Today's progress

As some of you may know I have been working on a Starcraft II blog/website. I am using Wordpress as my template so a lot of work so far has been going into just figuring out how to use the different tools and features.

I ran into a little bit of a wall though as originally my plan was to have a separate page for each category. I started using Wordpress to make separate pages and then thought that magically my posts would find themselves on that page. The problem that arose though, is that the pages are static. So for example, I made a post about an upcoming starcraft tournament, with the intention that it would fall under my Starcraft Tournament page. What happened was the post stayed on my main page and my Tournament page remained empty.

This had me think for a moment that I would not be able to have separate pages for my different posts but in fact I am now realizing I can use my godaddy.com hosting service to setup a separate sub-domain for these pages. At least I think I can, I'll have to figure it out so that it all links together which is now my current project.

/rubix-cube hat on

Using AdSense? Don't forget your Privacy Policy

Most people who think about blogging already know that AdSense is an easy to use service from Google that you can use on your website or blog to make some moola. What a lot of these people don't know is that recently Google changed the wording of their ToS to require you to have a privacy policy on your blog when you use the service.

Since neither of us likely have any idea of how to write a privacy policy, I went and googled the matter and found this website. It gives you a step by step on getting a computer generated privacy policy tailored specifically to your blog so that AdSense won't revoke your account (and therefore say bye bye to an easy way of earning revenue from your site).

Meet Alexa - a very sweet blogging tool

I just learned about the website Alexa, which lets you view stats of virtually every web page out there, and see where your website ranks under a certain category. This is great if you want to find other bloggers in your niche to network with by commenting on their blog and hopefully finding a way to redirect it back to your own blog. It's also a nice tool to see where you stand and if you check back enough, to help you monitor your own progress. I just started to play around with it now but I will be back soon to give you additional thoughts regarding Alexa.

Some questions to consider when embarking on a blog mission

When you first decide you are ready to start blogging, you will have more questions than you know what to do with. Currently, this is exactly where I find myself. In order to lessen the confusion, start by writing them down so you can find answers one by one and avoid the crazies in your head.

1) Blogger or Wordpress? These are the main two blogging tools to choose from, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. Currently I am using google's Blogger, because I already had a gmail account. So am I missing out? I guess we will have to wait and see.

2) Is google adsense the way to go, or is there a better option? (in terms of bringing in revenue)

That's all for now. I'll report back soon once I have found the answers to the above questions!

Welcome to the Garden of Deep Thought

Welcome to the Garden of Deep Thought, a place where I come to plant the seeds of my blogging endeavors. I got into blogging because I love writing and my interests vary wildly, so I was having a tough time figuring out my calling in life - until I discovered that you can actually make a living from blogging. This is one of my first blogs and I will be updating it with information that helps me reach my new found life goal of being a professional blogger. By the time I reach my destination, you will be able to go back and see the steps I took to reach my goals. I hope you enjoy your stay and encourage you to leave comments and feedback.

Warm regards,

Joe Donnellan
The Garden of Deep Thought Blogger