Geek Tales The Internet, technology, business, and blogging.

WordPress Errors

It seems like a good amount of bloggers are experiencing the WordPress “mm_handled” error, which triggers when you want to write a new post. What happens is that the custom fields section shows mm_handled over and over again. There are hundreds of mm_handled fields to fill out and for some people this prevents creating new posts completely. On the other hand, for others it extremely slows down posting. It is hard to say why this happens, but so far there are at least two things you can do:

• Use Firefox, as at least you can create posts, but unfortunately posting is slowed down. While this is not really a solution to the problem, it will allow you to publish a important post without taking more drastic steps.
• You can reinstall WordPress. This should fix the problem, as it worked for many people. On the down side, this will take you some time and don’t forget to backup your database or any template changes. I cannot offer any easier solution, but if you think that you have a better idea please let me know by commenting.

I know that those who experience this problem might be feeling really lazy when it comes to posting, and that is why this error should be fixed as soon as possible.

RSS and Email Subscriptions

What is most important for readers is to have easy access to information. There are many ways you can present information to readers, and the most obvious one in case of blogs is simply through your website. You work hard on your homepage and you like when people appreciate it. Unfortunately, this might not be enough for some readers, because they have to visit your blog on a daily basis to see if there is something new. That is why RSS and email subscriptions have been invented: they allow readers to know exactly when a new post is posted on your blog. The question is whether you should use RSS readers or Email subscriptions. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. That is because even thought RSS readers seem to be more convenient, many people are not familiar with them. Technology is changing so fast that many Internet surfers still do not know what RSS really is, and they are happy that they learned about email recently. That is why I recommend offering both RSS and email subscriptions. This way your visitors will be able to chose whatever they prefer. Setting up both subscription methods is not that hard, especially if you look at all of the benefits.

Non-Copyrighted Images

Using non-copyrighted images has two main advantages. First of all, you do not need to pay for them, and secondly you do not risk copyright infringement. Besides that there are many high quality images that you can use. In my opinion, the best source of non-copyrighted images is Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons), so I am only going to discuss this website in my post. On the side note, take into account that many images found in Google images are indeed copyrighted. But let us get back to Flickr. The images that I recommend to use are using the creative commons license, especially the Attribution License. This means that you are free to use them for commercial and non-commercial use, and additionally you are allowed to modify the images. You are only required to credit the author of the image. Just follow those steps to get yourself started:

1. Visit Flickr creative commons page.
2. Browse the photos in the Attribution License section.
3. Use search option to find some images with the theme you are looking for.
4. Click on 'View Most Interesting' instead of 'Most Relevant' as this will show you some really high quality images.
5. Click on 'Show Thumbnails' to have many images displayed and this way save a lot of your time.
6. You are done! Simply upload the photo to your blog/website and credit the author by linking to his Flickr profile underneath the image. You may want to do it like I did it below:
Photo by Author’s Name

Reinstalling WordPress

If you are an active blogger, sooner or later you may need to reinstall WordPress. This is usually advisable when your installation is corrupted and cannot be fixed otherwise. It is important for any blogger who is serious about blogging to know how to reinstall WP. That is why you may want to learn how to do it, and now is a good chance. In this post, I would like to share with you an easy way to reinstall WP. While this may not make you an expert when it comes to WordPress, you will feel a lot more confident, and you will not be worried even if something goes wrong with your current installation.

The most important thing when it comes to reinstalling is to make a copy of all of your existing files, in case something goes wrong. You should also know your WP database details. The next step is to re-upload all of the WP files, and overwrite your existing files on the server. This way any damaged files will be replaced with properly working ones. To make sure that all of your posts, comments, and settings will appear on your blog, you should edit the 'config' file to include your existing database details. This will ensure that your new installation uses your existing set up. This way if everything goes well, you will have your whole blog intact. Like I said, there are a few reasons for reinstall; however, most people reinstall after their blogging platform no longer works properly.

Vote For the Most Popular Blogs

There is an interesting website I came across, specifically BloggersChoiceAwards. It is a website that allows users to vote on blogs in different categories such as Best Celebrity Blogger, Best Religion Blog, and Best Blog Design. There are many other categories as well, I believe a few dozen in total. I think that with so many categories it should be easy to find blogs which you would have interest in. If you want to be famous, or if you are looking for a challenge, then you can submit your own blog and hope that your blog will be nominated with the most votes possible.

On the other hand, if you are looking to contribute in a different way, you are free to leave comments. In the future, I expect to see more and more websites that give some sort of awards. I noticed that when a website of this type launches, it very often wants to receive valuable backlinks. I do not have anything against it, but many of the websites which give some sort of rewards do it in order to receive backlinks. If you do not mind to put the reward on the homepage of your blog, it is alright.

Improving Online Social Life

Some time ago I discussed ways to improve your online social life. Here are some more ideas on how to further enrich it:

• Link abundantly to other bloggers. This can really pay off especially when you do not expect it. People like checking who is writing about them and might mention this fact in one of their posts. I noticed that many popular bloggers do that.
• Join and be active in such communities like MyBlogLog. While trying to find how such communities like MyBlogLog can enrich the social life of many bloggers, I found some interesting articles from which I learned a lot. I myself have enjoyed participating in MyBlogLog and a lot of good things came out of it for my other blog. What I like the most about it is the widget that so many bloggers put on their site that displays the icons of other bloggers visiting their site. Basically, it displays the icons of bloggers that are also part of MyBlogLog community. To get most out of your membership in MyBlogLog, you need to actively participate in the community.

To sum up, I can say that blogging can be a very rewarding activity. It is up to the blogger how his social life looks like. There are many ways to enrich it, and make it even better.