Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog and resolved

How Do I Promote My YA Fantasy Novel?

musofire — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:33:51 -0800

I want to promote my Young Adult fantasy novel about Morgan le Fay on the web. The biggest audience should be young women and libraries; Wiccans, medieval re-enactors and King Arthur fans would dig it, too (I hope). How can I best promote the book myself? What sites and blogs should I contact? Are author's tours effective? What should I definitely put my efforts into and what's not worth my time? I've written a fantasy novel about the childhood of Morgan le Fay which is coming out next year. My publisher probably doesn't have huge resources for promoting the book, and I want to do my part.

I've thought of doing a virtual author's tour, contacting blogs and websites for (a) young adult readers (b) Wiccans (c) medieval fans (d) King Arthur fans. What are the blogs and websites I shouldn't miss?

Also, here in Canada, publishers can get grant money to send authors on real live book tours. If I hit four or five major cities, how can I get the maximum buzz out of being physically there? It's not worth traveling to Calgary to sell ten books, unless I can leverage that somehow into radio interviews or ... what?

I'll work up some sort of website about the book and about Morgan le Fay, of course. What sort of content might be the most interesting to readers?

What have I missed?

Slow & Steady

ocherdraco — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:07:16 -0800

Why is my website loading slowly, and how can I fix it? My blog (linked from my profile page) seems to load incredibly slowly (sometimes taking up to a minute), even though it's not a content heavy site.

Things that may be relevant:

the blog is Wordpress v. 2.0.4

the admin page for the blog loads up just fine, with no delay

it used to be hosted at the .com version of the url, but after a brief scare in which I lost access to that url (though it was later regained) it was switched to .org, and I'm not certain that I changed absolutely everything that ought to have been

the page displays my Twitter feed, which is the main content that resides on the main page and comes from outside the site itself

Why is it loading slowly, and what can I do to fix it?

For those of us who didn't go to Harvard. . .

Ndwright — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:26:53 -0800

Are there any sites or blogs dedicated to pointing out great courses and lectures not to be missed on iTunes U? The Mefi post with this question's origin.

Is there a software command center for social networking sites?

Me, The Snake — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:05:20 -0800

Hey all, Just a quick question, here. Currently I am trying to manage a number of blog-esque sites, i.e. MySpace, Face book, Word press, and of course Metafilter. I was wondering if anyone knew of programs to help maximize my productivity when updating these. For example, I often post new songs I have created. Is there any program that would allow me to post an update across all my pages from one central hub? How about managing my messages from these sites? Any way to manage those in my regular email, or is there a program that could unify these? Basically I'm wondering if there is some type of "command station" program to help manage multiple sites like this one. Thanks in advance for any help! Hope you all had a great weekend.

What should I be reading?

csjc — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:33:11 -0800

I ask you, educated and oh-so cultured MeFites, what should I be reading? Everything's in order, except for my RSS feeds. I'm in need of a good mix of wit, news, and good ol' amusement from the world over to serve as nothing less than my daily reading material. Help me stock that RSS reader. A little background on myself: I'm a 15 year old, suffice to say "linguistics junkie" from Vancouver, Canada.

As far as news goes, I like to have a variety of angles, political and geographical. Whatever you think would leave me with the most accurate and comprehensive knowledge of world news. Locally, if any Vancouverites could oblige, please do.

Otherwise, I'm open to anything. I haven't done well keeping up with all the news lately, but a couple places I enjoy visiting, are, for example: languagehat (of course), and The New York Times book review. I'm generally a big fan of book reviews, interesting short fiction, food, design, geography, history, travel, theoretical physics, photography and anything linguistics-related. I'd like to have a couple links under each of those headings, at least to peruse during the day.

I know there's a lot out there, but I'm only asking for the bare essentials, or at least your personal favourites.

Anything in French or German would be appreciated too, even Swedish/Danish/Norwegian... if you have anything in mind.

Where to go in Bellevue, Washington and Surrounding Eastside?

Redmond Cooper — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:21:16 -0800

Looking for Local happenings blogs like Seattlest and company, but for the Eastside. Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Bothell, Renton, Woodenville and the surrounding areas Basically I'm looking for blogs that list current events that are happening in their coverage zone. Right now I seem to get most of my, "Oh that sounds like fun" events from Seattle based blogs and friends in Seattle. The only problem is the only events I usually know about on the eastside come from friends and what I notice posted in the library.

Redmonds filled with Microsofties so there has to be a few good local blogs there right?

Thanks

Thanks for the pageviews, no thanks for the spam.

tip120 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:26:21 -0800

I have been getting weird Wordpress referrer spam the last 4 days, but there are no injections or anything of the like on my site. I have a site running wordpress. No comments or users, I'm using it as a simple CMS.

I'm using the StatPress plugin to check out who is coming to the site. This morning, I noticed an abnormally large number of visitors the last few days.

People seem to be visiting pages like mysite.com/?myfjkfosljfsfjd (NB : not a string I've seen, just an example). When clicked, it will go to my homepage. Checking the source, there is nothing out of the ordinary (no spam links, etc). If you google that end string by itself, you get one result, to my site, with a summary that lists a whole bunch of viagra type words.

Any idea what is going on, and how I can stop this?

I was running 2.8.2, upgraded to 2.8.3 this morning.

You can get my details from my userpage if you want specifics.

Blogs about the twin cities or Minnesota

TheClonusHorror — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:08:57 -0800

I'm looking for your favorite blogs about things to do in or around the twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) or in Minnesota in general. In Los Angeles, I read Eating L.A., which is about restaurants around town, and Big Orange Landmarks, which is done by a guy who travels around to all the places on the National Historic Register and takes photos. It hasn't been updated in awhile but the archives are still great. This guy chronicles his walks around Los Angeles' various neighborhoods and his road trips.

So I'm looking for blogs along those lines (or loosely related), but about Minnesota. Or if you have any ideas of google terms I should search for or other jumping-off points, those would be helpful too!

Attack of the spam

hibbersk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:25:29 -0800

A particular post on my (wordpress) blog just got hit with over 10 spam comments in 3 minutes. I've disabled comments on that post for now, but what's going on? These aren't the typical website-pimping viagra-toting comments - they're all along the same lines - for example "Thank you for this site, such as multi information! Thank you!", "Oh hell yeah", "nice post, thanks for sharing" etc. Also, the authors have similar sounding addresses - either host238-96-dynamic.16-87-r.retail.telecomitalia.it or 84.123.82.200.dyn.user.ono.com with different numbers at the beginning, sorry I don't know the correct terminology.

I have Akismet enabled and can't remember the last time it let through one spam comment, never mind 10 in the space of a couple of minutes..

Why is this happening, and what should I do about it?
thanks!

My brain hurts. So what's new?

miss lynnster — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:28:58 -0800

The title sequences and credits are looking blurry on the videos I'm posting to WordPress. I need to find out the tricks to posting the best quality video possible to my blog, but I'm new to this. Help! To show you what I'm talking about, look at the video that's currently on the front page of my site. See how the titles and credits look like crap? It's KILLING me. (Don't judge the video please. Yes, I've ordered a tripod. Don't have one yet.) I've searched the web for advice on this but haven't found any tips yet.

I'd never done this stuff before so I've been learning everything the hard way. I'm using the Modularity theme from Graph Paper Press, and it has a function to "post HD video." They say to take a MOV and save it as a FLV. I created the movie in imovie and then saved it for web (should I save it as something else? I liked the sound quality better on the "CD" format, but it was a larger file). I downloaded Sorenson Squeeze to try various formats of FLV. The file got SO much larger after it was turned into an FLV that I couldn't upload it to wordpress... I can only upload things that are less than 8MB. So that was frustrating. I tried 1MB, 2mb, 768, 512... this particular video was saved as "medium."

Since I'm a graphic designer at heart, this blurry type is physically paining me. I want to get better at this stuff so down the road it can look really good, clean, crisp, and sound nice too. Thanks in advance for your expertise. :)

A woman on the run, smuggler pilots, and a blog -- does anyone remember this?

kowalski — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:12:34 -0800

Does anyone remember a blog c. 2001-2002 purportedly written by a European woman hiding out in the Caribbean/Central America from the well-positioned family she had run away (and stolen) from? What was her pseudonym? What was the name of the blog? Is there any trace of this story (and any resolution on the question of its veracity) left on the web? I've tried googling, tried searching here, but all the descriptors I can think of are far too common, and there are too many years of unrelated chaff covering it over. Now looking for someone with a better memory for key details than mine to unlock the global archive.

Is it a blog or a website?

Pineapplicious — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:10:39 -0800

I'm trying to understand what distinguishes a blog from a website. Is it technical? Content? User?

Wherein Whelk Wants Wonderful Words

The Whelk — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:06:07 -0800

Name My Blog! After years of creating things and then casually tossing them aside, I've decided to create a blog to put them all in. Cartoons, short fiction, audio clips, short video, etc. A bit like Lore's Bad Gods. The only problem is, I've got no idea what to call it. I'm torn between something direct like "John Did That" or something that just sounds cool, "Automatic Inspiration" was a leading contender for a while. Want to avoid anything suggesting random, junk, or trash (Even though that's what it is, the whole theme is overused). Shower me with your minds, Mefites!

I don't need your stinkin public service!

mhz — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:05:44 -0800

How can I deal with bloggers uploading pictures of private events? In my small-ish community, there are a LOT of 'events,' usually a few every day. While tradition calls for most of these to be modest affairs, people have gone crazy with size and cost over the years. Specifically weddings and engagement parties, where anyone with any tangential connection will at least show up for a few minutes of congratulation. I don't have a problem with that, I do it myself occasionally.

While I'm still old-fashioned enough to think that invitations should be personal (and everyone still does make those personal invitations to everyone they might otherwise miss), it's become common for local 'community blogs' to publicize the dates, times, and locations of all of these events. This huge invasion of privacy is often overlooked, but…

Recently, they've 'upgraded.' Now they're posting PICTURES of many events online. Still many people are happy with this, and even consider this (along with the 'notifications' of the events in the first place) a public service. I hate it.

So, what are my options to stop it?

We're talking about various websites, who use many, many, photographers. Should I ever make such a party, there's no way I'd know everyone there, and there's no way I can stop people from entering. I don't like the idea of a sign asking people not to photograph (a. I have no problem with guests taking pictures, posting them to their Flickr and Facebook accounts etc, so the wording would be weird. b. It'd probably be ignored anyway).

I can't know for certain who might be doing this, although a good hint is anybody who's not family or hired carrying an SLR. Should I see learn somebody is taking pictures for one the (I think it's now 5 or 6 different) blogs, what are my rights?

These parties, despite what they've become, are privately paid for, etc, so I imagine I can throw them out. If somebody goes without making a big deal of it, can I insist (read: force) him/her to delete the pictures taken without my authorization? What are my options if they don't want to leave? Don't want to delete the pictures? Can the fact that the time/date/location has been posted online be construed as an invitation? Does the fact that someone is invited help them at all? I don't like the idea of somebody who isn't a guest taking pictures, even if they're not being published – it's still creepy. (Nobody who's there as a guest will be taking more than a few, these bloggers routinely take hundreds.)

Am I offering a fair wage to freelance bloggers?

ben242 — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:18:25 -0800

How much do I pay a freelance blogger? The company I work for has four shopping blogs. We're looking to hire freelance bloggers to write 2-3 posts per week. The posts require a minimum of research and no expertise. That is, I don't care if the writer has a college degree as long as they can write 50-150 words about blenders or coffeemakers or home theatre or whatever. This isn't meant to be expert bloggers giving complicated instructions; its more like the advice you get from a friend who knows a bit about whatever product you're shopping for.

I've been told $5 per post is about right for the kind of writing I'm trying to get. Is that an okay rate?

Resume on your blog

thejeshgn — Mon, 18 May 2009 02:14:51 -0800

Is it good to have your full searchable resume on your blog? if yes. What would be the good HTML format for resume.

Who's reading?

pseudostrabismus — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:06:40 -0800

How can I juice up a foo.wordpress.com site? Specifically I want a better statcounter, but any other cool stuff you recommend would be nice, too. I have a blog at nameofblog.wordpress.com. I'm planning to move it to nameofblog.com, but that's not high on my priority list at the moment. In the meantime, I'd like to know more about my stats, but I'm not sure which is the best free stat tracker for a Wordpress.com site. Right now all I see on the default tracker are pageviews, referring links, and the posts that get the most clicks. But those "most clicks" numbers only add up to about 20% of my daily pageviews, which... huh?

Specifically, I'd like to know:
How many people are following on RSS
Stats by city & country
Average length of visit
Any other stats you'd think I might find interesting.

All this stuff used to be easy to track on Blogger blogs with StatCounter, but I don't understand how to put a different stat tracker on Wordpress (I'm using the Contempt template, and I don't know how to edit CSS). Anyone have a suggestion of an easy, free way for me to satisfy my stats curiosity until I have time to customize the whole site? Ease of use is key, though- my knowledge of programming is scant, by which I mean I know maybe 10 HTML tags and that's about it.

While we're at it, I guess I'd also be interested in hearing about any Wordpress.com site goodies you know about that are cool & easy to use, but not widely known.
Thanks!

Blogger needs more room!

chrisinseoul — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:53:30 -0800

Blogger running out of hard drive space trying to keep it simple and free... So I keep a fairly photo-heavy blog (http://chrisinsouthkorea.blogspot.com, if you're interested) and have been for over a year. Blogspot allows for 1GB of photo storage through upload, which I'm coming up to the limit... Ideally, I'd like a place to upload photos that gives thumbnail links and displays a photo with as little clutter as possible. Oh, and free, easy to understand and upload. Any ideas?

Please help me figure out what to charge for video segments

bryanjbusch — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:09:10 -0800

I have an opportunity to create some short (say, less than 5 minutes) video segments for a popular, ad-revenue-generating blog. How can I figure out how much to charge for each one? Some things I've thought of:

Charge a flat fee per video, whether it's used or not, whether it's popular or not

Charge a flat fee and get a bonus for each time it's played

Charge a fee only for each time it's played

Charge for the video creation, but based more on my time and effort, not just a flat fee

Charge a fee based on the length of the video

I have no idea what a flat fee or bonus fee looks like. Help?

Other considerations that probably shouldn't be influencing my decision:

the blog's owner is an old friend of mine

I really want to be getting in the habit of creating videos like this

the blog's owner publicly posts the revenue generated from the blog, so I could base my decision partially on how much he can afford

Where are all the writers to fill up these blank pages?

TimeDoctor — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:17:49 -0800

How do I find writers for a site when I can't pay them anything yet? I've got a few sites I run with wordpress software behind them and they're all fairly mature and fall under different categories of success and usefulness. I just cannot run them all. Is there a site for disenfranchised writers of any skill to list themselves so I can pluck them from the masses? None of them are successful enough with adsense ads to let me pay anyone just yet.

Yes, they're blogs, they just aren't the usual. One is a niche site for workers in the video game industry, another is an open-source FPS project that needs more generalized gaming stuff which is familiar to users of that project posted to the front page.

I've gotten a few writers already from my friends, but, they don't have the same kind of drive I do to write about these subjects. I end up making the majority of posts.

Or am I just asking for too much and should I attempt to do a better job myself? We are talking about only a few sites here with maybe some thousands of visitors a month between them.

I would prefer to find folks who are at least decent enough to write well, but I do not really care what they write about as long as they are interested in it enough to keep writing.

How do I get a magazine to publish my article?

monkeyman82 — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:03:19 -0800

I want to write a story in a nationally syndicated magazine about a friend to draw attention to childhood cancer. Where do I start? I have a friend whose son went through Burkitt's lymphoma. He (the son) is in remission and doing fine- no small feat for a 16 year old! Over the past couple of years, the father has kept a blog documenting the whole journey, and describing other patients that suffer from childhood cancer. To raise money, he (the father) trained for and completed a marathon.

As I was reading Men's Health last month, I realized that his story would make an incredible article and would draw a lot of attention to- and potentially raise awareness of- Burkitt's lymphoma.

I was thinking about writing an article about it, but short of actually writing the thing, I don't know where to start. Does anyone have any experience with writing and submitting magazine articles for publication?

Bloggersfilter, need your wisdom!

spacefire — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:48:46 -0800

Disqus blog post comments number doesn't show up in Firefox anymore. HTML/CSS gurus please please help! My wife's is having issues with her blog at Budget Bride Blog
On the first page, the comments link at the bottom of each post does not show the number of comments. However, if you move on to the second page, the number of comments shows up. So obviously there's something wrong with the HTML of the first page. I checked the links to Disqus on both pages and they look exactly the same. We're stumped.

Note that this is only a Firefox issue. The number of comments shows up in Internet Explorer and Safari.

Help me get the Wordpress audio player plugin to work? Please?

hifiparasol — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:19:35 -0800

I'm having trouble implementing the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website. Please help a baffled man. I've installed the Wordpress audio player plugin on my website, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong -- it's not showing up on the page.

I'm writing the page using the "html" setting on the wordpress control panel, and I'm following the instructions listed under "usage" in the 1pixelout link above. The file I'm trying to play is definitely in the folder I'm directing the player to (I'm hosted, it's not just a WP blog); I can link to it conventionally (as in, without the player).

The only change I made was to change the audio files directory path from "/audio" to "/uploads." I've even tried checking the box (in the audio player controls on my WP control panel) that replaces all links to mp3 files with a player instance. Didn't work.

Can someone help me out here? I have a feeling there's some extremely minor thing I'm doing wrong, so don't think I'm too foolish. Thanks.

Help me remember this website?

szechuan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:05:58 -0800

Does anyone remember a blog/diary site of woman who claimed to be on the run? This was years ago. She purported to be on the run from her family (possibly European) who were very wealthy and out to kill her, I think. She was posting as she travelled under assumed idenitities through South America, maybe? There was much arguing in the comments about whether it was real or some sort of art project or book plot. I feel like it was in the days before blogspot etc, when anyone could do this. I suspect it is long gone, but can't stop googling to try and find it.

XML-RPC posting throws up error

lilkeith07 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:44:55 -0800

Why can't I get a wordpress.org blog to enable XML-RPC posting? I installed a new version of Wordpress on a subdomain (history.keithkeirstead.com). I was setting up and checked the box for XML-RPC posting when I clicked save changes it sometimes gives me a 403 forbidden error or it will redirect me to the blog and says sorry no posts can be found. Everything else seems to work fine, I can update sidebar, add new posts but just not enable XML-RPC posting. So far I have tried it with different themes, deactivating all the plugins and deleting everything and completely reinstalling wordpress, but I still get the same error. Does anybody know why this is happening or how to fix it?

Ive Googled around and found no errors like this, and posted on the wordpress forums but they seem less then helpful so I turn to the hive mind to hopefully help, Thanks!