Tag Archives: Wordpress

Conversations Are Becoming Fragmented: The Case for a Killer Conversation Tracker Application

Quick Summary: As conversations become fragmented across social networks, there will be a huge business potential for a killer conversation tracker application that allows you to track and publish all the conversations around your content in one place, on your blog.

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Over the last few months, I have noticed a new pattern emerge in how I engage in conversations:-

Step 1: I often use Twitter to pre-test a post idea. I typically tweet the topic I’m planning to write a post on and often get twenty plus reactions and suggested links. This enables me to include multiple perspectives in the post.

Step 2: Whenever I’m writing an involved post, I try to capture the essence of the topic in a graph and post it on Flickr. Typically, five to ten people comment on the graphs on Flickr and Twitter, which further helps me pre-test my post idea.

Step 3: Finally, using the tweets and the graph as a starting point, I write a post on my blog. Most of my posts get five to ten comments on the blog itself.

Updated: Why Use Twitter When You Can Make Your Own Microblogging Network With Wordpress Prologue?

Quick Summary: The Wordpress Prologue theme from Automattic may be the first step towards an open-source distributed micro-blogging platform.

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Wordpress creator Automattic has launched a new theme called Prologue which can be used to create private Twitter-like micro-blogging platforms.

Basically, the Prologue theme uses the Wordpress content management system to mimic the Twitter interface. Here are three reasons why I like Prologue –

(+) The “whatcha up to?” post form integrated into the front page is nifty for posting short tweet-sized messages. It would be useful, however, to have a “title” field apart from “post” and “tags”.

(+) The theme is built to be used by multiple authors (see demo blog) and author-wise RSS feeds are useful for linking each author’s posts to their Twitter accounts, via TwitterFeed.

(+) The summary view on the front page, expandable by clicking on authors or tags, is a neat touch. The front page now shows a stream of recent updates instead of one update per user.

Installing Wordpress on the Root Directory

Not moving to my own domain at the right time is not the only blogging mistake I made. When I did move to my own domain, I made the mistake of installing Wordpress in the gauravonomics.com/blog directory instead of the root directory.

This is a bad idea because it means that my homepage is duplicated at gauravonomics.com and gauravonomics.com/blog. Search engines and Technorati consider these two as separate blogs and therefore my Google Pagerank and Technorati ranking are adversely affected.

Daniel from Daily Blog Tips had made the same mistake when he set up his blog, but corrected it within a few months.

Taking Daniel’s lead, I decided to move Wordpress to the root directory last night. However, something went wrong and my blog was down for most of the night. I tried everything Ajay and I could think of, but it just didn’t work! I haven’t had a more frustrating night ever! In the end, in the wee hours of the morning, I decided to abandon the operation and revert to my backups.

Move to Your Own Domain Now

I started blogging at gauravonomics.blogspot.com and found my voice at gauravonomics.wordpress.com. However, when I moved to my own domain at gauravonomics.com, I realized that I had stayed at gauravonomics.wordpress.com for too long.

But, first, why should you move to your own yourblog.com domain anyway?

- Because you can do much more with your blog in terms of aesthetic, functionality and monetization.
- Because your blog is perceived as more professional and authoritative by both readers and search engines.
- Because it costs little in terms of time and money, so why not?

What happens when you move your Blogger or Wordpress blog to your own domain?

- You lose your pagerank and have to build it all over again. Even after three months, gauravonomics.com is still to get a pagerank while gauravonomics.wordpress.com has a pagerank of 5. Even Amit Varma - widely accepted as India’s best known non-techie blogger - made the same mistake and indiauncut.com has a pagerank of 3 while indiauncut.blogspot.com has a pagerank of 6.

Too Good to be True

After a year when less was more, because that’s all there was, I almost have a problem of plenty (here, here and here).

And, almost to remind me of the hold she still has on me, she entered my dreams early in the morning:

We sit together on my parents’ bed -

You, my mother and I -

At their house at Patna

And watch ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham’ on TV.

Their white Pomeranian bitch sits in your lap

And licks your hand. Dream four.

Also, apropos of nothing, my blog has been on the Wordpress Most Popular Blogs list for the last few days, and climbing.

I understand, of course, that both these situations are too good to be true, that they are tests of some sort, tests of my sanity, that I’ll open my eyes tomorrow morning and realise that it didn’t really happen.