Maximize entrecard traffic

Hi! Thanks for visiting. Here you can find blogging tips and free Wordpress themes. You may want to subscribe to RSS feed.

One of the hot traffic exchange site for blog is Entrecard today. Many blogger signup and forgot about it though.

I’ve been with Entrecard for some times, I can’t say that I’m expert or master on it. However, in order to get enough bloggers to advertise on your widget, there are tricks - Make them happy. Many bloggers tend to put lots of widget, which I don’t know what was that too. Here are my idea…

1, Let useless item be in trash.
Like I mentioned, a lot of widget/banner that is useless, delete them. You don’t need them to place all over your blog. What do you want your blog to be? Traffic jam the blog or traffic jam the sidebar? Beside, banner/widgets often has their own code (Be it JavaScript or plain HTML), it require time to load. Make them happy, let’s assume they have a slow connection. To be honest, I close blogs/sites that take up more than a minute to load If your sidebar is packed with banner/widget, how can I assure that if I put my entrecard on your blog, visitors can see it?

2, Entrecard on top.
I know that content is king. Think about this, the purpose you put entrecard is to…? By the way, some people are selling entrecard point. Many sites (Not blogs) that has in entrecard tend to put the widget at the bottom. I myself use entrecard a lot for this blog, but I do look through all the blogs and sites to make sure their placement is visible enough. It’s not gonna take you lots of space, it’s just a 280px height banner.

3, Good web code.
I fed up with some blogs though, really. Some blogspot users love taking template from other blogs, import/edit whatever and voila, they love it. But hey, love is love, don’t forget to check with browsers. There’re plenty of browsers on the internet, I used FireFox and Safari (Mainly Safari though), if the coding is not that professional, it’s a mess. Sometimes I can’t see the entrecard widget too. Either tried to validate the code or simply use some more browsers to browse your blog to make sure it’s ok.

4, Don’t Updead, update!
Here is the thing - If you have a blog and want to have traffic from entrecard, update your blog. Doesn’t matter if it’s simply “Hi visitors, I’m an asshole, you’re pussy! Bye!”. All you need is a little care about your blog so the advertiser would see more happier than a dead blog, with last entry from somewhere June 2007.

These are what I can think for the moment, would update it once I notice something else Well, my entrecard widget is prominent and visible enough, it would be nice if you advertise here. And I would be happier if you advertise here too

Releasing first free wp theme - Starlite Diva

Finally SimplyWP is releasing the first free wordpress theme. Starlite Diva is a 3 column theme with girlie design, right sidebar, and widget ready. It is compatible with up to Wordpress 2.6

[ Demo | Download ]

Due to some circumstances, there was some delay on posting as well. Anyway, we’re planning to come out with more free wordpress themes within next month. There will be premade and custom made too.

You may want to subscribe to our RSS feeds if you haven’t.

P/S: Somehow I haven’t find any good plugin for demo site. Anyone know any plugin that works better than this one? For your information, once you preview the demo site, it will cache on your cookies so this whole blog theme will change to the preview

Update:

I’ve added this ajax light box for images on both themes released. Those who downloaded it, do re-download them again. Sorry for this late update, have fun

Write right, blog right

Many people, especially those who did not blog and those who just step into blogging. They have this problem on blogging topic. Many people argued that a weblog should be personal, wrong, it was decade ago when they said so. Let’s see what Wikipedia said years back:

A blog is a website for which an individual or a group frequently generates text, photographs, video or audio files, and/or links, typically (but not always) on a daily basis. The term is a shortened form of weblog. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts,” or “entries”. The person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”.

From Wikipedia

Don’t check “weblog” or “blog” in Wikipedia now, because it has changed ever since… A year ago if I remember correctly. Above quote was used on my other site, that’s why I have it The most recent explanation Wikipedia gives is:

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

From Wikipedia

Wonder why it changed? Simple. Since blogs are adding everyday, and each blog has their own specialty and category, it’s not a personal anymore. After a period of time, it has indirectly replaced “News Website”, why a company has a blog? They just want to update you, job done! Google any keywords or questions, you’d probably come across more blog than a proper site. Proper site here I mean site that built just for that particular topic.

One major factor that influence this changes though. Make money online. The word online here means search engine as well, so if you want to make money online, you have to make sure that search engine loves you first. How search engine love you depend on certain search engine, Google jacking off some making money bloggers this days, let’s not get into it My point is, a niche topic blog could help a lot more than a messing topics blog, like a personal blog.

I’m not saying that people who blog personal stuff is stupid or is wrong. I see a lot of people start by doing so, which is good. These people keep the traditional meaning of “weblog”. I myself have a personal blog as well, because I want to keep what it should be.

P/S: Recently just finished another theme, but I would like to make some correction and look for a demo/testrun/theme viewer plugin. Anyone knows any?

Does validating matter?

A lot of people talking about validated CSS and XHTML, I didn’t care that even now, however, according to most webmasters, validated CSS and XHTML is very useful, hence every web that you built must be valid. When I asked why is it useful and how it useful to a webmaster, the answers were uncertain, and I assume these webmasters just wanna be cool like teenagers who smoke.

Validating a web by putting these buttons on it are just like people claiming themselves as genius but the fact is unknown. I’m not talking about you know it is valid, rather you know it’s a web. Let’s put a more simplicity question, “What is the job for CSS and XHTML?“.

The main objective for XHTML is to structure a web and CSS is to beautify the web. Jobs done! However, some people claim that in order to make sure all the browser will show out same, validating is needed. Trust me, if it works on FireFox, it works on most browser, try to forget about Internet Explorer. IE is a total pain in the ass, apparently Microsoft still want to be unique even on coding a web for IE

For me, as a webmaster for sometimes now, I think validating is not important. I’m a Mac user, so IE is a problem for me, however, I tried to make sure that all my web working fine in FireFox and Safari, it will reduce the risk of having the web shows out messily on IE. SimplyWP.net is valid CSS and XHTML, but will I continue maintain it as valid? Definitely no, because I really don’t give a damn, just my two cent

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

The default wordpress first entry Anyway, SimplyWP is so new just like this title and the default entry. Will update more soon, now just fixing something. To know more about SimplyWP, head to About page.