Wordpress 2.5

Last weekend, Wordpress 2.5 was released!  Have you upgraded your Wordpress site yet?  I have not done it 100% yet, but it is something that I am still working on with my many Wordpress sites.

I am wondering, though, do you think that Wordpress is still the way to go for a website or blog?  I have been thinking about this for several months now.  I have a couple of reasons for the question:

1. Wordpress is the most popular blogging client.  No doubt.  That, though, can have positive and negative sides.  First, since it is so popular, it is the default target for people with malicious intentions.  For example, if somebody wants to hack a website, figuring out a vulnerability in Wordpress is the best way to go.  With just one vulnerability, he can hack millions of sites, if he chooses to do so.
2. Because Wordpress is a hacking target, that means that there are constant updates coming down the tunnel.  It seems like Wordpress is getting new versions on at least a monthly basis these days.  For somebody like me, who has a ton of sites, this means that doing all the upgrades can be a time consuming job.

Because of these factors, I have been considering that perhaps it is time to move to another platform.  Yes, I do believe that Wordpress is the best out there, but the considerations above make me wonder if it is the right way to go.

What do you think?  Another blog platform?  Maybe a CMS (Content Management System) site?

Let me know what you are using, I’d like to take a look and see what others have going!

$1 per day: Get it from Google!

Do you have a blog? If not, you really should consider having one. The first thing that people ask about having a blog is this - “What will I write about?” Well to be totally honest, that is a decision for you to make! My best advice is this: Write about something that you are passionate about! Every one of us has different things that we are interested in, and you should choose one of the things that interest you as the topic of your blog.

Some people have very “general” blog sites. One day they write about the flowers they planted in the garden, the next day they write about a new factory being built in their town. A few days later they write a post about their kid’s school project. Frankly, these things are not related. Or are they? Well, I can think of one way that these could be tied together. Let’s say that you live in “Anytown, USA.” If you had a blog about what is happening in Anytown, USA, you could make these topics all tie together nicely. One day you write about what kind of plants and flowers are in season in Anytown, and how you just planted some in your garden. Next day, “Anytown is getting a new factory which will bring 10,000 new jobs.” A few days later, what is going on in Anytown Schools. But, if you can’t do something like this, it’s better to focus in on a certain area that interests you.

Let’s say you are an avid gardener. You can have a blog about gardening. Teach people like me, who know nothing about gardening, how to do it. Just write about gardening. Let’s say that you also have a passion for cooking. Well, start a different blog about cooking!

I’m going to assume that most of the readers of this site already have a website or blog, so you are halfway home. Do you have Google AdSense on your site? If you have even a half-busy site, you can make much more than $1 per day by using Google AdSense on your site! If you don’t have AdSense already, go to google.com/adsense and sign up! I’m not making anything from referring you, I just want to help you get started.

Your next step will be to set up a regular schedule for blogging. The more often you update your site, the more that people will come and visit. When people come and visit, there is more chance that they will click on your Google Ads, and when they click on an ad that interests them, you make money!

Congratulations… this could be your first step to checking off your assignment for this week: to come up with one new idea that will produce $1 per day for you!

See you tomorrow with more ideas.

Why RSS?

Do you know what RSS is? Some people say it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Others argue that it stands for “RDF Site Summary,” and still others say that it means “Rich Site Summary.” The most widely accepted notion, though, is that RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” That is what I mean when I say RSS.

So, if it is Really Simple Syndication, what does that mean? Well, simply put, it means that if you offer RSS on your site, people can subscribe to it and have it delivered to their desktop. When you publish an article on a site with RSS, that article will be pushed to your reader’s desktop in a matter of moments. If people choose to subscribe to your site, the text (and photos) of your articles will be available in the reader’s “Feed Reader.” Feed Reader is a piece of software that collects all of these RSS subscriptions and the reader uses this software to read the articles. Most current software, especially blog software (Wordpress, Typepad and others) and other Content Management software (Joomla, Mambo and others) include RSS as part of the package. I would say that probably about 75% of current websites offer RSS of some form.

So, there are also special programs that a user can have on his PC for gathering his RSS subscriptions. There are dozens of Feed Readers out there. Bloglines, Google Reader and many many others. Personally, I like to read blogs from within my browser, and I use Firefox to gather RSS headlines, then I go to the site to do the reading.

The number of RSS subscriptions that you have has kind of become a way of measuring the success of a blogger. Personally, though, I feel that this is not a good metric for measuring success. You see, in my case, I don’t really push RSS or encourage people to subscribe.

Why don’t I encourage people to subscribe?

Well, if somebody is reading your site through an RSS reader, they generally don’t see the ads on your site. Let’s face it, I primarily blog to make money. I do it for other reasons too, but if I could not make money doing it, I would at lease have a lot fewer blogs than I do. If somebody reads through a feed reader, they don’t see my ads, and thus can’t partake in my advertiser’s products. Yes, you can also place ads in your RSS feed, but from everything I have read, those ads are not nearly as successful as ads on the website. Thus, I actually prefer it is people come to my site, rather than read me through their feed reader.

Now, I am not an expert on every topic, and I readily admit that I might be missing something here. So, if you are better educated on this topic, let me know where I am straying. For a writer who wants to make money from what he writes, how can he successfully convert readers to profits when they are using a feed reader to subscribe? Honestly, I hope that somebody can point me to something that I don’t know about this, because I might be missing some opportunities.

Any opinions?

One quick final note here. When it comes to reading, I love RSS. It’s just that I am looking for input on the writer’s side.