But as you begin to use it more and more, you start learning little tricks. I’ve stumbled upon some fantastic time-savers that make me almost want to scream, “WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS SOONER?!?!”

So I’m going to tell you these things, and I apologize for not telling you sooner! Experiences users, hopefully you still find a gem or two in here, and please leave your own favorite hack with a comment below!

1. Expand to Fullscreen for Easier Typing

Let’s start out with a simple tip, but one I didn’t realize was an option until well into my blogging career. It can be annoying to type a post in such a small box. First and foremost, if you scroll to the bottom of the left-hand sidebar when signed into your blog and editing a post, you’ll see “collapse menu.” Click on this text to get rid of that sidebar (don’t worry – you can easily get it back). It’s instantly a little more space. But an even better option is WordPress’ Fullscreen Mode.

There are actually two fullscreen modes. If you click the button that looks like a, square with arrows pointing at the corners (see picture), you’ll get a full screen mode with limited button options for easy, quick typing. If you press Alt+Shift+G you’ll get a version with the full bar of buttons for easier formatting. Both are great, especially if you’re working with a lot of pictures or block quotes.

2. Use Windows Live Writer for Formatting

How your final post looks will depend on the WordPress theme you’re using. You can continuously preview using WordPress itself, but that can be a little tedious, especially if you’re working with pictures and trying to get things to line up just right. Instead, download a desktop client to make formatting easy. I use Windows Live Writer (Mac fans, help me out with a comparable version?), which I like because I can sync it with all the blogs I have. As long as you keep it updated, you can use the WYSIWYG editor to add posts and see what they’ll look like on your blog when published. Adding pictures and videos is super easy.

3. Install a Maintenance Mode Plugin

Sometimes, you have to do some major updates that will cause you blog to look crummy for a few hours. Rather than scaring users away, download and install a plugin like Maintenance Mode and your readers will get a simple message that you’re working on your blog at the moment. I like this plugin specifically because you can even choose to include a countdown clock that will tell users when you get back. No coding knowledge necessary!

There are other maintenance mode plugins out there; this is just the one I like to use on my personal blog. Of course, you can also manually point code your site to give users a maintenance message, but who has the time/knowledge/ambition to do that? This makes it super easy!

4. Use Zemanta for Easy Linking

Finding links can take time, but it makes your posts more valuable to readers. For example, in the previous tip, I linked to the plugin page so you could easily find it. Otherwise, you would have probably had to search for it, and there would be no guarantee that you’d find the plugin I was talking about. Zemanta totally takes the hassle out of linking. This plugin gives you a list of potential in-text links you can add, which updates as you type. In addition, it gives you a list of related articles based on your post, which you can update as you type. You just link on their recommendations to add links as you see fit. Super easy! You can even choose to create a profile and tell Zemanta the blogs you like most so it will draw links from those sites when possible.

5. Prevent Images from Being Too Wide

If you’re working with images, it can sometimes be annoying to remember the max width they can be to fit on your blog. I have a lot of trouble with this one since I blog on multiple sites, all using different themes. If your image is too wide, it will either cut off or overlap onto your sidebar, depending on the them you’re using. Both look pretty bad.

It’s an easy fix. I learned this one from WPHacks. You have to go into the code, but don’t be scared! It’s easy; I promise! Under “appearance” on the left-hand dashboard sidebar, you want to click on editor and find your theme’s .css file (probably the one that comes up by default. Then, just follow the instructions here to add a snippet of code. That’s it! If you can handle copy/pasting, you can do this one. Once you change the max to fit whatever your theme’s max width is, you won’t have to deal with cut off or overlapping pictures ever again.

6. Install the Editorial Calendar Plugin

Recently, we added this plugin here on the BlogWorld blog and it has been a total game-changer for me! I like to stay organized and am a very visual person. The editorial calendar plugin gives me a way to see when posts are being updated, and for a multi-author blog, it allows you to understand when others are planning to publish so you can strategically plan out your content schedule. I also like that you can jot down ideas quickly using the calendar when you have a post idea, and the visual nature makes it easy to see where you’re faltering: Are you uploading too many posts about a specific topic? Are you updating enough? Is your content always bunched instead of spread out? You can also use the calendar to schedule your content easily. Love it.

7. Split Long Posts

Depending on your theme, long posts may or may not look good on your homepage. You can use the “more” tag to split the post after a few teaser paragraphs. It’s the little split button beside the link buttons on your tool bar (see picture) or you can just hit Alt+Shift+T.

By default, this will create a link that says “Continue Reading” or “Read More” or something of that sort, depending on the theme you use. Want to change the text? It’s pretty easy. It requires you to go into your code again, but don’t be scared! Under Appearance on your sidebar, click on editor and then find the index.php file (Main Index Template). Search for:

<?php the_content(‘Read more …’); ?>

If your blog by default has different text, the theme editors already changed it, so that’s what you should search for. In other words, if when you split the text and publish the post, it says on your site, “Click here for more…” you should search for:

<?php the_content(‘Click here for more…’); ?>

Search for whatever that text might be. Then, once you find that line in the code, you can change the text to read whatever you want.

It’s a great way to get more page views out of a single long post.

So there you have it, seven of my favorite WordPress hacks for bloggers. Now it’s your turn to tell us your favorite hacks and tips with a comment below!

It’s taken WordPress quite awhile to make something like this available and they say it’s because what they had seen as far as advertising, wasn’t very tasteful. And while it seemed Google AdSense was state-of-the-art (at the time), WordPress says “you deserve better than AdSense”.

WordAds won’t be open to everyone. It’s open only by application and to publicly visible blogs with custom domains. Selection for WordAds will be based on traffic levels, engagement, type of content and language used on the blog.

To apply for WordAds, fill out this form.

For those of you who use WordPress.com, will you apply for WordAds?

It was back in July talk of Google unifying the Google+ brand began. Although they haven’t renamed Blogger to “Google Blogs” as it had first been reported, they are starting the process of integrating the two.

What benefit is there to connecting your Google+ profile to your Blogger blog?

Google says, “In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you’ve shared the post.”

They are making this feature optional, considering all of their bloggers do not have a Google+ profile yet. If you don’t have one, you might want consider it. They hinted at more Google+ integrations coming in the future.

For those of you who blog with Blogger, have you added your Google+ profile yet?

WordPress is the blogging platform used by most major bloggers who have their own domain names. Of course, it isn’t the only choice for bloggers, but I personally find it to be the best option based on the community of people developing for it, the ease of installation and use, and the various options to customize your blog and the way you use it.

Before you continue reading this post about using WordPress, head to their site to read installation instructions so you can get WordPress set up on whatever domain name you own.

Adding a Theme

The first thing I do whenever I install WordPress on a new blog is look for a theme I like so that I’m not using the generic out-of-box theme that comes with WordPress. The theme is basically the look of your blog – colors, fonts, sidebars, etc. If you know CSS, you can pretty easily make changes to any theme you see, but even if you don’t, there are thousands of choices, so you should be able to find something you like. If you’re willing to pay for your theme, check out Thesis and Genesis, two of the most well-known and easy-to-customize options out there. Want a free theme? There are tons of those available too – just do a quick search and you’ll find lots of options.

When you download a theme and unzip the file, you’ll want to add it to your site by uploading it to the themes folder. When you log into your WordPress dashboard, you’ll be able to access all of the themes under “Appearance” on the sidebar. From there, you can preview how the themes would look on your site and choose which one to make live.

Adding Plugins

Plugins are awesome. Basically, they add additional functions to your blog based on what you personally need for your community. Personally, my favorite plugins are:

• All-In-One SEO – perfect to for simple SEO on all of your posts
• Zemanta – helps you interlink posts on your own site, find related posts to recommend, and add tags to your post
• Livefyre – my personal comment plugin of choice is Livefyre, though you can also make a case for Disqus (what we use currently here at BlogWorld) and CommentLuv with the generic WordPress comment system, which simple adds a person’s more recent post to the end of their comment

In addition, though there are several individual plugins that perform each of these functions, I recommend using plugins for:

• Creating a mobile version of your site
• Adding buttons for social sharing (on individual posts, in a top/bottom bar, along the side of the post, etc.)
• Adding contact forms to your pages or posts (if you don’t want to list your email address)
• Building galleries of your pictures
• Creating tables
• Backing up your site (SUPER important – check out BlogWorld speaker Peter Pollock’s post on protecting your blog)
• Adding your author profile to the top or bottom of a post

This is not the end-all list of plugins you can add to make your blog more functional for you and for readers. Spend some time browsing through the available plugins to find those that make sense for your blog.

Setting Up Your Sidebar

After you’ve installed WordPress, added a theme, and set up plugins, your next step is to set up your sidebar. I recommed you include the following things on your sidebar:

• Links to your most recent posts
• A sign-up box for your mailing list (I use Aweber)
• A link for people to subscribe to your blog via RSS
• Links/buttons to your social network profiles
• A list of your categories or other navigational tools
• Polls
• A calendar of events or posts

You can also consider adding a list of your most popular posts, advertising, a blogroll, a search bar, your Amazon wishlist, Youtube videos, links to products you’re selling or affiliate products, a list of the most recent comments on your blog, a tag cloud or list of popular tags…and much, much more. If you want to add it to your sidebar, there’s a way to do it – and most of what you’ll add to your sidebar, you’ll do so with widgets.

You install a widget much like you’d install a plugin. Under the “appearance” tab on your dashboard sidebar, you’ll see a link to show your widgets, so you can simply drag and drop them onto your sidebar. Easy peasy. There’s also a text box if you want to get all HTML-y and add your own code instead of using a widget for something you want to display.

Configuration

Next, head into your profile (under “Users”) on the sidebar and update it as necessary for your blog. You should pay special attention to your display name (go with a name or nickname rather than “admin”) and your biographical information if you include a theme or plugin that adds your bio to each post.

Remember to go to Gravatar to upload an avatar associated with your email address if you don’t have one already.

Under the “Settings” tab on your dashboard sidebar, you’ll also want to do some more configuration work on your blog. Here’s what you should do, at minimum:

• Under General: Add your blog title and a tagline (or at least delete the default) and change the blog to your timezone
• Under Permalinks: Change the permalinks structure to something better than the default numbering system

I recommend going through each page under Settings and considering your various options. While the defaults work for many bloggers, you might want something different.

Adding Content

Congrats – you’re finally ready to add content! There are two different types of content you can add via WordPress (and most blogging platforms):

• Posts: the general articles you want to add to your blog day by day
• Pages: content that is more informative to help the user understand more about your blog or you

Posts are linked to both categories and tags. Categories give a broad, general topic while tags are more specific topics. Most bloggers have categories are a main navigational function and choose to include 5 to 15. You can also include a few main categories and then several subcategories under each main “parent” category. Tags tell your reader what an individual post is about. There’s no limit to the number of tags you use on your blog, though most recommend that you don’t use more than 10 or so on any one post.

Pages include things such as About Me, Contact, Archives, About the Blog, Best Of, and more. They’re typically included on the navigation bar of a blog so people can find them quickly.

WordPress Pointers for Beginners

Here are some more tips and tricks for using WordPress if you don’t have experience with this platform.

• You can change the permalink for a post of page under the main title box by clicking on the “edit” button. This is helpful for SEO in many cases and can also help you create a permalink that is easy to remember.
• You can work in a WYSIWYG editor or HTML editor – whichever is more comfortable for you.
• Most of the editing buttons are self-explanatory, since they’re similar to what you already use in word processing programs. Some that you may not know: to the right of the link buttons you’ll see one called “insert more tag” when you hover. This adds “read more” to the post on your homepage which is beneficial if you write extremely long posts and don’t want the whole thing displayed. Beside the spell check, you’ll see a blue box called “toggle full screen” which can be beneficial when you’re writing posts. Beside that, you’ll see a button called “show/hide kitchen sink” which, when clicked, gives you even more editing options.
• You don’t have to publish a post immediately. You can also schedule it to go up at a specific time in the future by choosing the “edit” option in the publish box.
• You can move boxes around on your dashboard to make it more functional for you. Simply drag and drop!
• At the bottom of your edit post page, you can see previous revisions and auto-saves of a post.

If you’re a WordPress user, I want to encourage you to leave your own tips in a comment below!

Boing Boing gave their front page a new look yesterday, which I thought was fantastic. It had the nostalgic classic Mac look we all know so well. Now WordPress has taken note and created a free Retro Mac theme.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg commented on the design saying, “Yesterday one of the tributes I noticed was the website Boing Boing switched their theme to one reminiscent of the original Macintosh interface, one of the several times Jobs would make a ding in the universe through his work. It seemed fitting, and we wanted to make it available to all of you, so our theme team worked through the night and here it is”.

Here’s a description of the Retro Mac theme:

A whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics to evoke some serious computer nostalgia. In all its remembrance and respect, Retro MacOS also supports recent functionality. Read on to learn more.

You can download the theme here.

Do you have a favorite way Steve Jobs was honored yesterday? Let us know in the comment section below.

Dynamic views reportedly load 40% faster, as well as provide their blog readers with more enjoyment and discovery of their content. Some of the new features include infinite scrolling, keyboard shortcuts for quickly flipping through posts, lightbox-style posts for easy viewing and more.

Here’s a video look into the new themes.

Here’s a list of the descriptions and examples of the different theme choices via the Blogger Buzz blog:

• Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
• Flipcard (M loves M) – Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
• Magazine (Advanced Style) – A clean, elegant editorial style layout
• Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) – A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) – An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) – An interactive pinboard of your posts
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) – A horizontal view of your posts by time period

If you would like to preview your favorite Blogger blog with the new Dynamic Views, you can do so here.

So tell us – what do you think of the new Blogger Dynamic Views?

They announced the new system on their blog saying, “Why did we create it? Simple – because we think you should be able to share online like you do in real life. That’s why you’ll find Posterous Spaces has intuitive privacy controls that make it a breeze to share with the right people, every time. ”

Here’s a video which explains Posterous Spaces.

Introducing Posterous Spaces from Posterous on Vimeo.

The company also announced Posterous Spaces for the iPhone. You can have all of the functionality right in your pocket.

Other new features they’ve added include “five new professionally-designed themes, a beautiful new reading experience, 3x faster loading times, slick new profile pages and more”.

According to cnet, Posterous still isn’t making any money, but say they are doing well and are focusing on user growth instead of revenues.

Do you use Posterous or know anyone who does? If you use the blogging tool, tell us what you think of the new system and if this will take the company to the next level.

The number 10 billion is amazing in and of itself, but the fact that they went from 1 billion to 10 billion posts in just one year is phenomenal. In 2007, Tumblr launched as the first microblogging/sharing platform.

Here are some other impressive numbers:

• Just last July Tumblr was seeing 1.5 billion pageviews a month and now they’re at at billion
• Tumblr says they are now at 28.5 million blogs, doing around 36 million posts a day
• They are about to close on a round of funding that should value them near $1 billion

Some features of Tumblr include hundreds of themes to choose from, the choice to create your own themes, mobileability, custom domains and the ability to post text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video, slideshows, and more.

Do you use Tumblr? If so, tell us what you love about it! Also, be sure and read Allison’s excellent post on The History of Blogging. It’s a very interesting read to see where everything came into play and where we are at now in the blogging world.

The Basics: Know the basics

“Every computer on the Internet has a unique address called its “IP address” (Internet Protocol address). Since, IP addresses (strings of numbers) are hard to remember, the DNS (domain name system) allows a familiar string of letters (the “domain name”) to be used instead. So, rather than typing “192.0.34.163,” you can type www.icann.org. The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users find their way around the Internet.”

Survival First Aid: Understanding domains

The organization that coordinates all of these unique identifiers across the world is called ICANN. They are in charge of delegation of Top-Level Domain names (TLDs). Some TLDs are delegated to companies or organizations (generic top-level domains or gTLDs,), and some to countries and regions (country code top-level domains or ccTLDs).  In general, .com stands for the company, .org is for the organization, .us is for the USA, .uk is for the United Kingdom, .ru is for Russia, and .me is for Montenegro.

Beyond the Basics: Types of domains (TLDs) and their real meaning

Although ICANN decided to assign a purpose to every TLD in the world, the domain history has shown that TLDs sometimes have a life of their own. What happens is that users decide what they want to do with a particular TLD. Take a .com for example – for a long time it was (and it might still be), unofficial domain of the USA, although the US has its own country code top-level domain.

.COM was intended to be used for a commercial purposes only. However, you’ll find many more uses for .com as well as for .org and .net. Somehow, along all these years the usage of top-level domains made them lost their original purpose. Some TLDs faded away, some gained unexpected popularity. Contrary to the original concept, some ccTLDs gained more global appeal than certain gTLDs. When you think about .travel, and the purpose it was supposed to have, a various usage in the tourism industry is first what comes to mind. Many would say “what a great idea!” Well, it failed, especially when you compare it to the success of the .de or .uk.

This brings us to the point where it seems that actually the combination of meaning and length might affect the popularity. Therefore, it is understandable that due to the multiple meanings certain ccTLDs like .me, .tv, .fm exceeded their country borders. After all, what is a better choice for a radio channel than .fm or .am, and what is more personal for a blog than .me?

New TLDs, or how to choose wisely?

Recently ICANN has accepted a new policy that allows virtually anyone to start a TLD. If we have over 200 TLDs, will this decision result in a better organization or will it create chaos? Will we need a different system to decipher DNS? And ultimately, what will an end costumer need to know about new TLDs? Not much! You do not need to study marketing to realize that being memorable is the most important thing in the business world of today. It is same with domains  – you need to “feel” a domain name, to hear its jingle. Who wants a name that is difficult to pronounce or spell, like ThisIsMyCompanyNameAndThisIsWhatIDo .com?

Believe it or not, domain extensions are an important category of not only the Internet infrastructure but also advertising, and they are part of the string where you need to fit in. Everything before the extension whether it is, your name, your company name or a cool marketing message reflects your personality. But remember, the content behind a name is how you present yourself, and it is the most important aspect of the web presence for your users loyalty. “CrazyD.me” may get you some traffic, but if there is nothing else valuable behind the appealing URL, nobody will return to your website ever again.

So, when choosing a domain name, get one that fits your business or personal model best but keep in mind two things – make it short and cool.

The .Me Registry operates the .ME domain name which is available for worldwide registration and also offers special, highly valuable premium names through its development program (see details here). .ME Registry (the d.b.a. of doMEn, d.o.o.) was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension. ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited.

While there are some new features available (like customizing your favicon) – the most prominent aspect of the redesign is the streamlined look of Google+ and Gmail’s new facelift.

Check out how clean the Overview page looks:

And a new Post page is extremely sparse:

Since the design is still in draft mode, Blogger invites you to provide feedback on anything you see. They say, “We hope you’ll enjoy the new Blogger interface and send us your feedback by clicking on the “Send feedback” link from the navigation bar. Happy blogging!”

What do you think of the redesign?