More and more people are setting up their own blogs to write and share their thoughts, opinions, experiences and even skills with their readers. There are a number of things that I wish I could tell all new bloggers when setting up a blog. Here are 11 things I have in my mind:-

1. Get a Hit-counter!

One of the first things you might want to do when you first set up your blog is to get a hit-counter to monitor your traffic. The earlier you install your counter, the better. This is so that you won’t miss the first few visitors who visit your blog.

Personal tip: Stay away from Webstats4u.com (aka Motigo webstats, formerly known as nedstats), because your visitors will be annoyed by ilead.track.it popups.

2. Use a Nickname

I personally know many bloggers who choose to use their own real name or initials when they blog, which is fine, really. Short, given names are okay but full names? I would suggest to use your full name only when you understand what you’re doing - because it takes away your anonymity online and that’s irreversible unless you start afresh again. On the other hand, if you start off by using a nickname, you could gradually shed away your cloak of anonymity whenever you’re comfortable.

3. Blog Selectively

Think carefully before publishing an entry, because (and I always stress this) no matter how personal or private you claim your blog to be, it is always accessible to virtually anyone in the world who has an internet access. Whether it is something very personal, controversial, or offensive, be aware that in the cyberspace, you’re never alone. Your contents could be indexed and cached by search engines, or reproduced in forums, other blogs, or heck, even newspapers! So you think removing an entry solves everything? Not really. Unless you understand and do not mind the consequences, think twice before you write.

Related example: Last year, a teenage Singaporean blogger, Wee Shu Min had to remove an offensive entry just one day after publishing, because it drew a flak from thousands of people worldwide. She admitted that she didn’t expect to receive so many readers overnight. Indeed, her average daily hits was never that high. (It’s a long story but if you’re interested, Wikipedia could help you out. And yes, her original text is there too.)

4. Fight Spam!

Most modern blog publishing tools have a comment spam filter. Additionally, you could also use a Word Verification system (for Blogspot users, for example), whereby commentors would need to key in characters displayed in a randomly-generated image when leaving a comment. Wordpress, in addition to the standard Akismet Spam Filter, also has an anti-spam plugin that requires commentors to answer a simple math question. It’s an extra-step for your commentors who wish to leave a comment but they’ll understand it.

Personal tip: When you come across a Wordpress blog that requires you to answer a simple math question when submitting a comment, beware of time-outs. That’s because sometimes that particular math question expires before you’re done typing your comment. Always copy your comments before submitting, as even the ‘back’ button in your browser can’t help you recover what you’ve typed! Personally, I think the Akismet Spam Filter that comes standard in all Wordpress is sufficient for most use.

5. Ensure Compatibility

Try viewing your blog using another browser to ensure that it displays nicely, especially after you’ve modified its layout. Most default layouts are compatible with almost all browsers but once you want to modify something, you gotta do it at your own risk. I once (while using Firefox) came across a site that was really messy and the ‘Post a Comment’ link was hidden. I couldn’t leave a comment! I then switched to IE and everything appeared perfectly fine.

Personal tip: This can get a little technical. Well anyway, if you’re interested, try validating your site using the W3C Markup Validation Service. Here’s why.

6. Provide an Email Address

It’s useful to provide your email address somewhere on your site (eg. in your profile or sidebar), especially if you’ve turned off commenting in your blog. However, don’t provide your complete email address in text. Replace the alias with something like [at] or .at., or use spaces. If you have your email address provided in full (like me@me.com), web crawlers/spiders/robots (strictly speaking, they’re scripts) could index your email address and pick it up for spam purposes. So come up with a way to ‘fool’ these web crawlers. The best way is to display your email address as an image (check out my About page). You can generate your email image here.

7. Personal Photos

This is a no-brainer. From (3), you know that your blog is accessible to virtually anyone who has internet access. Even though you have never provided your URL to anyone, people can still reach your site via search engines. Understand what you’re getting yourself into when posting up pictures of yourself, friends, family members, your car (with the vehicle registration number visible), your house, etc.. Attracting stalkers is the last thing you’d want to do online. I would say that children (since anyone could set up a blog these days) should be extra careful when posting up photos of themselves.

Technical note: I don’t know if there’s a way to prevent indexing by search engines. The ‘noindex, nofollow’ for robots meta does not work all the time.

8. The Statement “I Blog for Myself” is Codswallop

Don’t bother setting up a blog if you’re not expecting any readers. However, there are instances when you might want to make a particular entry private. I don’t know about other blog-publishing tools, but Wordpress allows you to do this. When enabled, that blog entry becomes password-protected. (Maybe someone could shed some light about Blogspot, MT, LiveJournal, Xanga, Vox, etc).

9. Go Easy on the Advertisements

If you’re gonna monetize your blog, you gotta remember to keep a balance. Unless you’re running a corporate/commercial blog in support of a product or brand, go easy on the ads. The very reason why advertisements exist in the first place is traffic. Your contents, not the adverts, is what drives your traffic. So start by focusing on your contents before anything else.

10. Turn On Comment Notifications

A reader may drop by your site and leave a comment in one of your older entries (say, a few months old in your archives). It could be a compliment or even a question - whatever it is, you most likely wouldn’t want to miss it. Turn on comments notification (which is sent to you via email) so that you know there is a new comment left in your blog. Alternatively, you could also display all recent comments on your sidebar.

Personal tip: I’ve found the ‘Recent Comments’ section in my sidebar useful in drawing traffic to my entries. Try it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

11. Credit Your Sources

Don’t be a thief. Credit your sources. If you publish photos, texts or anything that do not belong to you, the least you can do is provide a hyperlink to the original source. Watermarks in photos are there for a reason (especially if taken from another blog). So if you intend to use that photo, don’t crop away the watermark - it’s one way of crediting your source.

Personal tip: Have you ever suspected that someone might have plagiarised your work? Try http://www.copyscape.com/, and weed out the copycat!

Footnote: Everything provided here in this entry is based on my personal opinion, experiences and observations. They are in no way affiliated with or endorsed by any organizations, companies, or associations.

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