10 Ways to make Your WordPress Blog Faster

Comment Policy–Why it’s a Good Idea!

Anyone who’s been publishing a blog for a while has received comments that are inappropriate for a Christian site–comments full of obscenities or bearing links to pornography–or comments that you would rather not have published on your blog.

There are always those Christians who consider it their mission to drop pre-written articles into the comment line of any post that comes close in anyway to their specialty issue. Mention ‘baptism’ in a post and you might receive an unsolicited 2 page teaching on "why infant baptism is a false practice"–posted on the comment line. You may even agree with the teaching but it really doesn’t respond in any way to the original post–what do you do?

On other occasions you might receive a ‘comment’ that is longer and more detailed than the original post–usually in opposition to what your take is. Then there are those who show up and choose to use the comment line as an opportunity to make a promotional announcement or post a veiled commercial link–how do you respond?

I have even received an angry email when I edited or deleted one of those 2 page off-topic ‘comments’. I didn’t have a policy posted at the time.

Every blogger eventually faces commenting problems and must develop some standards on how to respond. At first you’re happy when anyone shows up and leaves a comment. later when your blog actually has some traffic, all the spam begins to show up.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you already have developed a policy–you might as well let your readers and commenters in on it. If you’re brand new, you might take a look at the comment policies on some of your favorite blogs and settle on some principles to start with.

Here’s my Comment Policy –probably more than most of you will want or need. It was originally developed for my Answers For The Faith blog which handles controversial culture-war issues.

It’s really a good idea to let your readers in on your comment policies and expectations. Especially if you are a Christian blog with different ideas of acceptability than the general blogosphere. That way there’ll be no excuses and readers will be able to respond more appropriately in their comments.

Here’s a link to a post on the Blog herald with some great ideas on creating a comments policy.            *Top

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Plugin: WP Easy Uploader

A couple of weeks ago I put the WP Easy Uploader plugin on my WordPress blogs. What a great time saver this one is! Now I can upload the entire program for a plugin or new theme into my WordPress files with only a couple of clicks.

In order to try out a plugin or a new theme, I use to have to download the program then open it up and upload each individual part into my plugin or theme files. Use to take forever–especially on new themes–now it only takes two clicks! Well maybe three-download–browse–and upload.

This makes it fast and easy to check out new themes and plugins. It does take some time and effort to set it up, but it’s well worth the initial effort. Here’s a link to the download site.            *Top

The International Day of Prayer

Sunday Nov. 9 is The International Day of Prayer (IDOP) for the persecuted church. Please join hundreds of thousands of Christians all around the world praying for those who are being persecuted for their religious beliefs. (More–at my Christian news blog)

Capture with Apture

Another blogging app that I was introduced to at BlogWorld Expo last month. Little by little I’m trying them all on for size and affect. This one is a keeper for sure!

Apture allows you to add pictures, pop-up articles, videos, music and all sorts of good stuff to your post after you have published it!–without re-editing or republishing!

It works different than Zemanta, which is connected to the editor and you use as you’re writing. The good thing about Apture–you can use Zemanta first, add pics and links available from Zemanta, then publish the post. Go to the front page of your blog and take a look at the new post, turn on the Apture editor, find more stuff that you can add and embed in the post, and then put it all on without having to re-edit or republish it. Actually it is unbelievable!

If you have already added a link to a Wikipedia article through Zemanta, the Apture program automatically turns it into a pop-up when you point at it.

For example, in a recent articles on one of my blogs I linked Dr. James Dobson, and Knights of Columbus to articles in Wikipedia. Notice how Apture turns them into pop-ups when you hover over them. Also, Apture will allow you to capture any other media that might be available under that title or name–at the bottom of Dobson’s article you can click on and view a YouTube video of Dr. Dobson at TheCall. Later with just one click, I embedded the video below–between this paragraph and the next.

Last week, after writing an article about revival on one of my blogs, I found all sorts of great videos in the Apture mode and added some on. Hover over ‘revival’ above and see what I mean–here’s just one.

At first I didn’t think it would be all that useful for a Christian blog, but I was wrong. Also, it just takes a minute or so to ‘capture with Apture’ and transform your blog into a multi-media source.

Apture can be installed on the following platforms:

• 1 Blogger
• 2 TypePad
• 3 WordPress.org
• 4 MoveableType
• 5 Ning
• 6 Tumblr
• 7 Blogsome
• 8 Wikispaces
• 9 Drupal
• 10 Xanga
• 11 LiveJournal
• 12 Squarespace
• 13 Related Links

Check it out, it actually has far more features than I can tell you about in one post.            *Top

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