…and all I had to was ask.
Check out the official 2,000 bloggers list and see if you can get in before it’s too late.
It’s an honor to be a part of this list. 
-Eric Odom
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Popularity: 4% [?]
I don’t know about you, but when I think of Dan Rather I instantly think “blogosphere”. It’s almost astonishing to consider how quickly the media world forced themselves to forget the power of the internet and its community. One of the most influential News Hosts was taken down by a handful of bloggers, and when I say taken down, I mean he went down in flames. But that seems to be long gone now. It’s not even brought up in most related conversations.
The good news is, the blogosphere is alive and well. In fact, I would say the community is sitting quietly, waiting for the 2008 campaign trail to really start heating up. I predict the internet will play a major role in the outcome of the 2008 election cycle and we’ll begin seeing new forms of information dominance move in to play.
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Popularity: 5% [?]
Warner Todd Huston recently suggested we begin linking our blogs together to create a network and increase both traffic and rankings for the overall community. Thanks to this suggestion we now have a blogroll/network established and it’s ready for use.
If you’re a ConservaBlogger, or even a Conservative/Libertarian blogger who is not using our free Wordpress hosting and you wish to join, simply follow the instructions on the official page.
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Popularity: 5% [?]
I’m getting a LOT of e-mails about Wordpress Themes and most of our bloggers appear to be on the hunt for something simple, clean, fast loading, and straight to the point. Because of this I’ve decided to list the themes I currently have on file. These themes are ready for upload at any time.
If you see a theme you like and want to use, simply post a request in the “Blog Support” section of the support forums.
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Popularity: 6% [?]
After only a little over a month of being online and offering free Wordpress hosting for Conservative and Libertarian bloggers, we’ve already began seeing a plethora of spam comment issues. As we grow, so will this problem. Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you activate the Akismet plugin located under the “plugin” tab of your admin/control panel.
In order for this hack to work, you’ll need an official Wordpress API key, which you can obtain here.
After you activate the plugin you’ll see a message saying you still need to enter the API key. Click on the link and enter the key. That’s it! You’re all set and the plugin “should” stop most, if not all, comments that Wordpress has deemed spam.
Enjoy!
-Eric Odom
Director of Internet Operations
Citizen Outreach
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A few years back you would be out of luck if you didn’t know how to code and needed a good look for your blog, but now that Wordpress has moved into the top ranks of blogging software, developers are lining up to create new themes for the public masses. The following is a list of places you can go to find new Wordpress themes to use on your ConservaBlog.
The Official Wordpress Theme Site
This is probably the most common place to find a template. Wordpress, being open source and community driven, allows users to upload templates they design so that anyone using Wordpress can download them and use them on their blogs.
Personally, I find the Wordpress theme site difficult to use because its search and sorting feature doesn’t do a whole lot of good. That being said, there are still TONS of themes there and if you have time to sift through them you’ll more than likely find something that fits your taste.
Alex King Theme Directory
Alex King has long been praised for his list of Wordpress themes. It’s an extensive list, but you’ll probably want to use the theme viewer so you can see what a theme actually looks like before getting more information.
BloggingPro
This is my favorite hot spot for Wordpress themes. BloggingPro has a constant watch on the theme industry and has posted some of the cleanest and most desirable themes that can be found on the internet.
This list should help you get started in finding a new theme for your blog. Keep in mind that in order to get the theme to your blog admin/control panel, you’ll need to use an ftp client to upload the files to our server. If you are not familiar with ftp you can post a request in the support forums and we’ll upload the files for you.
-Eric Odom
ConservaBlogs.com
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Popularity: 13% [?]
Bloggers from all walks of life are finding ConservaBlogs.com to be the perfect fit for a blogging home. We offer free Wordpress hosting with virtually unlimited space for posting, file hosting, and bandwidth is something we’ll continue to pump into the system as we grow. With this in mind, it’s no wonder so many folks are getting comfortable here at ConservaBlogs.com.
Now that we’re coming out of beta we’re starting to see many levels of internet skills here on our servers. Some bloggers have been doing this for years and in turn have learned the ropes of the seemingly complex code structure of Wordpress. Others are just getting started and the whole thing could be seen as a tad bit overwhelming.
If you’re new to blogging, or have never used Wordpress before, this post will be an excellent starting point to help you properly launch your blog and get off to a great start.
We’ll start with the basics.
First, when you apply for a blog here at ConservaBlogs.com, our team has to go in and manually install the software to the server. Once your blog is set up and can be found on the internet, you’ll find that everything is set to the default settings and it might temporarily seem a little messy. Fear not my friends, we’re going to walk you through it step by step.
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Popularity: 5% [?]
Last night I received a copy of an e-mail conversation between Crystal and one of the ConservaBloggers. The blogger was on the hunt for a way to use ftp to get files to his hosting account and didn’t quite know where to start.
Here at ConservaBlogs we use a specific plugin for Firefox to handle all of our ftp needs. The extension, Fire ftp, is arguably one of the easiest to use ftp clients available via open source.
First, in order to use this you’ll need to scrap that crappy Internet Explorer browser and pick up the free browser, Firefox. Then go to the plugin page and download the Firefox extension.
You’ll love it!
-Eric
Popularity: 3% [?]Bookmark to:
Popularity: 3% [?]
Warner Todd Huston of Publius Forum just installed the Social Bookmarks plugin on his blog so I decided I would go ahead and post about it in case anyone else was interested.
The Social Bookmarks plugin for Wordpress is one of my favorite plugins and I use it on a good 50% of the blogs I run. Basically, the plugin places image links to all the major social networking sites at the bottom of every post or page of your blog. This allows any reader to click the image and submit your story to the social networking sites. It’s a great way to get your stories published on other sites, and if you make it to the front page of one of these sites, you’ll find up to 10,000 visits within a few hours.
You can see the plugin in action here.
Social Bookmarks (formerly known as Social Bar) is a WordPress plugin that adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of different social bookmarking sites. You can see the plugin in action at the end of the article (just before the comments section). Furthermore, the plugin adds a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it.
This plugin is free and available to all ConservaBloggers.
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I belong to a private mailing list that sends out daily tips and hints for search engine optimization. While I find most of the techniques discussed to be morally bankrupt, it’s always fascinating to read what the latest cheats and hacks for search engines are.
Today a quick blurb about directories dropped in and I find it quite intriguing. The e-mail mentioned the use of web directories, such as the famous Site Sift directory, for the purpose of creating backlinks that can boost search engine rankings.
Using web directories for link bait is old news, but I thought Google had taken preventative measures to ensure these kinds of links were devalued in an attempt to cut back on spam? According to this particular e-mail, web directories still play a valuable role in SEO.
I guess black hat SEO is still OK with Google. Shame isn’t it?
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Popularity: 14% [?]
