Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with blog

Hurf durf butter eater nudity

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:33:06 -0800

How should I photograph my soon-to-be-shrinking bod for best results in animated GIF? This is not a technical question but an aesthetic one. So I'm doing a blog, because there is no doubt in my mind that this is it, this is my successful journey to permanent weight loss. Today I'm taking start pictures, Front, Side and Rear. I'll set them up in a template in Photoshop so each week I have a new image and I'll create an animated GIF over time so after a couple of months, you* will see the incredible shrinking woman. This, along with my experiences, graphic representation (little arty cartoons, motivational desktop images of fruit & vegetables and so on), my successes and set backs, and my incredible sense of humour will lead my blog (as yet unnamed) to be one of THE weight loss destinations of 2010 (and therefore the perfect vehicle to monetize via weight loss ads).

So here's the thing
1. Black strip across the gorey bits (like hiding an identity but a bit lower) or wear my ugly undergarments?**
2. Any other idea on presentation of the bod blog?
3. What to call it? The blog?

* When I say "you" I don't mean "you". I mean, like I'd be showing you all my wobbly bits? C'mon! Plus that'd be self-linking.
** On the pro side completely nude with black strips does mean honesty, and no difficulties matching underwear, but on the con side, unfortunately even less flattering because the girls without support are in a different place, if you know what i mean.

What other awesome frugal cooking blogs are out there?

marsha56 — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:21:06 -0800

I've just discovered 30 Bucks a Week and I love it. What other awesome frugal cooking blogs are out there? (more detail inside on what I'm looking for.) What I love about 30 Bucks and what I'm hoping to find in other blogs:

Focus on cooking frugally. I'm NOT interested in other aspects of frugality right now.

Focus on fresh ingredients and very little processed food. No coupon clippers since they almost always are using lots of processed food.

Simplicity. I like recipes that don't have a long list of ingredients. Also prefer cooking to baking as baking often seems to require more time, more measuring, more precision, more ingredients.

Eclectic influences, including Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, Mexican, etc, etc. Emphasis on interesting flavors.

Looking for meals with little or no meat, but would prefer not strictly vegan. I still enjoy eggs, yogurt and occasionally cheese.

I like lots of recipes and enjoy enticing pics of prepared food and/or food prep.

I really like it when the blogger explains how and where they shop and how much they spent and what they are eating for every meal, including breakfast, packable lunches and snacks, not just dinners.

Looking for blogs. I'm not asking for your own frugal ideas. Lots of other AskMe posts cover this.

I need help naming my blog.

seandq — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:50:49 -0800

I need help naming my blog. I'm doing something a bit new, a bit random. I'm basically a high school senior who is taking on some friends with me to create a group blog on everything - mainly sports, entertainment, news, politics, etc.

I originally thought of hosting this blog on my domain and then just outsourcing my friends' posts as guest posts. Then it struck me it might just be a good idea to put all of our work together on its own site.

Ideas I'm hovering towards involving the phrase "Vox Populi", "Hive Mind", or "Groupthink". However, finding an open domain with those in there is a very hard thing to do. I want to emphasis the collaboration aspect, and possibly to a lesser degree the fact we're teenagers, and soon we'll be college students.

Thanks in advance!

How do I remove password protection for logged in users?

Solomon — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:06:45 -0800

How can I make password protected posts visible to logged in users, but still require a password from guests, in Wordpress 2.9? For example, I have a password protected post on my blog. I want it to be visible to all logged in users, just like any other post, but I want not-logged-in people to have to enter a password to view the post.

Logged in user: sees the post as if it wasn't protected in any way.
Guest: sees the password box on the post and is then able to view the post after adding the password.

How can I do this?

Well written, snarky exploration blogs?

shinyshiny — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 13:43:48 -0800

I'm reading through DetroitBlog's archives, and at my rate I'll be finished today. Are there any similar blogs? I know about Forgotten New York, which I also read. I'm looking for well written, snarky exploration tales, basically. Any city, any country, rural or urban. Something that tells about little-known local histories. As a plus, any spanish blogs would be interesting.

Blog gimmick ahoy!

schmichael — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:30:12 -0800

Help me with a gimmick for a blog! After hearing about the movie Julie & Julia, I had an idea for a blog along similar lines. My idea: read every (X) book in a year. Maybe I could do every Book prize winner, or every Pulitzer. I would have to read about 50 books in one year. Not a huge amount of books, but on top of a busy life I think it's a good challenge. I calculate that 50 books would average out to about 3/4 of an hour of reading a day, 365 days a year.

My first question: does that sound like an interesting blog to you? To be honest, I'm kind of mining for opinions and ideas here. Maybe reading is just too boring to make for a captivating blog, maybe it's all depends on how you present it. Maybe there are enough literature-lovers out there that it would find an audience.

And maybe the theme could be improved on - maybe the Pulitzer and Man Booker are too well-known to be interesting. Maybe there's some really really weird way of theming 50 books to read - bizarro literary prizes, weird genres, something like that.

I would be aiming to do something more interesting than just reviewing the books. Partly because I am not a literary critic, and partly because that would be just boring. I'd be researching the books, the authors, looking into the story behind whichever theme I choose, looking into the whole why-we-read thing.

I'm fairly excited by this idea. But there is a lot to think about in a really short space of time (if I want to be rolling on this by New Year's Day, that is). One thing is that I've never really done any proper blogging before. I know that there's a difference between Tumblr and Wordpress, but not much more than that. I would not know how to make a custom template or do any deep work other than pasting on a pre-made skin.

And I also don't know much about the blogging world in general. What are the good literature and books blogs out there? How do you go about building an audience and making connections? What sort of things are possible with blogs?

All input appreciated!

How to write a successful blog?

remi — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:59:42 -0800

Any tips you can recommend about writing a successful blog to someone who's been writing on the Web for 12 years? I feel really embarrassed to ask for advice about this topic. I'm a successful Web developer and I've been creating sites for myself and clients for around eight years already. As soon as I had my first few sporadic hours of Internet at one of my friends' workplace, I created my first Web site with a journal -- that was before the word "blog" existed. I was writing HTML at home using Edit for DOS, saving my files on a floppy disk, and publishing them on Angelfire, then Geocities, when I was visiting my friend at his workplace. Of course, today, times have changed. Internet is accessible everywhere, the transfer rates are a lot faster, really good Web hosting is cheap, I have my own domain names, and I'm using Drupal to run my blogs.

I enjoy what I do. I like sharing my views and opinions, or discuss people about my interests. For the past 12 years, I've been maintaining a personal site. The design changed many times, and the name of the site changed occasionally, but these are steady now. As I get older, I gradually moved away from the intimate "complaining teenager" writing to less personal issues and topics years ago. I also started what may be called a "spin-off" -- another blog, about my new life in a remote country. I believe this precise topic might be something more people are interested in rather than the general "main" blog of mine.

However, after such a long time, I'm getting discouraged. Especially when I visit blogs that just started a few years ago and are already getting a lot of attention. I don't mind sharing what I wrote, and I don't mind my writing to be a niche for a small group of readers, but beside the rare positive comment I get from a friend in person, I usually get no encouragement. No comments, less than 10 hits per day... Almost nothing. Worse is, the rare comments I get are usually posted on entries of mine with strong negative opinions about certain topics, but I usually get nothing for the positive or neutral material, which is usually what I write now. With this lack of attention, I still don't mind writing, but I'm wondering if it is better for me to stop spending money on my sites and time on maintaining them, and just write a diary with ink on paper.

Are my blogs boring? Since English is my second language, is my writing poor, blend? Are the designs ugly? Am I putting too much or not enough of a personal touch? I tried asking for feedback from friends, but they always act like I'm doing the best work in the world. Maybe they're just polite. Can someone here review my blogs and give me an honest opinion? I can sure use some constructive criticism.

To note, I try to be fair on the way I spread the word about my blogs. I don't spam forums or annoy friends by asking them to check them out. I'm truly sorry if posting this question here seems hypocritical, which is another reason why I'm ashamed of asking for help. I was thinking of posting anonymously, but then since I'm asking for some people to review my sites, I would have just set a throw-away e-mail address with an automatic reply containing the URLs for them. This defeats the purpose of trying to stay anonymous, I believe.

If you're interested in reviewing my blogs, please see my profile. Even if you don't review them, I would sure appreciate any tips you can offer. This being said, if you do believe this is just an attempt to get more traffic to my sites, I will gladly remove the links to my blogs in my profile while this question is still on AskMeFi's front page.

In advance, thank you!

What would I do without you guys, really?

Bageena — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:31:30 -0800

My friends and I are starting an artist collective in Phoenix, Arizona and we desperately need help thinking of a name. Can you help? Short explanation; I myself am an artist with, you know, the paper and the pencil and occasionally, some ink or acrylic or something. I have three friends that are photographers, another friend who's a painter, two friends who are musicians, and a few others who might also join. What we've decided we'd like to do is start a community blog where we all write individually what we're doing to try and break into the mainstream or just get our work seen. The main site will show all of our posts, broken down by individual members, along with a sort of swarm cloud that shows how often each artist works with the others.
Anyways, we've got a ton of great ideas already and we're excited to get a move on it, but we're stuck at what seems to be the first effing step! We need a name for our little community. We don't have a lot in common except that we all work normal 9-5 jobs outside of our passions for our individual work, we are all artists of one sort or another, and we all live in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm trying to think of names that are reminiscent of the desert or of Phoenix. I sort of like the idea of something ancient and awesome sounding. Really though, we're open to anything. I'd list the links to our websites so you could actually see our styles and who we 'are', so to speak, but I think that'd be a little too self-linky for me. So yeah - if your really that curious, you can look in my bio and I think there's a link there to my personal work.
So yes, I leave it once again to the most clever people I know to help me hop a hurdle in my life. Thanks Mefites!

Name this book illustration blog!

actionpact — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:39:34 -0800

Help me name my illustrated book blog project! Some illustrator friends and I are starting a blog up where in 2010 we each will draw a scene of a favorite book of ours, every month. (There are eleven people, so eleven books, illustrated at least once a month) These aren't all children's books-- I'm doing Alice in Wonderland, but among some of the other books are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Tarzan, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sounds good, right? Well, I am bad at naming and the first thing I came up with, Picture Book Club, sounded good enough to go with. However I just found that there is a picturebookclub.com, which is a book review blog. Plus since not all the books are all ages/childrens' oriented, maybe picture-book as a term isn't a good one. I am struggling to come up with a better name so I'm hoping you Me-fites might have some awesome suggestions!

Basic starter words to get you thinking: books, illustrations, drawings, stories, storytelling, scenes, reading, worlds, color, mood, narrative.

I was thinking something like Storytelling/Storytellers' Society/League/Club/Lodge or something but I bet you guys can think up something ten times more awesome than that!

Thanks hivemind!

There's a widget for that

chrisinseoul — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:17:06 -0800

There's-a-widget-for-that-filter: I need a write-once, run-anywhere events widget to keep the world updated on what's happening. I run a moderately successful blog in Seoul, South Korea (for reference purposes: chrisinsouthkorea.blogspot.com). One of my more popular posts is an 'events' post that gets published at the beginning of every month. I'll hand-type this thing after hours of researching and formatting - and there's GOT to be an easier way.

Ideally, I want a widget (with HTML code / script people can copy and paste anywhere) that can:

A: accept new event listings from selected users (or pre-registered users)
B: be displayable with filters (location, date, price, etc.) anywhere the code is placed.
C: Write-once, run-anywhere so other bloggers can contribute and post the same widget.
D: Is free / open source.

Google Calendar is the only application I'm familiar with that MIGHT produce something like what I'm thinking about. But Hive Mind, you are smarter than that. Any help would be great. Thanks!

How to take a blog from online to book format?

Mysticalchick — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:25:35 -0800

My goddaughter passed away three years ago at 19. She has an online blog (which I host) with about 4 years of entries. Is there a way to take all that text and drop it down into a program so we can print it out easily (almost in book form)? Or is the best way to cut and paste into a word doc and then put it all together? It's a very old version of Word Press (circa 2005) so not sure it would work with a current program.

I did see this previous entry but it's almost two years old so I thought I'd see if anyone knew anything more current.

Looking for ideas - whatever you think might be do-able. Thanks!

Will I get in trouble for posting mp3s to my blog?

hagelslaag — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:33:22 -0800

i am (surprise surprise) into blogs. and before i was into blogs, i was into music. now i like to post mp3s to my blog. is it a bad idea to label which song/artist it is -- as in, are there really crazy music coppers who will show up on my doorstep to arrest me? my blog's host is tumblr, which makes it easy to share an mp3 a day. should i just forgo labelling which songs i post? or is it pointless to even worry about this at all? i have no idea how intense lawyers are these days about persuing folks who share tunes online, and i don't want to get sued just 'cause i want to spread my love for joe meek.

How to make my diary not suck?

mono blanco — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:28:44 -0800

How to write diary entries I actually want to read? Life's interesting. But when I try to do a diary I never want to read it later. It's either I ate blah blah or I think blah blah. Got any tips for making the recording as interesting as the original?

It's dot com!

andrewcilento — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:12:41 -0800

Trying to find a hockey blog I came across during the last NHL season. I forgot to bookmark it, and Google is failing me. Hoping someone will read this description and know the one I'm talking about. At some point towards the end of the 2008-09 NHL season, I came across a blog that I think was titled "Old-Time Hockey," though I could be wrong. What stuck out to me about the site, and the reason I'm trying to find it again, is that in the sidebar, the person running the blog had the NHL standings as they'd be if there were no shootouts or overtime loss points; I think those standings maybe have even not included regular-season overtime (so, just wins, losses, and ties).

Some other fuzzy details: I think it was hosted on Blogspot, and I also vaguely remember the layout being light text on a dark background, perhaps with orange as one of the colors?

Barring anyone knowing the blog I'm talking about, if anyone knows of a website that shows the standings the way I described, that would be great too.

What should I name a blog about question-asking?

unknowncommand — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:58:23 -0800

I'm starting a blog about question-asking (including Q&A sites, library reference, etc) and I need a good name for it. I was thinking of some kind of wordplay involving hives/bees/honey/pollen because I love bees, and because "hive mind" is kind of related. Obvious names like "hivebuzz" or "infobuzz" or "hivetalk" are a little too obvious for my tastes (and are also already taken, so it could just be sour grapes). Any ideas? Non-bee suggestions are also welcome!

I see a blog post in your future

arcticwoman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:37:51 -0800

Do I have the right to transcribe and publish a recording of a psychic reading (I was the client)? Nearly ten years ago I saw a psychic and at the conclusion of the appointment she gave me a cassette tape recording of our conversation over the previous hour. I no longer believe in psychics, and I think a line-by-line analysis of the reading would be interesting to myself and other skeptics - do I have the right to transcribe and publish the recording online? Do I have to get her permission? I have nothing against this psychic in particular, and have no intention of publishing her name or any identifying information. I don't make any money off my blog - no ads or anything.

I am located in Canada.

What are my options for RSS Readers that are text only?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:13:53 -0800

What are my options for RSS Readers that are text only? I use Bloglines to read my RSS feed, but I'm trying to find a reader that can strip away all the images and display only the text. The reason is that a lot of the blogs I like to keep up on tend to post a lot of NSFW pictures and I do most of my reading at work. The mobile version of Bloglines worked for awhile, but lately has started displaying pictures too.

Anyone have any recommendations on how I can keep up with my literary porn while working for an ever watchful boss?

Make My Hyper-Local Blog Community Friendly!

daviss — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:30:56 -0800

I run a hyper-local blog about Penn State . I want to create a new area in which our readers can post content, similar to Gawker's #tips area but with a share box like Facebook's. Other Details
*** We're using the latest version of Wordpress. One thought I had was maybe to switch to Wordpress MU, keep the standard blog intact, but then create another Wordpress system for the user generated content?

*** I'd really like this to be smooth (i.e. AJAX) and extendable... Facebook and Twitter integration would be awesome, as would the ability to upload pictures and embed videos.

*** While having to moderate posts individually wouldn't be a big deal, I'd prefer if we could get a CAPTCHA set up for the system.

*** The ability to rate content submissions, or comment, would be awesome.

Best blog platform for easy commenting but little spam

bystander — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:12:42 -0800

Best blogging software to allow easy commenting by strangers but avoiding comment spam. I want to start a new non-commercial blog that encourages comments from readers, but avoids as much comment spam as possible. I realise this is tough, but what is the best current solution? I am not up to date on this area, but I want a middle ground that perhaps avoids a registration stage or moderating every comment. Is there possibly a comment option that allows a comment to be written, but it only goes live after a link delivered to a valid email is clicked? Is there a better solution? I feel captchas are not as effective as they have been, yet I want to avoid robot spam, but also make drive by valid comments be possible. Is this a pipe dream?
I can probably install any suitable software, but my preference is a *nix based solution or hosted. Free is better but not essential.

I need a specific CMS that allows each user to edit one part of a page.

grumblebee — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:46 -0800

I need a page of bios integrated into a WordPress site. I would like to give each person the ability to update his own bio without letting him mess with other people's bios. It would be awesome if the list was alphabetized. In other words, if you visit the bio page, you'll see something like this:

Fred Alberts has worked at Acme for five years. He lives in New Jersey...

Alice Jordan loves the NY Times Crossword and...

Peter Smith is a gourmet chef who has lived in London and Paris...

If, say, Alice no longer likes the crossword puzzles, I would like her to be able to log in someplace and change her bio, but I don't want her to be able to change Fred's bio.

This system will slowly grow in terms of me adding more people. Currently, there are about 100 people. I will probably add about ten more people to it each year. These people will regularly want to update their bios, and I don't want them to have to email me each time they want a change made.

Ultimately, I want all the bios on to be on one page of a Wordpress blog.

Is this something that exists already, or do I have to code it myself?

Typepad blog question

londongeezer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:08:29 -0800

I have a Typepad blog. I would like to make all my posts that are more than a certain period old - say, a week, but that might change - inaccessible except to people who have registered with me by providing their name and email address. Can I do this using Typepad? There don't seem to be any 'widgets' that provide this functionality. I'm not at all sure that Typepad is capable of being 'programmed' in this way, but I hope that I am wrong. Any suggestions gratefully received.

How to get an RSS feed from a website that doesn't have an RSS Feed.

gm2007 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:40:39 -0800

Setting up an RSS feed for a job board that does not have an RSS feed subscription. Is there a way to do this? I would like to add an RSS feed to my iGoogle pages for USAJOBS.GOV searches that I have set up. USAJOBS.GOV allows you to subscribe to searches and receive them by email, but does not have a way to subscribe via RSS.

I went to feedage.com, which has a tool that they call HTML2RSS, which is supposed to convert any HTML page to an RSS feed, but it doesn't work very well on USAJOBS.GOV.

ANy ideas

Print is dead; help me replace it

TochterAusElysium — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:16:34 -0800

What's the best platform for a local community news and events site? I've volunteered to set up a site which will serve as a news source, events calendar, and community hub for an area encompassing three or four small cities. I've done personal blogs, and a single-area blog in Blogger, but for this larger project I'd like to expand my options. Is Wordpress a better way to go?

Are there other platforms I should look at? I know Ning is dead or dying (or so I've heard) but it seemed to have the flexibility to do something like this. I don't mind learning a new system, but I'm not a programmer, so I don't feel ready to build a site from scratch. Ideally, there is a pre-existing community news platform that I can customize to be exactly what is wanted.

Also, do you know of any local blogs or community news sites that are well-designed and useful that I could look at as reference?

Many thanks in advance!

"Just add RSS"-type instablog needed

ignignokt — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:47:40 -0800

Recommend a free blog provider that can use an RSS feed as a source for content, but also has a decent comment system. I know Tumblr can create blogs that translate RSS feeds into Tumblr blogs, but - by design - they don't have a robust comment system. You can try to drop in something like Disqus, but I've tried that before, and the results are ugly.

Why I'm looking for this: A friend of mine would like to take his Google Reader shared items feed and present it as a blog that strangers can comment on without too much trouble.

Self-help but I need your help - what should I name my blog?

Chrysalis — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:31:37 -0800

Help me name my blog! I'm in the process of turning my life around and changing some really unhelpful mental habits and would like to start a blog basically about the things I'm learning and trying towards enjoying and living life more fully, feeling good in my own skin and having a positive attitude etc, hopefully to a) keep me motivated and on track with this and give me a place to record the journey and b) hopefully maybe give other people some ideas/inspiration. I'm thinking along the lines of each entry being about a little concept or something I've been thinking about or an idea I'm trying, maybe a question, rather than a "dear diary" overly personal to myself style.

I'd like something positive and catchy and easy to match with visual images, so I was thinking of something like "making life sweet" but less cheesy, but am open to any suggestions (on any theme) at all as long as you don't mind if I ultimately end up using your idea :)