There's a fine line between blogspam and self-submission

Nobody reading your crappy blog? Spam Digg and Reddit with it constantly!

Blogspam is bad. It must be; it has ‘spam’ in it. But what on earth is blogspam? [read more...]

How to lose half your subscribers in 28 days or less

A case study on the difficulties in selling a blog and maintaining readership

Followers of Wisdump may be familiar with the saga over the new ownership. The once-mighty Web 2.0 blog changed hands twice in a very short space of time, and has fallen from grace in some respect as a result. Indeed, the FeedBurner subscriber statistics tell a grim tale - once standing at around the 7,500 mark, the total number of RSS subscribers now languishes at around little more than 3,000. Where did it all go wrong? [read more...]

Guest Posting on Wisdump

Followers of fellow weblog Wisdump (née Whitespace) probably already know this, but with owner / 9ruler Scrivs selling the site to Manchester-based Maxafi there was an opportunity for a new batch of writers to write for Wisdump. [read more...]

How Long is the Ideal Blog Post?

On word counts and writing for entertainment

The internet is changing the way we read information. No longer are we constrained by a physical medium - we don't have a fixed number of pages to fill, nor a certain column inch quotient to meet. [read more...]

'What's Wrong With My Blog?'

A guide to common pitfalls, mistakes & faux pas in blogging

Creating a blog is easy - but alas, building a readership is somewhat more difficult. So where do nascent bloggers most commonly go wrong? [read more...]

Book Review: The Photoshop Anthology

101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques (Corrie Haffly, Sitepoint)

Photoshop is a deceptive beast. You can use it day in, day out, to the point where you consider yourself an expert – only to discover some basic functionality or keyboard shortcut that you really could have used some months ago. Perhaps it’s just me – but, for instance, having recently discovered that pressing the Tab key hides the menus, I wonder if there are any more nifty tricks that I’m missing out on. [read more...]

Comment on this post?

I’ve been knee-deep in PHP this week, working on a multitude of projects – and I’ve finally found the time to implement bona-fide commenting in the backend Modern Life blog software. [read more...]

Tracking Live Web Logfiles with Tail over SSH

Using Apache with Linux

There are two distinct types of people when it comes to Linux: Those who are pretty much clueless with the whole OSS thing, and who generally stick with Windows or MacOS - and those who are seemingly born naturals at command lines, regular expressions and other such arcane operations. I'm fortunate to be squarely in the middle of the two extremes (i.e. I use Linux but I'm far from an expert) - and if you're in a similar situation to me, then you may find the following useful. [read more...]

How To Get A Six Figure Blogging Income

In just a few simple & logical steps...

Blogging is easy; it’s the getting rich whilst doing it that’s difficult. Fear not, though, as here’s everything you need to know in one simple (and logical) diagram. [read more...]

UK Blogosphere: Top 10 British Blogs

Underepresented, undersubscribed and dominated by the US?

You may be able to guess by the .co.uk domain name and the Anglo-centrism of Modern Life, but to clarify, I hail from England in the United Kingdom. With all the buzz about blogs in the UK media (notably the BBC, Guardian and the Times Online, amongst other forward-thinking publications), one would have thought the UK blogosphere would be a shining example of how to embrace new media. Right? [read more...]