A little BT Update

I’ve got a few things about the site i wanted to talk about to readers so i thought i’d squeeze them all into one post

Time to get the holiday head on

As i told you all recently, im going travelling around all of new zealand for 3 or 4 weeks. We move out our flat Friday morning and early Saturday morning we are leaving Auckland for the trip. Im already booked in for the Hobbiton movie tour on Sunday!

I have written close to 3 weeks worth of posts which means that there will be a post every day im away from the laptop. I didn’t rush these posts either - obviously with me not being on the net everyday i’ve not been able to cover many current events. Instead i have written some good wordpress guides and promotion advice. I hope you like them. I’ll still be logging in when i can - i just don’t have the time to sit and write posts every day. Post frequency will drop from around 2 per day to 1 but once i get a flat in Christchurch things will be back to normal.

What can i say….im taking advantage of the benefits of being self employed via the internet! (Not to mention all of a sudden my accent apparently becomes sexy because im living in a foreign country…yes i am that shallow!!)

Blogging Tips Review Me Update

I have been getting some reviews of Blogging Tips through ReviewMe. David Culpepper of PureBlogging posted his review today and regular Blogging Tips commentator Chris Stark posted his review of us yesterday. I was pleased with both of the reviews. The criticism on them was definately fair. Chris made a point about the top adsense being too close the main links so i moved them and David made a similar point to Small Potato about the sidebars - dont worry guys, changing the sidebars is on my list to do! David also suggested that the search box wasn’t too obvious - what do you think, should i move it or change the color or something?

I’ve got some more reviews on the way from Blogging Tips author Kumiko, 13 year old blogger Carl Ocab, full time blogger John Tp and last but not least the evil money making machine John Chow.

In a few weeks time i will explain my reasons for choosing these sites and post about my experience with ReviewMe. Regular readers should notice that the sites i have chosen are sites that i refer to quite often here because i subscribe to their feeds.

Mascot Competition

Our mascot competition is only 3 days old but its proving quite popular - and no wonder, 1st place gets a mascot worth $300 from my buddy at Sos Factory. SOS Factory was the company which did my mascot

Blogging Tips Mascot by SOS Factory

Theres still plenty of time to enter so if your interested please go here for more details.

Here are the current standings

1st place - cymru66
2nd place - The Flying Beagle
3rd place - stocktube

This competition seems to have been well received from readers but remember, if someone comes up with a better idea for next months competition ill pay them $50

Also, let me know what you think would make a good prize next month (blogging related). I was thinking a years free hosting would be a good prize for those who are currently hosted on blogger or wordpress.com - however im open to ideas

Guest Authors

We have now had 3 guest authors on Blogging Tips. The main content for this blog will come from myself but i think that contributions from guest authors is a great thing. I’m hoping to get some more authors to write in the future (and ask the current ones back for some more).

If you are interested in writing for the blog, please read the write for us page for more info.

Blog Traffic

Traffic is increasing very steadily so thanks to all those who comment here and spread the word. Traffic from 6th May was nearly 10 times the traffic on 6th April! A good sign for things to come i hope

Blogging Tips Design

The first thing that was on my to do list was to change the sidebars that are there just now. At first i thought they were ok but the more i post here the more thay annoy me - they just dont seem to fit into the design of the blog.

I spent a day or so messing about with some ideas but unfortunately it was brought to my attention that Blogging Tips is a bit messed up in IE 6 so the sidebar change had to be put back. This IE problem is something that thousands of sites have - its due to the float technique in css. Internet explorer renders them differently in IE 6 than it does in IE 7 and firefox etc.

Ive spent a lot of time trying to get it fixed but the more i work on it the more i think i could just use one sidebar here instead of two. I could display the latest comments etc either at the top of the bottom and make sure the sidebar isn’t too long. Unfortunately i just dont have time to finish the articles i need to write before i leave so i wont get a chance for another month to resolve this. Sorry! :):)

Also, David from PureBlogging brought up in his review that i cut posts too early with the more tag. Anything beyond the more tag isn’t shown in feed readers. The main reason for this is for search engines - if you dont use the more tag the full post is posted in the index, in the archives and in the categories. If you make sure you split up your larger posts then the full post will only be available in one place on the web. Thats my main reason for doing it but id like to here what any subscribers think about it all

Thanks guys,

Kevin