Newbie Blogger Iniative: Time flies when you’re having fun

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 May 2012 02:16 Written by Kadomi Thursday, 31 May 2012 02:30

Today, it’s May 31, so the Newbie Blogger Iniative comes to an end. It’s a wrap! In an example how not to do it, I totally dropped the ball on sending link love to new blogs for the past two weeks. The first week I was off on a day-trip and the following week my computer’s power supply imploded. Consistent posting frequency, I struggle with it. Syp compiled a massive list of all new blogs, and all the advice posts that were published during the NBI, so please, enjoy. Even if the Iniative ends now, you can start blogging any day, any month, any year. If you have the urge, advice is out there. Just do it. Thanks go to Syp for creating the iniative in the first place, and I was glad I got to participate!

All new blogs:

• Lotro Family of Flosiin Nightsong
• Red Neckromonger
• Casual Aggro
• SWTOR from Scratch
• Elfkina vežička
• Unwavering Sentinel
• Windy Acres Ranch
• TL-DR
• Saali in Taborea
• Bad Tauren
• Musings of an Altoholic
• Neurotic Girl
• Geo’s Ironman Challenge
• Crafty’s Corner
• Scattered Thoughts
• The Poison Mushroom
• My Staff is Bigger Than Yours
• Vagabond Goes for a Walk
• EVE All Night
• Dreadblade
• Priest All The Things
• Brazokie’s Blog Space
• Warp to Zero
• Altaclysmic
• Winniekin’s Adventures / Winnie goes F2P
• Diminishing Returns
• World’s End Tavern
• Warrior Needs Time Badly
• We do it the WASD Way!
• Middle-earth Initiative
• That Was An Accident!
• Aggrolicious
• Conveniently Placed Exhaust Port
• Adamant Nomad
• Toastman’s Blog
• Ravalation
• Gaming for Introverts
• The Incidental Analyst
• Funsponge
• Bloodthorne
• AntiPlasmaFrequency
• Kemwer Game Blog
• The Adventures of Danania, Supergirl of Lorien
• Unliving a Death Knight
• Deathstomp
• MMO Juggler
• White Charr
• Not Too Heavy
• Flask Half-Empty
• Raspberry Jammed
• Click to Loot
• Kaw Kaw! Get in the Bag!
• Mistress of Illusions
• Malefic Incantations
• MMO One Night a Week
• Omens of Onterion
• The Blue Haired Geek
• TFScribbles
• Glimpses from Middle-earth
• Goetia’s Letters
• /con mmob
• Gaming Abroad
• Backseat Game Design
• Divinity’s Reach
• Big Numbers
• Trippin Tyria
• Eons and Eons Away
• Horrible Ball of Fire
• Image Heavy
• Casually Vicious
• The Frugal Gamer
• Gaming Brew
• The Roaring Silence
• MMOARprz
• Game Delver
• The Diverted Muse
• Newbie Hobbit
• Battlemastered
• thenotsonewnoob
• Auction House on Farm
• Giddeon’s Hammer
• Noob Raider
• The Altoholic
• stnylan’s musings
• The 10th Level of Gaming Hell
• commentarilies
• Inside the Magic Shop
• Beyond Tannhauser Gate
• Argus or Bust
• Lotro Cinna
• Warlockery
• Stabby McStabStab
• Healing Mains
• The Loony Bin
• Warcraft Street
• Real Adventures in Fake Worlds
• GnomeGates.com
• Hipstalotro
• The Butterfly Gamer
• The Mighty Viking Hamster
• Why I Game
• Wald’s Wanderings
• Ald Shot First
• Sephora’s Closet
• Donovan Drones
• Beyond Reproach
• The Horn & Ivory Gates
• Landroval Style
• MMO Asylum
• Renai Hunter

All sponsor advice posts:

• Stropp’s World: Being a blogger superstar, Just do it, The pros and cons of self-hosting
• StarShadow: Some blogging advice, Themes and widgets, Screenshots, Menus, categories and tags
• In An Age: Advice for new bloggers
• Tish Tosh Tesh: Who Am I?, Blogging is a social activity, For love or money, Thinking linking, Traditions
• Tastes Like Battle Chicken: Build your own boss, Week 2 challenge, A few words of wisdom, Week 4 challenge
• Tales of the Aggronaut: The Google Reader blogroll, Getting started, Be open-minded (unlike me)
• Wadstomp Gaming: The importance of social media, Submit a guest post, The best advertising payouts, Be sure to burn your blog to feedburner, Create your own voice
• Beau Hindman: General advice, Indie games and bloggers
• Games and Geekery: Why you should blog, Learning about blogging from perfect strangers
• Skycandy: Blogging wrong, blogging right
• Shards of Imagination: Choosing the subject of your blog
• MMO Compendium: Keeping up with the industry and bloggers
• Contains Moderate Peril: Some general guidance, Mind your language, Stats, Episode 61
• Lotro Fashion: Screenshots make your blog interesting
• High Latency Life: Finding your voice, You need a thick skin
• Scary Worlds: Mobile blogging, Creating a good title, Advice you don’t want to hear
• ETCmmo.com: General advice
• Nerdy Bookahs: Why do you want to blog?, Why haven’t you started your blog yet?
• World of Matticus: WordPress plugins, Finishing your blog setup, Making connections
• World’s End Tavern: General tips
• Parallel Context: The best advice
• Tremayne’s Law: Read Think Write Edit
• Jaded Alt: So you wanna be a blogger?, What’s in a name?, If you remember nothing else… write!
• Avatars of Steel: Curling up with a good blog
• Blog de la Burro: Why I started blogging, Some advice on blogging, Does traffic matter?, How to deal with writer’s block, What you should blog about, Are comments important?, Is it ever okay to rant?, How to get noticed
• Inventory Full: How the Bhagpuss came to be, Take a moment, Backing up your blog
• Gamerlady: Tips to start
• Just One MMOre: How to be consistent and make it painless and easy, One question high-traffic blogs ask
• Spinksville: Picture manipulation tools and copyright
• T.R. Red Skies: Quick tips, Objectivity, relating and heart
• Live Like a Nerd: WordPress plugins for bloggers
• I Have Touched the Sky: Avoid barriers to commenting on Blogger, Blogs lists and RSS
• Thade’s Hammer: Advice for the new bloggers
• Levelcapped: Tell me about yourself, None of my business
• Psychochild: What makes your blog special
• Bullet Points: The worst advice you’ll ever receive about blogging, You are your blog
• A Casual Stroll to Mordor: Learn how to podcast, Writing for the web
• Contains Moderate Peril: Episode 58, Fine-turning your blog
• A Green Mushroom: Blogging tips and hints
• Too Many Annas: Picking a name
• Grimnir’s Grudge: It feels good to be a blogger
• Gankalicious: Never tell the truth, Meeting interesting people, Who the hell reads this?
• Herding Cats: Creating a podcast on the cheap with WordPress
• Distilled Willpower: 8 blogging tips they won’t tell you
• Vicarious Experience: From there to here
• TL-DR: Protect your blog!, Tags and Categories
• Multiplaying: You should be blogging
• Blue Kae: Advice is a strong word
• Screaming Monkeys: Top five tips
• Caer Morrighan: Get started with WoW blogging
• Hawt Pants: New blogger advice
• Tiger Ears: Why I started blogging
• Berath’s Brain Burps: Sage words, How to get lots and lots of hits
• Just One More Unlock: Newbie blogger tips, Opportunity
• Hunter’s Insight: An idea is formed, What not to do
• ALT:ernative: Starting at the beginning, The first idea
• Epic Slant: Tips and links, Guest post
• MMOGC: 3 little things
• A Journey through the Mind: My 0.2 ISK
• Red Cow Rise: What and why to post, Blog setup and community building
• Epic Slant: Writer’s block
• Creeping…: So you think you can blog
• The Ancient Gaming Noob: Playing blogroll breadcrumbs
• Dragonchasers: How not to build an audience
• Welcome to Spinksville: What you should write and how to write it
• The Stories of O: Top 4 tips
• A Ding World: Blog posting
• The Wild Boar Inn: Blogging tips
• Professor Beej: Stop writing!
• Nomnom.info: 4 blogging tips
• Gamer BC: A solid foundation and a step forward
• Casual Is As Casual Does: Tips, tricks and who am I kidding
• Roll One Hundred: Managing screenshots
• Bullet Points: I refuse to call it a blogosphere
• KIASA: Good advice
• Pumping Irony: Before taking the plunge
• Life is a Mind-Bending Puzzle: Wrapping up advice all in one place
• Rikna’s Rants: The blog rings, By this keyboard I rule!, Guests and cross posts
• Sheep the Diamond: Advice from an old bull

New Blogger Iniative: Friday Link Love

Last Updated on Thursday, 31 May 2012 02:08 Written by Kadomi Friday, 11 May 2012 03:00

Has it been a week already? Time flies! The NBI newbie forum has exploded, and there are so many new blogs out there now. Hardpressed to just pick five, I tell ya. If you want more recommendations, Syp is doing lists of new blogs almost daily, over at Bio Break!

Without further ado, here are my five picks for the week. Head on over, welcome them warmly, and let’s hope for some great blogging content.

• SWTOR from Scratch – Skaggy is one of my SWTOR guildmates in the quite lovely guild Crusade on the Nightmare Lands server. The guild includes such notables as Spinks from Welcome to Spinksville and Teppo of the Three MMOsketeers podcast, and they’re currently recruiting! Skaggy’s blog is a very solid guide for new SWTOR players, and he’s been knocking out a lot of posts since he started, including a detailed look at all the companions in the game.
• White Charr – this blog is focused on Guild Wars 2, and I am sure that we’ll see a lot of those crop up in the near future. What the ArenaNet designers have done wrong with female models of humans and norn, they have done right with the charr. They look like they can deliver a good ass-kicking, and their different legions are interesting. I liked all the character options you have when creating one, and so obviously does the creator of this blog. There’s a lot of very cool charr art and screenshots available here. It’s a Tumblr, so not my cup of tea when it comes to commenting and reading, but I had fun looking at all the art anyhow.
• Gaming for Introverts – Pamela just started her blog encouraged by all the NBI posts. I’ve engaged in MMO discussions with her on G+ and was delighted to find out she’d start blogging. She has a vast experience in MMOs, certainly more than I ever played, and I definitely recommend her for intelligent posts. Glad she joined us!
• The Frugal Gamer – Skron is looking at games on a low budget which is fascinating because I really don’t spend enough time checking out F2P games. There might be some hidden gems, and I wouldn’t know, because the only F2P game I ever checked out is LotRO. He also posts about bargain games, single-player RPGs like Legend of Grimrock and the like. Good stuff.
• Click to Loot – Finally, in anticipation of next week’s release, I bring you this Diablo 3-centered blog. They’ll probably get the theorycrafting and math going right from the start. I am curious to see what kind of content they will come up with. They already have a lot of solid information about the game. Anyone here excited to play it? I really did enjoy the open beta, so I will very likely give it a spin, if maybe not directly at release day.

That’s it for this week, hope you found something on the list you liked. And if not, Shadowspawnd is keeping a complete list of all new blogs over at World’s End Tavern.

Happy weekend!

New Blogger Initiative: WordPress Plugins for bloggers

Last Updated on Monday, 7 May 2012 04:17 Written by Kadomi Monday, 7 May 2012 04:06

Today’s post is my first advice column. I am obviously no big name blogger so if you are looking for advice about how to earn money via blogging, how to drive traffic to your blog or how to optimize for Google, I am not your go-to girl. I am however a big fan of self-hosting WordPress, so that’s what I am going to talk about today.

When I first started out, there was no doubt about it for me that I wanted to host something myself. I wanted the maximum freedom, to pick any theme that’s out there, to be able to mess around with HTML/CSS myself, and choose which plugins to install. I picked WordPress as blogging system because it is free and can be expanded in functionality. There is an astounding number of plugins out there, and a lot of them are very useful for blogging. I think a few of them are actually quite essential, so here’s my look at the ones I wouldn’t want to go without anymore, in alphabetical order.

• Antispam Bee – Spam protection is essential for a blog. As soon as you put yourself out there, the bots will find you and start leaving their nonsensical crap in your blog. Comment moderation is not enough to keep the spam out of your blog. Now, most WordPress users will likely use Akismet which is the antispam plugin from the WordPress creators themselves. However, Akismet has a huge downside. It sends data from the comments (IP address, comment, author ID, etc.) to US servers. This violates German privacy laws so to use it I would have to put a data protection clause in my blog. Too much hassle. Instead, I use the very reliable Antispam Bee. Anonymous, fast, with a very easy configuration. The author is very active on G+, so I can’t recommend it often enough. If you want to be safe from spam and value the privacy of your readers at the same time, please consider using it instead of Akismet.
• Better Blogroll – I like sharing link love. One of my ways for doing that is to use a blogroll widget that will display a random set of blogs from my blogroll. I use a lot of different categories in my blogroll, and if I wanted to, I could only have MMO blogs listed in the widget. I think it’s a nice way to showcase your blogroll, without having a huge list of blogs listed.
• Blogroll Links – I like having a blogroll page where I have the creative freedom to list the different link categories in any way that I see fit. This is where Blogroll Links comes in for me. It allows you to display your blogroll on any page via shortcode, or only selected blogroll categories. You can see it in action on my blogroll page. It’s no huge deal, it’s a quality of life improvement for me.
• CommentLuv – This plugin is a huge deal for me on the other hand. I wouldn’t want to be without it. It’s a gesture of saying thank you to fellow bloggers who leave a comment on your site by offering a dofollow link back to one of their most recent posts, listing the title of the post. This might be interesting enough to bring traffic back to their own site, which also means people might be more keen on leaving a comment. The non-premium version of this plugin works just fine, I highly recommend it.
• Google XML Sitemaps Generator – If you want your blog to be found on Google, and you want to, then you need a sitemap. A sitemap you submit to Google, Yahoo, etc. will help you with getting indexed faster. The plugin does all the work for you and creates the XML file the crawlers need to index the site. Easy to use for sure.
• Organize Series – I am a big fan of this plugin because it comes in very handy if you post a series of articles, like my NBI posts, GW2 or my blogging challenge. It adds an extra box on the new post page where you can create a series, select if your current post belongs to one, or manually set which part of the series it is. Once you have posted, it will display that this is a series of posts. On the single page for the post, it will link back to all previous posts in the series as well. I find this incredibly handy.
• WP to Twitter – Twitter has been awesome for me as a blogger. Day to day, I talk to fellow bloggers on Twitter, get links to their most recent posts, and have interesting, 140 character conversations with folks there. Even if you are doubtful and think Twitter is a fad, give it a try. If you don’t like it, you can always delete your account again. If you do enjoy it and start talking to other bloggers, you surely want to post your most recent post to Twitter, the moment you have blogged it. You can automate this with this plugin. It lets you choose what URL shortener to use, what text you want to use to tweet, and if the tweet for some reason doesn’t go out allows you to tweet manually. The instructions on how to connect it to your Twitter account are very clear as well.
• WordPress SEO – If you are looking for more SEO assistance than just a sitemap, then this plugin might be for you. It will generate SEO title and meta data for you based on your templates, can create sitemaps, allows you to keep posts and pages from being indexed if that’s your thing, etc. I find it fairly easy to use, but I also don’t do a whole lot with it. Of the free SEO plugins, I thought this was the one that’s documented best.

That’s pretty much my list of most relevant blogging plugins. I am always keen on discovering more plugins, so if any reader has more suggestions, or is looking for a specific plugin, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear what else others are using!