A WordPress Website

The e-book I read to research this post was How To Install WordPress And Build A Secure WordPress Blog by Jan Kearney which is a very good e-book that I downloaded for free on kindle. This book is around 40 pages so is quite short. It is mainly aimed at people considering hosting WordPress on a 3rd party host like Blue Host or Go Daddy. Another option is letting WordPress host it themselves which is usually free and either way it might be best to purchase a domain name. The process of installing WordPress on a separate hosts server is quite simple but might be a bit tricky to do the first time. This book also outlines the main steps in configuring your website and suggests using Yoast a WordPress plug-in instead of c-panel which is normally included and both contain slightly versions of PHP to each other. To really get indepth in designing a site you need at least some fair knowledge of HTML. I did enjoy this book and do quite recommend it. There are probably better books on the market particularly particularly retail ones but I think this book does a reasonable job. Jan the author has a website at http://www.mylocalbusinessonline.co.uk . It also does mention a free website scanner called Sucuri that might be of interest and scans the website for any problems.

Food Writing

The book I read to research this post was The Best Book On Food Writing which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is about how to develop a career in writing about food but is also relevant to those seeking a hobby. When you write about a restaurant you must turn up there anonymously. You want them to think you are a typical customer. In writing about food simply saying it is delicious isn’t enough. You should write about what ingredients set it apart and how it compares to other restaurants. Many of the best food writers intermingle information about their life with the food article. When you think of it having a sumptious meal is a very personal experience often reminding you of things like the first time you ate a particular dish. It is simple enough to start tweeting about food on Twitter or write about it on social media or start a food blog. If doing a blog you should aim at doing a post at least 3 times a week. This kind of thing is a good training ground. When you go to a restaurant you aren’t simply eating you should be going for a wonderful experience especially if it is expensive. A lot of critics use a key to display things like how the price compares to other restaurants. It’s also essential to find out if they do a signature dish and try that. Often a critic will have a list of dishes to try. This book is only short around 35 pages, I did enjoy it and recommend it.

 

Finding A Profitable Blog Topic Idea

The book I read to research this post was How To Find A Profitable Blog Topic Idea by Steve Scott which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. Actually I think this book was free but I’m not sure. It’s around 60 pages so is a fair length. This book is about finding a niche subject for your blog and the author says to make your blog stand out from the crowd it probably needs to be a niche subject which you don’t necessarily have to be an expert on but have to be passionate about. The subject field shouldn’t be so narrow you run out of material to write and if you ie have an interest in say personal development think about what attracts you to that subject and is there a type of subject with in that subject you tend to read about. An example might be positive thinking. You also should write a list about your self with your age, employment history, what qualifications, what your favorite book is and what subjects interest you. The aim here is to see if there is a pattern that you can you can find a subject for a blog. You should carry a small notebook around with you and no matter how daft an idea seems should write it down as it comes to you and each have a review of your ideas and see if any are blogable. He also suggests reading ezine articles and one of the best sites is http://ezine-articles.com and also look at blogs which there is a directory at http://alltop.com which lists blog posts according to subject. Your aim in the long term should be to make some kind of profit blogging on the subject you enjoy and he suggests doing e’books on sites like kindle and smashwords where you can start off giving books away but eventually start charging for them. I did enjoy reading this book and would recommend it. I this book would be helpful to bloggers.

WordPress Search Engine Success

The book I read to research this post was WordPress Search Engine Success by Kathy Burns-Millward which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is only short but very interesting. It’s primarily about optimizing your WordPress blog or other type of site for search engines like Google. Search engines apparently love WordPress and often rank these sites highly in search results. If you have a WordPress blog you tend to get lots of back links from other sites, the program automatically alerts the major search engines when you do a new post & lets you include search terms for each post. Also each post and page is given its own URL, simplifying the search engines job. The URL can be customized and some users include a category as part of the name but this isn’t advised. You are better off sticking with the default name and including a descriptive title which of course influences the URL name. Any blog posts should be a decent length as this helps search engines. There is a wide variety of types of website the WordPress program can be configured to make especially when self hosted. It is far more than just a blog. At one time it took 6 weeks for a search engine to check a new post but the process happens in a few hours. Also if their were no links the search engine would probably never find your site. I did really enjoy this book and it has a lot of useful information. I learned quite a lot from it.  I think I downloaded it for free.

Typepad

The book I read to research this post was Typepad For Dummies by Melanie Nelson et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Typepad came about as a blogging engine developed for someone’s blog which they realised there was demand for and formed a company called Six Apart. The company name is because the couple had their birthdays 6 days apart but anyway it has become a popular blogging service that can be either hosted or self hosted by a company like Go Daddy for which there is a version called Movable Type which is similar in terms of features and the software itself is free. Typepad is particularly good in that it is configurable especially in the Movable Type version and as in a lot of blogging programs is composed of modules. In the Typepad version you can configure it in HTML. In the other version there are other programming languages like Python you can use. This book is a little bit out of date being written in 2010 but does include the substantial upgrade to Typepad in 2009. The biggest upgrade of features to date. There is a basic free option where you get a single blog with 3 GB of space and various paid options which also let you have a customized URL among other things. This is a very good and interesting book I enjoyed reading. In the basic version you are stuck with one theme called Chroma. I think Typepad is better suited to business blogs than personal blogs but it does have various social media modules so you can integrate it with the various sites. In particular there is a friendfeed module which even informs followers of your activity on Amazon. You can do podcasts although due to the increased space involved will probably need a paid membership. I must admit I’d probably have no need to use Typepad but I do find books about the different platforms quite interesting.

 

Scrivener

The book I read to research this post was Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Scrivener is a writing software initially released for the Apple Macintosh and particularly for the OS X Lion operating system and I think the version in this book is a previous version which at the time had a cut down Windows version although in future both versions will have similar features. I did look on Google to see how much this software is and it is free for 30 days and $40 thereafter. The company that make it is literature and latte. It is particularly suited to writers as they can keep all there work in one place which it does with folders and subfolders. It also allows you to do e-books particularly in pdf and you can import your work including notes and annotations into Microsoft Word. There is a kind of add on at http://crowl.info which is a word counter useful for editing for things like magazines and newspapers. The book does a decent job of explaining how to use it although this software has been superceded by Scrivener 2 which hopefully there will be a follow up book on. The book explains where there are differences between the windows and mac versions although in the later version the features in the windows version are comparable. I really enjoyed reading it and think the price of the software does sound quite reasonable. I’d never heard of this software prior to reading this book and apparently the word scrivener is a fancy word meaning writer. It’s an interesting book.

Blog To Win Business

The book I read to research this post was Blog To Win Business by Henneke Duistermaat which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is quite short at around 100 pages but is quite interesting. If you look on kindle every other computing book seems to be on blogging but I still found this book quite interesting. The author prior to writing your blog you need to come up with a metric of your ideal reader and every post on that blog has to be aimed at that person. With the huge variety of blogs it is impossible to write something everyone will enjoy so you are writing for a certain chunk of that readership. It helps to write a profile for your ideal reader in quite a lot of detail if possible. When you are writing a post if you have a certain image of the reader in your mind and a profile it helps you write things like you which make him feel like you are specifically writing for him. You must also avoid being condescending and empathize with him. If you have some ideas what problems he faces and incorporate that into your post it will make him feel like you understand just how he feels. This book is mainly aimed at people who blog as part of their job and maybe are selling products although it warns that getting orders isn’t an end in itself and you should try and make your blog informative and interesting. It suggests if you have to write for more than one type of person the simple solution is to start a separate blog although you may find that is creating a lot more work for you. Henneke has his own blog and he does write on several high profile blogs like copyblogger as a guest. I enjoyed this book and it does look at an interesting angle on blogging.

 

Writing For The Web

I read the book Writing For The Web by Linda Felder which is a very good book which I bought from kobo. This is an ebook and I expected it to be quite short but was actually a decent length and quite interesting. It’s about composing blogs and websites with content such as photographs, sound clips & of course writing. Of course you should use photographs and sound clips sparingly. The more you practice taking photos, constructing blogs and writing the better you will get at it. Even the author Jack Kerouac who used to write whilst on speed, used no punctuation & would write a whole book at one sitting developed his art over many years. Many authors have a ritual prior to writing, like ie Stephen King takes a vitamin pill. If you are serious about becoming a good writer you should get a good book on grammar & punctuation. I for example have a book called Words Into Type by various authors & I have read it but it’s a very complex subject. In my writing I often try to minimize my punctuation to enable my thoughts to flow. Some people write blogs without any punctuation which obviously makes them difficult to read and I bet there aren’t many like that.