by Bryan on September 23, 2008
In case you’ve missed it Technorati is unveiling its annual State of the Blogosphere this week. The report is being phased over a 5 day period and features some very interesting blogging trends.
The report has already raised some eyebrows regarding a claim that blogs with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month have a mean revenue of $75,000 per year. The number does seem quite high for 100k uniques but I think the “or more” portion of the statement probably has it skewed upward a bit. All this has me particularly interested in the Day 4: Blogging For Profit piece. Should provide some good reading regardless.
Expect a opinionated overview here after the full report is released.
by Bryan on September 23, 2008
Have you ever registered on a blog to find login and user pages with the WordPress backend look that just don’t fit the flow of the blog’s design? If so, you’re not alone.
Rae Hoffman recently enlisted the help of expert WordPress plugin creator Joost de Valk to ditch the WordPress look from the subscription user pages and create a seamless built in look. The result is the Customize Your Community plugin.
While I don’t offer user signup on Blogging Review currently I decided to go through the process to see if this plugin was as good as advertised. I wasn’t disappointed. The install was very easy and setup took just a few minutes by inserting some DIV tags into custom backend fields. The DIV tag additions allow you to match your new user pages to the blogs current layout. I really like this method as it ensures maximum flexibility of the plugin. I can see how it would be a bit confusing for the beginner not familiar with code, but with a little time everyone should be able to get it done.
Here are some screen shots showing user pages before and after installing the CYC plugin
Default User Registration Page
Registration Page With The CYC Plugin
Default User Page
User Page With The CYC Plugin
As you can see the plugin does a fantastic job of bringing the user pages into the theme of the blog making the experience much more seamless. I highly recommend this plugin for any WordPress blog that allows open registration.
Get It Here
Customize Your Community Plugin Page
Don’t forget to donate if you decide to install CYC. 
by Bryan on September 22, 2008
If you are a WordPress user and you are utilizing the WordPress stats services you’ve probably noticed that the service also comes is a very small smiley face addition to your blog footer. The smiley was added as a visual way to ensure the stats are tracking and is not something that can be removed directly from the plugin code.
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by Bryan on September 20, 2008
The folks at Wordpress.com announced this week that they would be offering a premium option to users which would remove Adsense ads from their Wordpress hosted blog. The Ad-Free upgrade will be offered for a yearly charge of 30 credits (which appears to be dollars).
This is a good move in my opinion and one that I feel should be offered by any service that displays ads on user generated content. A value added service for a reasonable price….although I will always recommend a self hosted option. 
by Bryan on September 19, 2008
So what is this RSS stuff I see everywhere and why should I care?
It’s a fair question and probably one that has gone through all of our heads at some point. Heck, maybe you are asking this very question right now. In case you are I’ll give you the skinny.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a format to feed content and syndicate it via various tools which are referred to as RSS aggregators or RSS readers.
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