# Anyone have Wordpress?



## TrinityWolfess (Jul 30, 2010)

I have a wordpress account because my web design teacher made me and i'm trying to stay with it but no one looks on my site... I guess i'm not that interesting or something but I have a story that I'm writing on there. So look at me? 

It's mainly about me starting college but there are other things that I was hoping that others would comment. 


http://kristinbirdsall.wordpress.com/


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## kitreshawn (Jul 31, 2010)

Getting traffic to a web page takes work.  There are several things you can do.

Link to it in your sig and set it up as your web page on sites like this.

Comment on (and link to) other people who have blogs.  A lot of them will return the favor.

Update semi-regularly at least.  I know some people who say you need to update a blog every day, but really I think once or twice a week would be a good goal to start.

Write 2 types of articles: short 2 or 3 paragraph things about some thought or something you've had, and 'pillar' articles of about 500-2,000 words.  A pillar article is generally something like "5 Ways to improve at X" or "First Page of New Story".

The biggest thing is that you need to gear your content away from simply things that interest you and toward things that will interest, and more importantly be useful, to others.


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## quoting_mungo (Jul 31, 2010)

A few notes that'll help attract the attention of people who surf onto your page:

* Be careful with your spelling and grammar. This goes both for your blog posts and your story. Language errors make it look like you don't care, and if you don't care, why should the visitor care?
* If you can, try to put in illustrations with your posts, especially since your layout in itself isn't very visually interesting. I always do this for the "meta" posts on my storyblog, and try to do it for my story posts when I can.
* Think about what you want the "main thing" of your WordPress site to be. If you want it to be little tidbits of your life, having it set up as you do makes sense. If you primarily want to showcase the stories, you're _really_ doing yourself a disservice by posting your story installments as pages rather than as blog posts. Pages don't show up on e.g. RSS feeds, for instance.
* Any pages that have subpages should have links to those subpages unless there's a specific reason for them not to. This would be your "Photos" and your "Stories" page.

In general your blog posts are rather "chatty"; they're unlikely to be of interest to anyone but your personal friends. This is fine if that's what you want to do with your WordPress site, of course, but I get the impression that you'd like to attract a wider audience. See if you can put a spin on things that would make them more useful to others. For example, you could write about what has been similar and what has been different, going from high school to college. What would you have liked to have known, before starting community college, to help you get prepared? 

Also note that people generally aren't that inclined to comment on stuff unless they know you personally. I've gotten the stray comment here and there on my storyblog and the other WP-based site I run, but people in general often don't speak up. What the previous poster says about getting out there and commenting on others' blogs is probably the best way to encourage comments as you start to build your audience.

For reference, my Wordpress-based sites:
http://vixenscratch.furry-tales.net (storyblog)
http://www.erigineea.com/paladin/ (webcomic, using ComicPress)

I don't know how much customization wordpress.com allows you in terms of installing themes and plugins, but there are a couple of alternatives available for hiding certain blog post categories from the front page, for example, like I do with the Meta posts on Vixenscratch.


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## TrinityWolfess (Jul 31, 2010)

Ya i know i'm bad at grammer and all >.< and I'm not a one topic kind of person. I like many things but I was forced to have this blog cause my web design teacher made me. 



quoting_mungo said:


> A few notes that'll help attract the attention of people who surf onto your page:
> 
> * Be careful with your spelling and grammar. This goes both for your blog posts and your story. Language errors make it look like you don't care, and if you don't care, why should the visitor care?
> * If you can, try to put in illustrations with your posts, especially since your layout in itself isn't very visually interesting. I always do this for the "meta" posts on my storyblog, and try to do it for my story posts when I can.
> ...


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## Tanzenlicht (Jul 31, 2010)

TrinityWolfess said:


> I like many things but I was forced to have this blog cause my web design teacher made me.


 
So you *don't* care.  And we don't either.


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## TrinityWolfess (Aug 6, 2010)

No, i do care...


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## quoting_mungo (Aug 7, 2010)

"I have this blog because my teacher made me" doesn't indicate any impressive levels of dedication.

Getting advice and taking none of it doesn't indicate much dedication, either. Some of the things I suggested are dead easy to implement.

Doing a blog well isn't just about caring, it's about _showing_ that you care.
Write your posts in Word before you post them up, to get the benefit of the spell/grammar check. It won't catch everything, but it'll catch some things. Your WordPress site still seems very unfocused, and that's not going to help attract visitors. What you need to ask yourself is, would you come back to your site if you didn't know the person who'd made it? If the answer is "no", you need to figure out why, and fix that.


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## TrinityWolfess (Aug 7, 2010)

Well I dont know what to do... If I had any idea I would but I don't. No one will give suggestions so ya...


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 8, 2010)

People are giving plenty of suggestions... about running a Wordpress site.  That's why I left this thread open.  If you want a critique of the story, use the Critique Thread.  If this is just a homework assignment, ask your teacher for help.


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## TrinityWolfess (Aug 12, 2010)

Well I'm trying... Sorry...


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