by WebKeyDesign | Jan 16, 2006 | Out Of The Box
In today’s online world, writing skills are a must. Chances are that if you are going to blog, write in-depth reviews, or simply make some comments on why you hated the latest movie you rented from NetFlix, your points will carry more weight if you write them correctly and with style. If you happen to run into problems when putting your thoughts into words, consider the following advice.
The Difference Between Writing And Editing
The first thing to understand is that no one writes great works the first time around. I know there is that story of Jack Kerouac writing his famous book, On The Road in only one draft, but the truth is that there were many drafts and revisions. Most writing comes from a few inspirational moments when you open your mind and just let the words come to you, as natural as breathing. Once you have your inspirational notes written down, you put them away and come back to them later. Some writers then add more to their notes and form a first draft or if their work is long enough, they begin an editing process. During the editing phase, you correct words, phrases, even try to correct the points your are trying to make.
Writers often have what is called writer’s block, periods of time that they can not come up with anything to write about. It is especially important at these times to be open and jot down whatever comes to mind. We sometimes let the editing phase take place too soon, and nothing kills inspiration like an editor’s point of view! It may surprise you how well you do write when you are not thinking of proper grammar and punctuation.
Learning To Write From Others
It may surprise you to learn that being original has nothing to do with writing. Most works get their storylines and ideas from previous works. Writing is not about coming up with something new, but about saying it in a new and/or inventive way. This means that writing well, has a lot to do with studying your subject matter and the writers that write about it. If you want to write reviews of video games, then you need to read a lot of game reviews to see what the standard is. Who knows, you might find that these reviews all lack something which you feel can make your reviews stand out.
Another example is my growing fascination with basketball, which I am now trying to write about for my personal site. Much to my surprise I find myself having trouble writing about sports, to which I can only attribute to the fact that I have had very little exposure to sports writing in general. This is something I am trying to remedy by reading as many sports books as I can find at my local library.
So even if you find yourself stuck when writing about particular subject matters, it may not mean you are a terrible writer, but that you need to learn more about writing that subject matter.
Developing Style
Something which I myself find hard to explain is style. To me style is not something you learn from a grammar guide, but something you develop over your life time. Most of the time people refer to it as personal voice. As you read more authors, you will find that some appeal to you more than others, and some you will undoubtedly try to copy their style. This will lead over time to your own style, as you keep copying different styles that eventually you will find your own uniqueness. The process is slow, but the more authors you read, the more your technique will improve with practice. This is true of most art and not just writing. U2’s guitarist The Edge, Eddie Van Halen, and countless other guitarists all learned to play like Eric Clapton, before they developed their own styles. Yet U2’s music sounds nothing like Clapton’s.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 13, 2006 | WordPress
Without a doubt, Ricardo Galli’s WP-Cache is my favorite WordPress plugin. It speeds up WordPress significantly, therefore making your blog more appealing to your site vistitors.
Installing WP-Cache
You can either install WP-Cache like most plugins, by dropping it in your plugins folder: wp-content/plugins/. Or you can manually install which means you have to create a symbolic link from wp-content/advanced-cache.php to wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-phase1.php, something which is impossible to do if you do not have shell access to your hosting account. This is why I recommend the normal plugin install. However you still might have a problem with file permissions, which WordPress will warn you about once you go to Admin – Options – WP-Cache. Usually it will be due to something not being writeable, like:
- wp-content/cachedirectory
- wp-content/
- wp-config.php
You will need to change all three to permissions 0777. This still might result in an error with the symbolic link not creating. For this you must an FTP client like SmartFTP that allows you to change the stickybit. Depending on the ftp client you are using, this might show up as Stickybit or simply you will have a row of 4 boxes to type in a number. You will want to change the directories above to 7777, so that the symbolic link will create. This is usually the problem and solution, if you do not have shell access.
You can read a short description of Unix permissions on WebmasterWorld (membership required).
Once you get pass the permission issues, you should be able to view WP-Cache Options and configure the caching expire limit and exclude pages from caching. If you ever decide to remove WP-Cache and your site no longer works, you must manually go into wp-config and remove the define(“WP_CACHE”, true): line. For security reasons you should change the permissions of wp_config back to 644. Just remember to change the permissions on this file if you plan to enable or disable Wp-Cache.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 12, 2006 | Web Site Basics
I must admit that I totally forgot about this, last week, when I brought up the subject of splogs (sites that steal your content). There is a link on every page of WebKeyDesign.com that points to our Terms of Use policy. Under the Personal and Commercial Use section there is a statement that prohibits any other site from copying our content. However the statement did not mention RSS Feeds specifically. I have now changed the statement to read:
You may not modify, reformat, copy, display, distribute, transmit, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer or sell any information, products or services obtained from the Services, except as permitted by these Terms of Use or under applicable laws. This restriction means, among other things, that you may not mirror on your own Web site, the home page, content pages, or RSS feeds of this Web site or any WebKeyDesign Site.
Though I am sure that this statement will not stop sploggers, it will at least make clear what WebKeyDesign.com’s policy is on content theft.
If you do not have a Terms of Use page on your site, you should seriously consider adding one. Most commercial sites have long and complicated terms, but for a personal site you probably can get by with a more simplified statement. The best plan is to consult a lawyer or someone who knows the law, but I know many webmasters end up using Google to piece together a decent Terms of Use page.
The main purpose of the Terms page is to protect your site from liability, and of course to protect your site’s content from theft. Most Terms pages you find are very restrictive, for example NBA.com, does not allow any other site to link to any internal page within its site. You must only link to the main page. Which is pretty ridiculous, but it is what NBA.com has for its linking policies.
Once you finish your Terms Of Use page make sure it is visible on all your site’s pages.
