Rational Idealist

I have a very special announcement to make, at least very special to me. i’m happy to be announcing the launch of a community project, that’s building on top of the WordPress Plugins directory, augmenting it’s default information about the plugin, with some never-seen-before data, that should make your decisions when evaluating plugins even easier. It’s called RankWP.com

I have been a blogger since 2004, ever since i installed my first WordPress, version 1.0 if i recall correctly. it was the hottest thing online back then, and one could argue, it still is. Also, the first product we ever released at zemanta was a WordPress plugin. of course we uploaded it to the directory, and rejoiced when we saw bloggers discover it, starting to use it, leave reviews and ratings.

one of the best features wordpress had, and still has, is it’s extensibility trough plugins. there is a plugin for just about anything you could think of, more possibly, there are several. for every wordpress-based site owner, testing various plugins is a regular, and fun activity. wordpress.org directory is like an app store for website owners, built in a true open-source fashion as an ever-growing and ever-improving repository of blogging goodness, where developers across the globe are building on top of previous efforts of likeminds.

with thousands of plugins available, it’s not always easy to find the best one for your needs. it’s easier if you know just how popular it really is, so we have built an algorithm that estimates the actual number of active users of each plugin. plugins also become more or less popular over time, so we started tracking their popularity rank and show you how it’s changing. both of these informations are available now for all the plugins for the first time.

all these great plugins are built by people, and most developers publish more than one. we are happy to expose most successful developers based on the aggregate number of users of all their plugins. of course automattic’s own developers have a clear lead, but of the independent developers, Yoast is a clear winner. I’ve shown him an early version of this project and he was kind enough to say a few words for this announcement:

“For users to find new plugins, or better alternatives to plugins they’re already using, is really rather hard. RankWP seems to be a very good step in the right direction of allowing people to see what other people use, which plugins get installed and uninstalled more often and which developers tend to have good plugins. I hope they keep developing this as the community could really use this.” – Joost de Valk

you’re all cordially invited to take a look, send me feedback, suggestions, corrections. if anyone feels like helping, either coding or editing the content, you will be very welcome.

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Image by Vins64 via Flickr

1. stop over-consuming information – everyone wants you to be passive consumer, but you feel you should be active participant. stop f**ing listening to other then, stop obsessing over your wall, stop and think and write! i check out my FB messages occasionally, just so friends don’t call me rude, and that’s it!
2. nobody’s perfect, don’t over-engineer – stop worrying about the quality, whatever you write will be 80% OK, and the last 20% you’ll develop by doing, not by waiting.

How to Overcome the “I Wish” Mentality and Start a Blog

This Guest post is by Adarsh Thampy of Conversionchamp. I wish I started my blog a long time back when there was a lot less competition. I wish I was able to write great content from the start. I wish I had the money to purchase hosting and set up a self-hosted WordPress blog. I wish, I wish, I wish…

via: www.problogger.net

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Personalizando WordPress 1.5 (Photo credit: juanpol)

Your blog is your online home. Even if you spend most of your day somewhere away, this is where your toot-brush is, where you are yourself.

I’ve been a proponent of this view since I started blogging, and it’s also the reason why I’m sticking with WordPress – I like moving furniture around.

Using WordPress as your publishing hub

This morning at WordCamp San Diego I gave a talk titled “Using WordPress as your publishing hub. It went well and lots of people had great questions. If anyone has followup questions I’m happy to answer them in the comments. The slides are included below.

via: andrewspittle.net

In a nutshell, regardless of what you are doing around the web, you will promote your posts on twitter, and not the other way around. That’s the core power of the blog!

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Image via Wikipedia

great post with charts and numbers from 2011 on three most famous hosted blogging platforms. it clearly shows that blogs are not declining, and we at Zemanta saw a huge influx of bloggers with new years resolutions in January!

Round 2 of Tumblr vs. WordPress vs. Blogger: FIGHT!

Tumblr is up almost 70% from last December, steadily gaining share. WordPress seems to have followed a similar path on par with an audience size close to Tumblr. Lastly, Blogger seems to be on a steady albeit conservative growth path.

blog.compete.com

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Image by francescopozzi via Flickr

this is by far best summary of reasons I have seen so far. all true, all tried:

Why Every Professional Should Consider Blogging

I often argue that professionals should share their knowledge online via blogging. The catch is that virtually anything worthwhile in life takes time and effort, and blogging is not an exception to this statement. So before committing your energy to such an endeavor, you may rightfully stop and wonder what’s in it for you. Is blogging really worth it?

via: technicalblogging.com

… in reality, every bloggers cares about one or two of these points. for me they are (1) improve communication skills, and (3) personal repository. they were the reason I started blogging myself. and then, after a while, all other benefits creep into your life and y

ou get used to them. and people start calling you blogger. then, you should always keep in mind the ones that get you going in the first place, in order to stay true to yourself. the readers can detect when you start deceiving them and they will go away.

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