Jon Sheppard’s Blog

Internet Down - Blogging Delayed

So, I’m no longer piggybacking (stealing) internet at home, all of my neighbors have wised up and secured their WiFi networks. I am waiting to get hooked up with fiber optics so that I can blog again!

Posted in Blogging, Daily Events, The Interwebs | No Comments »

Wordpress 2.5 - Not Perfect, But Much Better

One thing that I really love about Dreamhost is the ability to upgrade Wordpress with a One-Click Install. It is as painless as can be and it keeps me using the most up-to-date version of Wordpress.

I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 a day or two after it was released and haven’t looked back. There are a couple of things that I really like about WordPress 2.5:

• The admin panel is much more user-friendly and helps me to do the things that I do most frequently (i.e. write a post, approve a comment) very quickly.
• Saving a post in progress and previewing it without ever leaving the future post is a huge timesaver!
• Collaborating on a post is much easier because WordPress 2.5 notifies you if someone else is editing a post at the same time.
• The ability to upgrade plugins automatically!
• The media gallery is great, even though I doubt that I use it to its full potential.

What do you think about it?

Posted in Blogging, The Interwebs | 2 Comments »

To Blog or Not to Blog

I have been asked quite a bit lately why it is that I blog. I don’t keep an online journal and I don’t even have a picture of myself on this blog (not that there is anything wrong with .blogspot.com that kind of blogging), but why do I blog? I do it for a couple of reasons:

 
1. I love the freedom of expression that a blog provides.
2. Blogging helps me to learn about all sorts of cool stuff, i.e. FTP, SEM - PPC & SEO, HTML, PHP, and all manner of web-related acronyms.
3. Blogging helps me improve my writing skills. (Or so I hope!)
4. Blogging is fun!

Freedom of Expression

There is something very empowering in the thought that my ideas and opinions could be read by anyone in the world. I know that there are only a handful of you who read this blog because Google Analytics tells me so, but the possibility that I could contribute information on a global scale is still there!

Search Engine Marketing & Internet Technology

I work at a technology company that specializes in local internet marketing for small businesses, so I pretty much have to keep up on how search engines are working. Through blogs, I have learned how to optimize a website and its content show I can show up for relevant terms on the search engines. I’ve learned about site tracking and I’ve even run pay-per-click campaigns to drive traffic to my blogs. Blogging has helped me learn HTML and even a little PHP, stuff that I have wanted to learn ever since I first logged on to America Online.

Blogger is to Blogging as Writer is to Writing?

I don’t consider myself a good writer and I have never enjoyed writing, but under the guise of a blog, I actually like to write. It’s magical. I just wish I would’ve felt this way in 11th grade English!So that’s why I blog, why do you?

Posted in Blogging, PPC, SEO, The Interwebs | 4 Comments »

RSS Feeds & Feed Readers

Come on, folks! It’s 2008 - the blogosphere is alive and well and you are more connected to your friends and family than you ever wanted to be. Sure there’s MySpace and Facebook for “keeping in touch” but we bloggers know a better way. We share personal biased opinions without sharing every stinking detail about ourselves (though there are plenty of blogs that do that too!).

How do you keep up with all of your favorite blogs and websites? I hope for your sake that you don’t visit each and every one of those blogs/sites every other day in hopes that maybe some new content has been posted. What a waste of time, right? Especially if your friends are slackers who don’t post regularly. Enter RSS feeds.

What is an RSS feed?

R•S•S feed
noun (pl. -s)
1 Really Simple Syndication is a popular technology for notifying users of updates to content on a website or blog.

Maybe you’ve seen the little orange icon to the right on a site or blog before, it’s the (almost) universal icon for an RSS feed. When you see it on a site or blog, you know that you can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, but how you might ask? Just click on that little orange icon in the address bar of your web browser. Once you subscribe to an RSS feed you need a way to organize and view the RSS feed. Enter feed readers.

What is a feed reader?

feed•read•er
noun (pl. -s)
1 a client software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, and podcasts in a single location for easy viewing.
2 a necessary tool for individuals who want to stay in the know without wasting a lot of time

A feed reader is to RSS feeds as Microsoft Outlook is to email. Feed readers allow you to see which sites have new content and to preview those new blog posts. Lots of times I read an entire blog post without ever actually visiting the blog. Readers also let you organize related RSS feeds into folders, subscribe to feeds, and share your favorite content with others.

I have only ever used two feed readers, Google reader and the reader built in to Apple’s Mail app, but there are a lot of options out there. I think that Google reader is probably the best reader, but I don’t like having to open my web browser to view my feeds. If you use a different reader, leave a comment and tell me which one it is and why you like it.

Lastly, subscribe to my feed!

Posted in Blogging, Daily Events, The Interwebs | 6 Comments »