Now, I’ve personally done this type of bible-reading in some other fashions and through other methods but it made me curious as to how you guys are reading the Word for your personal studies… and if you’re using technology for it?
Apparently they’ve got web-enabled, iPhone, and BlackBerry representation… wicked!
From the YouVersion Team directly:
Our One-Year Reading Plan will take you through the entire Bible in 2009-just read the selections mapped out for you each day and you’ll cover the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice this year. Invite friends to join you in this journey and you’ll have built-in accountability along with enhanced learning.
And don’t forget that you can use your mobile phone to read the Bible no matter where you are. Find the YouVersion.com that works for you while you’re on the go:
This is the 2nd Guest Post by the one and only @Side3Media, or Christopher Doherty. It’s been a personal pleasure of getting to know him better, especially since it appears he’s a “little” smarter than me in a number (a lot) of areas.
He also gets points for the wickedly good photoshop skills… If you want to read his other post, go here.
So you have made the jump to self-hosted WordPress.
Let’s get you ready for Top-Gun School.
Moving to a self-hosted WordPress install can be both rewarding and stressful. Now that you are on your own, you can add those features to your blog, change up your theme in dramatic ways and enjoy the added flexibility of your own space on the internet. Unfortunately, you also lose out the deal because you no longer have the full arsenal of servers of WordPress.com keeping your site running smoothly.
Not a problem….
Once you have selected your hosting provider (preferably one that has the flexibility to grow with you) you need to tweak your install for Top-Gun performance. You see you never know when a blog post is going to be popular, very quickly. So you need to be ready for that digg, that twitter, that word of mouth to check it out that could bring your site to a screeching halt.
Some of the blogs that I read have had these problems recently, so I decided to follow up with a post started on Human3rror (ChurchCrunch founder John’s superhero alter-ego), John gives us some quick tips on how to improve self-hosted WordPress performance with some quick database tweaks.
Okay….now the engine that runs the behind the scenes of your site has a some ninja like Top-Gun skills to battle the traffic, we can take a look at the front end.
I did want to give a quick warning, these tips range from the beginner to a little more advanced level. Some of these involve editing your wordpress theme files manually.
1. If you are not comfortable making these changes, you probably want to have someone help. 2. If you are doing this on your live server, first make sure you have copies of your theme pages in case you miss something. 3. If you change your theme often you will have to make these changes each time you switch. 4. I added this line because I felt it looked more important if I had 4 points in my list instead of 3. Thanks.
Now that that’s out of the way we can begin…
Images:
Images are some of the biggest thieves of your page load times. As internet readers have short attention spans, you have the potential of losing your audience with slow load times. There are a number of tools out there to help so it will be a personal preference on what you use. If you don’t already have a program, I found this really slick app called Shrink-O-Matic that could be just what you are looking for. Shrink-O-Matic is a drag and drop image editor built on Adobe Air. It’s a lightweight application that won’t impact your desktop performance and Shrink-O-Matic is a niche application, it does one job and does it well.
Editing image sizes will have a huge impact in your page performance. If you want to use Hi-Res photos, you can always put a link to a photo stored on Flickr or Photobucket and save yourself some bandwidth.
The next section gets into a bit more advanced editing. If you are familiar with editing HTML you will do just fine. Again, make a backup and you can always overwrite your changes if you make a mistake.
WordPress Queries:
WordPress stores your information in a database and recalls the information it needs to present it in a web browser. You don’t create a new page for each post, just an entry in the database and WordPress pulls it together through templates and queries. In this section we talk about data that pretty much stays the same throughout the life of your blog. So, why does WordPress need to check a database to know where to find files it has to load every time you load a page?
1. Header.php
Your blog is your blog and unless you decide to change the url for some reason it’s pretty much going to stay that way.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://<strong>PATH TO YOUR STYLE SHEET</strong>/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="<strong>YOUR BLOG NAME</strong>" href="http://<strong>YOUR BLOG URL</strong>/feed" /> <link rel="pingback" href="http://<strong>YOUR BLOG URL</strong>/xmlrpc.php" /> <meta name="generator" content="<strong>WHATEVER VERSION OF WP YOU ARE USING</strong>" />
Take a look at your Header.php in the WordPress Dashboard and open your blog in a web browser if you are not sure about the absolute paths. If you view the source all the paths will be viewable there.
Just these quick changes took 8 queries out of your page.
2. Navigation
The majority of bloggers have tons of posts and only a few pages. You have your standard pages like; about me, archives, contact, categories, etc. and chances are you are not adding new pages every day, so why bother having wordpress check to see your pages and load them from a database. Change the dynamic links to static ones.
This code tells WP to get the page names from the database and present them as a “li” but if you look at the source code for your page in a browser you can get the HTML code for the pages and just copy and paste that into the section of your theme files that load the navigation. Like this:
Check your categories. Come up with a few categories that all of your posts can fit into and change the query to load your category list to static HTML. If you have to add categories later you can drop it in manually.
4. Includes
Some WordPress themes use includes. This tells the page to load other pages and add them as part of the current page. Check the pages of your templates for includes they look like this:
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . "/searchform.php"); ?>
Changing the TEMPLATEPATH to static HTML (view your source code in a browser for the path) since it is unlikely that your pages are going to move around without you knowing.
This could remove 1 or 2 more queries depending on your theme.
5. Footer.php
A lot of themes have tons of queries in the footer.php. Check the footer for items as well that you can replace or remove. As an example:
All these queries can be removed or replaced with static info. If your theme footer contains a timer as shown in the above example, you can remove that section completely.
By fixing just those pieces, we have removed about 18 queries from your pages. If 100 people visit one page on your site that’s 1800 queries removed, 1000 people hit your site thats 18,000. If they look at two pages 36,000, and so on. I think you get my thought process here.
Extraneous Content :
This section is more from a personal observation of web surfer behavior and areas where you can optimize your page. In other words my personal ranting section.
1. Archives
If you have been blogging since Jan 1903 congratulations, but honestly I don’t think anyone going to your site says “Oh I wonder what he/she wrote about in Sep. 1927″. If you are going to have a listed archive on your page you really should limit it. Have 6-12 months listed and have your full archive on a separate page.
2. Tag clouds
Check your stats. Is anyone really clicking on them? I am sure that you will find if you have concise navigation and well thought out categories there is no need for a tag cloud. At this point it’s gimmicky and overdone. That widget you are using to load the cloud is wasting server resources. Not to mention diverting search engine bots down never ending loops of posts and tags. With that said, make sure you put tags on your full posts. If people want to click they will and it does enhance the relevance of your page.
3. Repeated info.
Got, top comments by, most recent comments and most commented posts, most popular posts, etc. widgets? Are they all on the same page? It fills that space quite nicely but does it really have value, think about how much of that information is the same or close to the others. Pick one or two and drop the other widgets, valuable page weight and database resources are being used.
4. Plugins
Before you install another plugin. Ask yourself if the ones you have now are really necessary. Try to limit the number of plugins to those you really need. Things like twitter status can be displayed on your blog with a few lines of code instead of a full plugin and widget.
For those that are working in the so-called “corporate america” and for those trying/considering leaving the “cube life”… I challenge you to consider that option carefully.
But you already knew that, right?
I woke up this morning (actually I jolted awake) thinking madly about the decade and a half of experience living in the cube farm, working for “the man” and climbing the ladder of corp to an executive at a Fortune 50.
I wished I was still there.
But only for a second. Where God has called me now is exactly where I need to be. But, if it were humanly possible, I’d “live” in both. And since I can’t, I’m challenging those who are to keep on truckin’.
Here’s why (in my very limited opinion):
You are a part of a large system that is developing products, technology, and strategies that I (at this point in time) will never see, touch, nor smell (and play with) until they’ve made it through the bureaucratic mess of management and executive budgeting. You’re a part of a larger body of “innovation”.
This is a good thing.
The simple fact is that these large-scale businesses have access to money and incredibly gifted thinkers and strategists that we (the Church) need. But we NEED YOU to be the voice, and we NEED YOU to share those things with us, those that no longer live in that world.
I wish I had this perspective when I was there. I could have done so much “good” with it. And now, those ideas are stale, gathering dust, or completely forgotten… and I had no one to share them with (or rather, I didn’t think about sharing them).
So, from a very admittedly selfish perspective, please don’t leave Corporate America and the Cube… just make sure you share with us what’s going on at the “farm”.
Super simple WordPress hack here in the form of a wickedly smart and easy theme.
Enter Redirectr Theme, a simple yet effective way to move old traffic from an old blog to a new blog.
For example… Let’s say that I had a mental/emotional/spiritual breakdown and I wanted to completely rebrand “ChurchCrunch.com” to “JesusIsAHackstar.com“… and in my emotional insecurity and insanity somehow remembered that I want old traffic and blog posts to ChurchCrunch to head to the new blog site.
How would I do it?
Redirectr Theme would be the easiest (editing your .htaccess file would be the best, but for many this is “beyond” us).
Once activated and set up any calls to the old site will be redirected to the users desired site, passing the correct HTML header codes and optionally appending the passed permalink and query strings to the new site.
Sweet! So, what else?
Redirect requests to – You should enter the website address of your new site here. This is the address that you want all requests redirected to.
Redirect header – You can choose which HTML header you want sent with your redirect. The default is 301 and this should be used if your redirection is a permanent one as it will help search engines keep track of your sites address.
Pass permalink structure – If your new site is a direct copy of your old one, and has the same posts, pages and permalink structure then you can request that the URL is passed in full to the new site.
Pass query string – If this option is enabled then any query string variables and values passed to the old site will also be passed to the redirected URL.
One thing that I’m going to spend a little bit more time doing is unloading all my blogging hacks onto you guys. Essentially I’ll be giving you my most guarded secrets in how I “do” blogging, especially in terms of WordPress design, plugins, theming, etc…
So, one of the first tips is also one of the best.
Whenever you’re starting a new blog or want to stress-test a theme, you’re going to want to make sure it can handle everything that you may throw at it, especially from a content and blog post perspective. Can your new theme “handle” quotes? Bolding? Bullets? Does it align pictures correctly?
Theming your WordPress blog is fun, but can be dangerous if you don’t “check” it before use… especially if you don’t know how to code or fix the errors down the road.
So, one of the things that I do is upload bogus and dummy XML page and blog post content to my new blog and/or themes… This dummy data contains everything that a theme might express in a blog post, with a bunch of tags, categories, child-cats, child-pages, comments, gravatar-support, etc…
Upload this baby into your blog and see if your theme works out just fine. Make sure you follow these picture instructions… don’t forget that “check box” either!
If your theme survives, you may just have a winner…!
I had mentioned previously that some “Blogging Resolutions” may be helpful for some people. Here is a list I found of some great examples of “goals” that a few have set for themselves in the coming year of 2009.
1. Cross 350 RSS subscriber mark. 2. Write atleast 5 posts a week 3. Write atleast 3 good quality posts a week out of above 5
2. Crane Factory:
Goal 1 – Increase paid blogging income
I got a taste this year for paid blogging and it has so far worked out well. It certainly isn’t “pro blogger” money but it means I don’t need to dip into the household budget to fund things like hosting fees, publishing setup costs, or development costs such as premium themes.
1. Two posts per week (a minimum of 104 next year) 2. Forty total RSS subscribers (current total: 20) 3. Add an original video at least once each month
Stop chasing social media – 80% of visitors come from search engines and another 17% come from links and blogrolls.
5. MyLifeCEO:
1. To increase my readership (no limits to this) 2. To increase my ‘Property Product’ sales 3. To somehow upload my son’s “Thomas the Tank Engine” video clip to You Tube
6. JARD:
1. to launch my 1st e-book 2. to get more bookings from my two travel sites 3. to get more advertising/sponsors for my sites.
1. stop procrastinating 2. write an article at least once week and submit 3. create a new blog once a month( niches)
8. Hardware Revolution:
Reach 1,000,000 pageviews monthly. I know, you’re probably thinking that I’m absolutely out of my mind here. Well, I am aiming high, that is true. I do believe that it is a reachable number, if we work together toward it! We? That’s right. While I will do my best to deliver valuable content, I will need you to help me spread the news and help me by sharing this to your friends, family and contacts that you have on social networks!
You must have got what would be my intention by this time! Yes,First we need to set some goals if you want to succeed some where.Ofcourse i know one more quotation “Setting goals is easy,But achieving shows the difficulty” Even though nothing we loose by setting and trying to achieve them.So,Here are my goals/dreams for the coming year.
1. Posting more regularly, hopefully on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. If possible increasing posting frequency to five days a week. 2. Increasing RSS subscribers in the LGR Internet Solutions blog to 500 or more. 3. Diversifying my online income so it is more dependable and less reliant on one or two sources.
11. Slavi:
1. Read 7 good books on algorithms and best software development practices 2. Start learning Java 3. Write 5 articles / week
1) I want to complete landing pages for all four of my main websites
2) I want to install on all four sites a four-part graphic widget that links to the landing page, the best posts, the funniest posts, and the most useful posts
3) I want to put up a better background on http://picsremix.com (suggestions?)
13. Devakshor:
1. Increase the frequency of my posts. 2. Start posting at least one original and quality content on my blog every week. 3. Submit articles to EzineArticles, Goarticles, etc and create some Squidoo pages
1. Figure out way to be successful in click arbitrage. 2. New designs for few blogs in my blog portfolio. (I manage 3 popular blogs) 3. Post consistency
15. Scribbler:
1. Increase traffic from sources other than Teacher Lingo 2. Get 100 RSS subscribers 3. Blog at least once a week
16. MayUOnline:
1. Daily Unique Hit: 4000 2. Daily Hit: 6000 3. Ad sense Revenue/Day: $10
17. Thursday Bram:
Before the end of January, 2009 I plan to have an ebook to share with all of you. I’ve been working on this particular ebook for a little while, but I need to wrap up some lose ends before I tell you the top secret title. I’m also planning to do a few more series of posts, like the series I did last year on copyright. If you’ve got any ideas for topics, please let me know.
18. Joyful Days:
My goal is that the Joyful Days blog benefits enough people to generate a monthly income of at least $800 a month. Too new to blogging to know how many daily uniques, RSS subscribers etc will give that result. That’s what I have to figure out next year!
1. Learn the new tools I found recently (Yahoo Pipes , PostRank , NewsGator , etc) and find some more. 2. Build some bridges of communication to people around, since starting this blog my Internet experience became more social. 3. Learn to drop services, sites and blogs I no longer enjoy sooner instead of sticking with them to the last.
1. Bring one quality post per day + At least one Important News item from Blogosphere for the visitors 2. Start Video Blogging, bring one weekly Video post for the visitors
1) Get at least two friends to start blogging. This means you!!! Even if you keep your blog private (that’s easy to do) or accessible only to your friends and family, it’s just too easy to have a nice site these days. I have a whole different post coming about managing your online reputation. Having your own site is the first step. Grab a domain name for a few bucks a year, and talk to me about hosting. I’m running a friend special right now.
25. Zen Dreams:
1. Make more opensource plugins for WordPress (and get ideas of course) 2. Publish more on Zen-Dreams.com (at least once every two days would be nice) 3. Get more daily visitors (not defined)
1. Reach over 500 Subscribers – I reached 94 from 8 but lost some during the migration. I guess it was those on the rss readers. It is now at 74. 2. Reach an average of 1000 page views per day by December 2009 – It is currently between 200 to 300 on normal days. 3. Keep a steady average number of 25 posts per month
27. Putting Blogs First:
1. Have a Twitter network of at least 2000 followers (follow me on Twitter) 2. Become highly active on at least ten social media sites (currently about 3) 3. Have an RSS subscriber base of atleast 3000 readers, for this blog as well as for a new one(Listfied)
1. Reach 500 RSS subscribers to this blog . 2. Build overall income to $5000/month across all sites. I’ve nudged this one many times in the past. I’d like this to be the year I stabilize it. 3. 5 posts per week per blog for my 2-3 best sites.
1. Reach 500 visits a day on my blog. I am not sure what to expect, but if I can reach this, it will be good! 2. Reach 25 RSS subscribers. Something which is very low at the moment, I will work on this! 3. Get an income from blogging. It doesn’t have to be big, but it would be nice.
1. Reach 7500 RSS subscribers (currently at 1300+) Didn’t manage to achieve that.. Currently at nearly 3000 subscribers 2. Average 30,000 daily page views (currently at 10,000) Around 20,000 at the moment, so didn’t achieve this as well. 3. Generate $2,000 in monthly revenues (currently at $0). Achieved it earlier in the year, but didn’t quite manage to keep it consistent
31. Daniy:
1. An Alexa rank under 200,000 points for this blog (it’s 1,118,243 points currently) 2. At least 200 subscribers for this blog (for the current time it has zero subscriber *wink*) 3. At least $1,000 monthly revenue from all my internet projects
32. Jen Patton:
Build up my blog subscribers to 500 and my newsletter subscribers to 500. Right now my newsletter subscriber list is growing faster than the blog. I have made some changes in my article resource box to drive more traffic directly to the blog. Some of the goals below will assist me in achieving both subscriber goals.
33. Bloggers Guide:
1. Increase Twitter followers to 500 (2008: about 40) 2. Increase page impressions to 200/day (2008: about 200/month) 3. Increase ad revenue to $5/day (2008: $5/year)
1. Ensure regular SKYPE conversation conferences on technical topics. 2. Involve in these conferences students from English speaking countries. 3. Involve students from English speaking countries in written discussion carrying out on the blog
1. Post consistent articles that will encourage, motivate and remind other about the lasting joy of giving.
2. Focus on the quality of the posts.
3. Reach 700-1000 subscribers – This one scares me. Being so new and learning how to “get the word out” is more difficult than I had imagined.
37. Misentropy:
By the end of next year, I’d like to have the luxury of not needing to set any goals for this blog for the coming year(s). I’d like it to soar, with nary a thought to how high above the ground it is or how far below the sky. To be one with the wind, period.
38. Lx7:
1. The return of the Lx7 – Podcast – Once the studio is renovated and relatively dust free I am DEFINITELY bringing the camera in and shooting more how to videos, and get out to do some event based artist interviews. 2. Issue #3 of Assembler Techno Fanzine – all the articles are already here on the blog, but I haven’t done the magazine / PDF design. 3. More Music Releases – I’ve been working in a mini hardware setup that I’ve enjoyed alot, and once I’ve got the space where I can finalize some of the mixdowns, expect to see those finalized songs released beyond the Humanjava Enterprises page on Last.fm
1. Re-design the architecture of the site. It’s difficult to navigate and it doesn’t give people a lot to grab onto. 2. Publish at least 12 videos – that’s only 1 per month, so it really shouldn’t be that hard. 3. Boost daily unique visitors from nil (where it’s at right now despite my best efforts) to 500.
1. Reach out to more Tundra owners. People really seem to enjoy our ‘Featured Vehicles’ segments, and we’re going to work on boosting the number of trucks we write about. 2. Boost the number of RSS and email subscribers to 500. We’ve worked on posting on a regular basis (every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and we’re starting to get pretty darn consistent. The next step is to increase the number of people that read our site regularly, even if it’s just from their inbox or RSS reader.
1. Get more consistent. I’m not blogging often enough, plain and simple. If Sara and I work at it, we can post an entry every day of the week. 2. Expand the focus. Right now, we’re just blogging about our travels…but people always ask us what it’s like to work abroad, work at home, etc.
44. Weblist:
1.Reach 2,000 Twitter followers. (Currently 26) 2.Cross the border of Alexa’s 500,000 in Rank. (Currently 10,110,758) 3.Reach 1,000 RSS Readers. (Currently 0)
1. Write 64 articles. My articles are technical and generally require a lot of research, and I want them to be accurate so that they will be a resource to search traffic for years to come. My current rate is about one article every 10 days. I’d like to publish one full-length article per week in 2009, plus some shorter articles that take less work.
46. Geek Entrepreneur:
Page Views: 5,000 a month by November 2009 Unique Visitors: 1,000 a month by November 2009 Twitter Followers: 800 by November 2009
1. Market and promote the site. Up until now it’s just been a field of dreams, we built it and people came. Need to go well beyond that in 2009. 2. Network, Network, and more networking! 3. Read the book Sports Media: Reporting, Producing, and Planning
48. Daily SEO Blog:
1 – Increase subscriber base to 10,000 2 – Increase average daily post count to 2, increase unique hits at least by double 3 – Get more involved with other projects
49. Amrick:
1. Launch DesignCloud.co.uk 2. Launch IWDJ 3. Re-launch BO
Comments -The number of comments is very sporadic, I would love to see some more sustained conversation going on.
Daily Page Views – Again, I am hoping to increase my average over this year, and though I am still seeing slight growth, it won’t be easy. I will again shoot for a 50% increase, and hope to do this through writing more general appeal posts that result in better search engine traffic.
I’ve recently have had the opportunity to go on a number of “trips” to various locations around the world. Along the way I’ve packed and taken with me your typical “things”, like toiletries, clothes, digital cameras, iphones, and laptops.
One of the newest additions to my travel-goods is my social network.
Ever thought about that? On a recent trip to South Korea, I took my entire blog and twitter community with me on a journey of epic proportions. I was able to conversate with them, hear there thoughts, share my feelings, and get feedback from the many various experiences that I was having.
And they were awesome.
I felt loved and supported and cared for. It’s like having another “family” that’s standing by with you, and only the internet can provide it.
I realized, in addition, that it’s also a mega ministry opportunity; travel that is. It never really occured to me that the act and event of just traveling can in itself be a ministry opportunity.
But it is. And I strongly encourage you to consider it the next time you go anywhere. But you have to plan, be strategic, and have a little “purpose” perhaps.
Here are some tips and tricks that may support and aid you as you seek to use your blog, twitter, or whatever as a digital ministry opportunity:
Establish a Schedule for your trip. Post it.
Give your community some “heads up” about it. Prep them for it.
Establish expectations for your community and them.
Ask for their advice and feedback. Engage them in the trip, help them be “a part” of it.
Ask for prayer support. Prayer partners. Specific days too, if this is appropriate.
Take lots of pictures and video and/or media if you can.
Post regularly. Establish a personal time during your trip to do it.
Ask questions during the trip. Engage them in “the story” and the “narrative”.
Take some time and a break. Enjoy your trip.
Have a post mortem followup. Open yourself up to questions and continued experiences.
Follow those that follow you. Give back.
Do it again.
There are also a number of social networks and applications out that can help you document it… but I perfer the blog… don’t make your followers sign up for more accounts.
A lot of great plugins and themes come through my email box daily. Only a few every make it to the examination table and even fewer actually are worth an install and a comprehensive dissection.
Why? Because I simply don’t have the time. And that’s a good thing.
But WP-Invoice is one such plugin that was kickbutt enough to get a plug here.
Essentially, it let’s WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients. It actually plays nicely and ties into your user database in case you’re managing your clients from a WP-turned-CMS install or just your blog.
Create the invoice and it sends them an email with a paypal link via a specially created page just for them. The interface of the application is nice to boot.
For those that may use this, I’d love to hear some reactions about it. The days of consulting for me were over… but I may be entering back into that “world” again.
Everyone’s counting their costs these days. The financial issues that our economy faces prevents any sane character from not giving their financial accounting a one-over.
Dot com owners, especially, are taking notice and we’ve seen recent cutbacks and layoffs unlike anything since the bust back in the late 90′s early 2000′s.
A recent article about how Digg.com, a social aggregator of content, is eating itself alive at a nice and healthy cost of 5 million a year made my head snap back.
Really?
Wow. That’s a lot. But at least they’re making something. For many of us, blogging comes straight out of our pocket, and hosting fees are just the tip of the iceberg.
This coming year I’m going to start opening up slots for sponsorship and advertising. I have to or it won’t be financially possible to continue some of the projects that I’m doing online. I’m going to have to take a good, hard look at the numbers, facts, and traffic. I’m going to have to make some tough decisions.
Even though nothing we loose by setting and trying to achieve them.So,Here are my goals/dreams for the coming year.
I’ve recently have had the opportunity to go on a number of “trips” to various locations around the world. Along the way I’ve packed and taken with me your typical “things”, like toiletries, clothes, digital cameras, iphones, and laptops.
