Should blogs mention significant days if it has nothing to do with their niche?
Yesterday was September 11th, and my heart goes out to all who have been affected by it, but it brings up the question, should blogs mention significant days if it has nothing to do with their niche? The simple answer is: probably not. If you can bring it into a story to make a point (like I did here) then maybe you have something going for you, but I don’t need ExtremeTech telling me about Arbor day (obviously this is an exaggeration), that is fine that it is in your mind but I don’t need YOU to tell me about it, you are ExtremeTech, talk about some freakin technology, extreme, tech, whatever, Arbor day doesn’t really have anything to do with what you normally talk about, so don’t talk about it.
I did mention September 11th in this post, was that ok? Yes, because it has something to do with what I talk about, blogging.
We all know that September 11th was a tragedy, it was horrible that it happened but when you write in a blog you should try to be a little bit more professional and talk about what you talk about on your blog. John Chow wrote about going off topic on his blog, saying at the end that you should not go too off topic. He was absolutely correct, when you go off topic it puts your readers off, even if what the off topic post is about is really important, it doesn’t have a place on your blog so don’t do it.
WordPress Releases 2.2.3
I don’t want to be another one of those blogs that updates every time that a new version of WordPress comes out but this update is a security update and 2 of the fixes are high priority and I feel that everyone should know (I don’t know how you couldn’t know since it is the first thing you see when you log into your admin panel).
There are 9 bug fixes in this release and 19 changed files. It shouldn’t take you too long to update your install and this will probably hold you over until WordPress 2.3 comes out on September 24th.
You can download the new version here and here is the upgrade instructions if you need them.
I’m going to go install it right now.
When Should New Blogs Display Ads?
TechZilo recently wrote an article talking about why new blogs should not display ads. Since I recently reached the one month mark I have thought about all the ways that I could put advertising on Blog Scrutiny without bothering the readers but I am not sure whether or not it is too early.
I haven’t had too much luck asking my readers things but I’m going to keep trying.
When is it time to put ads on a blog?
I believe that doesn’t have anything to do with the age of the blog but everything to do with how much traffic you get.
If I do decide to put ads on this blog they will not be adsense or any other PPC advertising (at least not yet) but will probably be affiliate links in one of the sidebars. Let me know what you all think in the comments and maybe I’ll do a follow up post.
Two Word Reviews - WordPress Plugins
I didn’t get any comments on the last “Two Word Reviews” post so I figured I would try it out on WordPress Plugins and maybe someone will comment on this.
Advanced Permalinks - Permalink Redirect
Bloglines blogroll plugin - Interestingly Useful
del.icio.us for WordPress - Customizable, Simple
StatusPress - Life Sharing
GZ Calendar Date Style - Don’t Know
So there you go, there’s 5 plugins that you can try out, maybe even you can come up with your own two word reviews and put them in the comments.
First Month Anniversary
I’m not going to be like any of those other blogs that do those stupid monthly updates but I do want to let you all know how things are going for this blog since it is the first month.
Blog Scrutiny currently has 8 RSS subscribers which isn’t much but for a brand new blog I think this is pretty good, especially since I haven’t done anything to promote Blog Scrutiny at all.
I’m not going to disclose any stats about visitors because I think that is silly but I will compare it to the first month on my other blog, I currently have on average 2x the amount of daily unique visitors then I did on my previous blog.
I want to thank all of my readers for continuing to support Blog Scrutiny by reading all of my posts and I hope you continue to do so.