Name Your Twitter Addiction…

Twitter Addiction Definition Chart

Twitter:

a free social networking service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.

Addiction:

1.) being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming

2.) an abnormally strong craving

Twitter Addiction:

1.) the irresistible urge to check and update Twitter repeatedly throughout the day

2.) the sudden onset of writing tweets in one’s head while running errands, sometimes accompanied by a new habit of adding hashtags to other conversations and social media outlets.

Social Tweeters:

Those who only tweet socially. They can quit anytime.

Chain Tweeters:

Moving from one tweet to the next, with hardly a keystroke in between.

Serious Tweeters:

Tweeting on twitter even before breakfast.

Happy Hour Tweeters:

Mainly only tweeting for the few hours after they get off work. (“It’s ok, they have it under control.”)

Hard Core Tweeters:

Tweeting morning, noon, night, in the car, in the kitchen, in the bedroom. Will sneak tweets in through texts and fancy apps when no one is looking. They may have multiple twitter ids hidden around their computer. Those around them may not be aware of how often they are really tweeting, the Hard Core Tweeter is extremely adept at hiding it.

Photo Credit: Original photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanf/ / CC BY 2.0 Adapted by Amber Oliver under the allowances of the creative commons license.

I enjoy Facebook. I really do. In fact there have probably been too many days where I have spent too much time on that site. (And that’s not necessarily a good thing.)

Facebook helps me:

• stay current with my mom, who – after living ten minutes away my kids’ whole lives – moved four hours away a few years ago.
• keep in touch or get in touch with other family members across the country
• likewise with good friends I don’t see as much as I’d like to in person

On the other hand, Facebook also:

• helps me find people I’d completely lost contact with, who I think I might like to catch up with, who I never spend any time talking to, sharing pictures with, commenting on statuses with and so on.
• allows me to add “friends who are passing through” and then wonder if, when and how I should unfriend them after they are gone.
• sometimes presents the opportunity to add a friend, acquaintance, or friend of a friend who I feel I *should* add out of guilt, peer pressure, not wanting to hurt their feelings or whatever. (Most of the time I don’t give in, I’ve always been very selective about my friends and kept my profile very private.)

Still.

As enjoyable as Facebook can be, something sullies the Facebook sweetness. Three things actually. So here it is.

3 Reasons Why I Purged Over 100 People From My Facebook Friends

1.) Too much input.

Remember the movie Short Circuit? “Need more input.” Yeah. Not so. In this case it was more like TMI, only not necessarily as gross as when someone in the bathroom stall at Wal-Mart talks about what they are doing. No, I’m just talking about information overload. Every single time I logged into Facebook (or nearly so), I would have over 300 recent items in my news feed. THREE HUNDRED. And I log into Facebook at least twice a day. Seriously. And no, I don’t play a ton of games, I don’t join every group and page that comes through and yes, I do hide other people’s game applications. And still: 300+.

As you can imagine, it would take a lot of time to go back through all those updates every time I logged in. Sometimes I do, and I lose a lot of time to Facebook (which my hubby doesn’t appreciate.) Usually I don’t and then invariably someone I am close to asks: “Hey, did you see the XYZ on my wall?” Most of the time the answer is no. So that whole “keeping me connected to my friends and family?” That’s pretty null and void at that point, isn’t it?

2.) Online Safety

Facebook is the only place that I share my kids’ names and pictures. I do this because 1.) as I mentioned before I selectively add friends there and 2.) I have everything on my personal page locked down tight as a bank vault.

Or do I?

Everytime Facebook adds a new feature, a new setting, it defaults to public. Now wait a minute! How much sense does that make?? Sure, I go in and change it. But the bottom line is that Facebook is making me jump through hoops to keep my page private. And in light of some of their recent changes from the last two updates, it seems like the more friends I have, the higher the odds that one or more of my friends is sharing information with their applications. So it makes sense to me to think “less friends = less friends sharing information with applications.” Right?

You could argue that I could just delete my account. I could. And at some point I may have to. For now, I’m happy to cut out people I’m no longer talking to or close with to keep my Facebook friends “close to home” so to speak. In the meantime, I still get to easily share photos and funny things with my mom, my grandmother, my mother in law, and so on.

Another thing, this article “Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook” really got me thinking. You should read it. (And the links within it.)

3.) Real Life Safety

Some friends of ours recently came home from a shopping trip to find their house and been robbed. We have no reason to think Facebook played any role in this but it got me thinking. REALLY thinking. Let’s play pretend for a moment.

Let’s PRETEND that I add a friend of a friend who I know vaguely, or an ex-coworker or some similar kind of acquaintance. Let’s pretend that John Doe Smith is really not a very trustworthy or upstanding character – but I really don’t know him well enough to know this. Let’s then pretend that over the course of a few months I talk about random things, like my new laptop I got for my birthday, the diamond bracelet I got for my anniversary and then to top it all off, lets say husband got a new 60 inch flat screen for Father’s Day. Then let’s pretend that I put up something totally casual like “Off to the parents for the weekend! Yay!” And this is more than John Doe Smith can take because he’s really quite the unscrupulous character. He happens to know where I live and also happens to be removed enough from our circle so as to probably not ever be suspected. (I mean, what are the odds that the police are going to question all 300 people on my Facebook list?) So he goes for it. And I come home to a vandalized and emptied house. And my kids are terrified for their safety when they go to bed at night.

Okay, so I admit that was a lot of pretending there. And most likely our friends’ experience didn’t have anything to do with Facebook. But it did make me stop and think about what I’m advertising on Facebook and who I am advertising it to. DO I TRUST EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS LIST?

Do you trust yours?

So now my Facebook friends list is over 100 people lighter.

And not only that, but I also unliked many groups and pages that no longer meet or serve any of my purposes. How do you do that?

To unfriend a large group of people at one time, you need to go to your profile, click on ‘Account’ in the upper right corner, click on ‘Edit Friends’, click on ‘All Connections’ in the lefthand sidebar of that page. You’ll see all your groups, pages, friends all at the same time. Then just start clicking X’s and confirming! It’s as easy as cake. Or pie. Whichever you prefer. I like pie.

Go ahead. I dare you. Make your friends list a list of real friends. You’ll feel a hundred people lighter. And you might actually be able to keep up will all your real friends. Imagine that.

And for the record, all of my pretend stealable items were in fact pretend. However, if any companies or manufacturers of big screen tv’s want to give me one to try out for them, I’m available.

Also for the record, those are ranked in order of my concern – with number one being my main reason and so on. Just FYI.

Image Credit: D Sharon Pruitt via Common License

So you blog. AND you Facebook. AND you started a page for your blog ON Facebook. Now how do you get all those nifty little buttons on your blog?

Easy. Peasy.

Add a Facebook “Share” button to your posts:

To add a “Share” button to your posts (like the one at the bottom of this page), you’re going to need a teensy bit of php know-how, but not TOO much. You need to feel comfortable digging around in your single post .php file. To begin:

1. Login to your WordPress Admin, go to theme editor, open your single.php file.
2. If you’re uncertain, copy and paste the contents of the php file into textedit or notepad, so that you can replace it if you need to. Otherwise, skip to step 3.
3. Login to Facebook and go here: http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/share.php – choose your button style and counter/no counter then copy the code.
4. In your single.php file, paste the code “inside the loop” – somewhere after “<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>” (put it after this and before the code for the post content if you want it above the post) and before “<?php endwhile; else: ?> (put it before after the code for the post content and before this if you want it at the bottom of the post.” Use the code for post author information and comments information as a guideline.
5. Save and open a post. Check it out. Like it? If not, try again.

Difficulty Level: This’ll freak you out if you’ve never looked at your code, but you’ll feel more confident if you at least know how to change colors and add small things like signatures.

Option 2: Install this Facebook Share Plugin.

1. Login to your WordPress Admin, go to Plugins, Add New.
2. Search: “Facebook Share (New) Button”
3. See first result, Click “Install.”
4. Set your options.

Difficulty Level: So easy your 8 year old could do it.

Add a Facebook “Like” button to your blog:

This enables your readers to “recommend” or “share” your blog to their Facebook friends in their news stream. Instead of sharing one blog post, however, your readers are sharing YOUR BLOG. To do this:

To put it in your sidebar:

1. Login to WordPress Admin, go to Themes, Widgets, Add HTML widget where you want it.
2. Go to this Facebook page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
3. Enter your information in the box at the bottom – your blog address, choose button style, etc, and click on “Get Code.”
4. Copy/paste the code into your widget and save. Stand back and admire your shiny new Like Button.

Difficulty Level: Would you like some training wheels with that?

To add it to a page, post area, or anywhere else:

1. Login to your WordPress Admin, Theme Editor, open the appropriate php file.
2. For peace of mind, copy the code and paste it into a text file temporarily.
3. Go to this page on Facebook: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like
4. Enter your blog info, get code, copy, paste into the php file where you want it.
5. Check it out, move it if you need to, and so on.

Difficulty Level: Follow the yellow brick road. Do not deviate from the path or the scary flying monkeys will get you. Unless you’re a wizard, in which case, rock on.

Add a Facebook Fan Box to your sidebar:

This couldn’t get any easier. The fan box introduces your readers to your fan page and makes it super easy for them to join your page. It also displays your fan page activity to give an indication of the kind of content they’re going to “put up with” if they add you.

1. Login to WP Admin, Appearance, Widgets
2. Add an HTML widget where you want it to display.
3. Go to this Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/fanbox.php
4. Select your info and copy paste the code into the widget.

Difficulty Level: Like taking candy from a baby. (Not that I would do that – shame on you!)

Now wasn’t that easy? Now go enjoy your new Facebook integrated WordPress blog!

Is it rude to leave links to your blog, or one of your blog posts, in a comment on someone else’s blog post?

Some people seem to think so. I’ve noticed some discussion on blogs and Twitter recently where people were being coached to “never-ever-ever” do this because it was rude and inappropriate. Really? I was already pondering how far we’ve come from “the good ole days” of blogging when someone left me a link for something they thought I’d be interested in.. and practically apologized for it.

Okay, that’s it. It’s time for an intervention.

A shameless plug.

The Classic Housewife’s List of Rules for Proper Link-Leaving in Other People’s Comment Sections

If a blog comment form includes a box for your website/blog address, it’s okay to leave one.

These types of comment forms automatically link the comment author name to the comment author’s blog. This allows the blog author and other commenters to click through to the comment author’s blog and return the favor, get to know more about that blog author, etc. Leaving your url here should never be considered rude because that’s what it’s for. (If your blog has a url box in the comment form and you don’t want one, a few simple edits in the code can fix that for you. Really, really.)

If a blog comment form does not include a way for you to leave a comment in any way other than “Anonymous” (because you aren’t on the right blogging platform, etc.), it’s okay to leave a signature – and link it.

I’ll be honest, my opinion on this one stems from the fact that blog author hasn’t created a way for people from other platforms to leave a comment in any other way. But that’s a etiquette topic for another post. I don’t see any harm in leaving a linked signature in cases like this if a.) you really are leaving a sincere comment and not an empty one AND b.) you really did enjoy the blog, would like to keep reading the blog and get to know them better. BUT.. if you do, please know that using HTML to link your name or blog name is a MUST– because long urls in a comment box can be unsightly and cause problems for some blog themes, hanging off into or under the sidebar. Also, not linking means someone has to copy/paste the url. Linking makes it easier for the blog author to visit your blog if they so choose.

If a blog comment form does allow you to comment with your name, but does not include a place to include your blog link, you might want to rethink leaving your link in the comment area.

There may not be a good reason why a blog author doesn’t include a way to link your comment author name to your blog. It may just be the way their blog theme came. Or they may have done it on purpose, and you just never know. In cases like these I opt NOT to leave a link, UNLESS.. I really really want to share something I have written that is directly related to the discussion at hand. Again, using html to link it the name of the blog post is a must. Avoid leaving long gibberish url links in comments for the sake of the blog author.

Just a thought: if you have your blog set up like this on purpose, it wouldn’t hurt to go a step farther and add a line above the comment entry form saying, “no links, please.” That would clear things up nicely.

If you have a blog post that you really want to share (yours or someone else’s), that you think REALLY adds to the conversation, you should go ahead and leave a link for it, but…

You should know that a.) you might catch flack for it, b.) your comment may get deleted for it and c.) it would be wise to SAY in your comment “This post really sheds some light on why that is,” or “I’ve been reading the same thing from other people” or “I posed the same question to my readers and this is the answer I got.” You get the idea. Most blog authors just really need to know that you really do just want to add to the conversation and not just leave a bunch of links lying around their blog.

You should also know that:

1. If you leave links in comments, in most cases it’s not likely to help your SEO any so don’t just run around and leave a bunch of links in comments hoping it’s going to land you on the front page of Google.
2. If you do run around and leave a bunch of links in comments on lots of blogs in the same circles, people are going to start noticing and you’re likely to lose some followers and traffic, too.
3. If you get a comment with a link in it (and it’s obviously not spam – just delete those fishy ones), most likely the commenter had good intentions – so why not give them the benefit of the doubt?
4. If you have WordPress and you use the Akismet plugin. You will almost never ever ever ever get a spammy comment that actually makes it to your blog comments section. Not even the fake ones. (You WILL on occasion get a legitimate comment that ends up in the spam bin, but you can rescue those.)

And last but not least you should also know by now that you can’t please everybody.

No matter which side of this “debate” you’re on, you’re going to get comments from people who do it differently, and comment on other people’s blogs who don’t agree with you. That’s just how it works. But really – is leaving links in comments really worth getting all in a tizzy?

Not in my opinion. Not on my blog.

So, please…If you ever have something of interest to share, leave a link, I don’t care. (If you’re just gonna “pitch” it, then you can just skip it.)

Other blog posts on (both sides of) this topic:

• Comment Etiquette for Do Follow Blogs
• BlogHer – Is adding your blog address in a comment rude? (Read the comments, too!)
• The Blog Etiquette Your Mom Didn’t Teach You

And remember – this is just MY opinion. What’s yours?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/ / CC BY 2.0

So you’ve read all the debates about full feeds versus excerpts and you’ve decided that full feeds are the way to go (they are), but you’re having a little trouble making that happen? Yeah, I was, too, until I polled the savvyblogging stream on Twitter and got this very helpful tip from NerdMom:

So what does that mean.. exactly?

First, let me back up a few steps and make sure that we’re all on the same page.

First, we’ll assume that you’re already using WordPress & Feedburner.

The trouble that I was having is that my blog feeds in my WP dashboard were set to “full feed” but the feeds that Feedburner were delivering were showing up as excerpts. And I dislike excerpts so much that I wouldn’t want to put y’all through that.

If you’re using WordPress, take a minute to double check that your feeds are set to full text, under Reading settings in the dashboard.

Click for full size.

If you’re using another blogging platform and Feedburner, this blogging tip may still be helpful for you, since the issue was with the feed address that I gave to Feedburner. If you’re not using Feedburner but you want to be,.. go ahead and go sign up for Feedburner real quick and then come back. I’ll wait.

Back?

Now we need to check the feed address that Feedburner is using.

If you haven’t already, log in to your Feeburner account and select your feed. Near the top, click on “Edit feed details” so you can see which address Feedburner is using for your feed.

Click for full size.

As the instructions there say, DO NOT CHANGE YOUR FEEDBURNER FEED ADDRESS. (The sky will fall on your head.) The address you want to look at is the “Original Feed” address. Does it end with “RSS” or “RSS2?” If you’re like me, mine ended with “RSS” and if you’re like me and you’re crazy brave, you can just add a “2″ to the end and click save.

Because I’m crazy brave like that.

After my crazy bold move, I actually went and looked it up and here’s the dish: WordPress has RSS, RSS2, ATOM and COMMENTS_RSS built in. Even if you don’t have code in your theme to display a subscribe link to one of those, they are there, built in, so changing “RSS” to “RSS2″ shouldn’t cause any problems. (If it does you can always change it back and hit save and then leave me a comment telling me how scared you were that you’d nearly screwed up your feeds. I can take it.)

Now you just need to check your feeds.

All you need to do now is make sure that your feeds are working. What’s that? You don’t already subscribe to your own feeds? Why not?? It’s not vanity, it’s making sure that if there’s ever a problem with your feeds you’ll know about it. You can’t rely on your readers to tell you (trust me on that one!) Go ahead, go subscribe to your blog. I’ll wait. …

Now log in to, wherever you get your feeds, and look at them. Do they look good? All righty then!

If you really don’t subscribe to feeds at all (I know that some of you don’t.) You can just click on that little RSS button next to “Edit Feed Details” in Feedburner and at the very least you’ll be able to see if there are full posts or excerpts. Better?

One more thing.. to dot all the t’s and cross all the i’s.. or whatever.

No sense in doing something halfway, right? Remember that part about WordPress having built-in feeds and your blog theme displaying subscribe links to those feeds? To really truly make sure that all your feed subscribers are routed through Feedburner (for accurate counting) you should really change all those links in your code to your brand new, shiny, feedburner address.

If you have even a teeny bit of code know-how, you should be able to do this. If there’s a subscribe button at the bottom of posts, that will be in your “singlepost.php, ” or you may have an RSS button in your header or footer or sidebar. All you need to do is change the address in the code from “www.yoursite.com/feed” to whatever your new feedburner address is. After you save those changes you can check them by hovering over all the subscribe buttons on your blog and checking the address that displays in the bottom edge of your internet browser.

And now you’ve mastered the Classic Housewife Full Feed Tutorial

If there were such a thing. I feel like I need to make a badge for your sidebar. “I fought full feeds and I won.” Or something. At the very least you should be proud of yourself, give yourself a big pat on the back. You did it!

And a big huge THANK YOU to NerdMom for giving me the heads up on the RSS2 issue in the first place.

Class dismissed. =)

This is no April Fool’s joke! Weeks and weeks, nay, months and months of work and has finally come together and jelled into a giant plate of sweetness surpassing even a Jell-O No Bake Oreo Dessert. And THAT’s saying a LOT!

Click for bigger. This is what it looks like on my end -- how does it look on your end?

If you’re reading this through a feed reader, hop over and take a look at my new blog design!

I think I’ve got all of the technical kinks worked out but I’ve found a few teeny design things I still need to work out:

• The text in the middle column on the front is still bumped up against the left border.
• I need commas between the categories in the post hierarchy at the top of each post.
• There are little numerals to the left of each comment AND big numbers to the right, need to remove the little ones.
• The bullet points for trackbacks (listed under the comments section) is outside of the left border.
• Font on archives page is different than font on all the other pages.

I could actually use a little bit of audience participation on this. Are you up for it?

Of course I’ve tested this in various browsers and screen resolutions, but if for some reason things look a little off or wonky – please, please let me know about it? Make sure to let me know what web browser you use and what screen resolution you have also.

And while you’re at it, if you see anything else that needs tweaking, won’t you leave a comment and tell me? Anything, anything at all. If you think the italic font is too hard to read, if you find it hard to get around from page to page. ANYTHING. I especially want to know if you hit a 404 page for anything, or if images don’t pull up. I want to know if the site takes too long to load or content and images get cut off. You get this idea. This is your one opportunity to let me have it with complete amnesty. ;0)

… Oh – it’s important to note that there was a little bit of restructuring done yesterday. The majority of you will never even notice. A few of you may find that your feed subscriptions have altered a bit – as they’ve all been merged back into one. I don’t think you’ll get duplicates, but if you do – you may need to go in and edit your subscriptions. Or let me know and I’ll see if I can help you with! …

Isn’t this exciting? I know I think so! And I have a whole bunch of things to write about swimming around in my head, too. I’m going to have to pace myself. ;0) So enough from me – what do YOU think??

Edited: So far you have said the following…

• Adjust font size for headings so they have enough room at lower resolutions (should be better?)
  
• Text in 3 columns on front page get cut off at lower resolutions
• Need a space between month & day in date at the top (also on posts and category pages)
• The arrows pointing to the post titles in the content slider are weird, not lined up with the titles (yeah – they are. Original styling, I haven’t tweaked that but I can/will.)

Don’t hesitate to mention more… here in the comments or send me an email, either is fine. Thanks!