BloggersGuide.net

When it comes to blogging, nothing is more difficult for me than design, and when it comes to design, nothing is more difficult for me than picking a color scheme. Thankfully, though, I am married to a designer who is little by little teaching me to think like a designer. In the not-so-distant past, I decided to mix up the colors on my personal blog, and Chris used the opportunity to teach me the method he uses for generating a color scheme. Very little color theory was involved, which I was thankful for because I tried reading his color theory textbook, and I couldn’t get past page two. If you’re a blogger who isn’t a designer, I can imagine you have a hard time picking color schemes, too, so let’s use my personal blog as a case study and walk through his process.

We’ve been blogging with lists for the last few weeks, and we’ve already learned how to determine when it’s appropriate to use a list and how to write a list; we learned those week one. Last week, we learned how to use, code, and style ordered and unordered lists. This week, we’re discussing definition and nested lists.

Last week, we established that lists are a great tool for bloggers because they can make your content more readable by grouping related ideas and simplifying complex processes. We also learned when to use a list and how to write a list, but we didn’t cover the specifics of using the different kinds of lists. In this post, we’ll get to the nitty gritty of ordered and unordered lists, and next week, we’ll wrap up with definition and nested lists.

Are you a list writer? Can you go a day without writing a list? If you’re like me, lists keep you sane by making life easier. To-do lists, grocery lists, packing lists, idea lists—you get the idea. Lists are a great tool in our everyday lives, but they can also be a great tool in your writing and on your blog, for they can make your writing more readable by grouping related ideas and simplifying complex processes. In the coming weeks, we’ll look at the basics of writing a list and how to write, style, and code the four kinds of lists HTML allows for: ordered, unordered, definition, and nested.

In the blogosphere, Blogger and Wordpress are two very popular blogging tools, but they’re popular for different reasons. Blogger tends to be the beginner’s place to start because it simplifies the art of blogging and makes it easy for the novice to understand. On the other hand, Wordpress tends to be the intermediate and advanced bloggers’ tool of choice not necessarily because it’s more complicated than Blogger but because in general, it produces more professional-looking blogs. I’ve used both tools, and I like features in both.

Before you jump into blogging, you should know that having a successful blog requires time and creative energy. Many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed bloggers create blogs only to abandoned them a few weeks or months later when they get discouraged and lose momentum. Maybe they didn’t know how much time was involved or have the money to spend. Perhaps they ran out of writing material or couldn’t get an audience or didn’t have the technical skills to get the job done. If you’ve pondered having a blog of your own but aren’t sure if you’re ready for such a big commitment, consider the five questions below before making your decision.

You made it! This is the last Blogger’s Guide to Feedburner post, and I’m sure your pimped-out feed is drawing new subscribers like flies. OK, getting subscribers isn’t that easy, but at least you’ve got a great feed. So far we’ve set up your feed in Feedburner, familiarized ourselves with the Feedburner site, learned how to analyze and troubleshootize your feed, optimized your feed with extra features, and publicized your feed to other web sites. All that’s left, is networkizing and monetizing your feed.

The paint is dry, the rims are in place, and I’m not getting any better at this car analogy, so let’s get to work. To review, so far we’ve set up your feed in Feedburner, familiarized ourselves with the web site, learned how to analyze and troubleshootize your feed, and picked out some sweet options to really make it shine. Today, we’re going to publicize your feed. To get started, log in to Feedburner, select a feed, and click on the Publicize tab.

You’ve stuck through the first two Blogger’s Guide to Feedburner posts, and now the fun begins! Today we’ll optimize your feed, which is like putting a fresh coat of paint and shiny rims on a pimped-out car. To get started, log in to Feedburner, choose a feed to work with, and click the Optimize tab.

Sweet! You’ve returned to further pimp out your RSS feed! Last week, we set up the feed and familiarized ourselves with the Feedburner interface, and today we’ll start analyzing and troubleshootizing your feed. For today’s post, your feed needs to be working. Is it?