Another Organizing Style by Jessica Sprague

Another set of categories has been released at our site. These come from Jessica Sprague. She is a contributing editor to Creating Keepsakes magazine and is a hybrid scrapbooker (using both digital and paper products.) Jessica’s Blog Her comment about ACDSee and her categories:

“This was a lot of fun! My categories are actually pretty basic - I don’t mind scrolling through a list of 100 brown papers, for example, to find just the right one. But what blows me away is how much BETTER this is than any paper scrap organization system possible - you never have to say to yourself, “Well, this one has more blue in it than red, so I guess it better go with the reds”. I can put it in both. :)”

Jessica’s Categories:

• Brushes
• Papers
  • Solids
  • Text
  • PolkaDots
  • Stripes
  • Floral
  • Graphic
  • Brown
  • Red
  • Blue
  • Yellow
  • Orange
  • Green
  • Black
  • White
  • Grey
  • Elegant
  • Purple
• Alphas
• Ribbons
• Overlays and Frames
• Embellishments
• Tags
• WordArt
• JournalingSpots

To download this organizing style or see others, visit DigiScrapInfo Organizing Styles. The instructions are also located there.

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Our blog was recognized on Digital Scrapbooking Magazine’s blog!

Associate Editor Molly Newman blogs at the Digital Scrapbooking Magazine site about various happenings in the digital scrapbooking world.

From Molly’s blog

“Connie and Heidi of digiscrapinfo.com discuss setting up a blog, publicizing it via Google, using a blog reader to read the latest posts from your favorite bloggers all in one place and more. Great information all around!”

Heidi & I are truly honored to be recognized as ‘having great information’ & that her most recent post was on our series on blogging! We created this website & blog to give back to the digital scrapbooking community & provide quality information. We appreciate all of our readers so much! Thank you Molly for the recognition! We are humbled.

Molly also asked people to submit quality informational blogs for consideration for her blogroll. Let her know what your favorite blogs are for finding information on the digital scrapbooking world. Also, take some time to check out the Digital Scrapbooking Magazine site. They have many great digiscrapping tutorials & articles.

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How to help Google find your blog (making SEO work for you)

Wow! This is the 4^th in our series on blogs. Here’s a quick review in case you missed the first ones:

• Anatomy of an effective blog
• Let a Blog Reader save you time
• How can I setup my own blog?

Today’s topic is ‘How to help Google find your Blog’ or it could be ‘What you need to know about SEO’.

What is SEO you ask? SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization and is important to anyone that wants to be noticed on the net. I’ve started a couple of blogs and they were more like a journal because I felt like I was talking to myself. We blog because we want people to read what we’re saying & interact with us. And I must say that this series on blogging has been fun because people are leaving comments!

Google is the major search engine, but there are others. They have spyders out crawling thru the net cataloging blogs and gathering information. Your goal is to have your blog & site as SEO friendly as possible so you get noticed!

How can you do that?

Choose a domain name that suits your subject matter. Heidi & I agree that our domain name could have been better chosen. We chose it based on being descriptive, but it really should be based on what the majority will search for. But, I have seen many cautions about not changing your domain name mid-stream, so we will stick with ours. This site makes it easy to see if the domain name is available. http://www.checkdomain.com/ There are also resources for checking common keyword phrases. One application that I found useful is free called Good Keywods. You can give it a word or phrase & it will tell you how many times it has been searched in the past month along with related words.

Choose a blog style that can be personalized. That’s what we’ve done with our wrodpress blog. This is the behind the scenes types of things. Here’s the part of the description that influenced me to choose the style we are presently using:

heavily tuned and optimized for search engine relevancy: page titles are always relevant (the front page even shows your blog’s tagline), post content goes first in the HTML source, and semantic markup is used everywhere http://rudd-o.com/projects/burninr/

Tags & titles are very important once you have your blog up & running. Search engines don’t notice the body of the blog as much as they notice those two things. Tags are descriptive words that you assign to your post. Let’s say if I wrote a post about ACDSee Photo Manager. I would tag it with ‘organizing’. Posts tagged with ‘organizing’ would end up getting noticed by a Google search first.

Titles are also important. Pretend like you’re writing a newspaper headline. State the topic & be concise. This will also be noticed by the search engines sooner than something vague. I have to remind myself of this one often.

Inbound links - Awhile ago I posted about the importance of linking to other blogs whether by blogrolls or referenced within a post. This builds up credibility or your blog in the eyes of the search engines. On the bottom left of our blog you can see a list of who recently linked to our blog. Writing this just gave me a great idea that I may have to try!

Sitemaps - Sitemaps are text files (XML files to be exact) that list all your url’s for a website or blog. They help the search engines crawl/explore your site better including your blog. On wordpress, I have found a plug-in that generates and automatically updates my sitemap for our wordpress blog. Google Sitemap Generator Install the plug-in and follow the directions. It automatically submits your sitemap to google and you can also submit your sitemap to Yahoo or MSN. When you submit, you really are submitting a link to your sitemap. Then each time a post or page is added to your blog, the sitemap is updated.

If you would like to read more on Search Engine Optimization, Problogger has 15 ideas that are practical & easy to implement.

So you may ask, how do you know that SEO works? In my next topic I will show you how we’re collecting stat’s for our blog from free applications running in the background. That’s the most interesting part & provides feedback for improving your blogging. I check 3 sets of stat’s each day (can we say addicted?!! Maybe!).

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A great example of inbound linking!

Awhile ago I had mentioned that people were asking for my permission to link to our blog. And I said, definitely! go ahead. In my next post, I’m going to explain why, but I wanted to share a great example with you now of how the love spreads.

Heidi added a new feature to our blog and it’s on the bottom left sidebar. It shows the inbound links and they are updated by RSS feeds. (I bought Christine Smith’s new embellishments tonite by the way!). It looked like this at the time of this writing:

Take a look at the 2nd one - and you can see Ake’s post here. She linked to the post I had made on how I used her fabulous pop-it frames! Some of the other links listed are from people putting DigiScrapInfo.com in their blog roll. It’s good feedback of who is linking to you & helping you gain visibility on the net. Pop on over to there blog & leave a comment thanking them! We all enjoy getting comments.

In a future post on the blog series I’ll give you a secret on how to find out who is blogging about you. More to come! Happy blog linking!

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What to do with the new digital scrapbooking purchases and free things?

Are you recovering from inter-National Scrapbooking Day? Did you have a great time? It’s an awesome celebration of our craft. There were sales & freebies galore! We hosted a chat at 3Scrapateers and had a great time giving away ACDSee software.

I thought I would review some of ACDSee Photo Manager’s features in case you or a friend needs help keeping track of the new goodies.

Just getting started with ACDSee and want digital scrapbooking categories?

Easily categorize your elements in ACDSee using information in filenames

More Pre-made Categories for ACDSee Photo Manager 9

ACDSee can change the sample text of your font

ACDSee Photo Manager allows you to use Uninstalled Fonts in your scrapbooking program

And all of our ACDSee Photo Manager resources can be found here.

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How can I setup my own blog?

You have a few options to consider:

• What type of blog do I want? This is really the software that runs the blog.
• Do I wanted a hosted blog (someone else hosts the blog) or do I want to host my own blog (I already have a host or want a host.)

Again, we will refer to this Problogger’s blog He has a great article Choosing a Blog Platform that explains this top in-depth.

Have you read that article yet? If not, go back and read it!

If you have decided on a hosted blog then go ahead and choose a blog and get started. If you want to host your own blog, keep reading.

Some basic steps to install your own wordpress blog

As I continue with the example of how to setup your own blog, I am going to give Wordpress as example since that is what we have chosen for our blog. Setting up other blog types is similar, just follow the instructions on their website.

Installation:

My chosen host and many other major hosts install the major blog systems with a click of a button. I asked my install wordpress and about 5 minutes later I was ready to start. If your doesn’t offer this feature, you need to follow the install instructions on the package. (Read through the wordpress install and see if you are up to this: Wordpress Install )

Installing Theme/Design/Style:

First, the default theme they start with is boring. So you need to go liven it up. Wordpress Themes has a whole list of sites to find themes. The site I liked the best for choosing my theme was at Theme Viewer. I liked this site because after customizing our blog the first time I realized that there were many things I wanted and my theme didn’t provide them. So I spent a whole weekend redo’ing our blog.

So what are you looking for?

Widget Ready: I highly suggest you get a Widget Ready theme. A widget ready theme allows the administrator very easy customizable sidebars. Here is our widgets and you just drag and drop them where you want and you click on the blue and black lined squares to configure them. The Sidebar1 is our left side of the blog and Sidebar2 is our right side of the blog. (Connie spends a lot of time rearranging them on me.) There is a tray at the bottom that holds the extras. Look at this diagram & you’ll see that it’s our blog’s sidebars.

Number of Columns: How many columns do you want? We chose the three column blog.

Fixed/Fluid Width: The last important thing is the fixed or fluid width. Fixed width means that when the user expands or shrinks the window, the blog stays the same size. Fluid width means that the blog expands when the user expands or shrinks the window. I personally like the fluid width but it can get you into trouble. (Our images in the blog have to a certain setting so they don’t overlap into our sidebars.)

Now that you have an idea of what you want, head back to the Theme Viewer and choose your requirements and see if there is blog theme you like. If not, head to the many other links at Wordpress Themes and browse. This can take hours. Once you find one that you like, you need to download it, unzip it, and ftp into your themes folder on your wordpress host, and activate it. Here are the detailed instructions: Wordpress Theme Installation.

At this point, if you have experience you can customize the theme to your liking. This goes way beyond the scope of this post.

Installing plug-ins:

This last step makes your blog work and have all the nice extra features. Installing plug-ins is similar to installing themes except you place the files in the plug-ins folder instead of the theme folder. Wordpress plug-ins information. Again much of the time spent is hunting or looking for what you want.

I will list some of the plug-ins that I think are necessary or nice:

• akismet: comes installed with wordpress, activate and enter your activition code, and this will stop all those spam comments. Absolutely necessary
• Wordpress Database Backup: You can backup your wordpress information. I have mine configured to mail me my backup weekly. Absolutely necessary.
• Tagging plug-in: This helps those search engines find your blog. I chose Simple Tagging I found it easy to use. Other suggestions are Ultimate Tag Warrior or Jerome’s Keywords
  
• Subscribe Me: This allows the blog readers to easily subscribe to your blog in different configurable ways.
• Bookmark Me: This allows the blog readers to easily bookmark your blog in different configurable ways.

Start Blogging

You now have installed blog, with a theme to your liking, with a few plug-ins. Start blogging… See what you like… See what you want to change… See what you want to add… I think our blog has at least one change per week. It may not be visible but it is change.

Once you start blogging, you want to start sharing your blog with technorati, feedblitz, etc… But this is better left to another blog entry.

Some things you should do for blog maintenance:

• Backup your blog database. (Our is automatically done with the wordpress database backup plug-in.)
• Copy all your theme files back to your computer and store them there. This serves to purposes: If the server crashes you have your stuff. If you edit a file and your blog stops working, you have a file to replace it with. (This is especially important when you have a sister that is starting to edit the files.)
• Periodically check and see if you need to install the latest blog software. Updates are every few months. This is especially important because of security issues. Many of the upgrades of blogs fix security issues.
• Periodically check and see if you need to upgrade your plug-ins.

Note from Connie - See what I mean??? Heidi KNOWS!! She has done such a great job in setting our blog up not once, but twice. And I LOVE being able to move widgets around in the sidebars. (A widget is each item in the sidebar: like the Search Button, the About Us box, etc). It’s so nice to be able to click & drag the widgets around whenever I want to. (I did put in some html code one weekend, but that isn’t safe considering my lack of knowledge. And that’s why Heidi talks about backing up your blog! But I have never broken ours……yet! *grin* But she’s ready just in case!)

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Digital Scrapbooking Freebies and Free Fonts

So now that you have your blog reader set up & you need some sites to subcribe to!

I don’t think I know of a digiscrapper that doesn’t enjoy a freebie once in awhile. I was just browsing & Pillowgirl has made a list for you!

• She has a list of blogs that link to freebies.
• Don’t forget to subscribe to hers too, because I know that she offers some great freebies too.

And if you’re looking for free fonts, we have a list of links to fonts in the lower right of the blog, and also a thread in our forum.

Enjoy! and happy scrapbooking

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Let a Blog Reader save you time

If you already know about blog readers, then I’m going to suggest that you browse Problogger’s blog. Here he explains Trackbacks. And if you browse his blog, he has lots of practical advice on writing blog posts.

Today I’m going to talk about blog readers. They’re a wonderful timesaving tool!

Rather than bookmarking blogs & checking them every so often, a blog reader is a one stop solution.

For example, if you read 20 blogs, and visit them each day, maybe only 5 are updated. If you were visiting each blog thru bookmarks, there would be many that would have no changes. With a blog reader you can immediately see the new entries and after you’ve read them, most show that (like email does). At one point I was reading 75 blogs per day, but I’ve cut back now.

How does it work?

Blogs & news feeds have a symbol that looks like a little transmitting icon. And there are usually other buttons that correspond to specific blog readers. Most blogs also have the icons displayed somewhere on the page. Ours are located on the top right of our blog. In Firefox the universal feed symbol shows in the far right side of the toolbar. This indicates that it is a feed that can be subscribed to.

How to read blogs using feeds:

1. Set up a blog reader - some common ones are:

• Google Reader - my favorite but you need a gmail account (I have invites if you need)
• Bloglines.com - I used to use this, but it’s slower to read than Google reader
• Safari - for our Mac friends
• and there are others

• Update - my friend Ernie suggested that I include Internet Explorer 7’s built in feature.
• The Firefox browser has Live Bookmarks (but I mut have deleted mine off my toolbar..)
• And Thunderbird (Firefox’s email) has a Blog Reader that is built in. This is more similar to Google Reader. (Thunder bird is awesome because you can read many email accounts there. My sister accesses EIGHT in hers! and the folders options are great.)

2. When you visit a blog that you want to read in the future, click on the universal feed icon. Your blog reader will ask if you want to subscribe.

3. When the blog is updated, you’ll be able to see that when you visit the blog reader. And you can read just the blogs that have been updated. The great thing is that you won’t miss anything either if you haven’t visited a particular blog in a few days.

Here’s what Google Reader looks like:

And here’s Bloglines.com

Pro’s -

I like how you can see how many people are subscribed. Google doesn’t offer me that.

Con’s -

Sometimes you need to open each entry to read the posts in their entirety like in this example. In others, you can read the whole post without leaving Bloglines. It probably depends on where the blog is coming from.

Some additional reading can be found here:

How to explain RSS the Oprah way (an easy to understand explanation)

So set up your blog reader and spend less time reading more blogs! It definitely puts more joy in a routine thing.

And if you’re thinking of starting a blog or are a seasoned blogger, I’m going to link you to the same blog that I did at the top. He has so many good ideas. Blogging for Beginners And if you’re not a beginner, then try Write a Better Blog

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