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.