It’s just over a year since Blogging Tips last got a redesign. Whilst I did like the previous theme, I thought it was time to move the site forward with a fresh look. The new theme has the familar Blogging Tips black, red and white color scheme however it is a much tider looking design.

So for those of you reading this via RSS, here is a comparison of the old theme and the new :

Old Design

* If any of you are fans of the old them theme then please drop by and visit Blog Themes Club where you can purchase the theme directly for only $19.

New Design

Made by Guerrilla

Our new theme was designed by Mike Smith from Made by Guerrilla. Mike contacted me a week or so about a redesign of Blogging Tips as a way of promoting brand awareness of his new brand (a relaunch of his existing site Blog Theme Machine).

I had sent some emails about a redesign of Blogging Tips to a few designers over the last few months but nothing had come to fruition. Mike showed me his previous work and I was very impressed so we agreed to move forward with a redesign for the blog.

The header is much more professional looking though the logo has been reduced slightly to allow a 468×60 banner to be integrated. I had originally wanted to integrate a larger 728×90 banner in though this was removed from the final design as it pushed the main content area too far down the page.

The information shown on the sidebar of the new design is more or less as before. We have added a popular articles dropdown list and we have also utilized Sarahs ‘What Others Are Saying‘ plugin to show the latest posts from other great blogging related blogs.

The comment area now allows threaded comments, something which I unfortunately never had in the previous design. I’m sure you will all find that useful

All in all, the same information is being displayed on the site however I believe it’s easier to navigate and easier on the eye too.

Mike was an absolute joy to work with. He’s a fantastic designer who knows CSS inside out and I would recommend anyone who is looking for a unique design for their blog to shoot Mike an email at Made by Guerrilla.

You can read more about my experience with Mike here.

What Say You?

I hope you all love the new design. I appreciate that change isn’t always welcome but I’m sure anyone who has hesistations about the new theme will grow to love it over time.

As always, I’d love to hear your opinions on it. Praise wanted, constructive criticism more tham welcome but please leave the trash talk at home

Thanks,
Kevin

The final 1.0 release of bbPress, the popular forum script and kid brother of  the world famous blogging solution, WordPress, is now available. bbPress 1.0 alpha started around August of last year, and after several release candidates they have finally released bbPress 1.0 Final. The latest release is now available for download on the bbPress site. The current version is geared towards WordPress users offering various usability improvements which should be familiar to adopters who are used to WordPress.  A major overhaul of the admin interface has been done which should make WP users feel right at home.  All of the previous javascript code has been moved to jQuery and themes now include a “functions.php” template, a feature previously unique to WordPress which should be exciting news to many WordPress theme developers looking to make the jump the bbPress themes.

Here are a couple more of the exciting new features over the previous .09 series:

• “Voices” count on topics reports the number of individuals participating in a conversation
• Native support for cookie integration (single sign-on) with Wordpress 2.7 and 2.8
• Optionally allow login via email address as well as username
• Optional Akismet statistics page
• Improved use of posts admin to manage spam
• Read the full list of features at bbPress

Like many WordPress releases and other trademark Automattic developments bbPress is named for a jazz musician. This one is called named “Bechet” after the pioneering jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet. Its’ default theme  has some major accessibility improvements on the forms and also sports those cute beehive themed icons by Ben Dunkle which you see pictured above. Obviously a huge part of the success of this script is going to be determined by its compatibility with WordPress. Integration is going to be a key factor. Users will want a single-login and admins would most likely prefer the single user database as well. In earlier versions of bbPress integration was thorough but it was also tedious and painstaking to set up.

Integrating a forum with WordPress has been covered extensively on Blogging Tips and bbPress has kept coming up. In my opinion these changes that bbPress has made are going to make it more popular than phpBB as an open-source script. bbPress 1.0 final was released just this afternoon, so I haven’t had a chance to try it on any test servers or live web sites yet. I am hoping the integration with WP is as smooth as they say it will be. One of the first questions to come up on today’s announcement was about a possible migration from the popular vBulletin script. How many other forum options could bbPress potentially trump here? Could the open source bbPress forum replace the paid forum scripts like Invision and vBulletin?

If you read a number of blogs, perhaps even too many blogs, then Feedly could be the best RSS blog reader for you.  Feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page. The only downside is that Feedly is built upon Google Reader and Firefox – you need both to play.  Feedly displays your Google Reader feeds in a magazine-like format, allowing you to browse over multiple categories, preview post pictures and all your read items are synchronized back to Google Reader.

However, if you are already using Google Reader and Firefox then the Feedly Firefox extension will add a new level of ease and enjoyment to your blog reading.  Imagine the difference between a text book and People magazine – that’s the difference between most RSS readers and Feedly.

I have used numerous RSS readers like Google Reader and Bloglines, but none come close to the Feedly interface that makes aggregation more familiar and easy to use.  Feedly it segments and sorts the content flows into the columnar magazine format many of us are familiar with.

Feedly Blog Dashboard

Forget about even reading all the blogs you subscribe to, just remembering what blogs you subscribe to can be a challenge and hard to view in most RSS readers.  But check out how with one click on the dashboard link you get a crystal clear index style overview of every blog you subscribe to.  And managing your blogs is simple – click on the star on the left of the source name to mark is as favorite. Click on the X box to unsubscribe (your decisions are passed along and synchronized with Google Reader).  The dashboard can quickly show you details on your reading – light blue background means that you have shared some article from that blog during the last 30 days. A light red background means that you have not read any articles from that source for the last 30 days.

Feedly Integration

Since Feedly sits on top of Google Reader you right away get the sense that integration is key to this product.  I have to admit that I have been spending so much time reading more blog posts that I have no fully explored all of Feedly’s options.  However, you can integrate with Twitter, Ubiquity, FriendFeed and Google Apps.  You can even watch College Humor,  Hulu videos and Daily Show videos in an inline mode – viewing the videos right within the Feedly interface.

Feedly is ahead of it’s time

If you take the Feedly plunge than you should check out the Feedly Blog because they use their blog very effectively to seek out customer feedback as to how to prioritize new Feedly features.  As you can tell, I think Feedly is pretty good right now, many like Robert Scoble have even said that Feedly is ahead of it’s time.  So it’s now time for you to take the plunge and test it out!

Swimwire is yet another social aggregator that allows you to import various social networks into your account such as Twitter and YouTube. If you can get over the distracting rotating header (that seems to be on every page) you can then either sign up for free or sign in via Facebook connect.

From there you’ll want to edit your profile, details, image, privacy and add all of your supported sites. There are 46 sites that you can import into your Swimwire account. You will need to enter your full profile URLs. Whenever you click in one of the text boxes a small site description will appear above your mouse pointer.

Swimwire also has “wires” which are pretty much like Facebook applications. You will already have the Wall wire by default, once you sign up. You can browse through the available wires; currently there are only 6 available. Of course, since Swimwire is in beta, I’m sure they’ll be adding a lot more in the near future.

There is a Twitter updates wire that will display your Twitter updates on your profile. There are also Vimeo Channel and YouTube Channel wires that let you display your videos from each site on your profile. If you like music then you’ll love the Dizzler Media Jukebox wire that lets you create and show off playlists.

Finally there’s the Feeds wire which, as you may have already guess, displays an RSS feed on your profile. If you decided to use this one, just remember that the entire post will be shown on your profile. So if you are displaying a feed with long posts, it will make your page very long.

On the Swimwire homepage you are able to view recent activities from everyone else on the site. You can choose to show everyone or just show you and your friends. You can even see who is currently online.

In my honest opinion, Swimwire is nice but it seems to be missing “something”. It also seems to be kind of inactive yet, I feel that the potential is there. With all of the new social tools coming out on a daily basis it can be hard to compete so, I guess Swimwire is just another site trying to stay afloat.

If you decide to try it out for yourself feel free to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments.

Last week, I explained Blogger’s new API for Gadgets which enables us to draw upon Blogger feeds in order to create useful and interactive gadgets.

In this post, I’ll explain how to create a very simple Gadget which draws upon Blogger feeds to create a simple “subscription” gadget which you can install in your Blogger blog. Unlike regular “widget installers”, anyone who installs this gadget in their blog will not need to input their blog’s URL in order to retrieve the blog feeds: instead, the blog feed will be generated automatically by the gadget.

The basic structure of a Blogger gadget

To create a gadget for Blogger, we first need to understand the basic structure we will be working with.

Gadgets for Blogger (and Google) are constructed of XML files. Don’t worry if you have no experience with XML – provided you can use a bit of HTML you can easily create a gadget using this tutorial!

This is how a really basic gadget is coded:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
   // More Module Preferences go here
</ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[

    HTML content goes here

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

We’re going to use this structure to build a simple gadget which wil retrieve the posts feed of the Blogger blog it is installed on to create a “subscription” link.

To achieve this, we need to utilize some “Module Preferences” for the Gadget, and a little bit of JavaScript.

Module Preferences for creating our simple subscription gadget

When we create our gadget, we can add a number of “module preferences” to our gadget which create interactive functions.

In the example above, you can see I added a title to the gadget (title=”A Sample Gadget”).  We could also add the name and URL of the author, like this:

<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget"
author="Amanda Fazani"
description="Testing a sample gadget"
author_email="foobar@mail.com"
height="200">

Beneath this section in the example gadget above, you will notice a section where we can add more Module Preferences.

Here we can add some “required features” which enable us to parse and display aspects of the blog feed in which the gadget is installed.

To create our simple subscription gadget, we need to use the google.blog feature. This feature relies on the opensocial-0.7 feature (a current bug in the system, which should be resolved soon) so we need to include this feature too.

Here’s how to include these required features in our sample gadget:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
 <Require feature="opensocial-0.7"/>
 <Require feature="google.blog"/>
</ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[

HTML content goes here

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

The google.blog function enables us to retrieve elements of the blog feed. Using this feature, we can call:

• The main posts feed URL
• The main posts feed as JSON
• The main comments feed URL
• The main comments feed as JSON
• Post and comment feeds for individual post pages, as both the feed URL and JSON

These elements (and the code required to call them) are documented fully in the Blogger Gadgets documentation. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll concentrate only on retrieving the URL of the main posts feed.

Retrieving the URL of the Blog Post Feed

In order to retrieve the URL of the post feed, we need to tell the google.blog function to retrieve the URL for us, which we can then display in the gadget.

Here’s where it gets a little complicated

In order to retrieve the blog feed from google.blog, we need to pass a pair of arguments. This is because google.blog loads the feeds asynchronously, so it doesn’t stop the browser from “hanging” (freezing the page).

The pair of arguments consists of:

• A function to call after the blog is loaded: this will tell the gadget to retrieve the feed URL and what we want to do with this URL
• a call to google.blog and window.name (which prevents the browser from hanging).

We’re going to call these functions using JavaScript, which is added between the <![CDATA[ and ]]> tags, like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write(viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl());   // This gets the posts feed and writes it in the gadget
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);  // This tells the gadget to load the function (getFeedUrl) after the blog is loaded

 </script>

The tag

viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl()
  

is the function we use to collect the URL of the posts feed.

When we add this script to our sample gadget, this should output something like this:

Now that we’ve been able to get the URL of the posts feed and write it in our gadget, we can make this URL into a clickable link using a little more JavaScript, like this:

<script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write("<a href='" + viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl() + "'>Subscribe to Posts<\/a>");
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);

 </script>

With this extra JavaScript, the output of our gadget will look like this:

Here is the complete XML code for our simple subscription widget:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Module>
<ModulePrefs
title="A Sample Gadget">
 <Require feature="opensocial-0.7"/>
 <Require feature="google.blog"/>
 </ModulePrefs>

 <Content type="html">
 <![CDATA[
 <script type="text/javascript">

 function getFeedUrl() {
 document.write("<a href='" + viewFeeds.getPostsFeedUrl() + "'>Subscribe to Posts<\/a>");
}

 var viewFeeds = new google.Blog(getFeedUrl, window.name);

 </script>

 ]]>

 </Content>
</Module>

To test this gadget, copy the code above into a simple text editor (my favourite is Notepad ++) and save the file as sample.xml.

You can then upload your XML file to your web host, and note down the URL of your gadget which will enable you to add this gadget to your blog. Alternatively you can download/use the URL for this sample gadget: download sample gadget (XML file).

Adding Blogger Gadgets to your Blog

To add (or test) Blogger gadgets in your blog, go to Layout>Page Elements in your Blogger dashboard. Choose the section where you would like to add your gadget and click on the “Add a gadget” link.

On the pop-up page, you need to click the link which says:  “Add your own”.

Then paste the URL of your gadget in the space provided:

When you click “Add by URL” you should be presented with a preview of how the gadget will appear in your blog. You can then click “Save” to place the gadget in your Blogger layout, and move the position as with any regular widgets/gadgets that you add.

What else can we do with this gadget?

In the second part of this mini-series, I’ll explain how to utilise “User preferences” to create interactive elements for your gadget. This tutorial will enable you to write a more complex gadget where users can change the “Subscribe to Posts” link to whatever text is preferred, and also to add an optional feed icon to the widget.

You may have also noticed that the Gadget uses default styles for the background, text and link color. Blogger’s new API for gadgets enables us to parse the colour scheme of the blog and style our gadgets so they blend with the overall layout. So in part three of this series, I’ll explain how to utilize the “skins” feature to create gadgets which blend with the layout of the blog in which they are produced.

Final thoughts

I hope this tutorial has provided enough information to use the updated API to create gadgets for Blogger which use the google.blog function to retrieve the URL of the posts feed.

Please feel free to build upon this basic gadget for your own purposes and let me know what you think by leaving your comments below.

If you’ve ever come back from a vacation or conference and been reluctant to open up your RSS reader due to the sheer number of unread items that certainly awaited, you are already familiar with “second inbox guilt”. It’s caused by having a second unread count, much like your email inbox, that you have to constantly churn and plow through every day.

The cure for this disease, however, may well be a fever.

Fever is a different kind of RSS reader, rather than burdening you with unread entries and making you rummage through hundreds or thousands of posts to find what you want to read, Fever tries to bring the important articles to the top, making them easy to find and easy to follow. Though it lets you maintain a list of “must follow” feeds, it also works to find and summarize the most important news before you even get there.

Though it is a new and potentially compelling idea for managing RSS feeds, it does have some pretty severe limitations, including a hefty price tag, that will likely keep it from being widely adopted or used. Still, it is worth taking a moment to see if it is right for you.

The Big Idea

What Fever does is in many ways similar to how Google tracks PageRank on the Web. It looks at your RSS feeds and tracks what sites/stories the entries are linking to. The more articles that link to a particular story, the “hotter” it becomes. If enough entries link to one page, it becomes a “hot” and gets pushed to the top of your feed reader’s front page. Best of all, every story that links to that item is displayed directly underneath, making it very easy to read everything that’s been said about it in your feed.

Fever does this by classifying your feeds into two types. The first is “Kindling”, which are your “must read” feed items. These are the feeds where you are interested in nearly every post and want to read them as if they were in a regular RSS reader. The second kind is “Sparks” which are active feeds that are more hit and miss, where much of the content isn’t of interest. Sparks feeds are not intended to be read, but rather, are simply used to increase the temperature on popular stories.

In Fever, temperature is always based on the human body, meaning 98.6 degrees F and 37 degrees C, so that when a story gets “hot” it runs a fever, pushing it well over than normal temp.

The result is that, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds or are gone for a long period of time, you don’t need to read through hundreds or thousands of articles to find what was important. Simply checking your “Hot” list, for which you can set the date range, will clue you in to the most important stories within a few minutes.

Other Benefits

In addition to its unique way of displaying RSS feeds, Fever also has a few other benefits to consider.

1. Clean Layout: Fever’s layout is clean, intuitive and AJAX powered. It automatically refreshes feeds at regular intervals and does a good job displaying a lot of information in a very uncluttered way.
2. iPhone/Mobile Version: Fever also has a very effective mobile version designed for the iPhone or similar phones. Works great for keeping up with news while on the go since it is tailored to doing quick checks of important stories.
3. Bookmarklet: Since Fever has multiple places to put a feed, it has a special bookmarklet that lets you add feeds to either your Kindling or your Sparks depending on where you need it.
4. Keyboard Shortcuts: As with Google Reader, Fever uses keyboard shortcuts to make navigation easier and faster.

However, despite all of this, Fever is not right for everyone. Though it comes with a large number of compelling features, it has a series of drawbacks and concerns that will probably prevent it from becoming a mainstream success.

Drawbacks and Limitations

The same as Fever is different in way that it reads feeds, it is also different in the way it is implemented. Rather than being a site that you go to and register for an account or an application that you install on your desktop, Fever is a server-installed application, similar to WordPress or Joomla. This means that, in order to use Fever, you have to have your own server with PHP and MYSQL available and know how to set up applications on it.

Also, similar to those applications, the set up of Fever is not as simple as desktop applications. It involves uploading a folder, setting permissions, creating a database and a new database user. Though not difficult to a veteran Web admin, it can be intimidating to a more casual user that only does such things rarely, if ever.

Another factor to consider is whether your server can easily handle the load of Fever. Though it seems to be pretty light and not use up a lot of memory on my server, it is easy to see how, especially with a ton of feeds, it could become a drag, slowing down your public site.

However, the worst barrier for many will be the price tag: $30. Though it’s not an extremely high amount to pay for an application, in an era where nearly every other RSS reader is free justifying the expense may be difficult to justify.

Bottom Line

In the end, Fever is a great RSS reader that is going to be severely limited by a heavy price tag and a limited number of users capable of installing it. If there were a place to create a Fever account and run it on their server, Fever would undoubtedly start winning over a larger audience. But currently it is limited to a niche audience of those with Web servers that are willing to spend the time and money to set it up on their server.

For better or worse, I am in that market and have been using Fever this past week and loving it. However, I can easily see that it is not for everyone nor is it for most.

Ironically though, my greatest complaint about fever has been the time it has taken me to set up and run. I’ve had to reorganize my feeds to maximize the temperature on relevant stories and keep the number of “must read” feeds to a minimum. I’ve also had to subscribe to many additional feeds in the “Spark” folder to help find important stories (strangely I wasn’t subscribed to enough feeds at first).

Still, I see those actions as an investment to help me spend less time reading feeds and still be more aware of the important stories in my field.

If you meet the qualifications for running Fever, which you probably do if you run your own WordPress install, it may well be worth giving it a shot. Otherwise, just wait and see if maybe, someday, they’ll consider setting up a hosted version of it you can register for.

If you missed the post on faulty coordination, Sentence Structure and Coordination, be sure to check it out.  We discussed that you don’t always need to begin a sentence with the subject, and the problems we can run into with improper coordination.  This post is a continuation of that topic covering faulty subordination, rambling sentences and faulty parallelism.

There are two types of problems we can encounter when using subordination; we can use the wrong subordinator or we can subordinate the wrong idea.  To avoid using the incorrect subordinator, always make sure that the connecting subordinator shows exactly how two ideas are related.

Faulty coordination:  John ran for months even though he would be ready for the marathon.
Correct coordination:  John ran for months so that he would be ready for the marathon.

Common Subordinators and Their Usage:

To show time: after, before, whenever.
To show cause: because, since, as.
To show purpose: that, so that, in order that.
To show condition: if, even though, unless.

The second problem mentioned is not showing how ideas are related.  To avoid this we can use a subordinator to make the less important idea a subordinate clause and express the more important idea as an independent clause.

Faulty coordination:  Although they took a walk, it was raining.
Correct coordination:  Although it was raining, they took a walk.

To wrap up coordination and subordination, remember:
1.  Connecting words need to best describe how the ideas are related.
2.  If ideas are unrelated, use two separate sentences.
3.  Use a coordinating word if both ideas are equal in importance.
4.  Use a phrase or subordinate clause if related ideas are not equally important.

Rambling or Run-On Sentences

Sometimes we’re all guilty of having a sentence ramble on into infinity.  This is generally caused by using too much coordination.  We can avoid this by separating our ideas into more concise sentences.

Rambling sentence:  Children who get involved in sports at school are more socially adapted and have more self esteem than children who don’t participate in sports because they have support of the group, companionship, and are better able to focus on team efforts as opposed to loners who only focus on being an outcast.

Improved:  Children who get involved with sports are more socially adapted and have more self esteem than children who don’t participate in sports.  The children involved with sports share group support, team focus and companionship.  Loners often focus on being an outcast.

Faulty Parallelism

Ideas in sentences, like railroad tracks, should be parallel to one another.  If one of the railroad tracks is slightly off, the train derails.  In the same sense, if sentences contain a faulty parallelism, it derails the sentence.

Faulty: The band members were enthusiastic, energetic, and of great talent.
Parallel:  The band members were enthusiastic, energetic, and talented.

Faulty: Playing your best is more important than to win.
Parallel:  Playing your best is more important than winning.

Faulty:  Jack’s goals are to study accounting and saving money for the future.
Parallel:  Jack’s goals are to study accounting and save money for the future.

It’s not always possible to ask a writer to clarify a mistake.  Making sure that you’ve combined sentences correctly and used the proper combinations will help ensure that the message is conveyed to the reader the way it was intended.

It’s a pretty common task for a blogger to need a screen capture to get a picture of a Web page or grab a logo of a web site that they are writing about.  While Windows, Mac and Linux include some basic tools for screen captures, most bloggers will want a screen capture tool with the ability to capture portions of pages and add text or other annotations to the captured images.  What’s amazing is that the improvements in screen capture software are rolling out at an amazing pace.

Just earlier this year Jonathan Bailey wrote about Skitch: The Mac Blogger’s Best Screenshot Tool and 3 Firefox Screen Capture Tools.  While those tools are great, I’m impressed with the features that the web based Aviary is bringing to the table. Aviary just won a Webware 100 award for their photo editing service, but they are certainly not letting the award encourage them to rest on their laurels.  Indeed, less than a month after winning the award they have rolled out an addition which adds even more features to their screen capturing tool.

You can now capture any webpage at all, from any browser, by simply putting Aviary.com/ in front of the URL! So if you want to capture Blogging Tips homepage you just change http://www.bloggingtips.com to Aviary.com/http://bloggingtips.com. Your browser will open a new tab or window with the Aviary web-based image editor ready to go.  With the Aviary editor you can edit it, add simple markup like text and save the image to your desktop or host it online.  The capture worked on every page that I tested it with, using both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and even with pages that were Flash driven.

Using the URL to create the screen capture is just one of three ways to activate Talon screen capture.  If you want additional options like capturing a page at different resolutions or to only capture a portion of the page you can click Screen Capture on Aviary’s home page or just bookmark and go directly to http://aviary.com/launch/talon to start up the screen capture and editing service.  For even faster screen captures, Firefox users can install their Firefox addon which allows you to place a SCREEN CAPTURE option on your toolbar for quick access to the screen capture utility.

The Aviary editor screens are a bit cluttered – it doesn’t have the simple elegance of a Skitch for the Macintosh of Jing for the PC.  Also with all these features, the screen capture is a few seconds slower than other software – but it provides you access to free screen capturing, image editors, color editor, effects editor and more.   If you have not yet invested in a screen capture program, then Aviary is one to test out.

There has been a lot of discussions lately about WordPress and it’s GPL policy for themes. Thord Daniel Hedengren posted about the latest twist in the GPL debate today.

WordPress have added a Commercially Supported GPL Themes directory to the themes area of WordPress. There is currently 9 theme websites displayed in this commercial area : Pro Theme Design, Jestro, iThemes, Press75, StudioPress, Spectacu.la, Themeshift, ThemeHybrid and WooThemes. Though I have no doubt that this will encourage many more commercial theme sites to adopt the General Public License due to the exposure that WordPress can give them.

To be included in the commercial theme area your theme site must :

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
• Have professional support options and optional customization.
• Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date and professional looking.

Matt mentioned this new addition in his post about GPL themes earlier today.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible.

To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

Link : Themes are GPL, too

Leveraging your Twitter stream can be archived in a number of ways, but avoiding the negative connotation of being spammy or being labeled as a gimmick can be the tricky thing. Some tweet for a cause in order to ensure that their online actions aren’t perceived in bad light. The upside? You’re actually tweeting for a good cause. Now isn’t that a win-win?

It’s a lesson driven home by Franny Syufy over at About.com. She notes the current Twitter trend that Sockington started, which was little more than a curious return to the cat-blogging phenomenon that Twitter once was. Drilling down to the origin of Sockington’s fame or the purpose behind Sockington’s website is even more of a curiosity, as we can all scratch our heads and wonder at the necessity and purpose of Sockington at all.

Sockington’s owner, however, has the benefit of turning Sockington’s popularity into revenue, as he sells t-shirts. But what happens when his celebrity status dies down? Will Sockington’s owner need to come up with a string of publicity stunts in order to extend Sockington’s 15 seconds of Twitter fame?

Not that Twitter can’t be used for publicity stunts, leveraging the microblog for profit and popularity. But another Twitter user is leveraging her stream for a good cause. Caroline Golin has been on Twitter for about as long as Sockington, but uses her community-driven activity in order to raise money for animal charity. For each person that followers her Twitter stream, Golin donates 5 cents to animal charity.

This particular take on participating in Twitter activity is not only a good example of how Twitter can be leveraged for an alternative action, but it really exemplifies the viral nature of web-based communities. Golin’s actions has caught the eye of corporations that have sponsored her, and are matching her donations to a certain degree.

This boils down to similar community-driven activity we see on Facebook, where individuals can rally around a cause and continue to take particular actions from there. Moving beyond redirecting followers to other websites through your bio URL or links shared via tweets, the action-oriented behavior that can arise from your Twitter stream is a testimony to the next level leveraging that can occur as a result of your own Twitter activity.

While Golin’s cause is rather specific, the concept behind it can be applied to you as a blogger. Find a way to incorporate action-oriented prods into your Twitter profile and your update stream. Encourage your followers to take a specific action or follow your example. Even if it’s not for a non-profit or charity cause, you can still take the next step in leveraging your Twitter stream by incorporating these action items into the core of what your Twitter stream is all about.

This past weekend I was at WordCamp Dallas, where I was given the opportunity to both speak to and interact with a group of over 300 fellow WordPress users, bloggers and soon-to-be bloggers. It was a great event that was a unique combination of wonderful sponsors, great planning, spectacular speakers and great attendees.

But if you are a blogger that is new to conferences, whether they are blogger-specific, technical or otherwise, there is a lot to remember. Blogging, for the most part, is a solo activity and if your job doesn’t sent you to a lot of conferences there may well be a lot that you forget or don’t think to bring.

Since conference season is under way and many bloggers may be treking out to their first convention, here are a few things that you should remember before you get in the car.

6. Swag

Swag, which now famously stands for “Stuff We All Get”, are giveaway items that you hand out at conferences. These are small, but useful items that carry your logo and information.

Swag isn’t right for every blogger but it is a great and relatively cheap way to make an impression. Bring something creative that is cheap but people will want to keep. If you’re not feeling imaginative, pens, buttons and plastic bags are all cheap, if environmentally unfriendly, ideas for giveaways.

Swag isn’t something that every blogger needs or should bring, but if you want to stand out and your budget allows it, it’s a great way to stand out from the crowd.

5. Business Cards

Business cards may seem to be archaic in the age of Facebook and Twitter, but when you are meeting people face to face in large numbers, they are very handy.

Be sure to make them attractive and interesting. Also, make sure they have all the relevant information including Twitter, Facebook and other accounts you want people to follow you at. Business cards, especially for bloggers are not just name, company, address, phone, etc.

If you aren’t sure how many to bring, it is better to have too many than too few. For most people who aren’t being very pushy with their cards, a run of 500 will be enough for several conferences but if you plan to be giving them out aggressively or putting large stacks on card tables (which most conferences have), be prepared with more.

Do this even if you don’t have anything to sell or to pitch, it’s just a great way to give your contact information to someone that you meet.

4. An Elevator Pitch

The term “Elevator Pitch” refers to a short, usually under a minute, description of what you or your site is about. it’s designed to let you describe what you do while riding up or down the elevator with someone who might be interested.

Ideally, your pitch should be very brief and be able to convey what makes you and your site unique. Anyone who hears it should know what you are about and why they should remember you after the conference.

It’s worth taking a few minutes to write and rehearse one, even if your conference doesn’t have elevators as most meetings at large events are very fleeting in nature.

3. A Nametag Holder

Yes, most conferences provide these, but you’re going to want to bring your own. A name tag holder at most conferences becomes much more than just a means of displaying your name but also becomes something of an additional pocket. Regular conference goers put business cards, ticket stubs and other necessities in their name tag holder rather than in their regular pockets, purse or bag.

The other problem is that most conferences, understandably, do not spend a great deal of money on their name tag holders and, as a result, they often break or otherwise fall off. Going to the store and buying a solid one can be a huge help and aid you in keeping track of both your name tag and whatever else you find is best to put in there.

2. Camera and Laptop

At a conference you’re going to be mobile so having a really good smartphone (Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre, etc.) and a decent laptop is crucial. Not only so you can be blogging, Twittering and otherwise talking about what’s going on at the conference, but so that you can record notes during talks, take photos, preserve contact information and generally take in everything you see.

Personally, I tend to favor my phone more than my laptop for most things but like keeping at least a small netbook nearby for anything that requires significant amounts of typing.

Not having good equipment causes you to miss great opportunities and not be able to retain as much information. If you want to get the most for your time and money, it is best to come ready to learn and record.

1. Your Courage

The most important part of any conference is networking. You are there to meet people so you need to prepare yourself to start talking to otherwise perfect strangers. This isn’t easy, even for people who are otherwise very sociable, so it warrants taking a few moments to practice.

Get used to talking to people when you’re out and about. Talk to people when you are waiting in line at the grocery store or while you’re waiting for public transportation. Starting up a conversation with random people is an important part of any conference and it is important that you know how to do so before you get there are a convention with hundreds of people is no place to learn.

The good news is that most of conferences are extremely friendly in nature. I’ve never been to a conference where I felt that people were rude or angry, though I may just be fortunate in that regard. Still, being surrounded by so many people you don’t know can be very intimidating, especially when trying to initiate 1 on 1 conversations.

Start today and by the time you go to the event, you should be in good shape.

Bottom Line

This is just a short list of some of the things bloggers should or must bring to every conference they go to, I’m eager to hear from you all what I left off this list. Let’s see if we can make this one a top ten.

Guess what?  Writers are not perfect.  You see proof of this fact every day if you read enough blogs, books, newspapers or magazines.  The best writers in the world make mistakes, misspell words, use poor grammar at times and punctuate incorrectly.  Why?  Because writers are human and humans make mistakes.  Sometimes humans make mistakes several times before they learn the lesson. Sometimes they never learn.

All writers’ have their pet peeves too, things they notice immediately that may go unnoticed by another writer.  A few of my pet peeves are the use (or misuse) of then and than and obvious misspellings of common words.  Writers will often point out these fallacies in material they find on the web, in the newspaper or in novels.  When this happens, the writer’s own shortcomings are subject to being scrutinized and pointed out by yet another writer who has different pet peeves.  Often the second writer does so in a way that is an obvious attack.  “How dare you point out someone else’s mistake when you make mistakes of your own?”

I’ve recently read several posts of this nature across the Internet.  The writer had pointed out several mistakes in material that he/she found disturbing; his/her own “personal pet peeves”.  Along comes another writer to point out the original posters mistakes (obviously these mistakes were the commenter’s’ pet peeves), but instead of constructive criticism, the commenter was blatantly rude, following that “How dare you” mentality.

As writers, we feel the need to correct mistakes that bother us, the mistakes that slap us in the face.  But we also need to be careful how we point out the mistakes that bother us because another writer will come along and catch our mistakes and be more than happy to attack us.  This attack is rarely pleasant.  Why?  It’s the “How dare you?” mentality again.  How could you possibly point out someone else’s mistakes when you yourself are such an imperfect writer?  You shall be attacked, stripped of your honor and humiliated to the entire world.

But, if you follow the writer who is giving the blatant criticism you’ll soon find they have mistakes of their own.  Why?  Unfortunately, they’re also an imperfect human who’s wielding a keyboard.  Should you jump on the vicious cycle of pointing fingers back at the writer who’s openly criticized your mistakes?  That depends on how well you can criticize someone, and how well you think they’ll take the finger being pointed back at them.

I’ve found mistakes in novels of well-known, published authors.  The author missed it in re-writes, the editor missed it, the publisher even missed it, but little ole’ me found it as obvious as a wart on a nose.  Did I attack the author?  No, I realize writers are human and are apt to make mistakes, even famous, published authors who have over 20 novels to their name.

Any time you point out someone else’s mistakes, you risk getting the backlash from another well-intentioned writer who has no concept of well-meaning, constructive criticism.  The only way to avoid this is to never point out another’s mistakes.  But writers are such a testy bunch and often feel it’s our duty to do these things.

If you do point out mistakes you should state that these are personal pet peeves of yours, and while you are not perfect, you feel these mistakes are simple and should have been avoided.  This does not give you a guarantee that you won’t be attacked, but its good defense material to throw back at the inevitable attacker who will find you.

Another pet peeve of mine is those writers who do attack in this way.  They come off as snobbish with a “better than thou” attitude.  And what really peeves me is the writer who attacks in this manner generally doesn’t have one published novel under their belt, nor do they have a degree in English like you’d expect.

As writers we should support one another and realize we are all imperfect, we all have different grammar rules and standards that annoy us to no end.  We should point out these shortcomings of other writers in a manner that is not intrusive, but helpful.  When I’m criticized (which is often, because I’m human and I write) I prefer to reply to the other writer with a “Thank You”, instead of throwing up my defense mechanism that can only lead to more harsh words.

Writing is a learning process, it’s a never-ending education.  No matter how long we’ve been a writer, we will still make mistakes.  Instead of attacking someone for their mistakes, try being a teacher and learn how to give constructive criticism, learn how to be a little more light-hearted when pointing fingers.  Remember, when you point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you.

As bloggers we are in the public eye.  The quickest way to lose your audience is to attack and alienate other bloggers and writers.  No one likes a jerk.

If you see obvious mistakes in my work, and you will, please point them out without attacking and I’ll reply with a gracious, “Thank you”, as I’m sure other writers will do in the same situation.

Tim Ferriss, author of the hugely popular book 4 Hour Work Week, posted one of his presentations today on his blog.

In the presentation Tim talks about blogging best practices, community building, harnassing data for your blog and much more. The video is just over 50 minutes in length. As well as having lots of great tips, it’s also gives a great insight into how a successful blogger like Tim thinks and operates.

I encourage you all to take the time to view this video at one point this week. I’m sure it will give you all some ideas about you can improve your own blog

Link : How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself

A few weeks ago I spoke about Gyutae Parks ebook release ‘The Winning Way – Ultimate Marketing Checklist‘. The ebook contained a huge amount of tips and ideas and is well worth downloading.

Gyutae is moving onto bigger and better things with today being the launch of his new member site Winners Circle. Unlike other member sites which try and explain how you can build up a successful website from start, Winners Circle teaches members through interviews and case studies.

These case studies contain a lot of information which is hard to find elsewhere and will take you through the development of a successful website from start to finish and show you how the owner built up up traffic to the site and promoted it.

In the video below Gyutae explains what the member site is all about in his own words

Winners Circle costs $47 a month however Gyutae is reducing the cost of a monthly membership to $27 for the first 200 members. He is also offering a 30 day money back gurantee to anyone who isn’t happy with the membership site.

I have spoken to Gyutae directly via Skype over the last few weeks about his blog and this new membership site and have been impressed with his ideas for his new community, and even more impressed with his enthusiasm.

Membership sites is a subject which I plan on speaking about more on Blogging Tips in the future. I believe that they are not suited to everyone as you need to make sure you take the time to absorb all the content to get the most from it. However, if you are someone who learns better with hands on advice and guidance, you can get a lot of value from joining a member site.

The case study which Gyutae showed me a few weeks ago for Winners Circle was a case study for LapTopComputers.org. It went into great detail about how the site generates traffic, infact, the article is just under 3,000 words, which gives you an idea of what to expect in the case studies.

A new case study will be added every week and there will also be a new interview added every 2 weeks. This is in addition to access to the member only forum too. Again, I don’t think member sites are for everyone but theres no doubt that they are a great source of information as the owners always reveal tips and tricks that are difficult to find elsewhere on the web. Gyutae has a lot of experience on the web, particularly with Search Engine Optimisation, so there’s no doubt that members will learn a lot from him.

If you are looking to improve your knowledge of internet marketing by joining a member site, I recommend checking it out.

Link : Winners Circle

Sadly, several celebrities have died in the past week. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and Billy Mayes. Social media has nearly taken the Internet down, breaking news, sharing personal stories and spreading their own thoughts and feelings regarding these tragedies. So why would someone take advantage of the morbid trend by hacking into a celebrity Twitter account and reporting that they too have passed away?

In light of the untimely deaths of so many celebrities in such a short period of time, it’s just creepy and unnecessary for a hacker to break into Brittney Spears’ Twitter account and spread rumors that she is dead. The hacker even went so far as to us the pop singer’s twitpic account for effect. While Spears has since updated her Twitter account and Twitter itself says it’s working on the particular vulnerability that allowed the twitpic hack, one has to wonder at the thought process behind such a hack.

I know the regular celebrity death rumors get spread around the Internet every so often. Earlier this year there was talk of teenage icon Miley Cirus turning up dead. But this most recent hack into Spears’ account is especially insensitive and a Twitter user should never stoop so low for driving traffic, pulling a publicity stunt or merely gaining attention. The hack diminishes the purpose and value of a communication tool such as Twitter, along with the community composition that goes along with the microblogging platform.

With this being said, I urge you to remember what Twitter is made for and how it’s best used. There are plenty of ways to generate traffic and attention on Twitter without completely misusing the Twitter system and taking advantage of its community. From hashtags to joining in n the discussion of the hack itself, you can maintain a healthy web presence and still build your brand using social media tools.