Funniest comment seen on a WordPress blog today
Posted on September 1st, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,179 views
“Hartley don’t even think about any wordpress editing – you’re an absolute hack of a webmaster. I saw your site about desserts and it looks like the work of a small child.”
Found here.
Tags: Humour, WordPress
Filed under Humour, comments | 2 Comments »
So what really is the difference between WordPress categories and tags?
Posted on August 31st, 2008 by Richard Catto 1,061 views
When version 2.3 of WordPress was released, the WordPress World got something they had been wanting for for a very long time – tags.
Prior to this watershed release of WordPress, which is still considered the best recent release of WordPress by some, tags were not implemented in the WordPress core code, instead individual bloggers had to rely on third party plugins developed to fill this gap, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior.
Version 2.3 made all these third party tag plugins obsolete. Finally, at last, WordPress had tags built right into the core code! It truly was a huge advance and many WordPressers raced over to download it.
However, before all this happened, many WordPressers (including this one) misused categories as tags, and the number of categories ballooned out of control. SEO plugins also encouraged WordPressers to adopt this malpractice.
Since then I’ve never taken the time to tame my WordPress categories and put them to the use they were originally designed, until now, that is.
So what really is the difference between WordPress categories and tags?
First of all, I’ve read a lot of posts which tackle this subject and still come away scratching my head and not fully comprehending.
Until I got stuck into playing with them directly and setting up a coherent browsing strategy, I never understood the BIG PICTURE that would allow me to just create them on the fly as I blog.
If you’ve never sat down and focussed your attention on just analysing your categories, you have probably missed what I always did.
The fundamental difference between categories and tags is this:
Categories are hierarchical structures whereas tags are flat.
That is the power that categories have that tags will never have. Categories form groups and super groups and super super groups etc., whereas tags just form groups.
If I have a category structure of World->Africa->South Africa->Cape Town and I place a post in the Cape Town sub-sub-sub-category, that post is included not only in Cape Town, but also in the South Africa sub-sub-group, the Africa sub-group and the World group.
People (your site readers) can use a coherently structured category list to drill down to exactly what they want in ONE CLICK or back up a bit, up the hierarchy, and take in a larger group of posts.
Categories are structured with the most broadly encompassing container at the top and the most specific container at the bottom.
In other words, a person can take in Africa as a whole or zero in on a particular house in a street in a town in a region in a province in a country in Africa. That’s the power and directness of categories.
Categories are not meant to be loosely structured and lying all over the place. They are meant to be tightly organised and logically put together under each other to give you the structure you need.
On the other hand, while categories represent order and logical structure, tags represent anarchy and chaos.
There is no structure or hierarchy to tags. Tags are one long list of attributes, that you assign to posts as they relate to them.
I have heard some bloggers opine that tags should represent keywords that are NOT present in your post. WRONG, oh WRONG WRONG WRONG. No, no, no, no! Do not do that!
Au contraire, go find the juiciest most important keywords in your posts and tag your posts with those. This will allow people to quickly zero in on exactly those posts where those important concepts are discussed.
To enhance your archive pages which list posts in the various categories or tags, there is a useful WordPress plugin, WP-SNAP!, that will alphabetize your posts and give you a clickable A – Z index at the top of each page.
To conclude this post, I will add that if you make it easy for visitors to browse your site by category or tag, you will retain their readership longer by giving them a more satisfying experience.
This site is in the process of optimising its category structure.
Tags: Categories, Tags, Ultimate Tag Warrior, WordPress, WordPress plugin, wp-snap
Filed under 2.3, Categories, Tags, wp-snap | 2 Comments »
Yahoo’s brand new WordPress plugin is being shown the finger by bloggers
Posted on December 16th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,913 views
Yahoo very recently announced the beta release of their new Yahoo shortcuts plugin for WordPress.
This I got to know of via shoemoney’s rather scathing review of it and of various WordPress personalities.
Jeremy Shoemaker’s blog is a joy to read because he isn’t a suckass uptight wannabe pseudo intellectual blogger who spends 90% of his day kissing the asses of his online buddies and the other 10% trying to sound all intellectual by using obscure words that have most people either reaching for a dictionary or clicking the back button.. This I see too much of in the South African Blogosphere. Pretentiousness. It’s a creeping disease amongst the weak and spineless. Don’t go there. Be yourself. Be normal. FFS!
The Shoemoney blog was listed by Adii as a must read for Web 2.0 professionals, whatever the hell that is. I’m just an ordinary blogger. Web 2.0 is just yet another meaningless buzzword, although not the worst. The most pretentious and most inane phrase I’ve heard in connection with bloggers is "New Media Evangelist".
What the fuck is a new media evangelist!? Do these people go around knocking on doors asking if they can pray with you for your web shite, that it may be saved?
"Let WordPress In! Let Him In! Oh Mighty Laawd, let WordPress In!"
I think I’ll take a hot cup of cocoa with a gaggle of Mormons anyday over that bullshit.
Now cunning Yahoo has dumped this oh so impressive plugin on the WordPress blogging community obviously with the hope of getting rave reviews and… the reverse has happened.
Why?
Because they’re pulling moves, and their ulterior motives are so blatant, that it has led to many bloggers taking offence. So far, most of them seem to be American bloggers. I just bet the many obsequious South African bloggers are already laying out their prayer mats so they can get down on their knees to kiss Yahoo butt come Tuesday.
Yahoo enlisted one of WordPress’ famous developers, Alex King, to write their Yahoo shortcuts plugin. He has done a pretty good job for Yahoo. I’ve installed the beta release on this blog, and I’ve used it to add pictures to many of my blog posts, including many older posts in my archives.
That is the one feature that HAS received the thumbs up from most bloggers. The plugin does an excellent job of integrating flickr into WordPress so that one can find a suitable image which is hosted on flickr, and insert it into your blog post without much fuss at all.
It is what the rest of the plugin does that is not so kosher. Yahoo analyses your post for keywords and then automatically links them to various Yahoo resources, many of which appear to be commercial in nature, WITHOUT REMUNERATING THE BLOGGER.
They’re offering a T-shirt to anyone who installs the plugin. And you have to be resident in the United States. They must be insane. Yahoo’s plugin effectively inserts text link adverts into the blog post without paying the blogger. Sure, you can remove them, but what the fuck was Yahoo thinking?
Yahoo must own an enormous pair of BRASS BALLS to risk offending bloggers like this. They’re already down in the search game – I mean, I like NEVER use Yahoo to search for anything. Yahoo is so stupid. What is it that most bloggers want most of all?
MONEY from their blogs.
Google understood this and gave bloggers Google adsense adverts. It has not been smooth sailing for them. Google has alienated many bloggers with their harsh policies around alleged click fraud. So there is an opportunity for someone to step in and save the day for bloggers by giving them a cool new blog toy that helps them make some money from their writing.
Instead Yahoo has come in and low-balled bloggers with their "free plugin" and offer of a T-shirt, but no money.
SHOW US THE GODDAMNED MONEY, YAHOO!
Or go home.
Don’t try and take advantage of us. Show some respect for bloggers. We put in a heck of a lot of hard work, spilling our sweat and blood and tears into our writing, and many of us would like to get something tangible back from that.
So, still no white knight for bloggers has appeared on the horizon. But surely, some day one will come for us? Surely?
Tags: Alex King, monetize blogs, Plugin, WordPress, yahoo
Filed under Plugin, yahoo | 2 Comments »
Bolton Deventer admits he is a faker
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,667 views
An anonymous coward calling himself Bolton Deventer created this WordPress.com blog calling it Web Traffic Made Easy.
The little cowardly shit-for-brains wrote a pathetic excuse, today, for his activities which although satirical in nature only aspired to be comedy on its best days, and there were no best days. His latest post announced the closure of his fake blog and the termination of his fake personality, Bolton Deventer, but without disclosing his true identity.
Bolton Deventer, you are a fag!
The site he created was meant to parody Guy McLaren who recently ran into trouble for his controversial ideas and his use of muti to submit his own blog posts. A rabid crowd of arseholes on muti objected to his tactics and banned McLaren from using it further.
David Duarte is a co-owner of muti, one of the movers and shakers in the local SA Blogosphere and he should know better than to buy into the banning of McLaren. I’m not saying that he explicitly banned McLaren, but he also has not intervened to say that that is not ethical and fair and see to it that McLaren is not hindered from further using muti.
Fact is, muti is as, McLaren states, largely irrelevant in bringing any significant traffic to local blogs. Muti does not drive much traffic here. What does is StumbleUpon. Very often when a post of mine is stumbled, I get a sudden rush of hundreds of visitors.
My friends stumble me often and I stumble them to avoid the self submission of posts injunction. That injunction, however, is anyway lifted by StumbleUpon if you upgrade to a sponsored account which costs $20 per annum, which I have done. However, there is NO FRIKKING WAY I would give muti one red cent until they fix the bullshit that is going down there.
Until then, the David Duartes of South Africa can kiss my arse. I am not impressed with their offerings. Gentlemen, you are just going to have to do so much BETTER than what you are currently doing, which is sweet fanny fuck all. Giving me 3 or 4 visitors a day just does not CUT the mustard.
Tags: Bolton Deventer, David Duarte, fag, Guy McLaren, mashable, muti, Social networking sites, StumbleUpon, WordPress
Filed under Anonymous coward, Bolton Deventer, Fake blogger | 18 Comments »
The South African Blogosphere FAQ
Posted on October 2nd, 2007 by Richard Catto 3,059 views
What is this thing that people call the South African blogosphere?
It’s a collection of (mostly) South African web sites that have installed upon them blogging software.
What is blogging software?
Blogging software is the upgrade to classic web sites.
A classic web site contained mostly html and image files which mostly displayed as static (unchanging) web pages. The ability to interact with a clasic web site was, for the most part, very limited. There was no software behind the site which managed it as a whole and had built-in features that engaged visitors. Updating the site involved changes being made offline to html (and other) files and then uploaded via FTP. FTP remains an arcane and elusive protocol to master by many internet users today who find it beyond them technically.
Blogging software replaces that old model with something that is more accessible, especially to those who are not technically inclined. It allows a person to update their blog via a web based editor.
WordPress is one of the most popular blog software packages that is used by many South African bloggers. WordPress calls itself a personal publishing platform. Simply put, it affords almost anyone the ability to get their stories published online, without having to worry about a myriad technical details.
Where do I find the South African blogosphere?
Blogging software is designed to interact with various blog indexes to update them whenever anything new is published on them. This is something that classic web sites did not do – one needed to manually add them to search engines, and even then, there was no way for search engines to know when a site had been updated and needed reindexing.
Blogs are programmed to tell a whole bunch of, mostly American, blog indexes (including google) when they have been updated. If you are a South African blogger who mostly desires a local audience, then you need to add your blog(s) to the South African blog indexes, which are amatomu.com and afrigator.com. Instructions, which tell you how to do that, are found on both of them.
Both of those South African blog indexes display a list of South African blog sites known to them in order of popularity, as well as a list of the most recent blog posts. By browsing the list of recent posts, you will be able to pick out articles that interest you. You can also browse by category and do keyword searches.
There are two other South African blog related sites that you should be aware of – muti.co.za and sablogger.co.za. Those two are not blog indexes, instead they are social networking sites to which people can submit stories that they find interesting. Many of the submitted articles are from blogs, but not all. One can browse those sites to find out what other South Africans found to be interesting content.
What is the South African Blogosphere about?
Anything and everything really.
It’s a very interesting diversion from reading the mainstream media web sites, that most South Africans spend almost all their time online browsing.
You will read a diverse selection of opinions and monologues, some that will resonate with your own beliefs, others that may make you want to punch your monitor out, and still others that will just bore the life out of you.
Along the way, you will discover interesting people that will engage you and cause you to think about what you think you know and believe and hold dear. You will discover new things, new people, fresh ideas. You will grow.
Most bloggers desire to interact with their visitors via comments left in response to their articles. If you have an opinion about what was written, you should submit your comment. You will soon discover that it can be a lot of fun and that it can lead to new exciting friendships with people you might ordinarily never have come across.
What should I watch out for in the South African Blogosphere?
The usual suspects – disinformation, slander, general unfounded nonsense masquerading as fact, vociferous arguments about nothing, bad people.
Bloggers are often referred to now as citizen journalists. Being a journalist implies having a responsibility to report things accurately. Journalists still make mistakes. Bloggers, however, have no responsibility at all to report factually. They can make up anything they like, so take care about what you choose to believe. Many bloggers, including myself, will cite sources at the end of, or in the body of their articles so that the reader can see for themselves where they got their information.
Not all bloggers take care to meticulously research their articles before they write them. They may authoritatively state utter nonsense, and you may be inclined to take what they write at face value. It’s general laziness – laziness on the part of the writer and laziness on the part of the reader. Truth does not simply fall out of a tree like a ripe apple – it must be searched for. Remember that at all times. 
How do I become a blogger and join the South African Blogosphere?
The best type of blog to have is one at your own domain, typically a co.za domain. You will need to have your domain registered and hosted and blogging software deployed on your server space.
I do recommend that you register a domain in one of the .za domain namespaces if you intend blogging primarily for a South African audience. I recommend WordPress to power your blog, and I recommend that you host it on a Linux platform, not Windows.
There is more to do and an expense associated with this option. It is also the most flexible and any and all advertising revenue that you manage to derive from your blog is yours to keep.
If you prefer to start off with a free blogging option, then I suggest you register with either iblog.co.za or wordpress.com. iBlog.co.za uses the WordPress blogging platform too.
If you would like any advice in this regard, leave a comment and I will endeavour to give you useful answers.
Tags: afrigator, amatomu, Digg, iBlog, muti, reddit, sablogger, South African Blogosphere, StumbleUpon, WordPress
Filed under South African Blogosphere | 3 Comments »
