Stump The Nerds! – BlogathonATX

by Elmer Boutin on October 1, 2011

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Some ideas I got from the Stump The Nerds panel at BlogathonATX with Jeremy Arntz, Jackie Dana and Pat Ramsey. They were taking questions on techie topics relating to blogging and other web sites.

While all blog platforms have great features and are easy to set up, a self-hosted WordPress install gives you many more options, there are a lot more themes to choose from, and you have a lot of control over your site.
Cloud hosting is good if you want to scale to more memory, disk space and processor power
Use Akismet is a great plug-in for catching comment spam. It’s worth signing up for a WordPress.com account to get an API key
Analytics is easy and important. Google Analytics is a good option
Use Regenerate Thumbnail plugin for WordPress to automatically resize thumbnails when you redesign your site.
Use a cache plugin to speed up your download times. W3TotalCache is a good option
Nextgen Gallery is a great plugin if you display a lot of images
Don’t forget a social media sharing plug in to help readers share your site
Don’t go crazy downloading plugins, if you get too many plugins your site’s performance will take a hit. Plus, there’s more updates to keep track of and more chances for problems
A good category structure can benefit your SEO more than tags. Don’t forget the basics like good content and titles, too
Tags are very handy for plugins that display related stories with a post
Learning CSS, PHP and HTML are very important. Especially if you try to get help from a developer. You should have a sense of what’s going on – it’ll save you time and money in the long run
Backups are very important. This is especially true if you try to hack some code yourself. It’s nice to be able to roll back changes if you mess something up
Don’t install a plugin just because you think it’s cool. Install it only if you have a real need for the functionality it offers
Is SEO important for the personal blogger? It is if you want people to read your blog. But, not every blog will be successful. If no one is interested in what you right about, all the SEO in the world will help it. Consider tweaking your content or changing your format
Make sure to delete old plugins and themes you no longer use
Make sure to use a good strong password. That’s your first line of defense against hacking. Also, avoid using “Admin” for the admin user name. (I wrote a post about creating strong passwords a while back: Four Steps To Better Passwords - you might find it helpful)