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I’ve recently written an ebook of “Blogging Basics” to help new bloggers on their way.

It’s not a comprehensive how-to for those who already have considerably blogging experience - there are many books out there already that cater to that audience. But there are many others who do not yet know how to start, or if they’ve started, how to progress things further or what even the functions in their dashboard mean.

The book caters to Wordpress and Blogger users but the basics would apply to any blog platform.

The table of contents is listed below to give you an idea of what it includes.

Overview of Blogging
My Blogging Story
Why Blog?
What Are The Benefits of Blogging?
Blogging For Business

Getting Started
Domain Names For Your Blog
Paid Hosting For Your Blog
Steps For Setting Up a Blog
Blog Templates
Understanding the Components
Commenting on Other Blogs
How Often Should You Blog?

What Do These Things Mean?
Permalinks
Plugins
RSS Feeds or Email Subscriptions?
Tags
Trackbacks

Extras That Will Enhance Your Blogging Experience
Blog Carnivals
Blog Communities
Google Alert
Social Networks For Bloggers
Tracking Your Visitors

In Summary
Steps to get things happening

How do you get this ebook?
Simple, just subscribe to this blog and you’ll be given the download link to get it.

learning to blog, blog basics, Wordpress, Blogger, benefits of blogging

Tags: About Blogging by Kathie Thomas
9 Comments »

It happened! The unimaginable!  I’d been creating new blogs in Wordpress 2.6 and slowly getting used to the new look and Dashboard changes and thought I would upgrade some of my blogs to this new version. I did a couple and they worked well so I decided to upgrade this one too.  That’s when it happened.  My categories went missing!  And I didn’t know how to get them back again.

They weren’t showing in the menu sidebar - just an empty spot and when I logged into the Dashboard and viewed the Categories list, there were rows of empty tickboxes with no names and a number at the end of each line indicating the number of posts for that invisible category listing.

Searches at Wordpress Support didn’t come up with any answers for me, although many were asking for help on the same thing, but Googling did produce some results with some step-by-steps on how to fix the problem.  But there were steps missing!  The first part was relatively easy and I was able to successfully make changes inside phpMyAdmin and get the categories list showing but there was no explanation on how to link the tables back up (perhaps that knowledge was assumed by the writers) and since I’ve never done it before I was not going to attempt something with no clear instructions on what to do next.

They also assumed that you had a backup file you could use to find out what all your categories were - wrong!  Mine isn’t writeable to the directory so I have xml files I have exported and can import but don’t have a back up file to refer to.  I must fix that issue one day too!

However, I discovered a really easy way of doing it in Wordpress, and thought I’d share it here for those who are not game to fiddle with the database on their server.

I did a manual fix.

1. After thinking about this a great deal I decided to create a new category to see what would happen.  It showed - that was good.
2. So I placed one of my posts with that and that worked.
3. Then I ticked all the other blank categories listed and clicked on the delete button. Everything automatically defaulted to ‘uncategorised’ which was still showing as blank (and is not removeable) but I knew that the first listing there was the uncategorised list.
4. After that I recreated my categories and reconnected everything - there were 118 posts so that wasn’t too bad and only took me 2-3 hours to do.

The good thing about this was I got to rethink all the categories I have listed here and reconnected some posts to belong to more than one category so in effect, my blog got tidied up in the process.

So, if you are too scared to touch the real techy side of your blog and want a fix that you can do, without calling in help, the above should work for you - it did for me!

missing categories, categories invisible, Wordpress 2.6

Tags: About Blogging, Technology, Wordpress by Kathie Thomas
4 Comments »

Then have I got something for you!

The moderators and administrators at Aussie Bloggers were given a short story, and asked to fill in the blanks. The results have been combined into The Lazy Bloggers Blog Post Generator. And they’ve made it available for you to use too!

No longer do you have to worry about writer’s block and I’m sure you could get some really interesting stories for your blog. Why not try it out and share here or at Aussie Bloggers the fun that you’ve been having!

blogging, writing, writer’s block, ideas

Tags: About Blogging, Writing by Kathie Thomas
No Comments »

If you are an Australian, either living in Australia or abroad, and you blog, then you might be interested in joining the Aussie Bloggers Forum. Now reaching 6 months of age, this forum boasts over 600 members and over 32,000 posts - that’s a lot of chatter!

I discovered the forum only a couple of weeks after it got started and am now one of their top ten posters and also a moderator at the forum.

I did think I really did not need another forum (I belong to quite a few!) but as blogging is something I really enjoy, the chatter there is lively and always of interest.

So, if you’re an Aussie blogger (i.e. you live in Australia and blog, or am an Australian overseas who blogs) then we would love you to join us at the Aussie Bloggers Forum.

Tags: About Blogging by Kathie Thomas
3 Comments »