I had to reinstall my hard drive last weekend and put the finishing touches on the Structure theme. In the process, I lost a lot of links that I had saved in my feed reader. So, sorry to those that follow the Weekly Roundup. I now have everything working properly again.

Design:

Here are a few links that center on Web design. My personal favorite is Adii’s “53 Top Blog Designs.”

• Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
  I’m not even sure how or why I came across Jeffrey’s site, but I’m glad I did. It’s a beautiful layout that conforms to Web standards. It’s worth checking out just for his style.
• Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions
  Andy Rutledge knows his stuff when it comes to the structure of a site. This is a “must read” article for those looking to better their layout skills.
• Jina Bolton
  This is one of those sites that just looks beautiful in terms of style. It’s the type of site that I know I’ll never design because it’s not my style, but it’s nice to look at.
• My 53 Top Blog Designs of 2007
  WordPress Rockstar, Adii, while working on his blog redesign, puts together a comprehensive list of great site designs he’s found this year. It’ll take you a while to view them all, but they’re worth checking out if you like to follow Web design trends.

Interesting:

This is the dumping ground for other blogs, sites, articles, and other things of interest. Be sure to check out Common Craft’s videos.

• Common Craft
  “We use a simple format and real-world stories to make sense of complex ideas.” The Common Craft team puts together great videos in “Plain English” for use on the Web. Their videos are great for viewing and learning.
• OpenOffice
  I’m sure most of you have heard about this by now, and if you haven’t, you might want to try it out. I’m using it to write an e-book write now (an e-book that’s due sometime in the far away future).
• Why Traffic, Your Subscriber Count and Money Doesn’t Matter
  To me, this is one of Skellie’s best articles. I totally agree with the perspective on “looking” like an authority, even if you’re not one. This article could change how you present your blog to the world.
• Write Your Most Popular Post Ever
  The first tip of this list of 10 says it all — “Time is more important than talent.” This is a great article on how to write popular blog posts.
• Orlando prep school sues mother for criticizing it on blog
  This is an interesting case to follow. Blogger-moms, beware!

As always, you can keep up with my links by following my del.icio.us bookmarks or subscribing to the feed for next week’s roundup.

Must-see:

• My MySpace profile
  Yes, I’m shamelessly linking myself this week. I’ll soon release the newest version of the Facebook on MySpace Theme. The old version is, well, old. Look for version 2.0 in the coming days.

WordPress:

Your weekly dosage of WordPress goodies and news. There are definitely some interesting sites you should check out this week.

• WordPress for Dummies
  If only I had thought of this idea first. It sounds like a good read. I have so many WordPress tutorials and articles bookmarked now, that I’m not sure if I need a copy. I might still purchase one for reference though.
• We Love WP
  I can’t believe I haven’t linked this site before. It’s a great showcase of cool WordPress designs.
• WP Themez
  This is a Digg-like site for WordPress themes. It could become pretty popular soon. I’m trying to do my part in seeing that happen. Go vote for my Visionary theme while you’re checking it out.

Design:

Only one article this week, but it’s well worth the read.

• Understanding Web Design
  A great article by Jeffrey Zeldman on Web design. He talks about what Web design is and is not. He also argues that many of the leaders on the Web do not understand what makes good Web design because they don’t essentially understand the Web.

Articles of interest:

• Never Say Die
  It looks like a few more people are taking Ray Kurzweil and others seriously. This is an article about how some “big money” individuals are investing in life-extension technologies.
• 5 Content Myths and Why They Are False
  Jonathan Bailey gives a detailed explanation about some of the things you can do to fight against those that would dare to steal your site’s content that you’ve put together through hours of hard work and sweat.
• The Forrest Gump Guide to Becoming a Gazillionaire
  This is a funny and informative guide on keeping the cash flowing for your online business.
• How to Write the Perfect ‘About’ Page by Numbers
  I think I might just make a Skellie section on this blog every week. Once again, she finds a way to make sense of everything. Now, I’ve got to go fix my About page.
• Taking the Second Amendment to Court
  The Supreme Court will examine D.C.’s “right” to ban handguns. Oh great. What’s next? Let’s get rid of all 10 amendmants that make the Bill of Rights. When are we going to learn that these rights are not given to us. They’re ours no matter what any government tells us. The Bill of Rights was simply a statement of what rights we have as humans.
• A Nation of Sheep
  Someone from Fox News that actually makes sense. This has got to be some kind of joke. I’ll look more into it.

As always, you can follow what I link to daily by keeping up with my del.icio.us bookmarks or you can subscribe to the feed to have next week’s roundup delivered right to you.

I didn’t do as much blog-hopping last week as I should’ve because of said sickness, but I have a few useful links for you. Here they are:

WordPress:

Here’s some fresh content from the WordPress-o-sphere. There are some big things happening, and it’s going to be interesting to what effect these changes have on the community.

• The WordPress Magazine
  More-popular-by-the-day blogger, Adii, is making strides with his newest concept — The WordPress Magazine. Hop on over to his blog to find out what this thing’s all about.
• Make a Facebook Fan Page
  Mark Ghosh of Weblog Tools Collection discusses the importance of creating a fan page for your blog and how it could help your online presence.
• WP Designer Version 8.0
  Small Potato launched his new look, and I am impressed. Mostly, I’m interested in how he will incorporate some new features that are coming to his blog soon with this design.
• Ten Reasons to Choose WordPress
  A great list of reasons to use the most wonderful blogging platform / CMS in the world. I tend to agree with everything said from a beginner’s standpoint, but think WordPress has much more to offer for those of us that’ve been blogging and designing for a little longer.

From the feed reader:

This is a list of great articles from my feed reader in the past week. Make sure you check them out and subscrbie to their feeds if their content suits you.

• A Guide to StumbleUpon: Understanding and Beating the System
  This is a great in-depth guide of how StumbleUpon works. There are also tips on how it can help your blog gain better (not just “more”) traffic.
• Are You Putting Traffic Before Content?
  Chris Garrett writes about the importance of creating solid content before worrying about how much traffic your blog’s getting. What’s traffic worth if no one’s sticking around?
• How to Innovate by Solving Problems
  Skellie looks at how you can be innovative and find a place in your niche. It’s a great look at how you should find an area that other sites are weak in, and make that your strength.

Design:

I only have a couple of design-related links for you this week, but they’re well worth checking out. Evan Eckard’s site is a must-see.

• Evan Eckard Design
  Thanks to a post by our aforementioned blogger, Adii, I got a chance to see this beautiful site. I quickly tagged it under “inspiration” in my del.icio.us bookmarks.
• Table of Web Fonts
  A great list of common Web fonts to use. It even shows different sizes, variants, and weights of each font family, so that the user can see what the font looks like on screen.

Blogs, sites, and articles of interest:

I’ve just lumped all the other content here in this list. These are a few cool things you should check out.

• Pokin Around: A real person, a real death
  This is an interesting article on how one suicidal girl finally got pushed over the edge through the use of the popular social networking site, MySpace. It’s definitely an interesting read and might change your perspective on what you let your children do online.
• PopURLs
  A neat website that pulls in the top articles from pretty much any social media site imaginable. You can even customize the feed arrangement to suit your preferences.
• Shuffle
  A game I got totally addicted to over the weekend. This is one of the reasons I’m late on posting the Weekly Roundup. It’s just so darn fun!

You can keep up with my daily link habits from my del.icio.us bookmarks or you can subscribe to the feed to keep updated when the next Weekly Roundup rolls around.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. Do you have any interesting links, blogs, or sites that you’d recommend? There’s a good chance it might appear in next week’s roundup.

WordPress:

I’ve only found a couple of useful WordPress things this week. Be sure to check them out and check back next week for more.

• Blogtheme.com Warning
  Mark Ghosh at Weblog Tools Collection points out another site stealing themes. If you’re a WordPress theme developer, you might want to check this out.
• WordTube Plugin
  I haven’t played around with this yet, but it looks like another option that I might add to some of my news/magazine themes in the future. Plus, there’s an MP3 option that I might implement on my sister’s site once she decides to put some music up.

Feeds:

I’ve finally updated my feed reader. These are three sites that you should definitely check out. Be sure to subscribe also.

• Armen Thomassian
  It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally gotten around to adding Armen’s blog to my feed reader. I’ve kept up with his posts for a few weeks now, and he definitely deserves to be on my list of subscribed sites. Plus, he went straight to the top because his name starts with and A! I never miss his new posts now.
• Caroline Middlebrook
  In the vast online world, Caroline Middlebrook is trying to compete on the Web with her website and make a few dollars along the way. She’s got an interesting story, and you should definitely check out her blog.
• Nyssa Brown Design
  Nyssa’s site is a wonderful experience in design. Yet another designer I’m envious of. I’m happy to add her to my feed reader this week.

From the feed reader:

This week was a good one for my feed reader. Here are some wonderful articles from the blogs that I subscribe to.

• Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy?
  Caroline Middlebrook writes about how she creates her audience by leaving comments on others’ blogs. It’s something we should all look at. She’s pushed me to reevaluate my blog commenting strategy.
• Five Easy Steps to Editing Your Own Work
  Anna Goldsmith, in her first article at Copyblogger, describes the ins and outs of writing well. There’s nothing new here for me because these are basic tips that I learned in a few journalism and English classes. It’s always nice to get a refresher course on occasion though.
• Five years from now
  Chris Brogan asks an essential question to his readers — where will we be in five years (technologically)? It brought up an interesting discussion.
• The Secret to Building a Popular Blog and Getting Tons of Readers
  Another great article from Dosh Dosh this week. Maki takes a look at how to build a core audience and use them as distributors of your content. It’s quite long, but well worth the read.
• Three Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Writing Every Post
  Mohsin from Blogging Bits wrote an intersting article on narrowing your content down to a specific topic. This is a great article to go along with those which ask you to narrow your overall content down to a specific topic.

Design:

Since I’ve been expanding my work with theme development, I’ve also been expanding my bookmarks on design. These are some great sites to visit to fill your design needs.

• Komodo Media
  One of those sites that you just have to link to because of its design. I’d love to pick Rogie King’s brain on the design of this site. If only I had the skills to design like this…
• Kuler
  I’m finally getting around to using this great tool. This is basically the best color scheme tool I’ve found thus far. Everyone knows I’m not the best designer, so it has been useful for picking colors for a few of my upcoming themes.
• The Morning News
  Since I’ve been developing a few news and magazine-style themes lately, it’s best to see what other greats news designs are out there. There are quite a few elements that I like about this site.
• Themed Fonts
  If you’re looking for a few cool fonts to download, look no further. TypeNow has a large collection of free movie, music and video game fonts to play around with.

Other sites, blogs, and articles of interest:

This list is of sites that I’ve come across that don’t fit into the other categories. Don’t look them over though. There are some real gems here.

• Ayumi Hamasaki
  The Empress of JPop. Since I’m trying to keep up with Asian culture during my stay in South Korea, I figured I’d do some reading on one of the most popular artists in Asia.
• Asian Video Blog
  This looks like an interesting site that covers different movies from Asia. I think it’s best to see what Korean cinema has to offer during my stay.
• EPIC 2014
  A neat video about the year 2014 and how technology will change the world. I enjoyed it, but think it may be a little old now.
• Online Parallel Bible
  For those of you interested in biblical study, this looks like a great tool. You can view several different translations of the Bible alongside each other. Compare and contrast to your heart’s content. I’ve been reading the variations in the traslations of the Genesis over the weekend.

What, no Bill Maher this week? I didn’t see anything worth posting about him. He’s all over the Net anyway. I’m sure you can manage to find some good content.

So, this concludes my weekly roundup once again. You can always follow what I’m bookmarking throughout the week by checking out my del.icio.us bookmarks. Or, you can subscribe to the feed to keep updated when I post.

Be sure to check back next week for another weekly roundup.

I’ve also added the del.icio.us bookmarks add-on for Firefox. You can more easily follow what I’m linking to throughout the week by checking out my del.icio.us bookmarks instead of following my Digg, Reddit, and every other social bookmarking application in existence.

WordPress:

Things happening around the WordPress community this week.

• Premium News Theme
  Adii has just released one of the best WordPress themes you can get your hands on, and with a reasonable price tag. He’s really stepped up his theme designing with this one.
• WP.com Marketplace Idea
  Matt, WordPress god, releases a statement that theme designers might be able to make a little extra cash through WordPress.com. Reactions across the WordPress-o-sphere ranged from giddiness to extreme hostilitiy.
• WordPress Theme Marketplace: Hyposcrisy from Matt?
  David Peralty lashes out at the theme marketplace, and incites a great discussion on the issue.
• WordPress Guide to Livelihood Without Central Marketplace Dependancy
  Small Potato throws his two cents into the debate over the WordPress theme marketplace

From my feed:

I don’t give enough link love to the people behind my feed subscriptions. They too often get read, then discarded. Starting now, I will link to a few articles that I’ve filed away for safekeeping every week from my feed reader.

• 5 Ways To Make Me Your Subscriber
  Mohsin writes a well thought out and descriptive list of things we, as bloggers, should think about when trying to get feed subscribers.
• What can you give me?
  Skellie writes a great article (as always) about the “Key question your site must answer.”
• Your Fellow Blogger is Not a Competitor
  Maki from Dosh Dosh explains what your real competition is.

Interesting articles:

Interesting articles and videos I’ve found around the Net this week.

• Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
  Patrick Henry’s famous speech from 1775. If you’re an American and you haven’t read this, stop what you’re doing and read it now. If you have read it, it wouldn’t hurt to read it again.
• Internet poll on people’s lives and the Internet
  The 463 conducted a poll that asked some interesting questions about U.S. Internet users and their online lives.
• Scared of the Wrong Things
  Bill Maher is always hilarious, and he’s no different in this video where he examines Halloween and the things we should be scared of. I should start a Bill Maher weekly roundup.

Other blogs and sites of interest:

Cool sites and other things that don’t fit in other categories. Don’t dismiss them because they’re definitely worth checking out.

• Ask Dan and Jennifer
  This is a neat site about dating, relationships, and sex. I absolutely love their videos. Plus, they just recently had a redesign by Brian Gardner, using his Revolution Magazine WordPress theme.
• Deleted Images
  A showcase of images that people would normally delete from their cameras. Some are weird, others are not worth the time looking at. Give it a quick look through for the real beauties though.
• Snook.ca
  I’m not sure how I came across Jonathan Snook’s site, but it’s a showcase in design beauty. This is the type of design that most of us only dream of accomplishing. Plus, he’s got a few great articles too.
• Current
  A neat peer-to-peer network where people share their views. The TV section is great. You should see what some of the idiots say on there.
• World of Warcraft
  I’ve always wanted to play WoW, but never got around to it. A monthly fee kind of scares me off because I know I wouldn’t be able to put in the time to get my money’s worth. Anyone know of any good free online MMORPGs?

If you’ve been following my Weekly Roundup, you’ve obviously noticed something different, haven’t you? Yes, there are small excerpts with each link. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to do this or not, but thought I’d give it a try this week. Obviously, the more I write about things, the less time I have to find great stuff and link to it.

It’s an experiment in progress, just as the Weekly Roundup itself is an experiment.

For those of you who are new around these parts, the Weekly Roundup is my personal listing each week of what I’ve been doing around the Web. It’s my way of saying “thank you” to everyone that makes my Web experience enjoyable.

Feeds:

I only added two feeds this week. It’s getting harder to land in my feed reader because I don’t like clutter, and I can only read so much in one day. Next week, I do hope to offer a little more in the way of good feeds though.

• Dosh Dosh
• Lost Art of Blogging

WordPress and blog stuff:

Yes, new category. Since this blog’s focus is partly on WordPress, there should definitely be a WordPress section in the weekly roundup. This is a listing of things that have to do with designing, coding, and cool things for your blog.

• Advanced Tag Entry WordPress Plugin
• FireStats
• Flash video player plugin for WordPress
• LavaLamp for jQuery lovers
• n2menu: A script for creating horizontal menus based off jQuery
• Useful WordPress Plugins

Articles, videos, and other fun things:

The things that really matter, right? This is a dumping ground for articles, videos, and other random stuff I’ve come across throughout the week. To stay current on all things that I’m bookmarking, you can follow me daily at del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, or Reddit.

• 7 can’t-miss ways to kick-start the writing habit
• Anatomy of a black hole
• Bible Map
• Bill Maher tells Andrew Sullivan: “It was not that hard to see Bush was a moron in 2000″ (video)
• I know why pot is illegal
• ‘Second Earth’ found, 20 light years away
• Secret Worlds: The Universe Within
• Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050
• Two of ‘Jena Six’ defendants present BET award

Blogs and sites of interest:

Cool website and blogs that I’ve popped in over the last week. Some might possibly be on a future feed list. Others are just plain interesting.

• Buddhist Geeks
• Green-Beast
• LiveScience
• Mozilla Store
• Nusuni Dot Com
• Spoon Graphics Blog
• This Tulsa
• Thunderbird: Reclaim your inbox
• VideoDL: Download online video (Google Video, YouTube, etc.)

There you have it. Another week rounded up. Subscribe to the feed to stay updated. Suggest sites or other cool stuff through the contact form.

This thing has more options than anything I’ve ever seen. It even lets you add a logo over the video. I particularly like the floating controls it offers. Plus, everything can be overwritten for each video you post to your blog.

I was actually looking for a good video player for my site the other day when I posted The Milk Challenge, which has now been updated to use this plugin. So, go check that out for an example.

The plugin is perfect for me. The next thing I’ll do with it is convert all my crappy films to the flash format and use this player to show them from my site.

After that, I will add it to my next news/magazine WordPress theme.

The main reason I wanted to use a video plugin was because I want to host my own videos. Why would I want to do that when there are so many different ways to host videos off-site and embed them into my blog posts? Sure, it uses more bandwidth if someone plays it from my site, but that’s not my concern. I want full creative control over what is displayed and how it’s displayed. Plus, what if the site that hosts my video shuts down (that’s a big “what if” with YouTube), but if it does happen, I’ll have to find another place to host my video — that’s such a hassle.

Mostly, I want control. I’ll probably still upload any videos I happen to make to YouTube, but I want to have control over what’s on my site.

I like to have everything on my site. That’s why I took down my Flickr feed and am in the process of putting together a photoblog. There are always some limits when using a third-party to host videos, photos, or other files because you have to agree to their terms of service, are limited by how much you can upload, and what extra features you can add.

What do you think? Would you rather host your own videos or go through a third-party? Would you rather have more creative control or are you perfectly content without outside services?

What’s the weekly roundup?

It is an experiment I’m conducting on this website. Instead of posting asides, pulling in a del.icio.us feed, or posting daily on the things I like, I have decided to simply roundup some of the things I’m reading, watching, or listening to each week all in one convenient post. It’s my way of saying “thank you” to others for making the Web an enjoyable place.

Feeds:

These are the feeds I’ve added this week. I’ve also deleted a couple, but I won’t list them here. (One way to get deleted from my feed reader is by posting 20+ articles a day. That’s just too much to read.)

• Brian Gardner
• Chris Brogan
• Flat World Blog
• Grammar Geek
• Read/Write Web

Articles, blog posts, and videos:

Neat snippets from the Web that I’ve saved on my del.icio.us links, voted for on Digg or Reddit, or saved in my bookmarks folder because I haven’t totally invested my time in social bookmarking sites. I really enjoyed the Bill Maher article and video, you should check that out.

• 300 images from 1800 sites
• Bill Maher: Show me a man wearing an American flag pin, I’ll show you an asshole
• A vision of students today
• Fag is turning into a high school insult for any guy who doesn’t play football
• Information R/evolution
• Athiests and Anger
• We’re angry!(Response to Athiests and Anger)
• The Golden Mean
• What if the military advertised with disclaimers?

Blogs and sites of interest:

Here is a list of blogs or websites that I’ve bookmarked, but haven’t totally commited to adding their feed just yet. Or, it could be that I haven’t browsed them enough, so I don’t know if they’re feed-reader-worthy. Or, quite possibly, it’s just a cool site that I want to plug here in this post.

• AlterNet
• Armen Thomassian
• At0mica
• Delirium Propaganda
• Digital Ethnography
• Digital Rights
• Hatebook
• Headsetoptions
• Mark’s Digital Farm
• Ext JS WordPress Theme
• Lyfe Stream
• Think Progress
• Tree Hugger
• Valleywag

Every week, I’ll post a new roundup, so stay tuned by subscribing to the feed or bookmarking my blog.

So, what’s this weekly roundup thing?

This is where I herd all of the interesting posts, blogs, sites, feeds, or whatever together once a week. It’s a little something new I’m trying. Sometimes, I forget to mention how wonderful the Web is and what it does for us. Sometimes, I forget to thank or post a comment on a great article by a blogger. This is my way of giving some link love to the people who are making the web a better place for me. I hope you find some of these interesting.

Feeds

I just installed a new feed reading add-on for Firefox, Brief. It’s exactly what I was looking for in a feed reader. Nothing too fancy. A favorites folder. Just what I wanted: simplicity. So, with the new add-on, I decided to start anew (almost) with my feed collection. Of course, this list will only grow larger over time.

• Adii
• Amy N. Russell (My sister’s site)
• Beccary
• Blogging Bits
• Blog Herald
• Chris Garrett
• Copy Blogger
• Digerati Peninsula
• Lorelle on WordPress
• N. Design Studio
• Pro Blogger
• Science Codex
• Skelliewag
• Tech Crunch
• WP Designer

Articles of interest:

These are some of the articles that I’ve found interesting throughout the week and saved to my del.icio.us links, voted for on Digg or Reddit, or saved in my bookmarks folder (which I tend to do more often than anything).

• Constitution Class: 7 one-hour part series
• Global Warming: Scientific Consensus Proved Wrong
• Microsoft wants your health care records, trust
• More Than a Little bit out of Touch
• Resources For Web Design
• The day I joined a website looking for no strings sex
• Top 25 censored news stories of 2007
• Valid XHTML YouTube embed code generator

Other sites of interest:

This is just another list of sites that I’ve found interesting this week. I may have added some of them because I liked an article or the look of their blog, and haven’t decided on whether they are worthy of going into the feed reader just yet. Others might be vitally important sites that didn’t fit in the other cateogires.

• National Novel Writing Month ( View my profile. I plan on going all the way this year!)
• 13Styles
• Best Web Gallery
• Contest Blogger
• Design Vitality
• Flat World Blog
• Open Office

You can always keep track of new links added through my links page, but it’s hard to keep that updated as easily as I can with the various other resources I use.

I’m going to try to do a weekly roundup every weekend, so subscribe to my feed if you want to know the next time I update this site or post another weekly roundup.

What sites have made your Web experience a little better this week?

So, you wanna clean up your WordPress blog? Here are six tips that I think might help. These are recent updates to my blog that have motivated me to get back to blogging on a regular schedule.

1. A New WordPress Theme

   If you haven’t updated your theme in a while, say for at least the last six months or year, maybe your look’s getting a little stale. Since I haven’t updated my theme since March, I felt it was time for something fresh. My regular readers will automatically notice the new look. Do you like it? I call it Harmony because I was trying to balance dark and light.

   Maybe you don’t want to scare off anyone with a completely new theme. You could possibly tweak some of the files, add something extra, to your blog. It’s always best to freshen things up a little every now and then. Change the colors, font size, or header image.

2. Unclutter Your Blogroll/Links

   This section can easily get unruly if you don’t pay careful attention to it. Before I dared touch my links page, I cleaned my favorites/bookmarks folder on my computer.

   Get rid of those sites that you never visit anymore. Remove sites that no longer exist. I finally just started erasing everything. It felt liberating. Your site have music in the background? Delete. 8,000 icons in your sidebar? Delete. Haven’t updated in the last few months? Layout looks like something from a six-year-old’s geocities page? Delete. Delete. (I must point out that after a while, I almost went insane. Several times, my browser crashed because of the blogs I was going through. Yes, those sites were deleted.)

   After organizing my favorites, I easily updated my links. I added all the links from my favorites and deleted those that were no longer of use to me. I made two categories: Blogroll and Dailies. You might want to organize these in another manner, but some kind of organization is key.

3. Clean Out Your Plugins Folder

   I probably had 50 plugins in my plugins folder while using less than 10 (I do a lot of testing). With the release of WordPress 2.3, this shot to the top of my to-do list.

   The new tags feature allowed me to get rid of Bunny’s Technorati Tags. Canonical URLs and Pretty URLs let me delete the No WWW and Permalink Redirect plugins. So, you should definitely clean out those unused plugins. Make room for the next plugins you might want to use.

4. Add Fresh Features

   It’s important to keep adding new features to your blog as time passes on. Give your readers a little something extra.

   With the advent of the tags feature, I needed to update my theme a little. Now on each page’s single post, I have added a tags section near the bottom of the post. I also have a nifty little Tags page, which is basically just a tag cloud. I also have a new Topics page.

   Maybe you’ve been waiting for a moment to implement that cool, new plugin you’ve found, but haven’t gotten around to it. That was the case when I added Flickr RSS, Paged Navigation, and Related Posts. The latter two gives users easier access to older content on my site, and I think that’s ultimately what I wanted to do when looking for new plugins.

5. Learn To Use Custom Fields

   Custom fields are a powerful feature of WordPress, but I rarely hear of anyone using them. You can automate so many things that you usually input every time you write a post. Plus, there are many other cool things you can do with them.

   I’ve always used custom fields on my reading page to return a book author’s name. However, I wanted to do a little something more. Look at any post in my Book Reviews and you will notice a few things immediately.

   Take, for example, my Review of Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat. At the top left of the post, there is an image. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a lot of information along with that image. I used custom fields to display the image, alt text, link to Amazon’s page, and size and alignment of the image. Now, each time I write a new book review, I don’t have to write all that code. It’s automatically generated for me. I just input information into the custom field boxes. If you want a detailed “how-to” article on this, I plan on writing one in the next few days.

6. Update Your Pages

   We’re constantly updating our blog by writing new posts, putting fresh content out there. But, sometimes we forget about our pages. By definition they are “static,” and many times, users don’t return to them after the first view. Some people never write anything more than an About and Archives page, which is all right if that’s your cup of tea.

   I, however, have a lot of content that doesn’t belong in blogs posts. I recently revamped the Projects section of this blog. I used custom fields to display an image and description of each subpage. Sure, it’s only a new look, but it adds a little bit to the blog.

   Whatever you decide to do, keeping new content in your pages is also important. If users see that you rarely update pages, then they probably won’t return to them when you do actually update them.

Keeping your WordPress blog updated, not just in blog posts, but in other areas as well, can sometimes be a daunting task. However, it is something that needs to be done every now and again. Readers like the blogger who “goes the extra mile” or “gives “110%” to their blog.

Updating your blog can also motivate you. I feel like a new blogger now. Like that first day I started my Expage almost five years ago, which was lost because their servers crashed. I just want to write and write and write and…

So, give your WordPress blog the cleaning that it deserves. Your readers will like it better. You will feel better. Do you have any useful tips to add? I’d love to hear your ideas.