Tech and life

Well, after starting blogging here in August 2008, 3 years and 3 months later I’ve made it to my 200th post! If you do the math, that’s just over five posts a month – not a great amount so I’m never going to overload your RSS reader or email, and that’s probably a good thing.

I’d like to thank everyone whose subscribed to or kept in touch with the blog so far, especially those who’ve taken the time to comment. Blog comments and subscriber numbers are the two things that encourage bloggers to keep going. If you’re a long time reader, thanks for sticking around. If you’re new here, I’d love you to sign up to the RSS feed for the blog or to have posts delivered to your email inbox. You’ll find the subscription buttons at the top right of the page. Hopefully the fact that I’ve put out 200 posts over three and a bit years will convince you I enjoy blogging in my spare time and intend to continue at it.

I hope you will take a look around – with 200 posts now, there’s lots to look at. I don’t reblog tech news as there’s plenty out there doing that. You’ll mainly find tech tips here – things I’ve worked out and learned in the day to day working with my PC, software and online sites. I like to pass on what I discover. Problems I’ve solved, apps and free software I find useful, hardware I use, learning and working with WordPress, continuing my journey with Linux, discovering and using great online services, online privacy and so on. And you’ll also get the occasional post on my take on life in general.

Here’s a selection from the 200 posts which you might like to look at:

A short Twitter list to follow for great tech links

Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop screen replacement: not as hard as you think!

Points to consider when choosing screen capture software

Eliminate PC overheating and shutdown by trying a simple procedure

Improve search in Word by closing the search pane

The new search feature (Ctrl-F) in Word 2010

A generation of change in PCs

Remove FeedBurner tracking queries when clicking website links in Google Reader

Quick tip: Remove Windows.old folder after installing Windows 7

Send free SMS reminders to your mobile phone

Some Ubuntu resources for beginners

Useful links: Free wi-fi hot spots

Useful links: A to Z of search

How long should a good blog post be?

Give us this day our daily fruit and veg

Receiving low balance account alerts by SMS from your bank

Hopefully there’s something for everyone there. Well, here’s to the next 200 posts and more. Thanks for reading!

Image credit: gamillos

It’s common knowledge in SEO circles that not posting frequently and regularly will decrease your blog page rank and probably lead to a drop in RSS feed subscribers. What I don’t accept is the advice I’ve occasionally read on some blogs that if you’re suffering from feed overload and looking to prune back your RSS subscriptions, you should unsubscribe from blogs which don’t update frequently and regularly.

As I see it, the most important consideration in unsubscribing should be content. If a blog is offering interesting fresh content, even if on an irregular basis, I would keep my subscription. Having said that, if the blog is clearly stagnating with no posts for the previous 3 or 4 months, I might just drop it, unless the blogger has posted good reasons for taking a break.

Lighten the load

When you think about it, cutting back on blogs which update only occasionally isn’t going to have much effect on your blog overload. What you should be aiming to do is cut the blogs whose content isn’t interesting to you anymore, or the blogs which are pushing out poor content just to achieve a daily post target. In addition, in the tech space there are quite a few blogs which just reblog tech news and press releases. You don’t need this duplication so cut out a few of these. All these are the culprits in overloading your blog feed.

Spare a thought for the blogger

If you’re blogging in your spare time and aren’t a full-time blogger, it certainly isn’t easy to push out good fresh content on a daily basis. I blog in my spare time and put out posts when I can. And good unique blog ideas don’t come daily. In addition, the research which goes into make a good post may take a couple of days in your spare time. I only manage to post at most 3 times a week, but it can be as little as once a fortnight. So far I haven’t put adverts on my blog so I get no monetary reward for blogging. I do it for the enjoyment. So don’t penalize the part-time or occasional blogger who hasn’t taken the step to full-time blogging or perhaps just doesn’t want to.

And if you are a full-time blogger, take a few days off now and again to recharge. You’ll almost certainly return with fresher content and have developed a few ideas in the meantime.

Content is king

This should be the main focus on whether to unsubscribe from a blog feed. If a blogger is pushing out good fresh content which is of interest to you, keep subscribing even if they do post on an irregular basis. And if you do like a post, try and thank them in the blog comments or share their post in your social network. It may be the only reward they get for their efforts.

Update (11th September 2010): Here’s an interesting blog post backing up the premise that less is more and that it’s quality that counts: Why posting less can improve your blog

The case for continuing to subscribe to blogs which don’t update frequently and regularly is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

Having blogged for just over a year now, I never cease to be amazed at the time and effort some bloggers put in to produce tech posts which patiently detail a how-to or compile a list of great web apps, and on top of that, the blogger’s ability to post on a regular basis, very often in their spare time. I’d like to list a few of the best tech blogs I’ve found, not blogs passing on daily tech news, but those putting in a great effort to compile tech how-tos and walk-throughs or review and compare a number of web applications, clearly written and with great illustrations. These blogs are all great for the tech novice, and advanced users will find lots of interest in them too.

Hongkiat.com

Covering blogging, web design, photography, list posts, tips and how-tos all with a great layout. Well worth checking out. And with all of these blogs, be sure to check out their archives too.

Giggle Computer

I only came across this tech blog recently, I think through a link in a tweet, and I’m glad I did. Take a look through the archive and look at the range of stuff covered. Great walk-throughs and list posts.

WebAppStorm

Nice looking blog with list posts, round-ups, how-tos and reviews – and a sister site MacAppStorm.

Knowliz

Roundups, and how-tos covering Windows, Ubuntu, etc. I’ve bookmarked many posts on this site.

Technically Personal

Raju started this blog about the same time as I started mine and is clearly doing a great job. List posts, news, tips, tricks, and tweaks, how to watch online content for free, etc. And he posts at least once a day. Check it out!

Dedoimedo

A real gem here. Just look at the range of articles on the home page – Linux, Windows, web applications, games, physics. A lot of effort put into each post and a wealth of information to read. Bookmark this site.

Smashing Apps

List posts covering web design, web apps, tech, photography, and social media. Again a great back catalogue of posts to work through.

Tux Radar

Very good Linux blog for beginners and advanced users alike. Walk-throughs, reviews and round-ups. Published by Future Publishing, publishers of Linux Format magazine, for me the best Linux magazine.

MakeTechEasier

Covers tech cross-platform, and explains it in an uncomplicated fashion. Tech tips, reviews, walk-throughs and occasional list posts.

1stWebDesigner

Lots of list posts for bloggers, web designers and developers. Ten out of ten for effort!

So that’s just 10 of the top tech blogs I’ve come across and I’m sure there are other great examples out there. I haven’t included the big ones like Lifehacker, MakeUseOf and ghacks which I’m sure you already know of. If you have any you really like – particularly those dealing with web apps, tech how-tos, blogs that pack lots of useful info, drop a comment below.

I had a phenomenal response to my Firefox tips post yesterday thanks to submitting a link on the Technology board at Reddit. Yesterday was my first attempt at promoting this blog on Reddit and I’m amazed at what happened. I submitted a link to my Firefox tips post to Reddit around 2pm BST (British Summer Time) (9am EDT, 6am PDT) and over the next 24 hours, I’ve almost doubled my RSS feed subscribers adding about 350 to reach about 830 subscribers.

The link  stayed well up the first Reddit ‘What’s Hot’ page over the first 9 hours:

In hindsight, I’m actually in the wrong category on Reddit. Should probably have been in the category Software, but I was exposed to 145,000 subscribers on the Technology board.

Looking at my blog stats in Woopra, there was a huge increase to over 4000 visits and 10,000 page views yesterday. I originally published the Firefox post on my blog on Sept 2 and you can see a small effect there from previous RSS subscribers, Delicious and Twitter, but nothing compared to the Reddit effect on Sept 3.

Naturally, as the post was about Firefox, most visitors were Firefox 3 users, with Chrome the second most popular browser.

The plot below shows that Reddit and StumbleUpon were the best referrers by some considerable margin:

interestingly, with Twitter, Digg and FaceBook further behind:

I’ve never gone after bulk adding followers in Twitter but have just gone for organic growth – letting followers find me first, but clearly most of my 600 Twitter followers don’t seem to be interested in Firefox tips. I’ll keep a closer eye on referrers in future – quite easy to do with Woopra on my blog.

So, in summary, Reddit really drives traffic to your blog and it’s well worth registering and submitting a link to your blog posts there. I’ll try and get the correct category there next time, and doubtless I’ll reach a lower subscriber number with future posts – unless I start posting about technology. Still, it’s nice to have added a substantial number of new RSS feed subscribers.  I’ve just got to hold onto them now.

How do you promote your blog? Drop a comment below.

Today marks the 1st anniversary of this blog. It’s been an interesting journey for me so far, and thanks to Woopra, the WordPress plugin for website analytics, I’m getting a good idea which posts are the most popular and what people want to read here. I’ve put up 62 posts so far, so that’s just over one post per week. Hopefully, I can improve on that in the next year but it isn’t easy to blog in your spare time and still allow plenty time for friends and family.

My most popular post so far has been Installing Easy Peasy Linux on my Acer Aspire One Netbook, followed by Some Linux Resources for Beginners. However, if you haven’t already seen them, I’ve done a couple of posts in my series on Useful Links which you may find interesting:

Useful links: A to Z of Search

Useful links: Free Wifi Hotspots

It’s really heartening to see the RSS subscription numbers steadily rising. I didn’t dream of having almost 450 subscribers at the end of year 1. Of course, I also really enjoy getting emails, comments and suggestions from readers. Please keep them coming either by using the Contact Me form or commenting on any blog post.

And I really hope you’ll stick with me through the second year. If you haven’t already subscribed to the RSS feed, please do. It really does give me great encouragement to know that people are following and supporting the blog. These are interesting times for me – Windows 7 on the horizon, exploring and using Linux, working with netbooks, blogging with WordPress, getting a new touch-screen mobile phone, and more – and that’s just a few topics I can see coming up. I hope you’ll enjoy the journey with Tech and Life through the coming year too.

Picture credit: *iFatma

I’m not one to be checking my blog stats on a daily basis, just happy to have some loyal readers who are getting something from my posts.

I added the Feed Statistics plugin a couple of months ago and was pleased to find I had 7 loyal readers then. To my utter amazement, I went back to check my feed stats a couple of days ago and it is now hovering around 400! That’s really exceeded all my expectations and a big thanks to all who have taken the time to subscribe to the RSS feed. I’ve just added the subscriber count below the RSS button on the top right of the blog.

For those who don’t know, subscribing to an RSS feed from a blog allows the content to be pushed to an RSS reader like Google Reader. It’s well worth doing and means that rather than having to visit blogs looking for new post, the posts are actually sent to you in your reader saving you loads of time. Just click on the RSS feed icon (like those shown above) and add the feed to your reader.

I’ve been blogging in my spare time for just 10 months now with 49 posts up – not a lot, but I hope there’s something for everyone in the content so far. I generally have 2 or 3 posts in various stages of readiness and I’m pretty happy with the next 2 or 3 in draft. Hope you will be too. Check out the recent posts on the right and click through some of the categories which might interest you or visit the archives. If you like what you see, subscribe to the feed if you haven’t already done so.

Once again, thanks for subscribing and hope you’re enjoying reading my take on tech … and life.

Image credit: Chesi – Photos CC

I’ve use NotePad++ as a Windows NotePad replacement for some time now. It’s great for editing css and php files on my local computer. But did you know you can upload your files to your website directly from NotePad++? Saves having to launch your ftp client to upload them. In NotePad++, there’s a plugin called FTP Synchronize under the Plugins menu which is installed by default during installation of NotePad++. Go to FTP Synchronize and click Show FTP folders. New windows should open to the right and below the main NotePad window. The window to the right looks like this:

Click on the Settings icon, which will bring up the following window:

Click on New at the bottom left to start a new profile. In the box named Profile at the top right, give your profile a memorable name, e.g. the name of your blog and click Rename. Add the details down the right side and click OK. If you’re not sure of these they’ll be in your current ftp client. You can set the Initial directory to the sub-folder where your files are stored online.

Once this is saved, you can click the Connect button as shown in the top graphic. You’ll get a drop-down box with your saved profile and just click on it. Obviously, you could save a number of profiles here to connect to different folders online (e.g. different blogs). Once connected, just click the Upload button shown in the top graphic and the saved edited file currently showing in NotePad++ will be uploaded to your chosen folder.

That’s it.

Edit (6th December 2010) Since I wrote this post, the NotePad++ plugin has been updated and renamed. If you’re using the latest version of NotePad++ (currently 5.8.5), the plugin is now called NppFTP but works in much the same way as the old plugin.

I was commenting on a blog last night which got me thinking about blog content and length. There’s no doubt that great content is paramount for a good blog post. But there can be a problem here. Great content can require a lot of thought and research, especially if it’s a how-to, tutorial or review. Also to do justice to a topic may require presenting well argued points for and against a particular view. Both of these factors can lead to a longish post and incidentally can take a long time to prepare.

A lengthy post is all very well if the reader is interested in the topic and has the time to work through the post, and possibly comment on it, but I suspect that many readers may be turned off by a long post, and just skim it and move on, especially if they are new to your site and not familiar with your previous posts. The situation is compounded if you are a relatively new blogger and haven’t built up an established fan-base who are familiar with your work. After all, there’s so much to read out there and we have to cover all the latest posts in our RSS feeds and get on to Twitter where ‘micro-content’ is king.

So it’s a question of striking the right balance in your post – being concise and not long-winded. Not repeating yourself like I’ve just done in the last sentence. Have an interesting title and introduction to set the scene and hold the reader. Try breaking longer posts up into sections with clear sub-headings, bullet points or numbered points. This may help the reader to skim sections they are familiar with. If required, try and sum up the post in your last paragraph.

If you’re in doubt whether your posts are the right length, look at your own last blog post and consider whether, if you had stumbled across it, would you have read it through to the end. I must confess that looking at some of my earlier posts, they were probably too long and that’s reflected in the rapid click-throughs I see in Woopra Analytics up to December. That seems to have improved recently as more people are taking more time to explore my blog.

I’ll leave it at that – and well done if you’ve read this far. I hope I’ve got the length just right this time.

Any comments?

Further reading: How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes – Copyblogger

Photo credit: Will Lion

Tech blogs, tech podcasts and tech forums will inform you. If you have the time to follow a good selection of these, you will constantly learn new things and discover shortcuts to make tech work for you more effectively. I’ve blogged about good tech podcasts and tech blogs earlier.

I’ve made a number of great discoveries in the ‘tech well’ recently. Here’s just two from yesterday.

1. As a regular listener to the Aussie Geek Podcast, I was interested to hear the Jeffro2pt0 WordPress Weekly podcast mentioned there. I didn’t know about it so downloaded the last two or three episodes to try it out. Pretty good and I’ve now subscribed to it. You can subscribe here. In episode 22, there was an interview with Alex King, creator of the Share This WordPress plugin among others. I’m relatively new to blogging with WordPress and am looking for ways to improve the experience for anyone who visits my site so I’ve added the Share This widget to my blog. Share This allows any visitor to easily share the content via a social bookmarking site or email it to a friend. You can see the Share link at the bottom of this and every post.

2. Still on the blogging theme, I was reading the Download Squad feed in Google Reader and noticed a post about NotePad++. I already use this text editor from earlier recommendations on tech blogs and podcasts. It’s very useful for editing your theme’s css and php files before uploading to your website. What I didn’t know was that you can upload the files directly to your website from within NotePad++ using the FTP Synchronize plugin without going near your FTP client, saving some time.

That’s just two discoveries from yesterday. Who knows what today will bring!

As this is my first blog, I’m going to post now and again on how I’m getting on with blogging. I do have a small business website which I set up myself (using Serif PagePlus) about eight years ago and occasionally update but this is my first attempt with WordPress.

I must say I was a little daunted getting started. There’s certainly lots of information out there and maybe that’s part of the problem. Anyway my path was smoothed thanks in part to a recommendation on gHacks to try a service from a website called Blogtastique which offers free help in setting up a WordPress blog and free space on their website to load up themes and play around with test posts. A big thankyou to Daniel Pataki at Blogtastique for all his help in getting me started.

I decided against a WordPress hosted blog on Daniel’s advice. I researched possible domain names through DomainsBot, registered my domain with GoDaddy and went for hosting with BlueHost partly on its rating on WebhostingGeeks.

So far so good. Installation of WordPress on BlueHost went relatively smoothly. I’ve used WS-FTP 95 LE for years as my ftp client and used it to upload WordPress to my blog. This app suits me fine but if you’re looking for a good free ftp client, I believe Filezilla is excellent. Just encountered one slight problem when the provider’s documentation said I should upload and install WordPress to the root directory of my blog. I emailed BlueHost and they were very quick to respond. They pointed out that I should upload and install in the public_html directory. I used a free two-column theme, modified it with my own header and tweaked some of the code in style.css and index.php. I used NotePad++ to edit the files and found it excellent.

Next problem was in getting text to wrap around images and also setting the margins so that the text wasn’t right up against the images. The style.css file wasn’t right in the theme I had chosen and no matter what I did I couldn’t get the text to wrap around the image. I had downloaded a couple of other trial themes so had a look at the style.css files in them and quickly figured out that the problem was in the missing alignleft and alignright styles. I copied these styles into my style.css then tweaked them till I got the right margins. This is the code I added and tweaked:

img.alignleft {
padding: 0px;
margin: 0 15px 8px 0;
display: inline;
}

img.centered {
padding: 0px;
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}

img.alignright {
padding: 0px;
margin: 4px 0 1px 7px;
display: inline;
}

#content .alignleft {float: left; }

#content .alignright {float: right; }

The site is still not quite right and I have to try out and add a few plug-ins. The first one I installed was Askimet which helps screen out spam from comments. Anyway that’s where I’m at now. I hope some of this may be useful if you’re starting out in blogging. I’ll post again as the blog develops and as I tweak the site with new plug-ins.