eXtra For Every Publisher

Don’t you hate it when blogs take forever to load due to the dozen full length posts including images that the person has decided to put on their front page, and every page of their blog? You wonder if it is worth it to stick around to see what they have written.

Or how about when you go to a blog that shows only the title, and the first few sentences, and asks you to click read more on every single post? Feels like you have to jump through hoops just to read their content.

The choice to only show summaries or full posts on your blog can be quite difficult, but each has its advantages and disadvantages. I try to have the best of both worlds.

The Decision

One of the things that I have done here at Xfep is to make sure posts on the front page show the full post, and after they transition to other pages, I only show a summary. I did this for a few reasons, including search engine optimization, and better presentation of my previous work.

People have questioned me about this practice, as I do it on all my blogs.

Why don’t I make all the pages show full content? Well, with having full posts on every page, you begin to delay page loads, and making people wait is a bad idea. Also, most people don’t read past a few paragraphs unless they really enjoy the content.

There are also search engine benefits to limiting your duplicate content as much as possible. If I wanted even more search engine optimization benefits, I wouldn’t show any full articles, except on the single article’s own page.

Doing this has some negatives though, as using a system like mine means that readers are interrupted during their read of an article. They must perform an action to continue to the end of the post, and this turns some people off. Also, we come back to the waiting issue once again, as when people do find the article they want to read, they have to wait for that full page to load.

I find though that the positive aspects of the system that I use outweighs the negatives.

The Steps

If you want to do what I have done, and automate the whole process, I can show you how I do it. It might not be the best way, but it works for me. Please feel free to give me tips or tricks you might have, if you know a better way.

I will assume you are using WordPress to publish your blog. I am sure other systems can do something similar, but this will show how to make pages two to infinity show partial posts, while the main page shows full articles.

Once logged into your WordPress administration panel, go to Presentations and then Theme Editor.

Over in the right hand side, you will see a list of files. We will want to edit the Main Index Template, also known as index.php.

If you are unable to edit the file inside the WordPress administration panel. You will have to FTP into your hosting space and download the index.php file from your theme’s directory.

In this file we are looking for the code that allows us to show the post content.

The line should look something like:
<?php the_content("Continue reading →"); ?>

We want to change this so that we test to see where we are, and that will determine how the content is displayed.

The below basically says that if we are on the home page, page one, the search page, single page, or content page, we should display the full content, otherwise, we should show an except.

<? if (is_home() && (!$paged || $paged == 1) || is_search() || is_single() || is_page()): ?>
<?php the_content("Continue reading →"); ?>
<? else: ?>
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<? endif; ?>

Once you update the file with the new code, replacing the old one line content code, your first page should show full articles, while every other page should show only excepts. A great way to boost the search engine optimization of your site, and display teasers to your posts in a quick loading fashion.

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In one of the many Link Karma posts on Copyblogger, this blog was mentioned, and even though the link was mixed in with many others on the site, Copyblogger still brought the highest amount of traffic a non-social bookmarking site has brought to date.

With over 250 unique visitors, and a rather noticeable feed subscription boost in the twenty four hours after the link to this blog, I would say that getting mentioned on Copyblogger is pretty powerful, especially for a starting out blog. The visitors were also higher quality than most social bookmarking traffic, having checked out many articles on this site, as well as subscribing to the RSS feed.

A big thanks from me goes out to Brian Clark and the Copyblogger team. And for those of you entering a niche where copywriting is key, let Brian know about what you are writing, and just maybe you will be mentioned.

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A blog I really enjoy, Dumb Little Man, has posted how he blogs, including his daily routine. For a blogger that maintains a full time job, I have to admit, I am quite jealous of how far he has come, but his daily schedule is a bit more than I could handle. Four hours of sleep just isn’t enough for this blogger.

Here is a snippet from his post:

Do it right: Choose a topic that you are seriously in love with. I love saving time and money and obviously that is what Dumb Little Man is all about. When I write, the ideas flow without much thought. If you goal is to make money, you should still choose something you love and not what pays the most in advertising. If you choose something based on money, your writing will suffer and you will subsequently get no visitors. Guess what…no visitors = no advertisers = no money.

Check out his full post over at Dumb Little Man.

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Overview

WordPress.com was added to provide a service to those without the technical knowledge and understanding needed to run PHP software. It provided WordPress functionality to those that were stuck on other hosted blog platforms.

WordPress.com also allowed the Automattic team to test new features while controlling the environment of those tests. This has lead to some great features coming out in the self-hosted WordPress.org software.

Advantages

One of the biggest advantages is that you don’t have to find hosting, deal with server specifications, or even upgrade your WordPress.com blog. It is all dealt with by Automattic. They pre-install many great themes, as well as give you some great statistic software to track what is going on with your blog.

WordPress.com is also the test bed for new features for WordPress, meaning WordPress.com users get cool features that the self-hosted WordPress.org users have to wait a few versions for.

They also have a community feel which is separate from the WordPress.org community, making it feel smaller, though with more than one million WordPress.com blogs, it is still amazingly diverse and interesting.

Limitations

Unfortunately, WordPress.com is not without its issues, but many bloggers just starting out, won’t see the problem here, and honestly, neither will some higher level bloggers.

You can’t edit themes directly. You can change the cascading style sheets for a yearly fee. Cascading style sheets are a way to control things like what color your headlines are and how your content is displayed. Having this ability is great, but it can still leave you somewhat limited in how your blog can look, and function.

You also can’t have any form of advertising on your WordPress.com blog, meaning no way to monetize the hard work you put into it.

Lastly, if you need more than 100 megabytes of hosting space, a real domain, rather than being hosted on a WordPress.com sub-domain, custom cascading style sheets, for a custom design, or more than thirty-five private users, you will have to pay a fee. If you want all of these things, that fee can be a fair bit higher than you’d pay for hosting and a domain from a third party.

Conclusion

It really comes down to what you need, what your expertise is, and what you are willing to pay. For the starting blogger, a free WordPress.com blog has more than enough features. Never needing to go through the upgrade process, while fairly simple on WordPress.org blogs, is also provides some great peace of mind.

I can’t say that power users won’t like WordPress.com, as I have seen many happy with the service, but I think that most power users that know how to FTP, and want more flexibility with their blog will want to stick with the hugely expandable WordPress.org software.

Check out some of my favorite WordPress related books on my Books page.

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I found out about The Huffington Post allowing some of their top commenters to switch and become bloggers for the publication thanks to Problogger.net.

Reading through the comments on our site, we realized that our commenters are a tremendous — and underutilized — resource. So we’ve created a process whereby we will choose one commenter a month to become part of our group blog.

Our decision will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a Favorite, and our moderators’ preferences. Every comment now has an “I’m A Fan Of” link and a “Favorite” link, so start voting for the comments and commenters you like best. We will announce the first commenter-turned-HuffPost-blogger in the next few weeks.

My first reaction to this news was “wow, that is a great idea!” Quality commenters have some strong opinions, and rather than having them leave, and talk about what you have written on their own blog, or having their opinions be buried deep within a comments system, harnessing their power and having them work for you might just get your blog to that next level.

I don’t think that The Huffington Post needs more great writers as they are pretty much one of the top ten single blogs right now in the blogosphere, but what do I know?

If you have commenters that are absolutely amazing, maybe now is the time to extend a writing offer to them.

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