WordPress has offer yet another fantastic feature in the dashboard. You can now vote for Random Toxic’s posts, comments and also pages. By doing so, you can let me know the topics you like or hate and this will indeed, improve my blog(a lot)!

As you can see, you CANNOT view the rating system in the homepage. Instead, you have to click and view the posts’ URL. For posts, you will find the ‘Rate This’ text along with five stars below the post. Just click the number of stars you wish to give(5 is most welcome!) and TADA, I will receive a report in a few seconds.

For comments though, the stars are available above each comment. If you feel the commenter said something you agreed on, vote for him/her. If you find what the commenter wrote…very impolite, give him/her a 1.

As for Pages, you can find the 5 stars below the post in the page.

So, vote now! Vote for every posts, and every comment and every single page!

When surfing over to WordPress.com to log into my blog, I noticed a WordPress blog post that mentioned a new theme had been added to our dashboards. Curious to see what it looked like, I checked out my themes page. Boy, has it undergone a change – just like the WordPress.com home page.  (If you’re not a WordPress.com regular, trust me, the home page used to look nothing like it does now.)

The themes page used to offer a few pages worth of themes, listed in alphabetical order, if I’m remembering correctly. Or were they in order of popularity? In any case, the theme choice was fairly limited. Now, you can choose one of 75 different themes and you can elect to have them appear randomly, in alphabetical order, or in order of popularity.

One of the things I love about WordPress is the ability it gives me to preview a theme before adopting it. (For those of you who don’t know, a theme is the basic design of a blog – the pretty factor, if you will. Forgive me for not explaining that earlier.)

Having used the Tarski theme since starting this blog, I thought I’d preview a bunch of different themes, just to see how The Woo Woo Teacup Journal would look. You might think, oh, what’s a little theme change going to do to a blog that’s not much more than a bunch of words on the screen. Any theme should do. And there you would be wrong.

Other than the Tarski theme, I found only one other theme out of the 75 that would be aesthetically pleasing with Woo Woo Teacup, one called Misty Look. That’s not to say there are only two aesthetically pleasing WordPress themes. Au contraire! Many of them are quite pleasing. The problem is my banner picture. Most of the themes have colors that clash with the pic, or the layout is such that the picture gets wonky. Ocean Mist is a theme that I love. In fact, I used it for the original blog I set up at work. The light blue background works incredibly well with historic pictures, but is horrendous with my green and gold teacup pic.

If I select a theme that doesn’t require a banner photo, my choices expand. Green Marinee, Dusk, Ocadia, and Simpla look nice, but there are other things to consider. Does the blue/black/gray of Dusk really say Woo Woo Teacup? How about the light blue of Ocadia? Is Simpla too simple?

The Treba and Girl-in-Green themes are pretty, but the text of Treba is too small and the text of Girl-in-Green is difficult to read with the light green text on the dark gray background. These would be fine for a blog that is less text-heavy than mine, but, alas! I’m a wordy soul, so I have to take readability seriously.

As you can see, there is a lot to contemplate when selecting a blog theme. If you want the title and the design to work in concert with each other and with the content, you’ve got to choose carefully. Plus, you want to pick a theme you like enough to live with for some time. Whatever you choose is going to become part of the brand of your blog, hopefully for a long time to come, and consistency is key to not confusing your audience.

In the end, I decided to stick with Tarski, but not until I’d previewed Woo Woo Teacup in a couple of the wilder themes – the black and orange of Sunburn and the shocking pink of Sweet Blossoms. Another benefit of the WordPress theme previewer is that it saves you, the reader, from having to watch as I try out each theme live.

We have just broadcast a third post from Stories My Nana Tells. Thank you, my LinkedIn and Twitter subscribers -your support is much appreciated. Read it here

Here is a great article that highlights some of the eleven deadly sins on Twitter that will get you unfollowed.

About This Article by Social Media Rockstar.

11 ways to lose followers on Twitter

“Social media rockstar” is the tongue-in-cheek title of a blog featuring interviews with power users, social media tips and sociology / psychology insights. It is edited by Brett Borders, an independent Web traffic developer in Boulder, CO.

“Are You A Twitter TWION”

Perfect for learning how Twitter works and how to avoid making some silly mistakes, this handbook is invaluable for those just starting out on Twitter and who find  it hard to understand the intricate ways in which Twitter meshes all its services together.  Written by Lesley Dewar, who has a Twitter Grading of 99.9% – it combines experience and experimentation – to give the beginner and the regular user excellent tips and straightforward answers.

Get Your Own Personal Copy Of This Post – For Future Reference!

Just Click Here

This Twitter Handbook has been very well received and this is the latest update:

_buzzirkmobileRT @LesleyDewar Absolutely loved your blog on Twittering – probably the best I’ve read on the subject. Kudos to you and thanks.

dcychan@LesleyDewar Like your mentoring and help to newbies. Great to follow.

RT @chrisabraham @BlogCoach TheTwitterati keep telling us how to use and not use Twitter but we need to learn how it is actually being used.

Peirre Debois I like the specifics in the given examples, from Tweetstream to being a TWION.  I have not attempted the search feature but it is excellent from what I know.  Real time search will divide the usage from Google users once people realize its value.  Great suggestions here! 

Similar to “The Butterfly Effect” – we are now using “The Ripple Effect” to spread the word about Stories My Nana Tells and investigating the most effective form of social media for creating interest in a new online business.

It is going to be a very interesting ninety days and we will be happily updating both here and on our new Squidoo page as Creating A Ripple follows and reports on the ripples we make

You know what we mean – just dripping, dripping away into the pool of referrals and newsletters and letting all those tiny ripples build up their energy to become a tide of success.

Stories My Nana Tells is on WordPress and the splash was a great launch party, with a big press release on LinkedIn and Twitter. Making A Splash

We will follow the building of the business with the ripples we make by dropping small stones into big ponds and see how far those ripples go. Which social media is the best for creating ripples to build your business?

The Ripple Strategy

The strategy is

* post three times a day on Twitter – about Stories My Nana Tells
* update every third day on LinkedIn – about Stories My Nana Tells
* add a short post every day on WordPress (in one of three different, but linked blogs)
* post connecting messages to ezine sites three times a week – about Stories My Nana Tells
* leveraging on two specific groups inside LinkedIn – about Stories My Nana Tells
* opening up a facebook page – specifically about Lesley Dewar and how she is building her business

AlphaInventions

Whatever the changes are that have recently been made in algorithims for AlphaInventions.com, the search engine is certainly no longer responding to postings about it, as it was when we first started reviewing its ability to send traffic to blogs. 

See our earlier post http://tinyurl.com/ovsjgx

Australia to ban Second Life? This is been reported today under Conroy’s new Censorship Rules http://tinyurl.com/lz8f8x

The Australian Minister for Censorship has today confirmed what has been reported for nearly two years: online adult games including Second Life will be banned in Australia.

A spokesman for Censorship Minister Stephen “Goebbels” Conroy confirmed to Fairfax newspapers that “under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.” In Australia, the MA15+ rating means that the content is restricted to those aged 15 and above. Australia does not have a R 18+ or similar rating for computer games, with all adult games automatically being classified as RC (Refused Classification.)

If you want AlphaInventions to direct additional visitors to your blog and increase your readership, you must include their website address in your posts. You can also build own personal network with Map My Friends & Family at a brand new secure site – that has just launched today.  Be amongst the first to join.

Como todos estão cansados de saber hoje é dia 1 de Abril, milhões de mentiras foram contadas e muitos de vocês devem ter sido vítimas ou aprontaram com seus amigos. Aproveito e faço um post com mentiras que poderiam ser verdade, coloquei elas em forma de manchetes e claro com comentários logo abaixo.

Atualização urgente! “Blog TV Cinema e Música está hoje dia 2 de abril entre os 100 Blog do dia no WordPress!!!”

Agradeço a todos e fico felilz que depois de apenas 4 dias que o blog voltou ao ar, já foi capa do wordpress ontem e hoje está em 71 nos blogs do dia no wordpres, na categoria blogs que crescem ( em visitas). Agradeço novamente!!!

“Skank e Jota Quest resolvem acabar com as bandas e montam juntos uma fábrica de pão de queijo.”

Correndo o risco de perder muitos leitores, mas bem que essa notícia podia ser verdade.

“Led Zepplin confirma que farão uma turnê mundial.”

Claro que sem John Boham a banda perde muito, mas seria imperdível ver eles tocando juntos novamente.

“Globo cancela BBB antes da final: Max, Fran, Priscila e Ana ficaram presos para sempre na casa.”

Apesar de não odiar tanto o programa e assisti-lo às terças e domingos, acredito que essa notícia iria chocar o país, além de ser exemplo para aqueles que tanto sonham em entrar no programa.

“Silvio Santos decide que vai transmitir só Chaves no Sbt: Gugu e Hebe fazem protesto na porta da emissora.”

Essa sim seria uma decisão correta, além de agradar os fãs de Chaves, iria poupar muitos de assistirem a horrível programação do SBT.

“Globo decide que não produzirá mais novelas!”

Essa até merece um ponto de exclamação, imagine se isso um dia acontece, seria algo para entrar para história e do jeito que audiências das novelas globais estão fracas, isso não está tão longe de acontecer.

“Heroes é cancelado, Lost ganha mais 10 temporadas, Friends e Veronica Mars retornam a programação.”

Desculpe aqueles que gostam de Heroes, mais a série teve uma boa primeira temporada e o resto foi horrível, já está na hora do cancelamento, e mesmo não sendo o maior fã de Lost, gostaria que ela durasse mais tempo, para ver até onde a criatividade dos roteiristas poderia chegar. E claro o retorno das duas melhores séries que já existiram e que nunca deveriam ter sido canceladas.

“Confirmado: Star Wars e Star Trek terão um filme juntos, a produção sera dirigida por J.J Abrams e George Lucas.”

Óbvio que isso é Impossível de acontecer, mas imagine uma cena de luta entre Spock e Darth Vader.

“Público decidirá quais continuações serão ou não feitas no cinema!”

Imagine se você pudesse decidir se o seu filme predileto deve ter ou não uma continuação,isso depois de ler o roteiro, conversar com o diretor e etc, com certeza muitos delas não chegariam nem sequer a serem produzidas.

Deixo esse post sem fim e sempre aberto para que vocês comentem e deixem suas “mentiras”

If you have just received a “Tks for following” message from someone new you have started to follow on Twitter – it’s really easy to see if it is an auto follow message or if it really is personal and meant just for you.  You need to be on LinkedIn to use this.

Here is  a (good) trick to accessing the Company Buzz on LinkedIn – now that it is basically a Twitter Search Engine for LinkedIn Users.  You need to go to Applications and “install” Company Buzz on your profile.  It will not appear in your public profile after the update – but don’t worry.

When you want to do a Twitter Search, simply select LinkedIn Applications on your main LinkedIn profile and then click on Company Buzz.

Because you have already installed it on your LinkedIn profile – it will come up, ready for you to do your search.

With the Twitter search facility in Company Buzz on LinkedIn use their name or a link they have posted in their Tweet to you and see if and how many times it comes up in the Twitter search.  If you see the same message – without a single personal note or variation – it’s an auto follow. 

So, then, you can decide whether you really want to follow or re-think about how valuable their tweets are really going to be; about what information they can provide to you, when you access them through Twitter. Or they followed you first and you followed back.  It’s your choice. 

Try this example: the “Txs for following” message that included this link (http://tinyurl.com/6lkw75) – came up 100 times without a single variation – all posted 25 at a time, four batches every ten minutes over half an hour (now, in ten, in twenty, in thirty minutes) – not as DM (Direct Messages).

This is not to say that there is no legitimate use for DM auto-responses. It depends entirely on the way those you follow are using Twitter and if you are comfortable with that.  It is your choice.

But, this is a good way to determine whether you are getting the Twitter Tweet you think you are!  By comparison, the Tweets that contained this link  (http://tinyurl.com/d3ad8v )- came up 13 times over six hours, including NINE retweets.

Remember: when you want to do a Twitter Search, simply select LinkedIn Applications on your main LinkedIn profile and then click on Company Buzz.

Because you have already installed it on your LinkedIn profile – it will come up, ready for you to do your search.

If you found this post useful, please retweet. Thanks.

QUESTION: AI seems to be very very effective in getting my blog loaded and offers the potential for the person watching to pause long enough to be tempted to engage.

On the times I have made use of AI I have been quite impressed with it’s effectiveness – but alas I have not seen that been translated into consistent readership outside of AI and better still interaction through comments – which to me is what I am interested in.

Have you seen this translation?

ANSWER:  My statistics say, YES!

I am running statistics on my traffic through wordpress which shows me the referral sources that brings people to my sites; the number of total views (which includes each time your page displays on Alpha Inventions, I am pretty sure) and also the number of pages that are visited.

 I am seeing several things:

1. Alpha Inventions has brought me huge traffic views when the topic is eye catching (eg Dolphin Slaughter in Japan – 1900 in one day);
2. Alpha Inventions brings additional traffic after you write about them in your blog – even if you have not submitted your site through them on that occasion
3. A submission to AI always brings some additional traffic (views)

What I am finding is that my traffic is steadily increasing and the referral sources (wordpress dashboard; AI; the new CN search engine, even LiveFeed etc) are increasing all the time. The pages that are visited is also increasing and the viewing of associated sites (eg No Tall Poppies linked to Build Your Traffic linked to Smart Poppies)

Yesterday (11/3/2009) No Tall Poppies had 101 views from 37 referrals, of which only 13 were from Alpha Inventions.

46 pages were visited – so, if we assume that 13 views from AI resulted only in views on their site, but no actual visits; 36 referrals generated 88 views and 46 pages were visited. That means that I am now getting about one in every two people who come across my site (No Tall Poppies) are taking the time to actually stop and read something there. Or maybe one in every four is reading at least two pages on the site – I am still evaluating the data.

There is no doubt that using Alpha Inventions has brought me and continues to bring me an increasing readership and an increasing number of referral sources.

On comments – don’t hold your breath – very few people comment.

I make it a practice to visit at least thirty other sites a week and leave a comment. I might get two responses on my own site from that. You can also analyse from the referral sources how many of those comments have generated a return visit.

WordPress Dashboard:  This is an extremely important source of traffic, because readers use your tags to find you.

Keep your use of tags high and consistent – if you have been found once by a tag, it is highly likely your reader will use the same tag to find you again. 

It’s recurring readership that is the true value and you will never be able to measure that by comments. Start analysing your Statistics on your dashboard to see where and when and why your traffic arrives.

As a test – I am not going to submit this post to Alpha Inventions – we have had no views at the time of posting today – so, let’s see what happens.  I will report back tomorrow.

PS Thanks very much for stopping by and asking a very interesting question. Better than a comment – I will leave your link  http://synapticlight.com/

WordPress 2.7 added a very good feature namely ‘Quick Edit’. In the days before WordPress 2.7 came out, if you ever needed to add a tag or category to a post you had to open the post in edit mode to do it. The same applied when if you wanted to make a post sticky, or allow/disallow comments/pings to a specific post or change title. Not a big deal if you were doing that for editing a few posts, but for large number of posts be aware that in edit mode even if you make a small change in tag name etc, the whole post is resent to the server including the post content making the process slow.

I recently, in order to divided all my posts in two broad classes Technical and Miscellaneous, added either of two tags ‘TechPosts’ or ‘MiscPosts’ respectively to each of the posts. Imagine how could I have achieved that by editing each post for 250+ posts on my blog. But I achieved it very easily thanks to new WordPress 2.7 feature ‘Quick Edit’ which allows you change everything related to post (except for the content in it, of course) fairly quickly with least clutter.

Where’s the link to open this ‘Quick Edit’ interface? 
As you hover mouse over post title in the “Edit Posts” page, four links namely ‘Edit’, ‘Quick Edit’, ‘Delete’ and ‘View’ appears. Just click the ‘Quick Edit’ link and a small space as shown in pic above opens up. Below is the screen shot taken from Google Chrome 1.0 toshow the location of ‘Quick Edit’ link

But I don’t see any ‘Quick Edit’ link though I can see the other three!

Is it so?  then check screenshot from Firefox 3.0.5

or check another from Safari 3.1.2

or yet another from Opera 9.62

and did I forget Internet Explorer 8.0

Now the question is why didn’t the ‘Quick Link’ appear on Google Chrome’ while it’s present in all other browsers. The reason may not be related to Webkit renderer on which Google Chrome is based, as Safari browser too is powered by Same Webkit renderer…

Then what’s the reason? I searched a lot, over the net, but didn’t find any related page! Can you help me?

The Blogs Stats widget is broken on my dashboard and front page.

Good thing I’m not hyper-competitive about the amount of hits this site gets.  (As an aside, I’m hyper-competitive about the number of hits this site gets.)

A quick message from Oscar Rogers:

EDIT: WordPress was having a problem across its system.  When I emailed them, they promptly emailed back and the problem is now fixed.  It was lovely.

Ozh of PlanetOzh has released “A Journey Through Five Years of WordPress Interface.” It’s an amazing step back in time for WordPress fans exploring the changes in the WordPress Administration Panels.

For a long time, the Administration Panels, the interface or UI often misnamed the “dashboard”, stayed basically the same. Slowly, the WYSIWYG editor was developed for the Write Panel, named the Rich Text Editor, now Visual Editor, but the core panels stayed the same. With WordPress 2.5, the whole look changed but WordPress basically functioned the same, feeling more like a layer of paint had been applied rather than an overhaul of the functionality.

With WordPress 2.7, the whole interface changed. Jane Wells and the entire WordPress development team and WordPress Community worked together for a year to put the WordPress Administration Panels through a total overhaul based upon massive testing and feedback. No longer would the interface be guesswork and assumptions. Massive testing, surveys, and polls were done to get input from everyone on how things should work, and kudos to everyone involved. It’s an incredible work of art and compromise to get WordPress working more efficiently and beautifully on the administration backend.

In another walk through the past of WordPress, Peter Westwood brought back memories with “Useless graphs (What went before),” showing the WordPress release against repository revision number, time against repository revision number, and WordPress release filesize in kilobytes since the beginning.

All this talk about the history of WordPress has me thinking about my own history with WordPress. Do you have some history with WordPress worth sharing?

Site Search Tags: wordpress, wordpress news, wordpress history, history of wordpress, wordpress 2.7, wordpress versions, wordpress administration panels, dashboard, interface, wordpress interface, wordpress dashboard, wordpress statistics

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

As you may already be able to tell, I haven’t been playing EVE as much as I originally intended to over the past couple weeks. Unfortunately that was mostly my fault as I, rather foolishly, decided to re-activate my EVE Online account during the last few weeks of the college term. And as a result of that I was way too busy finishing off college work to get into EVE even for a little while. What little time I did have, I spent playing Spore (which I bought only recently).
Luckily though, my Christmas holidays have now started so I’m going to be gifted with hours upon hours of free time.

During the one or two times I was actually able to get into EVE, I didn’t really get anything constructive done (on my part anyway). I got quite a bit done for Heather though, on the other hand.

After making my way to Duripant, where she ended up starting, I bought myself a few EP-S Gaussian I Excavation Pulse mining lasers and fitted them to my old Pirating Brutix as that was the only ship I took there.

Blasphemy, right?

Surprisingly, after about half an hour of mining we got just over 9000m³, so I decided to stop there as that was roughly the capacity of the Iteron Mk I I bought. I wish I’d known how good a Brutix can be at mining back when I’d started out, I would be a lot richer than I am at the moment. I’m sure that there’s countless weeks of Brutix mining I could have done while waiting for my Mining Barge skills to train. I could be quite a rich man, as opposed to my 5ish mil right now.

That little bit of mining got us a hefty (newbie-wise) 330,000ish ISK, which I split 50/50 with Heather to go towards buying her first frigate. I did try to convince her that I didn’t need the money but she insisted that I took at least half since I did most of the mining.
While I will admit I was enjoying the somewhat relaxing mining, I was itching for someone to try and steal our ore so I could lock the bastard and stop him in his tracks. Maybe do a bit of ransoming while I was at it. Ah well, maybe another time.

I’m going to try and see if Heather will write a blog post about her experience on her EVE trial but we’ll see. I’m interested in how she felt about EVE Online itself and her time spent learning how to play.
Time to see if I can figure out the Authors & Users section of the WordPress Dashboard.

Fly safe y’all.