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 Outside the Beltway 

BLOGGING TIPS

If you’re using Movable Type or another program that uses multiple pages to store your blog, be sure to put your visitor counter(s) on every page.

Every now and again, I notice new blogs or ones that have recently moved off of BlogSpot where the only counter is on the main page. This will fail to count any visitors who come over directly to a permalink to a specific post which, if others are linking you, should be a substantial part of your traffic.

Update: Don Sensing just reminded me of another: Put the code for your SiteMeter outside of your table. (Mine is centered at the very bottom of the page.) Doing that will allow the rest of your site to load. Indeed, it’s best to do that with any outside scripts, like your blogrolling.com powered blogrolls. Kevin Aylward gives some technical explanation here.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Guilty. Thanks!

Posted by Mark Hasty | January 16, 2004 | 11:13 pm | Permalink
 

What a coincidence. I just did this yesterday.

If on MT, put the Sitemeter code in the Archive template, rather than 'by hand' in each post.

Has Sitemeter been down for a couple hours tonight?

Posted by The Commissar | January 16, 2004 | 11:20 pm | Permalink
 

Yes--definitely in the template itself!

And SiteMeter apparently operates on nodes or something. Mine has been perfectly fine all day but wonky several days this week. Don Sensing's has been down most of the day, though--which prompted the post.

Posted by James Joyner | January 16, 2004 | 11:22 pm | Permalink
 

Or, if you're lucky enough to have a visit counter on your hosting account, use that and get all the visits to your (sub)domain in one place, without bogging down with a request to a third party.

Posted by Wind Rider | January 17, 2004 | 01:57 pm | Permalink
 

WR: Yeah, I do that too and it's certainly more accurate. The advantages to SiteMeter, though, are 1) it includes the period when I was on BlogSpot and 2) it's widely used and thus gives me a basis for comparison to other blogs' traffic.

Posted by James Joyner | January 17, 2004 | 02:25 pm | Permalink
 

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BLOGGING TIPS

John Hawkins has some advice for fledgling bloggers. Among the eleven:

– Gaining an audience usually takes a lot of time even if you do good work. Be prepared to work for months and maybe even YEARS before you start to take off.
– Blogspot & Blogger are old & busted. Drop them like a hot rock and get hooked up on Movable Type.
– Do write about the blogosphere because bloggers as a whole tend to be narcissistic and they love to link articles that talk about what they’re doing.

Heh.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

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Ha! I beat you by two minutes.

Posted by Bryan | June 11, 2003 | 03:12 pm | Permalink
 

But mine was much more value-added, highlighting THREE tips rather than just your measley one. :)

Posted by James Joyner | June 11, 2003 | 03:15 pm | Permalink
 

Odd. No mention of interactives like, say, your fun Caption Contests.

Interactivity and lively discussion/competition keep people coming back.

Posted by Laurence Simon | June 11, 2003 | 03:28 pm | Permalink
 

True. Of course, I'm not supposed to waste my time responding to comments, either, since only a fraction of my readers are looking at them.

Posted by James Joyner | June 11, 2003 | 03:31 pm | Permalink
 

Ah, but comments responding by the blogger shows the readers that you really care about what they have to say.

Posted by jen | June 11, 2003 | 04:23 pm | Permalink
 

Oh, come on! If you didn’t want to read the comments, you”d remove the little comment-counter! wink, wink.

Posted by Daniel Morris | June 11, 2003 | 11:23 pm | Permalink
 

I think we need more data on how other bloggers responded to these guidelines. Or--more importantly--how they responded to James' response to the original guidelines.

Maybe I should blog on this . . .

Sign me,

Little Miss Soon-to-drop-Blogspot

Posted by Little Miss Attila | June 12, 2003 | 05:51 am | Permalink
 

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BLOGGING TIPS

John Hawkins warns newbies about The Three Cardinal Sins Of Blogging. Those and the first link back to his archives are very useful. Indeed, that archive article was something I read and learned a lot from early in my blogging career.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

Follow James on FriendFeed | Twitter | Digg
 
 
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