Our Mommyhood

Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

By Natalie, Contributor, Mommy of a Monster and Infant Twins (@mommyofamonster)

Have you ever heard of blog scraping? It sounds like it might be a joke, but it’s a real term and something that you need to know about. I had never heard of the term until a month or so ago when I read a post about it over at A Nut In A Nutshell. After I read the description of what blog scraping is, I became angry to know that my blog had been scraped and that when it happened I was actually flattered instead of upset about it.

What is Blog Scraping?

According to Wikipedia, blog scraping is:

“the process of scanning through a large number of blogs, usually daily, searching for and copying content. This process is conducted through automated software. The software and the individuals who run the software are sometimes referred to as blog scrapers.”

What does that mean to you? Well for starters, it means that content on your blog may be copied right onto another blog or site and may or may not have a link back to your blog. Or the blog scrapers may only take a portion of the content specific to common keyword searches. They do both of these things to improve their blog’s SEO.

When it has happened to me in the past, I became aware of it by a mention to me on Twitter (for those of you non-Twitterer’s out there, it’s kind of like getting an email) with a link to their blog. When I clicked on the link, it took me to their blog (which are often referred to as ‘splogs’ or spam blogs) and showed my blog name and the title of my post as a headline or featured article, which for (very naive) me was exciting! I didn’t bother to click on the post to see if it linked back to me; why would I? I already knew what the post said. If I had, I would have realized there was no link to my blog and that my content had been stolen.

Why Do Blog Scrapers Scrape Other Blogs?

Blog scrapers do what they do to improve their Google ranking, their trackbacks and their traffic. This is all done in the hopes of generating revenue; a profit and they are doing it using our content!

Some blog scrapers will say that this is legal to do because they are giving you full credit for the information by listing your blog name. However, this is not true if you are copyrighting your materials (for more information on protecting your content by copyrighting it, see the section titled What You Can Do To Minimize Your Exposure)

Why You Should Be Concerned

You should be concerned and aware of blog scraping to help ensure that your content is not being stolen and used without your permission. Another reason that you should be concerned is because any type of splog or RSS-fed spam site can scrape blogs. This means that your copyrighted material could show up on a site promoting pornography or any number of other offensive subjects.

What You Can Do To Minimize Your Exposure

1. Copyright your content! Anything that you publish on your blog should be copyrighted for your protection and there are lots of free services out there that you can use. Check out MyFreeCopyright.com or Copygator.com, just to name a couple.

2. Set up Google Alerts that will allow you to get an email update of keywords that you choose based on daily or weekly results. You can set up a separate alert for different keywords including the name of your blog, post titles or specific information you may be writing about. In my case, both times I was scraped I had written about depression and infertility (hot topics).

3. If you realize you have been scraped, you can contact the site’s host server and request your copyrighted content be removed from their site immediately (or within 24 hours).

Has your blog ever been scraped? How did you handle the situation?

By Alyson, Contributor, Common Sense, Dancing (@AMLanders)

Happy New Year! A time for beginning anew, forming new habits and making resolutions. I’ll spare you my list of things like “eat better,” “iron more”  and “shave my legs at least 2x/week.” Instead, I invite you to consider one of my blogging resolutions: in addition to simply “blog more,” I’m committing to blogging more.

I still think of myself as a “new” blogger. When does that wear off? I haven’t seen a timetable from The Powers That Be. At any rate, I’m still new. And I feel pressured — by my own self, of course — to write things that are witty, moving, thought-provoking and important on a weekly, if not daily basis.

But “witty, moving” et al. are content issues, I realize. One of my major writing bugs, however, is: Why, oh why, can I NOT get through a blog entry without some kind of grammar or spelling or punctuation issue sneaking through the draft stage and making it out into the Big Time of published entry?

It kills me. I write, edit, write, edit, preview it, edit more, write more, spell check and hit Publish. And .25 seconds after the, “Your post has been published” message, what do I see? Of course: some horrendous affront to English. (I’m hoping that the wonderful women of OMH will treat this piece kindly and proof it for me so that this piece doesn’t become evidence of my troubles. {Editor’s Note: Done})

Confession: I am a self-identified Language Snob. I know this. I accept this. I don’t always love it, since it leaves me scratching my head during my reading of just about anything: Why did the NYT editors choose to punctuate that sentence that way? Why that word choice and not this one; I lose big reading comprehension points because I get hung up in mechanics. This is less important when reading, say, People magazine, but a little bit of a problem when reading information that I actually need, like the boys’ dress code, or field trip details or whose turn it is for snack. (Dammit — I just caught myself using “who’s” in that previous sentence instead of “whose.” But at least it didn’t get published.)

With regard to you other writers out there, I have no beef with you. I get that there are stylistic differences among us and that some of you are not burdened by my baggage regarding the appropriate use of apostrophe marks and semi colons. And I mean that; it’s my baggage. I really do know that it’s my personal tic.

I know that what I write won’t interest everyone. Who cares about my Doodle Entourage except me? I’m sure there are at least 3 readers Out There who have some concerns about my attachment to the freak show that is Snooki. But while I can’t interest all the people all the time, I should probably ensure that what I do write is acceptable written English. And from what I catch on my blog after “Publish,” I’ve got some work to do.

What about you? Do you frequently scream, “Aaargh” after you Publish and then have to edit further? (Or is it farther? See? I’ve got a problem.)

Here’s to wonderful blogging adventures in 2011!!

Alyson is a SAHM mom to 4 children, although the “S” part of that is often a misnomer. She’s normally in the car, shuttling kids or their tuff between here and there. She likes reading good blogs, 70′s music, salty snacks as opposed to sugary (except brownies — give her a good fudgey brownie any time), and her Doodledogs. She is still trying figure out what the heck CSS and HTML can do for her, what actually happens when a blog “crashes” (and how to prevent it even if you don’t understand it), and the width of her sidebar(s). (Her blog sidebars, that is. Her personal sidebars are way wider than she’d like.) You can read more about her real and ridiculous life at Common Sense, Dancing.

By Liz, Editor, a belle, a bean & a chicago dog (@bellebeandog)

I consider March 2010 to be the beginning of my (public) blog career.  Like many people, I began blogging just for family and friends in order to keep them informed on our lives, and later ventured into the public blogging arena.

After publicly blogging for about 3 months, I had reached my first bloggy roadblock; Memorial Day was coming and I needed to decide whether or not to publish a post that day.

Deciding whether or not to post on a holiday is a common dilemma among the bloggy set.  Do we choose to take the day off from posting because we know most people are going to be away from their computers, spending time with friends and family?  Do we go ahead and post, but make it easy on ourselves by putting up a happy, festive post that honors that particular holiday?  Or do we post as usual even though we know we aren’t going to get the typical traffic that day?

At least in the cases of Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day each holiday lasts just 1 day.  No matter what you decide, there isn’t much to be lost or gained in only 24 hours.  But what about for the “bigger” holidays?  How do you feel about not publishing a new post for several days in a row?

Challenge #1: Thanksgiving. It’s arguably a 4 day long holiday, with many people either traveling out of town, spending time with family, getting a jump start on their Christmas decorating or braving the crowds to score those amazing Black Friday deals.  Personally, I didn’t feel comfortable not posting something new on my blog 4 days in a row.   I chose to have a post carryover from Thanksgiving through Saturday, and then posted something new on Sunday.  Sunday is always a standard, meme-related post for me, so that was an easy post to complete.

Challenge #2: Christmas and New Year’s. Not only is December the biggest holiday time of the year, the length of its holiday celebrations is unparalleled.  Add to that kids being off school for 2 roughly weeks and any paid vacation time many people take from work and the blogosphere is looking pretty empty.

While I don’t plan on regular postings during that time, I’m still not sure what approach I will take.

Have you thought about how to handle blog posting during Christmas and New Year’s? Will you post as usual, and write the same types of posts as the rest of the year? Will you try to utilize that slower time to write some posts for future publication? Weigh in with your thoughts at our forum!

By Ashley, Contributor, Just Another Mom of Two (@AnotherMomof2)

My post about choosing a blogging platform convinced you to move to WordPress. Except, there are all these terms that sound like a foreign language when you try to google doing just that. Let’s start with the basics, shall we? There are a few points that people seem to most often get confused about when looking at using WordPress.

Remember, it’s wordpress.org, NOT wordpress.com. As I discussed previously in choosing a platform, Blogger is the way to go as far as customizable options if you are wanting a free platform. Second, yes, WordPress is free, however, domain names and hosting costs are not. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked.

Domain Name

A domain name is like the title of a book. There are many chapters, maybe images, various content, but it has a single title. For example, this blog’s domain name is ourmommyhood.com. You can pick various extensions; .net, .info, .biz, etc. The most common is a .com, mostly because it is what people tend to type in when they are looking for a site. (But you will do such a good job branding your site that it really does not matter which extension you choose, right?)

Hosting

Hosting is can be considered the storage unit of sorts for your files. A place for your domain to pull all of the information from when people are visiting your site. There are various options for hosting plans and most will cost you from $5-$10 per month. Some of the more popular hosts include Blue Host, DreamHost and Host Gator. There are plenty more and you can choose what host you use based on your needs. One thing to consider when choosing a host is how much bandwidth you will need for your site; often, a standard hosting plan is more than sufficient for a blogger just starting out, but as sites grow more space may be needed.

WordPress

Many hosting companies offer easy WordPress installations (a great consideration when choosing a hosting company; find out if they offer this). If not, WordPress has their Famous 5-Minute Installation right on their site. The step-by-step instructions require a little bit of work but are relatively painless. Once you install WordPress itself you are almost there!

Theme

One of the most common questions people have is what theme they should use for WordPress; do they need a paid one, which is better, etc. etc. The answer is that you can really do what you want to do; it depends on how much effort and time you want to put into it. Paid themes like Thesis and Headway stand out because they have excellent SEO (search engine optimization) built right into their platforms. However, plugins like All-in-One SEO Pack can help with free themes. One of my absolute favorite free themes is Atahualpa- it is extremely customizable with an easy-to-understand user interface. Headway is fast becoming my new favorite paid theme, because it not only has excellent SEO options and amazing customization capabilities, but it also has a drag-and-drop interface that even the least tech-savvy can use to make their own customizations. These are important things to know about a theme before making the investment – while you can always hire someone to take care of the back-end for you, there will be things along the way that you will want to change and customize too.

At this point, you have the basic tools to start a WordPress Blog. Next time, we’ll discuss customizing a theme and some of my favorite plugins (Sneak peak: If you don’t have Akismet for spam, get it now!)

Have you made the switch to WordPress yet? Any tips to offer those who are still considering? Tell us about it in the forum!

Ashley is a stay at home mom (and social media consultant) who is not always sure what state she is in. She has moved her family to what will soon be 5 states in 6 years- whew! She can be found blogging over at Just Another Mom of 2 and also offers affordable transfers to WordPress. Email her at Ashley @ justanothermomof2.com for details!

By Mama M, Staff Writer, My Little Life (@5crookedhalos)

I like to consider myself a fairly intelligent person: I schlepped my way through college. I can solve simple math equations. I might even, be able to write out the chemical makeup of water.

But, there’s something I just can’t wrap my mind around. Maybe you can help me.

I keep running across blogs that have Facebook Fan pages and I really don’t understand it. We have Google Friend connect, Google reader, Feedburner; how many more times, and in how many different ways, do we need to hear that people like us?

And, besides that, what exactly is the point of a Fan page; this even confuses me in regards to businesses. I’m sort of understanding that businesses offer “Facebook Specials” for their “friends”, but Bloggers?

I’m confuzzled: What does a Fan page do for a girl (or guy)?

So do I need to get with the times and just create a dang Facebook Fan page for my blog, or are there other people out there who wonder the same thing?

Please share your knowledge; I would like to let my mind rest on this matter.

For Bloggers with Facebook fan pages: Please come by the Our Mommyhood forum to discuss the following and share your knowledge:

Do you have a Fan Page?

What are your thoughts on Blogs and Businesses that do?

If you have a fan page, do you feel it offers you or your readers something?

Do you interact with your fans or readers on Facebook?

Do you separate your personal Facebook page from your Blog’s Facebook page? Why?

Knowledge is power and we want to hear your thoughts!