Leave the door open

At Pick The Brain is a post about The Other Side of Productivity: Coincidences, Synchronicity, and Serendipity. The post lists “Three Methods for Attracting Coincidences and Serendipity”.

Believing in the phenomenon of coincidences and serendipity does not mean that you shun work and sit cross-legged waiting for the universe to deliver your dreams to your doorstep. It simply means that you plan your days utilizing the best organization and scheduling tools, tips, and advice you can find, while leaving the door open to startling, dramatic occurrences.

It is a great post and I love the final sentence: Plan your day, but expect for things even better than those that you have planned to happen.

I have been absent for a while due to another project of mine. For my coaching business I had two PHP-based websites, one in English and one in Swedish. Changing layout was a probleme even though I used CSS. I wanted the ease of WordPress and when I decided to merge my two coaching sites into one at Key Coaching I also decided to use WordPress behind the scenes.

As usual when we start working on a project what’s needed turns up. I came across Use Wordpress To Create Niche Websites which lead to a free eBook titled How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress. I have no intention to make money using ads at my site but the ebook has some useful information about static WordPress sites.

When looking for a suitable theme I came across Brian Gardner and his WordPress Themes. There are both premium and free themes. I opted for Revolution Blog Theme which is available in a three column version with a menu on each side. Since Key Coaching has information in both English and Swedish I created a side menu for each language. I have modifed the Revolution Blog theme when it comes to colours and looks.

One of my other blogs got targeted with spam comments, all aimed for one specific post. I did turn of comments for that post but that did not help, I have gotten 5,200 spams in a short period of time. Akismet properly catches the spam comments but I wanted to stop spam from getting into my blog at all. Today I found WP-SpamFree: A Powerful Anti-Spam Plugin for WordPress! which seems to solve my problem. After I installed WP-SpamFree there are no new spam comments.

For additional information, see Combating Comment Spam and Combating Comment Spam/Denying Access. Denying access is about blocking IP-numbers but in the spam comments I got they used a lot of different IP-numbers so it would not work.

Blog Design has posted How to Blog Design Style Guide. It is a terrific walk through of the different parts of a blog with suggestions on how to improve them. I will get back here and see what I can use as modifications of the theme I am using.

My view on the design of Blog Design is that the header is far too big. I see no part of the post text above the fold on my screen.

Scott Allen writes about How Much Money Can You Make Blogging?. If you consider blogging to earn money, start with reading that post, there are some links to other sources.

North x East has a guest post by Jarkko Laine about How To Show That You Are Serious About Blogging.

Darren at Problogger posts about How Many Topics Should a Blog Cover? which leads to Taking The Abundance Highway To New Heights where the discussion takes place.

Problogger has a post about 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider. I have some of them and will consider some of the other.

CopyBlogger has created a Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies.

CopyBlogger has a post by Alan Johnson about The Art of Blogging: Business or Pleasure?

Skellie writes about How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers and Comments. She lists 18 ways to get links, 10 ways to get subscribers and 9 ways to get comments.

Pro Blog Design has 60 Great RSS Icons for Your Blog, different shapes and sizes. I might use one of them in my modified Amazing Grace theme.

Hack WordPress, WordPress Expert and WordPress Max are useful blogs about WordPress.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger asks Will RSS Ever Go Mainstream? The article sets RSS versus email but I do not see it that way. The important thing to me is that readers follow a blog, not which way they prefer to do it. Personally I prefer to subscribe to RSS-feeds through email and then read them in Gmail. I have tried RSS-feeders like Bloglines but like mail much better.

Among the comments at Copyblogger is a link to How to explain RSS the Oprah way. A great low-tech way of explaining how and why to use RSS.

Over at Hack WordPress is a post titled How To: Hiding Your Affiliate Links using WordPress. A simple one line PHP-page is created for each link and placed on your own site. You then link to this PHP-page instead of linking directly to the external page. The good thing is that you have the external link, affiliate or something else, in one place only which makes updates easy.

This blog has been upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and all seems to work well. I hope it continues that way. No difference on the front but the admin section has a new and better layout.

Over at ChangeThis is a free eBook about The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How Word-of-Mouse Spreads Your Ideas for Free.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

It is a great read about viral marketing or word-of-mouse, how it can help you promote yourself or your company for free. There are examples of viral marketing such as eBooks and videos at YouTube. There is also a word of warning:

The power of the Internet makes it easier for people to fall in love with you faster. But beware—it also makes it easier for them to fall out of love with you faster.

The story of Website Grader by HubSpot and HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog is one of the examples, an interesting concept.

Darren Rowse at Problogger explains how he went From 10000 to 0 Emails in an Inbox in 24 Hours. It involves using Google Gmail, its filters and coloured labels. I use Gmail myself for my subscriptions and mailing lists, very easy to figure out what is important and what is not.

Leo Babauta has a guest post at Problogger about 12 Rules for Getting a Grip on Massive ProBlogger Email.

Leo Babauta has a guest post at Tim Ferriss’ blog about 10 Steps to Become an Email Ninja.

Pick The Brain has a post about The Email Habits That Make People Hate You.