Recap #crimechat March 22, 2013: the tech side of blogging

Recap #crimechat March 22, 2013: the tech side of blogging

this #crimechat was an attempt to collect your questions related to the technical side of blogging. The tech side kept me from blogging for a long time. I would see a blog, think that I could do that too, and then … wonder about a million things that could go wrong and I’d have NO CLUE how to fix things. One day I headed to the bookstore, stood with a “WordPress for Dummies” in my hands and  … I put the book back and ran out the store!

Thanks to my friend and webmaster, Jacques Soudan, I am online and my blog will turn four in November 2013. But it didn’t always go smoothly. There were things I did without realizing the consequences. I am sure that I am not the only blogger who did the following: I was checking for spam and I thought: Let’s clean up! So I dived into the categories and tags, checked which ones were under-used and started deleting those. Thinking that less was better, I also threw out some old posts that I didn’t like anymore, shortened a blog post title here and there, kicked pages off the top menu bar, etc.

Less clutter – better overview, right?

Wrong.

What I did not realize and what Jacques later explained, was that everything you type gets indexed. Think of little library cards in those drawer cabinets. If you throw a few cards away but the books remain on the shelves, people cannot check the book out. It is not in the system. If you toss the books but keep the index cards, people still cannot check the book out. The books are not in the system. This problem’s tech name is crawl errors (I think)  and thanks to my vigorous cleaning, I had plenty!

Did I know this when I started my cleaning? No. I thought that less was better, really!

This recap does not have a verbatim thread since I made notes of the questions that came in by email and came up today on Twitter. I have tried to place the questions on the same topic together so I do not think that the verbatim text is necessary. Jacques will answer these questions. The answers will be posted here on DCC possibly in different posts depending on the length of the answers.

YOUR QUESTIONS:

Pages/categories/tags:

Can I rename pages & categories? I have changed my mind about how I wish to split up my blog sections.

Should I schedule posts? Is it better to post on the same day and time?

Rankings:

If I do not post over the summer will that affect my blog’s ranking?

Posts:

Do I write stories on a blog or posts on a blog? What is the terminology?

What is the ideal length of a post? Word count?

Is there a “best frequency” for posting?

Does every post need a picture of a short video clip?

SEO:

What SEO plugin is the best?

I never used a SEO plugin. Should I?

Defence mechanisms:

What is Wordfence and is it better than Akismet?

Themes/widgets/plugins:

What is the difference between widgets and plugins?

How many plugins can I have on my blog?

How to start:

How long does it take to build a blog?

How do I start a blog?

Can I transport things I have on Facebook and Twitter to a blog?

Do I need a professional webmaster?

Handy Tools:

What are the best tools for bloggers?

Pictures/video clips:

Can you write a short how-to to get pictures/clips on my blog?

Is there a trouble shooting list for uploading pictures/video clips?

Self-hosted versus a blogging community:

What are the advantages of Tumblr, blogspot and others? Are they all the same?

Is it better for rankings to be selfhosted?

Ads/nofollow:

Are ads on your blog better for SEO or rankings?

What does nofollow do?

Layout:

Must my blog have columns in the theme?

What is the best spot for my menu? On the top or in the margins?

What are the best background colors?

On average, how much scrolling do people do before they stop reading a blog?

Stay tuned for Jacques’ answers. His website is here.

If your question is not here, feel free to place it in the comment box below. If you can answer some of these questions, feel free to do so in the comment box!

Happy blogging, V