MOVING IN ON MOVABLE TYPE: (www.movabletype.com)
MovableType is another potent blogging solution. It also offers two business packages – one for 5 authors and one for 20 authors which costs money.
If you decide to use MovableType 5.0 as your blogging solution, your web hosting service must meet these requirements:
. Scripts : Your web server must be configured to run CGI scripts written in PERL.
. Web server : typically runs on the Apache web server version 1.3x or 2.x. Ask your web hosting service if it meets the requirements for hosting MovableType.
. PERL : MovableType requires PERL 5.81 or later.
. PHP : MovableType requires PHP 5.0 or later.
. MySQL : MovableType requires MySQL 5.0 or later.
USING THE NO FOLLOW TAG
The NoFollow tag is a snippet of HTML code that can be added to your links so they’re invisible to Google and not included in Google’s search rankings. Many bloggers have started using the NoFollow tag on all outgoing links on their blogs, so there’s no chance that their links could be considered paid text links, which can cause problems with their Google rankings. However, using the NoFollow tag on all links on your blog also eliminates any link-love that legitimate commenters can get from leaving comments on your blogs.
The format for the NoFollow tag is as follows:
<aherf=http://www.example.com/rel=”nofollow”>linktextgoesthere</a>
It’s up to you to decide whether you want to use the NoFollow tag on your blog, but at the very least, use it in any text link advertising links and in any sponsored review posts.
MICROBLOGGING FOR BEGINNERS
What is microblogging? In simplest terms, microblogging is the process of publishing short status updates (example: 140 – characters or less through Twitter) on a personal profile through a micro blogging web site. The most popular microblogging sites are Twitter, Plurk, and Jaiku. You can create a profile on a microblogging site for free, input some personal information, and start publishing microblog posts. (Twitter users call them tweets). Typically, you can make your account public or private, so you control who can see your updates – any person with access to the internet or just people you approve.
Microblogging is intended to be a platform to share what you’re doing right now, and it has transformed the world of online communications.
CHOOSING A MICROBLOGGING APPLICATION
Twitter (www.twitter.com)
Character limit : 140 per message.
Twitter allows anyone to view anyone else’s tweets, unless a user sets his account to private, meaning only accepted followers can see that user’s tweets. When you sign up to follow another user, that person’s tweets are displayed within your Twitter stream in reverse chronological order, mixed within all the tweets of the users you follow. It can get cluttered, a wide variety of third-party Twitter applications can make it easier for your to manage your tweets.
With Twitter, you can also set private direct messages to other users, and you can tag other users within your tweets to notify those users that you referenced them in a tweet. It’s easy to share information through Twitter. Therefore, it’s not surprising that many individuals and businesses find it useful for promotion and customer service.
Plurk (www.plurk.com)
Character limit:140 per message.
Plurk offers many similar features to Twitter such as the ability to send private messages and make your updates (called plurks) visible only to the people you choose.
The site picked up steam quickly after its introduction thanks to some special features that Twitter didn’t have and that users liked, including a threaded messaging capability and scrollable timeline visuals. Furthermore, the ability to easily insert video and image content into updates set it apart from Twitter.
One of the features that makes Plurk unique is the ability to create cliques. You can create a Plurk Clique, so it’s easy to keep track of what a smaller group of users are doing. This feature makes Plurk a great choice for creating and growing online communities more so than simply sharing information as Twitter is best known for.
Jaiku (www.jaiku.com)
Character limit:100 per message.
Jaiku works similarly to Twitter, with features such as the ability to keep updates private and send private messages, but Jaiku adds a few enhancements that many users find to be quite valuable.
Jaiku users can publish updates to their personal status streams (called jaikus), or they can join channels that are dedicated to specific topics. They can post to channels separately from their own Jaiku streams and even invite other users to join channels of interest. Furthermore, Jaiku users can comment directly on other user’s updates and those messages and comments can be viewed in a threaded mode, making it very easy to follow conversations. This is a desirable feature that Twitter doesn’t offer.