Hot Blogs, Get your Hot Blogs

Well having just spent the past month slaving over a hot blog, not only trying to not only create and find good and interesting content, to both edify and to amuse. I have also been trying to learn as much as I can and implement any tips that I have discovered, hunted, chased down or otherwise snared to help bring my blog to a wider readership.

This I have found involves many bleary eyed hours looking at the screen, reading the terms and conditions from everything from widgets to submission sites. Getting snippets of code from affiliations and wondering where I am supposed to put it.

It has been spending a lot of time reading the blogs of others, looking at how they write, how they present their blog, how much, if any advertising they use. It has also been spent commenting, joining support groups, reading emails, creating and storing passwords.

From a couple of tentative typed opening lines at the end of July, The Tao of Blog has now become a monster, awake constantly and demanding my utmost attention.

It has developed such a personality that it haunts my dreams and every waking moment.
I have found myself wide-awake at 3:30 am, unable to sleep as I finally slip another piece in the jigsaw of blogging and website building.

I walk, through the darkness of the house, like an extra from a Michael Jackson horror video to the computer and commence work as a merely human component in my own construction of this Fritz Lang inspired, Metropolis blog machine.

The protestations of my beloved partner fall on ears deaf to all but the chitter-chatter of the keyboard, pounding thought the day and into the darkening nights. I think she is packing bags, though I am not sure who's, and muttering things about obsession and neglect.

There is so much information and advice about starting and developing your blog that one could easily be paralysed into none action or spend most of your time reading the same information on about half a dozen sites which in the end, tell you little.

One thing this time away for constantly blogging, or trying to think up some new articles for my Triond or Helium outlets for my random musings on the nature of navel fluff, has given me is the chance to both rationalise my Netvibes page, which had become somewhat untidy and scattered, with widgets here and gadgets there. It was starting to effect the way I was working, spending too much time hunting for things that should be at hand.

It also gave me time to have a look around for some useful and not so useful widgets. These I have only recently discovered, can be on my Netvibes pages. Now I can keep an eye on my blogs without actually having to go to their pages, they are all monitored from my Netvibes page.



From here I can see how many visitors and who has visited last, what if any comments have been left and allows me to access everything from a clear and uncluttered environment.

I have also created a test bed page for widgets that I might want either on my blog or on my Netvibes page. Here they can be examined and tested their usefulness or relevance.



So my apologies for not contributing as frequently as I would like, but in a way, this blog is doing what it wants, it's own journey of self discovery, with myself as merely the instrument of it's creation, and it is documenting what it finds, what renders it's own creation useful or not, accepting or rejecting that which fails.

It is a long process, and looking at the standards of blog construction of some of those who have been generous enough to visit The Tao of Blog, I still have someway to go on the journey and some gaping holes in my level of understanding.

Thanks to everyone who has visited in the past week or so.

Please leave your thoughts and comments as they help me to make improvements to the TOB, and any suggestions to what you would like to see.

Pablothehat

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