OK, according to my statistics, there are still a ton of visitors to my site that are using Internet Explorer. Why that is I cannot for the life of me understand. Some of you might have a good reason, and if so, please let me know what that reason is.

But if there are Internet Explorer users visiting this site that are only using Internet Explorer because it’s what you already have, it’s what you’re used to, and you don’t know there are other options, this post is for you.

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Text link advertising firm Linkworth has officially entered the Pay Per Post market.

First off, I like Linkworth. I’ve been a publisher for about two years now and they send a few hundred bucks my way every month. The links have always been on intrusive and I’ve had full control over who I accept as advertisers and who I reject. And most of my advertisers are happy because about 75% of them have been with more for more than a year.

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Sitemeter users are bailing out at record numbers and the stat counting company has still not posted anything about it in their blog, privacy policy, or public website. In the end this will be a very painful lesson on how NOT to handle your public relations issues.

Since my original post, this blog has received about 250 to 350 visits per day searching for information regarding Sitemeter’s sell out to spyware advertisers. And since that first post, the blogosphere has been working overtime making sure that readers and other bloggers are aware of the devastating decision made by Sitemeter.

The following illustration was posted over at Debbie’s Blatherings.

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There is a BIG shift in the way political campaigns conduct election war these days. During the 2006 elections I was contracted to do some work for Sharron Angle for Congress and it was a very educational experience and the race taught us many things about the new direction of political campaign marketing.

In our race for congress we were lucky that the opposition had little experience in online marketing. The reason we were lucky is that I had my hands full with other parts of the campaign and couldn’t spend any time on the website or out and about in the www community.

In the end we lost by about 400 votes, but the knowledge that came from working on such a campaign is something I’m thankful for. I was able to see one of our opponents get ripped to shreds by the online community because he virtually ignored them and his site did everything possible to avoid having to engage the group. At the time, this attitude worked because the social networks of Nevada were limited. Now, however, these networks have gained big momentum and I believe that if we were to see a repeat of that race he would have a very tough time slipping by without getting the online community involved.

The same can be said across the country. With more and more voters and activists moving their networks to the web, political campaigns are forced to move in that direction with their campaign plans and message marketing schemes. I believe we’re witnessing the birth of a new era in US elections.

Political campaigns would be wise to lend an ear to this massive movement of information and there are a plethora of tools that can help them do just that. I’ve compiled a list of what I believe will be the top ten players in internet activism.

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This is COMPLETELY new to me. For someone who spends countless hours surfing the blogosphere, I don’t know why it’s taken so long to discover and enjoy this new social network.

MyBlogLog is a new blogging community service that brings bloggers closer to each other by building networks of information that is compiled and made readily available via user accounts.

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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.

JOIN NOW!

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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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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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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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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 personally have made it to the front page with two stories, so I understand what the wave of traffic and attention feels like once you’re there. I also now understand what all the fuss is about, thanks to having one of my blogs crash in the middle of the day. The traffic Digg can shoot to any URL should have anyone who tracks this sort of thing drooling on their shoes.

Making the Digg homepage is no easy feat. The community is bulging with new users and user “clubs” that bounce around looking for stories to Digg. You can rest assured knowing that the chances are pretty good you won’t be hitting the front page anytime soon. Unless of course, you find a groove.

How do you find that groove? Well, very few people know the true formula for Digg.com, but there are some proven tips that seem to hold sound logic. One of the best lists of tips I’ve found to date was posted over at SEO Egghead.

Read the list of 8 ways to get your story Dugg.

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In a growing blogosphere it can be difficult to try and stay ahead of the pack. Keeping up with the news is no easy task. Having the latest news tips and information is one of the best ways of making sure your blog is getting a piece of the traffic pie. With that being said, it can also be one of the most time consuming ways of growing your readership.

Fortunately for us, there are now a plethora of free tools available for the general public. These tools can make watching the news as it happens a much easier process. The following is a list of ways you can make your story finding journey a little more pleasant.

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