I was asked this question by QuasiFictional Views. What is a blog to me? I’ll tell you.

Blogging to me, is coming together in this large, vast world to share opinions, ideas, stories, and inspirations. It is the opportunity to have friends that you’d have otherwise not met. People share their personalities and photos with the world in hopes that other like-minded people will feel the same, or maybe differently. A blog to me, is a forum with an unlimited amount of possibilities as to what you can put on there for the world to see. Be it an online journal, a place to share family pictures, or a place to rant and rave about work and others of life’s misgivings.

They also ask how do I make blogging easy. Well, I could say that I make blogging easy by taking whatever information I can find and sharing it with my readers, in my own voice. I put my personality out there and others do the same. Blogging is easy and I would encourage everyone out there to get a blog. If not to chronicle day to day activities, then to say something! Have a voice and be heard!

Blogging matters in life because it gives us an out. We can vent here and community members can laugh or cry with us, or agree or disagree.

I first started a “blog” around 1999/2000, the site was globalcrap.com. I raved about work and other stuff like that. People emailed submissions to me for posting and that was that. Back then, if you got a link from someone, that person was probably your real life friend. Then, when you linked to people, it wasn’t because they paid for the link, it was because you genuinely liked what they had to say. This site was taken down immediately after my manager asked what it was. I replied that I didn’t know and took the site down before he could find out for himself. I wish now that I would’ve kept it alive and going. It was all written in basic HTML and was updated by hand.

After that, I started tinkering around with blogs in December of 2005, at lonelynomore.net. I got the site name because I was reviewing dating sites and making fun of personal ads (I know, rotten, right?) at the time. Also, the domain name idea came from the Rob Thomas song of the same name.

Afterwards, I moved on to Yes, Mistress over at ClevelandBrew.com. They imported all of my posts, if you’d like to check them out. I was frankly evil in what I’ve said over there. Especially to the guy that hit my new car four days after I got it.

Then it was Earsucker.com. I love this site, it’s all about music and the such. Hop on over sometime and say hi.

Now I have this blog. I’m happy that I can share some aspect of my life with you. Also, I’ve guest posted at ICYDK.com and PureBlogging. Hang around a while and see what happens next!

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I think I’ve said that I didn’t expect this to go in the direction that it has. I thought I’d nominate some rockin’ girls out there and they’d think, Oh God, not another meme. It wasn’t supposed to be thought of as a meme in the first place and I never thought it would get this big…but I’m glad the idea has grown
Some of you ladies have have taken it to the next level and nominated others who you’ve thought was inspirational, funny, kind, or sweet. Or maybe you’ve went out of your way to find out who started all of it. Either which way, you’re here, and there was a reason for it, you rock!

Here is the original list of ladies who’ve gotten tagged, passed it on, or dropped by to say something thoughtful:

SunCoastScribe
Pfunk
Pocklock
Liz Strauss
MsDanielle
The Buzz Queen
Manila Mom
Vegan Momma
Jenny Up The Hill
Karen at The Pond
The Sassy Southerner
Crazy Working Mom
One Full House
Are We There Yet?
Desert Songbird
Scrappin’ with life
Coffee 2 Go
Rocky Mountain Retreat
Just Me Shann
Comedy Plus
Muffin53
Mags
Irish Blogs
Robin Lee Hatcher
Writing From The Inside Out
Absolutely Bananas
Fracas

Oh, The Joys who actually redesigned some nifty rockin’ blogger badges from different eras
Layla’s Classic Rock Faves
Szavanna Blog
Writer Mama
Now
Out Of Focus
Wacky Mom
Organising Queen
ShortyBears Place
Dayngrous Discourse
Skittles’ Place
Devilish Southern Belle
Skeet’s Stuff
My Mommy’s Place
Maya’s Mom
Mom Is Nutz
Home School Blogger
Little Woolgatherings
This Eclectic Life
Cindy Swanson
Petroville
West Of Mars - who changed it to the Rockin’ Wench Blogger..lol
Wonderland Or Not
Polliwog
MimiWrites
Suzanne Harris
Carma’s Window
FrenchKys
Malin at Infektia
Terra Andersen
Corrie Haffly

There, we have 50+ Rockin’ Girl Bloggers! And that’s not even all of them, I’m sure! My carpal tunnel won’t allow me to type much more today, but if I’ve missed anyone, please leave a comment or email me, and I’ll be happy to add you to the original list.

What you can do:
Take this list (if I can do it, so can you) and blog it and pass the love around!

I’ve found a lot of these blogs to be fun and friendly places to hang out. I’ve seen several memes passed around, and you probably saw my mug in one of your widgets. Visit these ladies today, cuz they just plain ROCK!

I just checked Technorati for the search term Rockin’ girl blogger and found 525 posts relating to the topic. Sheesh, I don’t have a tenth of those here…..these things catch on like wildfire!!

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These wonderful people have been commenting left and right on my blog. So, I thought I’d share the love
Check out Jonathan’s new bling-bling at SmartWealthyRich! I love this 3 column Cutline hack, it looks great!

Benjamin Cass teaches us how to make a YouTube video.

MsDanielle gives her idea of porn for women…ya know we love it!
Malin at Infektia shows us how to wrap text around images.

Rhys makes us laugh with a Baby Names cartoon.

Sassy talks about summertime….I’m lovin’ the nicer weather
Angie reviews AdesClrPicker. What a nifty little tool.

Bloggrrl is having a wacky contest!

Bob makes me laugh with goofy search engine mishaps.

Donovan tweaked the Wordpress Live plugin. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did.

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Well, what started out as something relatively small (to me) has turned into a huge monster… The Rockin’ Girl Bloggers have spoken!

I just Googled the term Rockin’ Girl Blogger and the results are really phenomenal. What I’m going to do is make up an entire list of lady bloggers who have been nominated for this badge and link to all of them. If you want to be on the original list, grab the badge and blog about it, lastly, tag five more wonderful women bloggers. Link back to me if you wish to be included!! Then we just pay homage to all of the Rockin’ Girl Bloggers out there by re-posting the list
Let’s keep it going, shall we? Oh yeah, and in the category of boys vs. girls, the girls are kicking some serious butt!

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John Chow recently posted about the WordPress Live plugin from Headzoo, which allows you to watch your blog activity in real-time.  He even included a cool video that shows the sickening amount of traffic that he gets on his site.  Check out the video here.

Being a stat junkie myself, I thought I would install the Live plugin and see it in action for myself.  I must admit that I was totally impressed with Live from the instant I installed it.  I’ll definitely be adding this plugin to my list of recommended WordPress plugins.

Since I don’t have people visiting my blog in droves like John Chow does, I immediately noticed that Live was showing all my personal activity as well as that of my visitors.  I don’t want to see my activity, because I already know which pages I visit and which posts I’ve commented on, etc.  I want to see everyone else’s activity, so I tweaked the Live plugin to support IP address filtering.

Support for IP Address Filtering

The changes I made to the WordPress Live plugin allow you to filter the live activity using your dynamic WAN IP address and/or one or more fixed IP addresses. 

Installation Instructions

If you are already running WordPress Live on your site, deactivate the Live plugin before continuing.  Click on the ‘Deactivate’ link in the ‘Plugins’ section of your WordPress admin area.

Download and install the WordPress Live modifications.   Inside the zip file, there is a folder named live0.4.1, which contains some files and sub folders inside of it.

Upload the live0.4.1 folder to your /wp-content/plugins folder on your web host using your favorite FTP client program.

If you are already running Live version 0.4.1,  overwrite the existing files when prompted by your FTP client. 

Once you have uploaded the Live folder to your web host, activate the plugin by clicking the ‘Activate’ link in the ‘Plugins’ section of your WordPress admin area.

Configure IP Filtering

Before you make any changes to the Live plugin files, make sure you deactivate the WordPress Live plugin. 

In order to change the IP filtering behavior, you have to edit the WordPress Live PHP file.  The easiest way to do this is to use the Plugin Editor in your WordPress admin area.  To use the Plugin Editor, login to your WordPress admin area and click ‘Plugins’ from the main menu, then click the ‘Plugin Editor’ link.  On the right-hand side of the screen, you’ll see the list of installed plugins.

Click on the link labeled ‘Live’ to load the PHP file in the editor.

Scroll to the very bottom of the file and find these two lines of code:

$ip_address_filter = $remoteIP;
$Live = new Live0_4_1($wpdb, $table_prefix, $ip_address_filter);

These are your options for custom IP filtering:

Dynamic WAN IP Address

The dynamic WAN IP address is the IP address that’s given to you by your Internet service provider.  Depending on your Internet service, you may either have the same address all the time or your provider may give you a different address from time to time.

This setting allows the WordPress Live plugin to detect what address you are coming from and automatically filter the results, even if your WAN IP address changes every day.  This is the default setting.

Change the $ip_address_filter variable to this:

$ip_address_filter = $remoteIP;

Fixed IP Addresses

To filter fixed IP addresses, you’ll need to change the $ip_address_filter variable to use a comma-delimited list of addresses, like this:

Single Address: $ip_address_filter = "68.99.116.151";

Multiple Addresses: $ip_address_filter = " 68.99.116.151,68.12.155.111";

Dynamic and Fixed Addresses

To filter your WAN IP address plus additional fixed IP addresses do this:

$ip_address_filter = $remoteIP.",68.99.116.151";

Disable IP Filtering

To disable IP address filtering all together, do this:

$ip_address_filter = "";

Once you’ve made your changes, click the ‘Save’ button and activate the WordPress Live plugin.

Please contact me if you have any questions or problems with the new code.

Download WordPress Live with IP Filtering

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Blog networks are a hub of the internet community. They are a collective group of bloggers blogging about the same topics. If you want to get your Technorati ranking up, then this is a viable choice for you. Networking in this fashion generally brings in a ton of links to your blog. Others will link to you, and in turn, your backlinks will grow.

Is it for you? Blogging in a network usually means that the network administrator will bring in the advertisers, and you’ll get a cut. All you’ll have to do is write the content. If the content is compelling enough, then readers will read and the advertisers will love you. So will your readers. It’s a “one hand washes the other” type of thing going on with these networks. It’s a cycle. The admin gets the advertisers, you get the traffic to the ads, you get paid.

So, there’s a good way to make money online. Would you consider joining a network? Why?

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If you’re in a slump and aren’t sure what to write about, you need to take a few things into consideration:

What is your niche?
If your niche is music, then post a video with some commentary. If your niche is blogging about blogging, then see what others are saying about your community. We all know that there isn’t a whole lot that hasn’t been said, but if you put your personality into your blog, then people will learn more about you. If they like your personality, through your blog, then they will subscribe and come back.

Maybe posting nothing is better than posting something you don’t care about
Think about that for a minute. If you’re in a slump or a bad mood, don’t you think your regular readers will know? If I’m in a bad mood and answer the phone, can you tell by my voice inflection, whether or not I’m having a good day? People can tell that your heart isn’t in the posting, so if you don’t have anything productive to add, then maybe you shouldn’t.

Give readers a reason to come back
This is sometimes easier said than done, but show off what you have to the world. Love what you’re doing, it will shine through in your blog.

Think about what you’d get from your blog if you were a subscriber
Put the shoe on the other foot. What do you get from the blogs that you read the most? Is it the posts or the commentary that follows? Is it the community atmosphere or the welcomed feeling in each post? Does the author care about your opinion? If you were reading your blog for the first time, what would your impression be? Would you come back?

Draw like-minded people to your blog
Here’s another one that’s easier said than done. I’ve said this before, but birds of a feather, flock together. This means that if you’re outgoing and have fun with your blog, then it will show. More importantly, bloggers who have the same writing style or personalities will read you as well.

Paint a picture for your readers
Sure, you could show a picture to your readers with some added commentary. However, if you’re describing a feeling that you’ve got about something, then paint a picture for your readers, with words.

Hopefully you’ve found these tips helpful. What do you do when you have nothing to write about?

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Benjamin Cass has re-worked the Awesome Guy Blogger badge. I thought when I made that badge, that it was decent & it was just to make a stand.

Unhappy with the current design, was Benjamin Cass, and he was determined to fix that….and quickly, too! I commented that if he made a new and improved Awesome Guy Blogger badge, I’d link to him from here and Earsucker.

So, to recap, we went from this:

To this:

What a great job! If you need to hire him for services, feel free to give him a shout!

Linky linky linky!

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Commenting on the post is enough to get you an entry into this sweet contest. ArsGeek has up for grabs, three MP3 players. If you write a post about the contest, you’ll get three more entries and a free link back!

Not too shabby considering ArsGeek has a page rank of five. A very generous contest indeed, and they make it so easy to enter, why wouldn’t ya?

The contest ends on July 8th at midnight, so hurry before time runs out!

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I found this blog site through MsDanielle’s blog, which is pretty nifty. Mr. P is running a free ReviewMe at CashForComments, for posting five comments on his blog. This is an innovative idea, because it encourages people to come on over to his blog and comment.

After you’ve done your five comments, he gives you a 100-word review of your blog. I did this to figure out what I could change to make this blog better, and get some feedback. After the free ReviewMe is up, he’ll head back over to your blog and post five legitimate comments.

Thanks Mr. P! What a great idea, I wish I would’ve thought of this first..hehe

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