The Fearless Blogger

A journalist that wore two hats

In her blog Save the Media , Gina Chen shares  10 ‘Journalism rules’ you can break on your blog.

As an intro to these rules, Gina writes:

there’s a part of me that loves blogging because you’re allowed to break the journalism rules. In fact, I’d argue the best bloggers break them regularly because blogging isn’t a news story; it shouldn’t read like one; it shouldn’t look like one.

At a high level, Gina encourages taking advantage of the dynamic, interactive and community qualities of the web when writing for a blog. I encourage you to view the post to read the list in full – below is a summary of her 10 rules:

1. Use partial or fake names
2. Tell part of the story
3. Insert opinion
4. Link to a report or news release rather than rewrite it
5. Link to background rather than repeat it
6. Link to the enemy
7. Use second person; heck, use first person
8. Get personal
9. Answer your critics or supporters
10. Fix your mistakes rather than just publish a correction

As newspapers are shutting their doors and mainstream media is hopping onto the social media bandwagon, this will become an increasing relevant issue in the near future. It seems natural that a new set of rules begin to emerge. read more

bbPress is forum software created by Automatic, the same folks who brought us WordPress. Until recently, it’s development had been relatively slow.

Seems like things are starting to move forward, based on an announcement made in the bbPress.org forum today:

Hi everyone, bbPress 1.0 is moving beyond Alpha stage and skipping Beta to go straight into a series of Release Candidates towards a final 1.0 release. The first RC is now available for download.

We’ve made this decision to push towards 1.0 final as the scope of what was going to be included in 1.0 has been whittled back and we have had some serious real world trials through TalkPress.

I’ve been playing with bbPress for the still-in-progress URLuscious.com, so plan to try out the new upgrade in the next few days and will keep you posted when I have a live version available for folks to check out.

For more on bbPress, visit the site at bbPress.org.  Justin Tadlock has also recently posted the first in his series of bbPress-related tutorials on his site.

I’m excited to announce my latest endeavor: URLuscious!
URLuscious is part of my master plan to demystify all things techie-geeky; helping non-techie folks incorporate the web and its social goodness into their lives.

The mission statement:

Make it easy for anyone to quickly and easily have a website or blog that looks great and is easy to maintain – regardless of your creativity, technical knowledge or experience.*

*translation: Websites so easy, even your mother can do it!

Blog-in-a-box
URLuscious’s flagship product is Blog-in-a-box, a service that includes installation, configuration, hosting and user training for a WordPress blog.

Having a blog has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve talked to so many people who would like to have a blog or website of their own, but don’t have the time or technical comfort level to get one started. Others want the benefits of a self-hosted WordPress blog, but feel locked into their current system or don’t know how to make the switch.

My goal is to remove these intimidating and/or frustrating barriers so that anyone can have the rewarding experience I’ve enjoyed.

Sneak Peak and Gift Certificates read more

I’ve previously written about Chat Catcher, a plugin for WordPress that “collect” tweets about a blog posting so they can be displayed with the posts comments.

Shannon Whitley, its developer, has another great plugin in the works:  Twitter Connect.

Twitter Connect adds a blue button to your blog  (pictured above) that visitors can click to use their  Twitter credentials to leave a comment.  Similar to Facebook Connect, this process tells the blog who you are without you having to share your Twitter password.

It’s brand-spanking new (or else you’d see one of those buttons on my blog by now!) – Shannon just wrote it today.

Shannon based the plugin on the work done by Adam Hupp of Facebook.  He writes:

Although this plugin is nowhere near as complex as the Facebook Connect code, it provides the basic login into WordPress and will display avatars with each comment.

You’ll likely be seeing the button on this site sometime soon.  In the meantime, head over to Shannon’s blog to try it yourself!  Twitter Connect (sort of) | Shannon Whitley.

(Worth noting:  In my Chat Catcher post, I mentioned how impressed I was with Shannon’s responsiveness and proactive service approach.  I’d like to make a follow up comment here to share that Shannon has continued to maintain that level of service, even as the popularity of his plug-in has grown.)

photo: ebbdog, via Flickr

When was the last time you backed up your website?

Trust me – as I learned yesterday – stuff happens!

It took a chunk of time to troubleshoot, resulting in a site outtage here.  But I knew that, worst case scenario,  I had the option of reinstalling the blog from a recent backup.  And, as it turned out, I ended up using that option.

So, learn from my (almost) mistake and take a few minutes today to back up your website.  Better yet, set up regularly scheduled backups while you’re at it!

If you use WordPress, check out the WordPress Database Backup plugin (it’s what I use).

What backup solutions do you recommend?