Insights

The Problem With Making Grandiose Statements

There?s a popular method of content creation, and it’s primarily centred around making grandiose statements to make a point.

These statements, and the blog posts around them, can range from the usual war cries of being more human in business, to posts on transparency and authenticity on the web, to how an ?industry? ? for want of a better term ? like social media needs its proponents to apologize for all their wrong-doing.

While the messaging of these types of posts may mean well, they only truly mean well if they come with no baggage.

The problem is, many don?t. Instead, they?re temporary soundbites, catharsis, or premises of something the author(s) miss in the bigger picture, that purport to be or do something that rarely continues after the original piece of content has been forgotten.

Words ? or whatever shape the content takes, be it a podcast or video instead ? are easy to create. And they may even sound good while creating them, and look great when the positive comments and affirmation starts rolling in.

But the real meat is in how the creators are making these things happen continuously, or whether they?ve been ? and continue to be ? part of the malaise they reside over, and their own previous behaviour and actions lives up to these grandiose statements.

Hindsight is easy; current thinking based on hindsight, just as easy. Grandiose is the easiest of all, because it validates hindsight with a moment of clarity.

Except it doesn?t.

Consistent action validates and clarifies. Grandiose is merely its noisy neighbour.

The Writing Process

It’s pretty hard to write about your writing process when there isn’t a specific writing process to write about (try saying that three times late on a Saturday night!).

While I completely understand that there needs to be some kind of flow, to be honest that’s not how my brain’s wired.

Given I’m juggling a lot of hypothetical balls (and I’m worse than Mr Magoo when it comes to juggling), the chances I get to write “properly” are few and far between.

However, since the kind ladies at Morning Rain Publishing recently?asked about my writing process as part of their series looking at how their authors work, I’ll try my best to accommodate with something that at least looks like it might be a process.

It Starts With A Scribble

Much like the way William Carson described his own writing process, my ideas usually come to me at the most inopportune time – running to catch a train, munching on a lunch-time banana, or even changing my two-year-old daughter’s diaper.

Because of this, many ideas are often lost – try writing something down with banana-covered fingers, or worse (I’ll spare you the diaper info).

Because of that, when I do get an opportunity to put down an idea, it’s wherever I can find somewhere to store or share it. This can be a text to myself, an email, a Post-It, or (on occasion) a marker on my forearm.

If I have the luxury of being near a computer, I’ll pop into Word, or my blog, and draft up the headline that sprang to mind, along with a one sentence “brief” that gives me the pointers to work on when I actually have some downtime.

I find this works really well for me, since I’m the kind of writer that writes as the thoughts come into my head, and keeps writing.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Readers are drawn in by stories that evoke an emotional connection – be that connector. #writing” quote=”Readers are drawn in by stories that evoke an emotional connection – be that connector”]

I usually don’t worry about how well it’s edited (that’s why there are far smarter people than me called editors, after all!) – instead, I want to catch the raw story and emotion at exactly the time I’m thinking about it.

On my blog, this has led to some of the most personal and confrontational posts I’ve ever written – but isn’t that what good blogging is all about anyway, rawness and emotion?

Besides, as a reader, I’m drawn in more by the story and how that evokes emotional connection in me, versus worrying about whether or not I’ve pissed off some grammar Nazi god somewhere.

The Surroundings Don’t Necessarily Matter

On top of the way I string ideas together, and how I write, I’m also pretty haphazard when it comes to where I write.

When I was speaking to my wife about this, I mentioned my writing space is essentially my head. Which doesn’t make for a very visual picture.

The image below is of the table that’s in one of our front rooms.

It’s a mish mash of family life – kids toys, baby wipes, portable DVD player, my headphones (perfect for late night YouTube watching when you don’t want to wake the family), and my trusty MacBook Air.

While it might look cluttered – okay, not might: is – ?it’s actually a very therapeutic little place for me. It reminds me of how lucky I am in having the kind of love a household needs to make it a home, while still affording me the little space I need for my own belongings.

If I’m not writing there, then I may draft some ideas during lunchtime at work, or simply text myself on the Lakeshore West GO train on any given weekday.

Because I write as an idea comes to me, versus meticulously planning, re-planning, and revising, I find even the craziness of clutterdom works in my favour. Which is alright in my books (no pun intended).

After all, the process is merely the tool that gets us to where we need to be – it’s the initial step on a new writing adventure that really matters.

And isn’t that how it should be?

A version of this post originally appeared on the Morning Rain Publishing blog, where my book The Little Book of Inspiration will be published early 2015.

A Social Conversation About Social Conversations

For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about how content is panning out, both from a creation and distribution angle.

As someone whose blogged since the late 90’s, it’s been interesting to watch the medium evolve from simple text on a screen to full-on media rich experiences, not to mention seeing how social media has swallowed some of the mainstays that were previously exclusive to blogging.

Perhaps one of the things that’s changed the most is the area of conversations. It used to be they were the sole domain of the blogger – post content, discuss afterwards in the comments.

Yet since Twitter and Facebook became popular, there’s been a lot of talk on whether this means the end not only for blog comments, but blogs themselves.

Personally, I don’t buy into it. Yes, we’re in the process of evolution – but like anything, evolution is good. It helps us grow, both as content creators and consumers of that content.

What bloggers need to do is consider how they’re doing things, and adapt to more organic ways.

You Don’t Preempt a “Normal” Conversation, So Why Preempt a Social?One?

Think about the best conversations you have. It could be with friends, family, lovers, partners, colleagues – heck, it could be with the bartender at your favourite local.

The point is, it doesn’t matter where it is, because the place isn’t the instigator of great conversations – the people are. Not just people, though, but the way that conversations naturally ebb and flow as questions and answers are exchanged – that’s where the gold comes from.

This is why organic conversations in a blog post’s comments often raise the post itself higher than the original content – because the points raised in a blog’s comments section can drive some amazing back-and-forth conversations, if both blogger and commenter are open to it.

It’s something that content itself has tended to struggle with – it’s not as easy to replicate that organic feeling.

Take interviews, for example.

If a blogger wishes to interview someone for their blog, it’s usually a Word document that’s sent over to the guest with a series of questions. The guest looks at them, answers, and sends back via email. The blogger formats and then publishes – job done.

(Note: this is based on written form blogging – obviously video bloggers and podcasters can enjoy the type of spontaneity found in “normal” conversations)

The problem with this is it’s a very canned approach.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Blog interviews can read like the content version of canned laughter – forced and unattached” quote=”Blog interviews can read like the content version of canned laughter – forced and unattached”]

There’s no spontaneity, no flow, no feeling that it’s an interview. Instead, it (usually) reads more like someone sent someone else a bunch of questions beforehand, and the responses are carefully planned to put the interviewee in their best light.

This is where ReplyAll comes into play.

Not Comments, Not Live Chat – Just Great Conversations

Imagine if you could have a conversation as if you were in the same room as the other person – shouldn’t that be the goal of social conversations (interviews, Q&As, etc.)?

The developers behind ReplyAll think so, and their solution does a pretty good job of making that happen.

Much like the Postmatic solution I’ve introduced on this blog, ReplyAll does everything via email. However, unlike typical email conversations for interviews, where there are a maximum of two emails exchanged (questions document sent, answers document recieved), ReplyAll conversations can literally be endless.

The set-up is simple:

You, the content creator, comes up with a topic for discussion;
You decide what guest(s) you’d like to discuss this topic with;
You create a ReplyAll around this topic, and send out email invites to participate;
You post the first question, and hit Send;
The replies come in, you continue the questions, more replies come in, and so on.

It’s straightforward, simple, and a great way to have an evergreen discussion around a topic, while not impacting anyone’s busy schedule. Questions can be replied to at any time, and they’ll drop into the conversation.

And, much like Postmatic, because it’s done by email, you get an instant notification that there’s a new question or reply, and you choose whether or not to participate further.

Because of this approach, it makes for a more natural conversation where an intended direction of a conversation can take a sudden swing, based on the reply of one (or more) of the participants.

[clickToTweet tweet=”The best conversations ebb and flow like a river – ReplyAll provides both, and more” quote=”The best conversations ebb and flow like a river – ReplyAll provides both, and more”]

The ability to invite other guests to the conversation is an added bonus. Let’s say there’s a question no-one really has a definitive answer to – someone suggests, “You know who’d know this one? NAME – let’s ask her.” An email invite is sent, and the answer soon follows.

It’s a great way to lead a real conversation/discussion, versus a planned and sterile Q&A that can happen when answers are already provided.

What Would Be Cool to See

While ReplyAll is a pretty cool piece of tech at the moment, there are some areas that it could either improve in, or would be great to see added in future updates.

Currently, ReplyAll needs you to jump back over to your ReplyAll dashboard to participate in a conversation. So, when you get an email notifying you of a new reply, you can’t simply reply to that email. This is where Postmatic shines, and keeps the conversation flowing because you don’t have to take additional actions. Co-founder Zach Abramowitz has mentioned this will appear in a future update.

Social interactions to add to social commentary. Because of the way social channels have taken a lot of the impetus away from commenting on an actual blog post, it’d be great to have the ability to include (moderated) social chat around a ReplyAll topic as well. It’s the kind of approach that Coverit Live does well – albeit for a cost. If ReplyAll could find a way to do this, it’d add more layers to its functionality.

Alerts on drifting conversations. One of the great things about ReplyAll’s approach is it’s based on your time – you choose when to reply. Of course, this could also see conversations drift, as some guests take longer than others to reply. It’d be nice to set some form of timescale and follow-up alert, to advise a response is needed (or ask if the participant wishes to drop out).

However, apart from the native email functionality, these are mostly nice-to-haves.

What ReplyAll currently does, it does it very well. Embedding a conversation on your blog or website is as simple as dropping a piece of script into the page. Replies then update once received, and the ReplyAll discussion grows until the host ends it.

As content continues to evolve, and the conversations around content evolve with it, it’s interesting to see how developers are addressing them. Along with Postmatic, ReplyAll seem to be taking it back to where it all began – email.

Given most of the world still prefers this method of communication, that may be no bad thing at all.

Check out ReplyAll for yourself here.

For an example of how ReplyAll works, below is a chat between Zach and myself that took place over a 3-day period earlier this month. Look out for more experiments with this format here soon.

Your Best Work is You

If you were asked to give someone a link to your best work when it comes to your content, what link would you share?

For me, some spring to mind, but what?s to say they?re my best work? Perhaps my favourites for whatever reason – but best? I don?t know. And what defines our best work?

Is it the educational post about using the latest social media tool or application?

Is it the blog post about a charity that we?re involved in that hopes to change the world?

Or is it just an ordinary post, talking about nothing in general really?

After all, if you?re just rambling as you would to someone offline, wouldn?t that be your best work for a stranger/potential friend to read because it?s relaxed and honest?

You see, to me, every single thing we share about ourselves through a blog post is our best work.

Whether it?s sharing your expertise with someone who may be less knowledgeable on a certain topic, or recommending other people to read, that?s sharing yourself with people.

Even if you?are just writing about your day, if someone else finds that interesting and stays to read it,?that?s your best work. You?ve helped the day pass quicker for someone, and that?s got to be worthwhile.

So, where would?you recommend us to go?

PS ? If you?re curious, I choose this post.

A Look Under the WordPress Hood at DannyBrown.me

Every now and again, I’ll get asked what plugin or solution I’m using on this blog to achieve a certain effect or result.

Because I use self-hosted WordPress to power this blog, it means there’s a crazy amount of add-ons, plugins and other optimization and performance solutions for bloggers to choose from.

While that choice is great, it can also be overwhelming.

Since I’m a self-confessed geek that likes to try out pretty much most things on this blog in the name of experimentation, I’ve used a fair few solutions in the six-plus years I’ve been blogging here.

It’s been a while since I last took a look at what’s underneath, so here’s what’s currently powering my blog, and why you might want to consider it for yours.

To make it easier (in case you’re already really happy with your sharing solution, for example, but looking to get more server speed), I’ve separated them into four main categories.

While some plugins may crossover into other categories, I’ve gathered them into the following areas:

Security
Optimization
Visibility
Growth

The solutions below are a mix of free and premium – what version you use depends on your need. Let’s dig in!

1. Security

While we may want a lot of eyeballs, shares, subscribers, downloads and more from our blogs, we need to make sure we actually have a blog up and running, that’s safe from attacks, and that can be restored if anything happens to it.

While there are various solutions out there, these are the ones I like and currently use.

Anti-Malware and Brute-Force Security by ELI

While WordPress is a great solution for any blogger, it can also be prone to frequent brute force attacks (where hackers try and gain access to your blog by multiple username and password attempts). The Anti-Malware and Brute-Force Security plugin by ELI is a great way to counter these attacks.

Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall – WordPress plugin WordPress org English Canada

Features include:

Automatic removal of known threats and back-doors
Automatic blocking of SoakSoak and other known malware
Quick Scan options to give an overview of current threat status
Complete scan to look at every part of your WordPress site

This is one of the most comprehensive plugins I’ve used when it comes to brute force protection – definitely recommended.

Check out Anti-Malware and Brute-Force Security by ELI here.

Login Lockdown

Tying into the brute force attack method of trying to access your blog via multiple attempts at guessing your username and password, the Login Lockdown plugin does exactly what it says on the tin, by locking down access to your blog after a set number of attempts.

You can:

Set the maximum number of attempts to log in before locking down access
Set how long a failed attempt is locked out for
Hide login error messages
Lockout invalid usernames (useful for a blog with limited amounts of users in the backend)

While it’s a pretty simple plugin, it’s effective. And you can’t ask for more than that.

Check out Login Lockdown here.

Monitive

If your content is created for any kind of business value, the uptime of your site is crucial. Heck, even if you’re a personal blogger like me, uptime is still hugely important and something to keep an eye on.

Monitive makes this process easy. Simply create and account and they’ll start monitoring your site’s uptime.

Frequency, type of alerts and reports are determined by the plan you’re on, but even the free account’s pretty awesome.

Check out Monitive here.

VaultPress

One of the worst things that can happen to any blogger is to lose his or her content due to a crash, hack, glitch or simple user error. If you have years of content, this loss can be even more painful.

VaultPress is a fantastic solution that not only backs up and restores your site (with real-time back up options), but also protects your themes, plugins and settings into the bargain.

Given that it’s from Automattic, the creators of WordPress.com, it’s almost guaranteed that this will be a great plugin, and so it is.

Alternative: iThemes offer an alternative called BackupBuddy. I was using this, but found it was causing load issues due to continuous creations of CRON jobs, so made the switch to VaultPress. More information on that issue can be found here.

Check out VaultPress here.

2. Optimization

Along with security, optimization of your blog should be one of the things you’re constantly tweaking. Google has already advised it will penalize slow sites as well as those that aren’t mobile-friendly.

Apart from your own penalization, though, the user experience – that of your readers – should be top of mind too.

Here are the solutions I use for optimizing my blog.

Akismet

One of the granddaddy’s of the WordPress plugin world, Akismet is probably a mainstay in the majority of WordPress blogs online today when it comes to protecting blogs from comment and trackback spam.

It also allows you to see how many comments have been approved by regular commenters, and enables you to bulk clean your comments area from span, keeping your site free of extra load and bulk.

Check out Akismet here.

Anti-Spam

While Akismet does a pretty good job of keeping spam at bay, it can still be beaten by automated scripts that bypass its algorithm. This is where Anti-Spam comes into play.

It inserts an invisible checkbox, kind of like a captcha, that automated scripts don’t see. This adds an excellent second layer of filtering, and one that only real people will bypass (even though they’re not aware it’s there). This plugin has essentially killed all but the most determined of spammers on my site.

Check out Anti-Spam here.

CDN Linker

One thing that every blogger should be concerned about is site load. Not only is Google looking unfavourably on slow sites, but visitors are more prone to leave a site that doesn’t load in an acceptable time.

CDN Linker is a plugin that makes the connection between your preferred CDN solution (more on that shortly) and your site (even if you’re using a local caching option). It’s lightweight, easy to set up, and effective.

Check out CDN Linker here.

MaxCDN

I’ve mentioned earlier how Google doesn’t look favourably on sites that load slow. A lot of these load issues are caused by sites hosting images and files on their own servers. If they’re not set up for this, cue load issues.

MaxCDN is an excellent solution that does the heavy lifting for you, and lets you just get on with the important stuff like content.

CDN by MaxCDN | Experts in Content Delivery Network Services

I use a hybrid of MaxCDN, CDN Linker, and WP Super Cache to keep my load times to a minimum. Because of the theme design I use (media rich, large featured images), this has made a huge difference in my own blog’s performance, and is well worth the monthly cost to do so.

Check out MaxCDN here.

WangGuard

Run a blog for any decent amount of time and you’ll get your fair share of spam commenters. As well as being a pain in the ass for bloggers, spam commenters (or sploggers) can ruin the experience for other commenters too.

WangGuard counters this by detecting and removing sploggers through a variety of ways – checking for duplicate emails, checking emails against DNS servers, enabling honeypot traps and more. An excellent solution.

Check out WangGuard here.

wpDiscuz WordPress Comments

While?there’s been a lot of talk recently about blog comments dying, I don’t buy into that. Sure, they may be moving more onto social channels, but there’s still life in “traditional blog comments” yet.

~~A relatively new plugin, wpDiscuz offers a sleek and elegant approach to comments, without all the bells and whistles that other commenting solutions come with.~~

~~It also uses native WordPress comments as its starting point, and this makes using wpDiscuz super easy.~~

~~Simple name and email requirement to leave a comment~~
~~Ajax powered to stay on-comment as well as utilizing “load more comments” versus pagination~~
~~Voting up and down options~~
~~Social sharing options~~
~~Customizable to fit your theme brand and design~~
~~In-depth backend to optimize usernames, commenter options, notifications of new discussions and more~~

I’ve recently started using wpDiscuz after being impressed with it on my wife’s publisher site. Its clean, simple to use, fast, and – most importantly – lets you keep full control of your comments on your own domain.

Note: After having issues with the Ajax loading, as well as mobile commenting, I disabled wpDiscuz. I now use Postmatic, for commenting via email, as well as their own commenting solution, Epoch.

Alternative: Previous to wpDiscuz, I’d experimented with a hybrid comment system on Inline Comments and G+ Comments, but have had to disable for now due to a theme incompatibility. Livefyre is also an excellent solution.

~~Check out wpDiscuz here.~~

WP Lightbox 2

When bloggers use images on their sites, it can be pretty hard to see the detail, dependent on both how much text is on the image, and the blog’s design (a small main content area will limit the image’s dimensions).

WP Lightbox 2 allows your readers to click on the image, and it’ll expand into a more optimal size (even on mobile). You can also create galleries as well as photo albums, and filter how large the image displays, based on browser screen size.

Check out WP Lightbox 2 here.

WP Smush Pro

Tying back into the optimization combination of MaxCDN, WP Super Cache and CDN Linker, WP Smush Pro helps keep media file sizes down by reducing an image file’s size on upload.

With the option to optimize existing images, and extremely simple set-up, it’s a great way to keep server load down even if you’re not using any other caching or optimization solutions.

Check out WP Smush Pro here.

WP Super Cache

As sites get heavier with load, caching content is a great way to ensure your visitors get to enjoy a speedy site. Caching simply means you’re “pre-loading” saved content, instead of having to load new files on every visit.

WP Super Cache is one of the best, as well as one of the simplest (even though it still has pretty in-depth features if you want them).

Legacy cache versus supercache, offering more options on where your content is preloaded from
Comment compatibility (comments will still show up right away)
Dynamic caching for certain pages
Cache rebuild to ensure each new visitor gets optimal load

There are a host of features on WP Super Cache, and it’s pretty easy to set up (with excellent support).

I don’t actually use it as my main caching solution – I leave that to MaxCDN, WP Super Cache and CDN Linker (and I explain here how to do that).

Alternatives: One of the most popular caching plugins is W3 Total Cache. From personal experience, I found this too intensive for my needs. A simpler solution is Quick Cache.

Check out WP Super Cache here.

3. Visibility

Of course, it’s all well and good having great security, and optimizing your blog ready for all the traffic that will come your way, knowing they’ll be presented with a safe and optimized blog. Not so fast, Skippy.

Making sure your content is seen is, surprise surprise, pretty key too – and if you think that’s an obvious statement, you’d be wrong, sadly.

Working on the visibility of your blog will be a constant challenge, but doesn’t have to be one you’re not prepared for.

Infinite SEO

There are a lot of blog posts that will tell you SEO is dead and content is the new king. While SEO as a standalone tactic may not be as important as is used to be, it’s still a key part in any successful content plan.

Infinite SEO is a great plugin with a host of features that anyone can use:

Control over page or post SEO
Preview for how your SEO will look in search results
mozRank and Page Authority based on external links
Intensive sitemap creation and indexing
Automatic internal linking for better cross site authority
Multisite and BuddyPress integration.

While there are several other SEO plugins around, for me this one beats them all.

Alternatives: I’ve previously used the hugely popular WordPress SEO from Yoast, as well as the All-in-One SEO Pack, and both are excellent alternatives to Infinite. Yoast is more involved, and probably better suited to more advanced needs.

Check out Infinite SEO here.

RSS Footer

This is a bit of an older plugin, so you may not want to use it (often older plugins can cause conflicts with later versions of WordPress or, occasionally, a security concern).

However, I’ve used RSS Footer for years with no issue. When used, it adds a simple sentence to your RSS feeds, and shows where the content was first published. Great for more visibility if your content is syndicated, even better to beat content scrapers at theor own game.

Alternative: RSS Footer has actually been enveloped into its developer’s SEO plugin (it’s from the same guy that built WordPress SEO). However, you can still download the original plugin on its own if you don’t use WordPress SEO.

Check out RSS Footer here.

Social Warfare

Perhaps the most effective way of getting any content seen is through social sharing, and there are no shortage of excellent solutions around, both free and premium.

I’ve experimented with more than my fair share, and the one I’m impressed with the most currently is Social Warfare.

Social Warfare: Your Ultimate Social Sharing Arsenal

The name alone should tell you this plugin means business.

Cached share counts for faster loading
Sort posts by social popularity
Customize tweets for optimized sharing
Optimize images for sharing on Pinterest
Optimized images for sharing on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn
Use different meta descriptions for open graph sharing
Integrated Sniply Buster plugin to combat the Sniply content hijacking script
Multiple design options, including responsive buttons, and sticky share options

As I mention, I’ve used countless sharing plugins and this one has really impressed me. The developers are also great at listening to suggestions and pretty fast with support issues.

Alternatives: Two great alternatives to Social Warfare are Flare from Filament Apps, and the Monarch sharing plugin from Elegant Themes. Both offer multiple design options, stats, mobile sharing options and more.

Check out Social Warfare here.

4. Growth

Ironically, this part of blogging is one I never really used to care about. And, to a degree, I still don’t: you won’t see any annoying pop-ups shouting at you to subscribe before you’ve even seen the content, and I don’t use my newsletter to sell anything.

However, as content consumption gets even more fractured, and audience attention dwindles, growing your blog and its community is key to any kind of success and longevity.

Elastic Email

There are a host of email service providers when it comes to blog newsletters – MailChimp and AWeber are probably the two best known.

However, depending on the size of your list, these can get costly, which is why Elastic Email is such an excellent solution.

While you can use Elastic Email as your newsletter form builder as well as sender, I prefer to use MailPoet for my forms (as shown further down), and Elastic Email for my delivery.

Features are excellent:

Easy subscriber cleansing tools
Real-time reputation monitoring to show your current status (spammy or trusted)
Activity reports
Single API to integrate other newsletter services (the way I do it with MailPoet)

Perhaps the best feature of Elastic Email though is the price.

Starting at $0.99 per 1,000 emails, the cost goes down as your email numbers increase. I’m currently only paying $0.39 per 1,000 emails – a small fraction of what I’d pay with other providers. And it’ll only decrease in cost as I continue – result!

Check out Elastic Email here.

Magic Action Box Pro

Look to the bottom of this post, or any other on my blog, and you’ll see only one call-to-action (CTA) – a subscription box for my weekly newsletter.

As I move more into personal content and interactions, the newsletter is perfect for me, and Magic Action Box Pro is perfect for what I need.

Support for any autoresponder service
Gated content options
Multiple and responsive templates
Sales box and sharing box options
Simple placement choices

While I don’t use many of the features (gated content and sales-oriented CTAs), what I do use has made a huge difference in email sign-ups. And for something that’s been built to provide that lift, you can’t ask for much more than that.

Check out Magic Action Box Pro here.

MailPoet Newsletters

~~While it’s all well and good getting new subscribers, if you’re not delivering emails that are appealing, you’re simply turning these new subscribers off.~~

MailPoet is an excellent email template builder that also comes with analytics around your subscriber actions, multiple list options, the option to implement in widgets and pages, and more. There’s also a WangGuard MailPoet Connector plugin to stop spammy email sign-ups.

~~I moved to MailPoet from Feedblitz?earlier this year and I wish I had done it a hell of a lot sooner. Easy to use, far more design options, and simply a better experience – recommended.~~

~~Check out MailPoet here.~~

Note: As of June 18, I’ve made the full switch to Postmatic for email delivery and comments by email – you can find out more about that here.

Future Plugins and Solutions – And You

Of course, as any blogger will tell you, just as content direction and voice is always in flux, so are the plugins and solutions we use on our blog.

While the options above are my current choice, they’ll be added to very soon with two very cool solutions that take content interaction and discussions in very interesting directions – more info on that soon.

Also, being on self-hosted WordPress, we’re so very lucky to have an amazing community of developers who are always trying to improve every experience – front end, back end, reader, blogger – that to stand still would be foolish (and impossible).

I can’t wait to see what comes next – in the meantime, though, I’d love to hear what you’re using.

Fire away – the comments are below, and all yours!