Questions: Make Impact 3/Nov 19, 2011
Answers:
(1 to 4) Tutor Miranda Gavin, e: info@feutraining.org
(5 to 12) Journalist Chris Wheal, e: chris@whealassociates.com

1. What am I linking to?

First of all, linking is an integral part of blogging. Linking allows you to reference another blog, website or article online. Blogs love links – it’s what they are all about, at least once upon a time. Think Link Love and Link Juice.
If you link and are linked to by popular websites it can increase your blog’s rating.

With traditional print we are used to reading side boxes or tables giving extra information about the topic we are writing about. Think of academic writing and the use of Footnotes to reference further information that is not immediately relevant to the text you are writing. However, with the Internet we can easily link to information sources that are important as well as give further information and credit to sources that we have used or ones that we think are relevant.

For example, if I am writing a post about Oscar Wilde, I may well link to the
Wikipedia entry on Oscar Wilde and make his name the link. If I am discussing an article that someone else has written, it is good practice and shows clear attribution to link to the article using the title of the article, the name of the author or some keywords. If I am introducing a new word I may link to a dictionary definition of the word. This is done using the linking icon (often a drawing of a chain to indicate a link and a broken chain to indicate one you want to remove).
See these entries for more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_website_linking

2. How do I upgrade the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) using WordPress?

You need to find the Store/upgrade section just under the Dashboard icon at the top of the left-hand column. With WordPress you will have to pay $30 a year to have the Custom Design Upgrade facility. These allow you to change the style – fonts size and colour – and layout of your blog and customise its look. In Blogger (www.blogger.com) you don’t have to do this. You will need to check each platform carefully to see what you need to do and how much you may need to pay to change the style sheets. These change the WAY your blog looks, not the content; you can change fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Georgia etc.), colour and general layout.

The CSS is part of the design element that can make your blog stand out from the crowd. Cascading Style Sheets “allow you to store style presentation information (like colours and layout) separate from your HTML structure. This allows precision control of your website layout and makes your pages faster and easier to update.”

3. Should I ditch my website and transfer to a blog platform?

Good question. It depends what your website does for you, how much it costs, whether you have to get someone else to change things for you or you can do it yourself. Nowadays a lot of people want to have as much control as possible adding new material, functionality etc. Also you may have outgrown its capabilities. Blogging platforms and websites are becoming increasingly interchangeable. Next time you see a website or blog, look at the bottom of the page – you may have to scroll down – and you will see how it was built.
See the WordPress video tutorials on the our website. There is a video on www.wordpress.com versus www.wordpress.org as well as other video tutorials that can help answer some of these questions.

ABOUT WORDPRESS FROM SITE: WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying someone a fee.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is limited only by your imagination.
(And tech chops.)”

About WordPress.org: “On this site you can download and install a software script called WordPress. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything.
About WordPress.com: “There is also a service called WordPress.com which lets you get started with a new and free WordPress-based blog in seconds, but varies in several ways and is less flexible than the WordPress you download and install yourself.

4. Can I have more than one person writing for a blog?

Yes and many people do. You will need to look at the platform you use as t0 how to add extra people. Usually, they can be at an Administrator level and an Author/Contributor level. Using WordPress look for the left-hand column and the icon that is three up from the bottom, it looks like a playing piece for a game. You can invite people to become an Administrator, Editor, Author or Contributor of your blog.

Administrator: An administrator has full and complete ownership of a blog, and can do absolutely everything. This person has complete power over posts/pages, comments, settings, theme choice, import, users – the whole shebang. Nothing is off-limits, including deleting the entire blog. Only one administrator per blog is recommended!

Editor: An editor can view, edit, publish, and delete any posts/pages, moderate comments, manage categories, manage tags, manage links and upload files/images.
Author: An author can edit, publish and delete their posts, as well as upload files/images.

Contributor: A contributor can edit their posts but cannot publish them. When a contributor creates a post, it will need to be submitted to an administrator for review. Once a contributor’s post is approved by an administrator and published, however, the contributor may no longer edit it. A contributor does not have the ability to upload files/images.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

5. What’s the difference between a podcast and an audio recording? I’ve already got the space upgrade so I can put audio on there, but is it the same thing?

Put up anything that shows off your skills. A “podcast” might be considered to be a short, complete package, with a beginning middle and end. But you could just put up recorded interviews for example, or put snippets of audio within a written piece, so people can listen to your interviewee actually say the words you have quoted. Consider using ‘Audioboo’ as an alternative to hosting your own audio.

6. When should content be made as a post and when as a page? I’ve gone for all the “factual” stuff, e.g., CV and testimonials as pages, and all my ‘whittering-ons’ as posts – does that sound about right?

Yes, that’s sound right. In general fixed content could be pages (Home, About, Contact Us etc) and your regular updates as posts. It should now be possible to add post categories to your menu so you can blog about different things under different categories each showing up under a different menu heading. Whitter away.

7. Can a gallery/slideshow be put into any post? I assumed they had to be a separate page.

You should be able to insert photos, video, galleries, slide shows etc into any and every page and post.

8. I’ve upgraded to CSS. It’s looking like rocket science to me. How on earth do you work out (from your theme’s existing style sheet) which bits relate to the bits you want to change? For instance, when there are several header styles, how do you know which is the one you’re looking for? The way the elements of the site are titled seems so random – header f, widget z and so on – how do you find how to change the colour of links, for instance, when they’re not described as such on the style sheet? Is it trial and error – change a style and see what happens?

Tip: Copy the whole stylesheet and paste into a text file, save. Have two windows open, one with the site running and one with back-office WordPress CMS. Always view the site in the first window and always work on it in the second. Then you can ‘trial and error’ and if it goes wrong past the original style sheet back to put it back again. Once you have a successful change, save that new version of the stylesheet as your back-up copy.
Typical things you might want to change are:
h – headlines and sub-headings
a – links

9. How does one go into the business page on Facebook without compromising your private page?

Once you are logged in you can use any of the pages or groups to which you are an administrator. It appears to you that everyone can see everything but actually only you can because you are logged in as you. Others will not be able to see all of that. But the basic lesson is: if there is something you’d rather people didn’t see, don’t put it online.

10. How often should I blog?

Little and often is best. If, on the other hand, you have lots of other things going on online and they are appearing on your site through links or your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles then you may blog less frequently.

11. How many words should I use per blog?

As many as you like. Short blogs are good – 350 words or so, but you can also go to town and analyse things in depth. Break them up into smaller bite sized chunks. With clear sub-heading (use the headings menu – don’t just make them bold)

12. How does blogging help to build your brand image?

It shows you variously, depending on how you blog and what you blog about, as an authority, an expert, a human being with a sense of humour, a professional, on the ball, connected, up-to-date and so on. Make sure you use links and get people to link to you. Comment on other people’s blogs and seek comments on yours. This will also bring your blog higher up the search engines so people will be able to find you.