Are You Looking For Blog Tools

It is only Thursday, but it feels like Friday.  Somehow short weeks mean you have less time to get more done.  Am I the only one who feels that way?  Well the sooner I can reduce my life to only one job then the better things might be.

I am a teacher by day and a blogger, MLM hostess, and affiliate marketer whenever I am not teaching or doing other teacher related stuff.  Well now I have that well earned break, and more time to spend blogging and doing what I enjoy doing.

I love to write.  Writing is more fun when you can write the random rambles, but I enjoy sharing what I learn about blogging, too.  I am hoping I can help some new bloggers to make some income from blogging, MLM. or affiliate marketing.  It would be awesome to teach people who really see the value in learning, and who want to learn.  It seems more and more this is the type of person we find using the computer, and searching for improved knowledge.

I will try to get back to posting about free blogs tomorrow, or Saturday at the latest.

Thanks for reading!

The question is the title of this post.  Should you choose Today.com or WordPress.com?  I should have included for your first blog, or even more for your first free blog that you do not have to host yourself.  Was that just a run-on sentence? 

I am a dye hard word press fan when it comes to blogs, but you know I am growing to like what I see here at Today.com.  Some of the Google Ads are a bit annoying, but hey they have to pay their bills somehow, right?  It is not that I mind the ads so much but it is the ad titles that sort of bother me because they don’t have anything to do with my topic.

Speaking of my topic, I guess I should get back to it.  I have been reading about editors you can download to make your blog posts look better.  I see this editor here for Today.com has all sorts of icons not found on the Word Press text editors.  Word Press blogs are pretty ho hum when it comes to text enhancements unless you can write your own code. Who has time for that, right?

Lets see some of the cool features for text with this blog. 

2008-05-27  I just did that date with the click of a button. Pretty cool.

I can imbed media links with the touch of a button too.  Nice.  I will use that in the future.   Tee hee, smiley guys.  They need more of those.

I can even change my font with the push of a button.  That is really nice.

Now look a different color.  Whee this is great!  Blog Posting will never be the same after this.  Too fun!

Once again you need to have an idea of the purpose for your blog.

I am going to have to visit some of the blogs here.  There are lots of categories to pick from.  I wonder if people are making blogs to sell anything from or if that is allowed here.  That is one thing I must be certain of.  Read the terms of service before you make a decision on any blogging choice.

One thing I always remember when choosing free blogs is that they are a great place to add your other blogs to the blogroll or links page.  You can never have too many links going to your site. 

Well if you read this please let me know you did.  Thanks I appreciate it. 

Thanks to all who serve in the military, and any other form of service.  You do so much and get recognized so little. We see the pictures over and over that circulate across the internet of the men and women in Iraq. 

Have you seen this video?  I like this one and it is how we should treat our military.  They are making so many sacrifices and life long changes due to what they encounter in the military.  This is one of my favorites.

After seeing this I now say thanks to the people I see in uniform.  I did before when it was convenient, but now I will go out of my way.  I hope you can take some time to remember someone who served today and tell them Thank You. 

Thanks Dad!  Thanks to all those who got off those boats on the beaches of Normandy.  Thanks to all those who died at Pearl Harbor and to those who kept on going. Thanks to all those who went to Korea, Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Iraq.

I might be back to add more images later.

Did you read this one?  I do not know if it is true or not, I have not looked on snopes or anywhere to disclaim it, because it is a great story.  It was sent in an email.

Leading the fight is Gunnery Sgt Michael Burghardt, known as ‘Iron Mike’ or just ‘Gunny’. He is on his third tour in Iraq . He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour.
 
 
Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US soldiers. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. ‘You can’t react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision,’ he explains. So,protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term ‘the longest walk’, stepping gingerly into a 5 foot deep and 8 foot wide crater.

The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it.  He cut the wire and used his 7 inch knife to probe the ground. ‘I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs,’ he says. ‘That’s when I knew I was screwed.’

Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant’s feet.  ‘A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded,’ he recalls. ‘As I was in the air I remember thinking, ‘I don’t believe they got me.’ I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down.’
 
 
His colleagues cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there. ‘My dad’s a Vietnam vet who’s paralyzed from the waist down,’ says Sgt Burghardt. ‘I was lying there thinking I didn’t want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, ‘Good, I’m in business.’ ‘As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. ‘I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn’t going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.’ He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. ‘I flipped them one. It was like, ‘OK, I lost that round but I’ll be back next week’.’ </ SPAN>
 
 
Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit.
 
 
Sgt Burghardt’s injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.

I decided not to show the photo because some might find it offensive.

I have used Free Blogs such as wordpress.com, and I still do use them.  Plus I host some of my own blogs, too.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both and I will discuss some of them.  Right now I am trying today.com as you can see because you are reading this.  I am supposed to get paid for publishing daily.  Well I missed yesterday because it is after midnight.

I have spent the last 7 and 1/2 hours updating one of my hosted word press blogs.  Lets see what is taking so long.  FTP is!  Wow it is so slow when you have a big blog, and I really do not understand unless it is the plug ins that are slowing it down.  I saved my content file and am not transferring it back and forth.  I only saved a backup of it though.

Well to have a hosted blog you need things. You need to have a way to use FTP, File Transfer Protocol, and that is necessary.  I love Word Press but they update often, and that means backing up your blog files often (which should be done anyway), and then seeing what will work with the update and what won’t.

If you are completely new to this blogging stuff then let me tell you about Word Press.  Today.com uses the Word Press format. It is easy to use.  If you can send emails you can blog.  It is that simple.  Wordpress.org is the one for more advanced users and wordpress.com is for the free blogs.

Word Press offers a huge selection of templates and some modification is available on the blogs they host.  They give you enough free space that you can have fun for quite a long time.  They do all the upgrading for you so you do not have to worry about web hosting and ftp stuff.  They take all the worries out of your blogging.

Word Press is even making life easier by improving hosting of media on your blog.  I will add some to this one soon so you can see what I am talking about.

So if you are thinking of starting a blog get a free one first to test drive.  If you like it and want to get serious then come back here for more updates on Blog Tools.  I will be going in that direction to give more and more information about blog tools and where to get them.  If you are enjoying this blog please leave a comment or a suggestion.

There used to be bloggers who just used this format to leave journal type entries for their friends and families to use to keep in contact. Some people used to write their poems and add them to a blog.  Others found blogging a good way to rant and get out their frustration and anger over anything that upset them.

It was amazing to me to see how open these people were in their topics and posts.  Also they were getting people to comment on their postings.  I usually write when I need to vent, but the thought of having it out there for everyone to see was a bit intimidating for me.

If you are going to have a blog where you express yourself with a lot of profanity, then it is best to inform the reader that you do not have a kid friendly blog.  I guess I am old fashioned in this since I believe that if you can take the time to write the profanity you can find the time to find grammar appropriate to everyone. 

However it seems that more and more we are finding even the well respected people in the world do not always worry about what words come out of their mouths or fingers.  The reader can voice their opinion by not supporting the blog. 

Perhaps you are just a blog reader.  If you are just a blog reader for now, that is ok.  That is how I started and now I am a devoted blogger.  One tiny bit of advice is that if you are reading a blog go ahead and leave a comment on it.  You can leave your email address and it is never given to the public on 99% of the blogs, but you might be asked to join a mailing list.

What happens when you leave comments is that you are getting your name out there.  You are beginning your internet presence.  Bloggers love to get comments.  Usually we will reciprocate with a comment on your site, or a return comment to your comment, or an email.

Remember your email address are usually kept private and you are notified of that.

I will discuss more posting etiquette in future posts.  I will also discuss more types of blogs and Web 2.0 sites.

First of all it is great to be accepted to Today.com.  It is also a thrill to see that they have chosen the Word Press format since I really use it for most of my blogging. When I filled out the form to be a Today.com blogger I wanted to share my knowledge of blogging with as many readers as possible.

I won’t say I am an expert at making blogs from the coding side of blogging.  There are so many great people out there who can make the widgets and the plugins, and beautiful blog templates.  However I feel qualified to write a blog about blog tools, and blogging in general.

I have been blogging for a few years now, and still have some of my original ones.  I have used a variety of blogging tools in the past.  Some were to help you get fast search engine rankings, and some were to help you get rss feeds onto your blogs to keep traffic fresh.

I will discuss how to promote your blogs, and different blog tools and techniques on this blog, so I hope you will return often to see what I am up to.