I figure since nothing about me is complete without my family, you should meet them as well.

That’s us this past Christmas (2006). Clockwise from top left: My wife, Sabira; me; my 3-year-old daughter A’esha; and my 1 year-old son Ahmed.

Sabira and I married after knowing each other three weeks. The night we met it took about 30 minutes for us both to realize we’d spend the rest of our life together.

If you’re wondering about the garb, I’ve been seriously studying Sufism since 1997. It’s quite literally the foundation of my life. But that’s a bit of story.

This is Sabira and I at Bryce Canyon, UT in January 2003, a few months after we married. It was cold in Bryce that time of year. But we we pretty much had the park to ourselves.

Here Sabira and I are shortly after moving from Angwin, CA to Chelsea, MI in the spring of 2003. Moved, bought a house, gutted it and began rebuilding – until A’esha decided she wanted to join us.

Here’s me beginning a backpacking trip the summer of 2003. Since 1992, I’ve spent more than 500 nights in the backcountry all over the U.S. and Canada. I’m also a sea kayaker, mountaineer, and have ice climbed. Yeah, I used to be in much better shape.

Here’s A’esha a few days after her birth in December 2003. She was born in our home with two amazing midwives. My wife was incredible.

And here she is just a week ago (almost 3 1/2). Gosh they grow up quickly.

Ahmed (and A’esha) shortly after his birth in March 2006. He was also born at home – in pool. The water birth was an incredible experience for Sabira. A’esha holding him isn’t a rare sight – even today.

And here’s Ahmed just a few weeks ago at 13 months. He laughs a ton, is walking and more than anything just loves to follow his sister around. And unlike A’esha, I’m the only one who can get him to sleep at night.

There is one more family member I don’t have a photo of yet. We’re four months pregnant. We won’t get an ultrasound nor will we find out the sex of the baby beforehand. We’ll just wait to see what surprise is waiting for us in November. Be sure you’ll hear about it.

So you now know a bit more about me and you’ve ‘met’ my family. I’m a very hands-on dad, which can make working from home difficult at times. But I love it. I love being able to have lunch with my kids or watch them run around in the back yard while I work.

Now I want to know more about you. Please join in the conversation, ask me questions or tell me how cute my kids are (that never gets old). But ask away. I’ll tell you anything I can.

And I’m also going to tag a few others. You can go to David’s blog to see the details of how to post for The Face Behind the Blog. So I’m tagging:

• Liz Strauss from successful-blog.com
• Dave Olson from daveolson.ca
• Adam Kayce from monkatwork.com
• Edward Mills from evolvingtimes.com
• Wendy Piersall from emomsathome.com
• Chris Cree from SuccessCREEations.com
• Phil Gerbyshak from makeitgreat.typepad.com
• Easton Ellsworth from businessblogwire.com
• Tony D. Clark from successfromthenest.com
• Mark Goodyear from goodwordediting.com
• Kammie Kobyleski from passionmeetspurpose.com
• Lisa Gates from designyourwritinglife.com
• Ben Yoskovitz from instigatorblog.com
• Jesse Peterson from gitrsblog.us
• Jonathan-C Phillips from smartwealthyrich.com
• Randa Clay from randaclay.com
• Armen from iffect.net

And if anyone else wants to join in, please, feel free.

11 minutes of some of the best parts of Guy Kawasaki’s presentations.

Learn:

• How Nike sells 2 pieces of cotton rubber and leather to people for $125.
• How your business can be revolutionary
• How to let a thousand flowers bloom
• Adding the big stones first

Enjoy…

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