Visualized.Feel.Abundance

Hey Folks,Today I’ve been doing some fine tuning of our blog for quite sometime, I originally thought that I would just make an announcement to let you know what has been added, so you would notice. But then I thought, why not just do a brief run down on some essential component of a blog that (maybe, just maybe) newbie bloggers/readers may not know of?

So here it is, my blog announcement cum blog run down on essential components of a blog:

Comment Box
A typical comment box/form can be accessed by clicking on the post title or clicking on the “comment” link or sometimes a “read” link. Here is an example of a comment box:

The comment box is either an integral part of the post or a separate pop up form. Either one would have one of the following:

1) Name (Allows author to know who you are)
2) Email (Allows author to communicate with you)
3) Website (Allows author and readers to know if you have a website)

You can click on any names in the comment column that looks like hyperlink. It will bring you to the commentators site/blog.

Sometimes you will be challenged to answer a math sum or decipher a messy image before your post is allowed to proceed. That is to prevent/reduce the number of robot spams that the author may receive. We do want to author to concentrate on writing good stuffs instead of fighting spams right?

The last part, usually before or after the “Submit Comment” button, you may find a check box that allows you to get updates to subsequent comments from this post. It is very useful as the author/commentators may actually address or reply your comments.

Do Follow Movement

Sometimes you will hear certain authors saying that they “Do Follow” or you get a logo that looks like . What is means is that any comment on such a blog will generate a backlink to your site/blog (if you remember to fill it in). Backlinks are important to Google’s pagerank calculation and Technorati’s ranking.

This is a way an author says thank you for commenting and that they appreciate you taking time to pen down your thoughts. That said, please don’t abuse their kindness by leaving a comment with 10 links!

You Comment, I Reply

Following the Do Follow Movement, another hot community project is You Comment, I Reply! The logo looks the one on my right!

Again, it was started as a project to thanks readers for commenting but I put it down to basic courtesy :P. Blog post and comments are like a conversation, who wants to talk to a person who does not reply? So I do reply all my comments (sometimes just a bit later) even though I don’t publish that badge

Getting Updates From The Blog
Everyone loves to read blogs and get updates (especially from blogs with good content), 2 ways to get updates without visiting the blog everyday is to subscribe to the blogs RSS. If you want to know what RSS means, check here.

The first way is to get RSS delivered to your email. Feedburner and Feedblitz are 2 of the common medium that blogs used to delivered their post. Just find the subscription box, enter your email, verify it and you are set to get every single updates. But remember to go back to the site to comment if you like their post! You can find an example of what it looks like to the right of this para.

Another way of receiving Blog post update is via an RSS reader. Google RSS reader is one such example but there are many other good readers out there, just do a search.

RSS readers are useful if you frequently read a whole bunch of blogs and you don’t want to mess up your email. Another reason why RSS readers are more commonly used is that RSS via email is not commonly adopted by every blog yet! To the left, you will find an example of how an RSS logo looks like. Below is different presentation:

Just click on the logo or link and you will be shown a page where you can preview the RSS feed and select your preferred reader. Again, remember to check back with your favorite to comment and give support to the author.

Social Bookmarking and Networking

The next important and critically essential component on any blog is it’s social network! Most bloggers join at least technorati, stumbleupon, blogcatalog, mybloglog, netscape, digg or bumpzee. And if you love their article or blog post, help them spread the word by bookmarking them with your account (if you have one, if not it’s about time to get one). The one on the right contains a Fave button for Technorati, a save button for MyWeb from Yahoo and a voting badge from blogskinny!

You can fave them, digg, them, stumble them or whatever them (whatever the next big thing is) to your liking. The thing is, if you love it, share it! And you can leave a comment to let the author know about it, I know he would be eternally grateful! Below are some more examples of social bookmarks commonly found on a blog, typically within a post (i.e. you need to click on the title, comment or read link to access the single post).

This one below is bookmarking interface from Feedburner (I know , its a bit small but you get the idea). It’s usually at the end of a post:

Trackback

The last item is called trackback! If you love a post and want to share it on your blog, do it via trackback. Best not to copy, don’t rewrite just trackback and add your opinions and perspective to it. You actually do 2 things at once, maybe 3.

1) You do it legally (no copying) and give credit to the author. Thus earning his appreciation.
2) You still get to post good stuff and add your perspective which is what your readers love you for. You won’t actually lose them.
3) You gain some traffic from tracking back to the source. Your tracking appears as a comment on the source post and readers will follow to find out what you have to say about the topic they are interested in!

So as you can see, nothing wrong with tracking back! In fact it is good to trackback! Usually a post has a trackback link at the end of the post/article. Just copy that link and add it into your post (instead of the regular url) and you get a trackback. I have a picture below but it’s a bit small, so take a look at any of my post to find out what it looks like!

UPDATE : I have found this good writeup called “Wordpress Trackback Tutorial“. It should explain trackback more clearly. Another point is that certain theme may not display trackbacks in their comments. In those case, just drop them a comment telling them you like their post and have trackback. Simple?

Oh if you love this post and want to share it, Trackback! OK?

Love,
James

PS: The new additions to our blogs are the email subscription, notification of comments update, big RSS button and some minor changes. But mainly the email subscription.

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