Is Blogging Just About Money? ramblinggit.com

@bradenslen You wrote: Does anyone know of or has written a “how to blog” article that is not about the money? Dave Winer would be a fertile source for such things. It also occurs to me that one could put together a supply from Micro.blog too. I will send you some of my own.

But I think that a lot more could be generated here if @manton were to offer a pin for writing such an article. And what better place to have them than right here?

@bradenslen I linked to this yesterday Why Blog? great reasons why academics might blog which works for other folk too.

@Ron Please do send some of your own! Good ideas too. Micro.bloggers might want to tackle this or may have already.

@bradenslen Well you already know about my site that I need to get back to updating, bloggingsimply.net.

@johnjohnston that is an excellent article. You are right, it applies to everyone. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

@bradenslen I just suggested an Education section on yr directory. I’ve a few blogs to add if that would be of interest.

@hope I feel like I won the jackpot lottery. Hope, you have a whole blog about "how to blog" without all the money stuff. And you are right, I did know about your blog but it just slipped my mind. I'm going to correct that, if you don't mind, I'm listing bloggingsimply.net in the directory at Indieseek.xyz straight off.

@johnjohnston Thanks for suggesting that. The Education section has been approved and please do add away.

@bradenslen I will. I quickly made note of a dozen postings from my own archive and will fold them into a summary posting for you in a day or a few. You're doing very good work. Keep it up!

..@bradenslen Of course .I don't mind! I think that's the first time I've been listed in a directory since like 2005-2006 hah.

@bradenslen Unfortunately I got pretty sick last month and couldn't continue with both challenges, and everything else that happened to suddenly fall on me all at once.

.@bradenslen You know why it's without all the money stuff? First of all, because blogging is fun. Secondly, because I don't just want to do the same stuff everyone else does, write .exactly what everyone else writes. Blah, that's definitely not fun! I tried to do that for a while with the Wealthy affiliate stuff last year and I could never, ever get into it because you had to write 3000-5000 word posts with images. No thanks!

@Ron Thanks Ron!

@hope You are listed in Internet > Blogging. Prepare for massive traffic. Okay, maybe not. 2006? Well, you can now say 2018. :-)

@hope That's a good reason. It's easier to find your own voice when you are not worried about making money or minimum word counts.

@jgmac1106 made way more since with line breaks. Have the worst time writing poetry in markdown

@johnjohnston If you don't mind, I'm going to add this to the directory too.

@jgmac1106 Bravo Greg! That was well done.

@jgmac1106 The line breaks came through, at least on the Comments panel in WP admin. I haven't actually checked it on the page yet. Yea for webmentions and WP.

@bradenslen of course not. Thinking about a few to add at the weekend.

..@bradenslen You bet it is! Not only that but it's easy to say hmm this isn't working, and either change things quickly, or just be done. I have a couple sites that lol I got the wrong domain for because I don't update daily hah. I like the domains I got and will probably keep those, but will register new ones.

..@bradenslen Lol what's "massive traffic?" I mean that's something I've never seen hah. I'd be happy if I got 50 human visits a month lol. Looks like I got 6 yesterday, go me! I don't promote too much. I do tweet my posts on the blog's account by hand, not automatically anymore.

..@bradenslen Also, how'd you pull off the directory with WP? Are you using any plugins to accomplish that? That's the kind of thing that it seems like WordPress wouldn't be all that useful for.

@bradenslen I'm thinking about making a directory-ish thing for me. I mean a list of links I like and/or use, organized by categories. Most likely with RSS and search, at least. Mostly because I love RSS, use it as often as I can and think it's still the coolest thing ever!!

@hope The directory is a paid stand alone script that can also act as a plugin for WP. It's by www.wsnlinks.com . I had used the free version of WSNLinks back in 2003 so I felt comfortable trying it and it is one of the few Web 1.0 directory scripts still rigorously supported by the creator.

I decided to go with the combination of WP plus the directory as plugin, mainly because of the Indieweb.org plugins available for WP. A directory on it's own is pretty passive in that it is hard to draw users to it. It would be totally dependent on search engines. But combined with a WP blog plus Indieweb plugins, suddenly I can reach out to the world by making blog posts: I can syndicate to Twitter, G+, Mastodon and Micro.blog. I can get webmentions back from those places. I can talk with a growing number of Indieweb blogs. It all helps to get noticed so that users can find the directory.

There are some limitations: the directory as a plugin, uses the Wordpress theme's header and footer and also the Theme's CSS. I was limited in what themes I could use because so few are Indieweb compatible. The theme I am using, Sempress, which I like would not have been my first choice for a directory but I went with it because it was 100 percent Indieweb compatible.

WP is a beast. WSNLinks is a beast with many hundreds of switches and settings to turn it's many features on and off. But WSN is very powerful. It wasn't all smooth sailing but I was able to call upon support from the creator of WSNLinks and he has gotten it all working together.

@hope I think that would be grand, making your own directory. I started with just my own selected bookmarks and "read laters" and then went from there. I would love to see more small directories.

I'm with you on RSS. I don't think we've explored all the ways it can be used for discovery yet. I wish I had a greater understanding of it's inner workings and how it can be used.

Be sure to let me know if you directory questions, I'll try to answer them as best I can.

@bradenslen I was looking at directory plugins last night and found some interesting ones. I'm definitely not great at picking themes lol. I'm not sure why WP has to be such a major beast, but it definitely is! I'll check out the WSN links plugin. I find flipping switches to be fun, but I'm weird like that!

@bradenslen well WP themes shouldn't really care which plugins you use, in my opinion. I mean if I want to build a directory and use that plugin, or use a lifestreaming plugin, the theme shouldn't care. Themes should strictly define the site design and structure. The backend part should be separate.

@bradenslen Wow that script is a powerhouse! I don't think I'll use a lot of the features.

@bradenslen It's unfortunate that we don't use RSS more the way micro.blog lets us add feeds from various sites and/or services. I especially like that feature. I really did enjoy Friendfeed as a lifestream, for instance. I'm pretty sure that WP has plugins for that.

@bradenslen Right now I use @linklockerapp to make my own private directory lol. I own the domain webspinner.link which is an interesting one. I'm either going to use that or webspinner.me as the URL for the directory.

@hope I thought exactly the same thing about themes. For most things they don't matter. It's the Indieweb suite of plugins that most themes have trouble with.

So for me that kinda caused a chain reaction. I wanted to use the Indieweb plugins and that limited me on my theme choices. The theme I'm usiing works great with Indieweb, and I like it a lot for a blog, but it's a bit somber for the directory, which as a plugin uses the WP CSS instead of it's own native themes.

@hope It is. I'm thinking WSNLinks might be overkill for what you want to do. There has to be something out there. You could use Links Shortcode plugin for a directory if you don't find anything suitable.

@Ron good idea .. but the challenge I suspect is that this would require a qualitative analysis of the post.

@hope I have a dim memory of some WP plugin that makes a feed reader on Wordpress.

@hope Oh either one of those domains would be excellent. I like "webspinner" a lot. It's memorable.

@bradenslen Lol well I suppose that’s one advantage I have. I’m completely unable to see the design, so I evaluate websites on function only. Form does exist, but it’s more like which element comes before which, etc. It’s more about how the site is structured than the colors, fonts and pictures. That being said accessibility is completely 100% relative, it can never be absolute because there are so many people with different experience levels.

@bradenslen There are other links manager plugins for WP. This is a nice little listy. lol sorry the opiates are making me loopy. https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/link-directory/ They are doing they’re job so far, though.

@bradenslen Oh man there are a glut of WP feed reader plugins too! Lol more listy goodness from the epic WP directory. https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/rss-reader/ Why someone hasn’t built an RSS reader based on WP I’m not sure. I suppose it would take too much server power to update everyone’s feeds. These are mostly plugins for displaying feeds on a site. I happen to subscribe to a lot of feed sources though so I think it would take too much work for WP to update them.

@bradenslen I grabbed those domains while they were hot lol. I do like webspinner! It comes from an article I saw around 2004 or so that’s title was something like, “why we can’t play spin the web anymore.” The article was about how because of malicious ads and such the web was becoming unsafe. Guess what? Thanks to ad blockers, we can reclaim the art of webspinning! Directories, webrings, topsites lists, deeper web search engines like Millionshort, RSS feeds, and so many more things can help with discovery, and bring the internet back to the fun thing it used to be. I’ve never stopped enjoying the internet and surfing the web!

..@bradenslen To me it doesn't matter how it looks as long as it works. It does it's job well!

@ramblinggit.com If you like lists, you'll enjoy making a directory! There are more directory plugins that are not listed in the wordpress.org site if that is any help.

@ramblinggit.com I've completely gone over to using web hosted readers because I have so many devices and frankly they work well. I'm using Inoreader right now and the free version is pretty generous on features.

@JohnPhilpin The pin could be done the same way @manton does the Apple events, but with a required Title: How I Blog.

@Ron doh !!!

Will I be forever just a grass hopper ?

@JohnPhilpin Ha ha ha. Best ever line after the word doh ! You had me laughing out loud. Not actually rolling on the floor, to be honest, but definitely loud. Here's what matters: you're a verrrry persistant grass hopper.

@Ron .. ROTF is a physical action I gave up a long time ago - it’s a past time for young people! Mahalo for the complement.

@ramblinggit.com

Why someone hasn’t built an RSS reader based on WP I’m not sure

Oh, but they have: wordpress.com/support/r...

@khurtwilliams WPReader is really kind of wonderful. It's just 1 step away from being a full blown blog based social network.

@bradenslen ha! I made a similar point a few months ago: Can I use WordPress Reader as a social RSS reader?