Nongeek perspective

This blog has not been very active last week. Here is the reason for that: I'm thinking about moving the blog. This blog is growing (believe it or not! :-), so I think it's time for taking it to its own domain.

Since this blog is hosted in blogspot.com I have little room for improvements. By moving away from blogspot I might add new tools and services for improve my readers experience.

So, I'm evaluating the possible choices in this moving: I might stay with blogger (posting through blogger to my own server via ftp) or I might choose another blog engine. There are lots of blog engines out there and I've spent some time trying some of them. The third case is rolling my own blog engine.

There is one more thing to consider: inbound links. There are some web sites linking to posts hosted in my blogspot subdomain that may not drive traffic to the new site. I'm already reading some articles about that issue.

I hope to be posting really soon in my brand new domain. It could be this same week.

Update: I moved this blog to a new address: http://www.nongeekperspective.com/
Add to: del.cio.us | digg | furl | blinklist | netvouz

In my previous article about promoting blogs using comments I recommended using TrackBack as an alternative to comments. However, I've been checking the blogs of some of my commenters and realize that many of them seems to be new to blogging (since their blogs have few posts) and after talking with some friends who didn't know about TrackBack I decided to write this little article about the subject.

TrackBack

TrackBack is a mechanism that lets you notify someone that you have written an article in your blog linking to (or commenting on) some post in their blog. Its like sending an email to the original author but, instead of a real email, you send a TrackBack "ping" using some TrackBack tool if your blogging tool does not support the protocol. The blog you're pinging to generally will display an excerpt of your post and a link to it.

You need to know the "TrackBack URL" which usually is displayed along every entry and it's unique for each post. So, if you want to ping some blog just:

1. Look for the TrackBack URL for the specific post you want to comment on, usually displayed at the end of the article.
2. If your blogging tool has support for TrackBack, enter the URL in it when publishing your post. If your blogging tool doesn't support TrackBack use a third party tool after publishing your post.
3. That's all! Pretty easy. Remember that you may ping several blogs at the same time.
   

Here are some free on line tools allowing you to send TrackBack pings:

• Simpletracks
• Trackback wizard
• Haloscan (requires registration). Let's you receive TrackBack too.
  

Backlinks, the Blogger.com style

Blogger does not support TrackBack but it has backlinks, which is pretty much similar. Backlinks are just a list of blogs linking to your post produced by Google blog search. So, if you're linking to a post hosted in blogspot you have nothing to do. When Google indexes your article the link will be automatically added to the original post.

However, the author of the blog you’re linking to must enable backlinks and, while TrackBack is a two-way communication system, backlinks doesn't allow you to ping a post in someone else's blog. That's why many bloggers using Blogger.com service (like me) use a third party TrackBack service along with backlinks.

Useful links

Additional to the links in the text, you may find useful information on these articles:

• What’s a Trackback? Permalink? Post slug? Ping?
• Haloscan Trackback: What? Why? How?
  

I hope you find this information useful. This post may be the first on a blogging basics series. Or perhaps it may be the last. I'm open to your comments and suggestions.

Technorati tags: blog, blogging, blogging basics, tools, promotion, blog promotion
Add to: del.cio.us | digg | furl | blinklist | netvouz

Many bloggers use to leave comments in someone else's blog to promote their blogs. That's not a bad idea. If you post a comment on some article with a link back to your blog you may have at least one visit. But between promotion and spam there's a fine line so here is a short list of things to keep in mind if you want to promote your blog using comments:

• Say something relevant: I've seen lots of comments just saying "visit my blog" or even worse, some posts comments saying nothing. Most people will consider such comments as spam. If you have never seen this type of comment is because most bloggers delete them as soon as they read them. Even if those comments were not deleted, few follow a link on a stupid comment.


• Be polite: You can express any idea politely, even if you disagree with the author. Politeness is a sign of intelligence. You may possess the absolute truth, but some people will not trust in someone talking rudely. So, it's better to be polite if you want to attract readers to your blog.


• Use controversy sparingly: While most people enjoy a good discussion based on interesting ideas really few of them likes stupid controversy. If you create controversy where none exists you may attract some traffic but few regular readers.


• Consider TrackBack: Have a long comment? post it in your own blog and notify the author with a TrackBack ping. It's like posting a comment on your own blog with a side effect, people have to visit your blog to read the comment. Most blogging tools have support for TrackBack. Update: Read this post if you want to learn more about TrackBack.
  

Although this short list is intended for blog promotion I think it's valid for everyone posting comments out there. Do you have any comments about it?


Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, promotion, blog promotion, writing
Add to: del.cio.us | digg | furl | blinklist | netvouz