Ever clicked publish only minutes later to update your post. I have. Several times. Here is a list of checks to carry out before clicking publish.  This checklist is a reminder to myself that may help others.

• Title

Choose a catchy SEO title.

• Tags / Categories

Remember to use Tags and select a relevant Category.

• Excerpt

Write an optimized excerpt that sums up your post.

• Boldface Important Points

Adding Boldface can emphasize points and make reading easier. It can also influence SEO.

• Spelling and Grammar

Wordpress can check your spelling but it is always worth re-reading to ensure your post is easy to read and clear.

Writing in Windows Livewriter enables spelling to be checked also. This is a must have blogging tool for me as I find writing in the browser cumbersome.

• Preview

I always have a look at a preview of my post to ensure that everything looks aligned correctly. Sometimes for me an image looks okay while editing, but not so good when posted.

• Image

Add an image that catches the attention. Pictures used on this site tend to come from a Flickr search for photo’s with the Creative Commons Licence.

• Credits

Don’t forget to add credits or sources, ensure that if you have used other resources then then let everyone know. If you have used someone else’s pictures remember to credit them too.

• Internal Links

Have you any other posts that are similar or useful that could have been internally linked to in your text…add them. Even if you have a Similar Posts Plugin or Widget.
Picture by Orcmid

I hope this helps but if you have any more to add to this fairly short list please add them in the comments.

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I have just come across a couple of pretty handy websites to check out who is sharing your I.P. address. Unless you have paid extra for a dedicated server you will presumably be sharing with a few other websites. To check out who is sharing your I.P. You could try the following two webapps:

• You Get Signal Reverse I.P. Lookup This website will provide you with a list of who is sharing the same server as you. Additionally it highlights in red any website that may be seen as explicit.

• MyIPNeighbours.com Provides a similar service but may come up with a different result (it did for me).

Why is Sharing I.P. Servers Bad?

According to buildwebsite4u.com:

“Some SEOs suppose that there really is no good reason to obtain static IP Web hosting. Your site will not perform any better by having its own static IP.

Some others theorize that your choice of dedicated IP hosting vs. shared hosting might slightly affect your rankings (i.e. it’s a factor considered by search engines).

Yet others suppose that sharing an IP address with known spam or adult sites raises a warning flag with search engines, so some of them may respond by banning the entire IP address from their index.”

They also go on to say that these fears are probably exaggerated and I.P’s will need to be shared in the future anyway. Shared hosting is a lot cheaper generally too.

I believe that it is unlikely that two websites sharing the same I.P. would be associated in any way by search engines. This is because a lot of websites share I.P’s and it wouldn’t make sense for them to be associated in any way.

For now I’m sticking with my shared hosting…

Any shared hosting problems? Comment away….

Pic by Robert Scoble

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To see the fairly revealing.. interview click through to Speakbindas.com

Q: What is your favorite food? Any particular dislikes?

• Ans.: Fish and Chips, the national dish of England (only because we don’t have any others and have adopted everyone elses).

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Looking at my Google Analytics here’s the rough monitor resolutions of visitors to JonnysBlog.com:

It’s hard to tell the resolution I should be aiming for here but my website is currently 1024×768 rightly or wrongly…

Armed with this info I used the very nice webapp  viewlike.us to see what my website looks like in different resolutions.

Here is a pic of viewlike.us in action with my website as seen on the iphone:

What resolution is your website and why?

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Just a note to say I am officially back from my wedding and honeymoon and will be back on full time posting duty as of today.

Thanks for the patience.

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Luckily I seem to have found someone who is willing to take me on and put up with me until I die. Unbelievable but true.

She also happens to be the funniest and most gorgeous wife to be -  known to man (I know everyone says that but it’s true in this case).

Normal service will be resumed in around a month when the fun / chaos is over.

P.S. I can’t wait Dx

Picture by Piez

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This is not what I wanted to see when I was temporarily having trouble accessing my own site but it confirmed that my site was down.

Downforeveryoneorjustme is a web service that does one thing – checks if a website is up and working.

After a few hours and an email to my hosting provider, normal service resumed.

• To quickly check your site you can make a firefox bookmark using the http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ url followed by your website name.

• This can then be dragged to your Firefox bookmark bar for quick use.

• E.g. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.jonnysblog.com

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ – To check if your website is up.

Know of any other / better web services like this? Let me know in the comments…

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Luckily Terence Chang has done the hard work and provided a JavaScript bookmarklet (a useful bookmark that processes a page in some way) that can check for you.

You simply drag the bookmarklet to your Firefox toolbar, go to the page you want to check then click your new bookmarklet. There is also an Internet Explorer version to use.

How do you know if a page is Stumbled? – Terence Chang’s Post.

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• Get friend who is really artistic and clever to design me a logo with photoshop.

• Spend days tweaking it because I didn’t tell him the right size.
• Read lots about positioning logo images in html and css for hours on end.
• Realise the file is still too large and crop it to correct size. (No logo positioning required).
• Post the logo on the blog.
• Realise it still looks rubbish.
• Leave the logo on anyway and stick the telly on.

Thanks to Kev for the Logo (which is much better than the one I have up there now and resides on my laptop).

For the love of all things geeky I wish I could design things! :)

If anyone has any hints or tips for me please let me know in the comments. I’m a pretty desperate man.

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Photo by JeffWilcox

Whoops – If have you have visited here using Internet Explorer in the last week or so my blog wouldn’t show. It happened when I installed a plug-in for wordpress designed to speed my site up, the issue is resolved now. But……I think we can both learn from this (tongue in cheek here).

I need to:

• Ensure I check that my site works in both Internet Explorer and my default browser Firefox more regularly after updates or posts.
• Check www.browsershots.com more often to see my site in different browsers
• Validate my site properly as the code has tons of errors.
• Learn html – see above.
• Take note when people say “I tried looking at your site on _____ and it didn’t work for me…”

You need to You could:

• Give me a smack or an email the next time my site disappears
• Use the Firefox browser instead because -
  • It works
  • It is more secure
  • You can add loads of add-ons / customisations to it
  • Did I mention it works?

Get Firefox for free from here (nice alliteration hey?) Firefox 3.

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