The WordPress PAD » Web Content

Why video should not take over the web

wppad — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:42:04 +0000

Like text messaging on a cell phone, video on the Internet should not replace common traditional modes of communication. Why? Because again, like text messaging, video serves a purpose but doesn’t and cannot tell the whole story. Especially on the web with bite sized bobs of information preceded or followed by ads.

Though a picture may say a thousand words, and video yet still ten thousand, sometimes you just want to read the bloody story and not have to update QuickTime or Flash plugin, or deal with video loading issues and/or errors. Like my hometown of NYC, the interweb should be thoughtfully convenient, not just “easy”.

I say, instead of reading an interesting headline on a news site like Yahoo News, MSN, NY Times or CNN, and clicking the title link to read a bit more about the story, but finding a video unstead, why not give us a choice.

More often than my patience allows, headlines, like movie previews these days, are misleading. So, I say at the very least, these news sites should just throw a summary of the video below or above the video. Or, if for advertising reasons these sites need the site visitors to watch the video – with prerolls and postrolls – they can put the entire story below with the usual inline ads.

Frankly, this last option, to me anyway, is more inline with what I would call “best practices” of social media/marketing. It gives site visitors options rather than assuming we want none. Were not all video junkies. And some of us who like watching videos on the Internet, don’t necessarily want to watch, but to read our news instead.

Though video killed the radio star, I believe there’s enough room for video and good old fashion plain text on this world wide interweb!

© wppad for The WordPress PAD, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cnn, internet, journalism, news, social marketing, Social Media, video, web

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Archiving for Blogs That Publish More Than Posts

wppad — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:32:42 +0000

So, let’s say you have a blog that publishes more than blog posts. Or rather, you use WordPress’s blog posts loop to publish glossaries, directories, or other lists that you don’t necessarily want published in your rss feed or exposed in your archives. Well, there’s a two-prong solution that takes just about 60 minutes of your time. First, installing the WordPress Advanced Category Excluder plugin and two, creating a JavaScript enhanced archives page that only exposes the posts and pages you want your users to see.
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Post tags: archiving, wordpress plugin

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Trend Watching: The Rise of Valuable and FREE Stuff Online and Offline

wppad — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:40:56 +0000

This month’s briefing at Trend Watching, is all about “FREE LOVE”, companies giving away free valuable products and services to consumers online and offline as the latest trend in marketing. I thought this is a relevant article especially as regards to the C2C (consumer to consumer) marketplace and of which we bloggers benefit from every day. We get free plugins from each other, free tools, free links, free traffic, all of which are valuable in our blogging successes. I touched on the value of “Free” things on the Web in an earlier article suggesting that good content on the Internet specifically may be worth paying for, and still, free content is only as valuable as its use to you. It’s interesting how Trend Watching breaks down how FREE LOVE came to be:
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Post tags: business, consumer, internet marketing, Trendwatching

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Add RSS Feeds to Your Website

wppad — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:07:33 +0000

So, let’s say you have a website and a blog. You want to advertise your blog on your website. It’s easy enough to add a link to your blog on your website, but that’s amateur stuff. You can do better. Why not add your RSS feed for your blog on your website so that a list of your current posts (and links to them) appear on your website’s sidebar (or elsewhere).

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© wppad for The WordPress PAD, 2008. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: rss feed, rss feed javascript

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The Way Back Machine Can Help Your Blog SEO Efforts

wppad — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:17:50 +0000

I have a wonderful SEO person whose taught me and continues to teach me all sorts of wonderful things about search engine optimization for my blogs and me websites. Last week while we were discussing a client’s website redesign project (on which we’re collaborating), she told me about “The Way Back Machine“. Have you heard of this? Here’s a summary from the about page of Archive.org:

“The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections.”

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Post tags: indexing, intenet archive records, search engine optimization, SEO, the way back machine

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The Business of Blogging: Separating Information Safely Shared From Skills That Should Not Be

wplover — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:31:16 +0000

When I first began this blog, I suffered the same conundrum many beginning business bloggers suffered: How much is too much information? I didn’t want to give away so much info that the services my business offers can be of no use to them. It’s not as dire as giving away trade secrets, but blogging about WordPress design, content, tools, plugins, etc. sometimes means teaching readers how to, when to, and the where to of what I do, on some level. But, does it mean my readers can go out, install, develop, design, update, maintain, and fix bugs in their blogs after they read my posts? Not really. I don’t give away trade secrets, sure (not that much is “secret” in these days on the information superhighway). But, most importantly I’ve learned and I am still learning that what I know is one thing, what I and my business can do is another. Other business bloggers should know this too.
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Post tags: business blog, business blogger, sharing information online, small business blogger, small business owner

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WordPress Plugin: Insert YouTube or Google Video in Your WordPress Blog Post Without Problems

wplover — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:39:06 +0000

So I was working on a client’s blog recently and was having the most frustrating time trying to embed video onto the site. I recall also having the same trouble on my Film Tops blog. I went to WordPress’s Plugins page and low and behold, I found a solution with a simple plugin.

EasyTube is a WordPress plugin that allows you to embed a YouTube or Google Video in your blog post without WordPress assigning p tags where they don’t belong making your published posts and those below them screwy looking. Anyway, the cool thing about EasyTube is that the code you have to put in your post is soooooo simple:

Click here to view the embedded video.

, that’s it! “URL” should be replaced with the actual URL where the YouTube or Google Video is found. You can also assign width and height:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Fabulous, ain’t it!

© wplover for The WordPress PAD, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog video, Easytube wordpress plugin, embed video, Google video, wordpress plugin, YouTube

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‘Tis the Season for A Website Makeover

wplover — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:21:53 +0000

In the previous article I talked about designing a Adding a Little Something Extra on Your Web Design from Head to Footer. Well, how about the in between too? It’s the end of the year and 2008 is literally around the corner, so why not give your website a fresh new look. Here are a few tips to make your website makeover a success:
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Post tags: Blog Design, web design, website redesign

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The 13 Best FREE Web Icon Sets

wplover — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:18:02 +0000

Want to spice up your design with some great looking icons? Or perhaps your desktop needs more up to date, 3D icons? I scoured the web looking for icons for a project recently and found there are really amazing web icon sets created by great designers who offer them free to the public to use on websites, blogs and desktops. Damn, I love the Internet. Below are some of the best I found:

Icon Archives has some really great FREE icons. Two of my favorites is the Email Me and the Comic iPhone icon sets. Icon Archives has an extensive library of FREE icons.

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Post tags: free icon sets, web icons

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How to Find Inspiration for Your Blog

wplover — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:21:23 +0000

Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to write a post for you blog. Sometimes it’s hard to find what to write about. Writing every day, or every other day for a blog is time consuming and mentally exhausting. You won’t always know what to post next. The best advice I can give you is what I learned at school as a writing major, don’t think so hard. Explore the world around you. Take a nap. Socialize. Work on something else. History proves time and time again that you often find what you’re NOT looking for and that inspiration comes from all corners of your life.

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Post tags: blog content, inspiration, Writing

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