Once you have your blog started you will probably get bitten by the “Stat’s Bug”. That’s what I am calling it. I just searched for the term on Google, and I see no existing definition. I am writing the definition now, mark down the date and time. 04/28/08 2:52 PM EST. Here is what it means”

Stat’s Bug - The uncontrollable desire of a blogger to look at the statistics of how many people are viewing his/her blog to the exclusion of doing the work that really matters.

It is easy to get consumed by the Stat’s Bug. You find yourself knowing that you should write an article or do a little site maintenance but you can’t resist the desire to take a quick peek at StatCounter. You check a couple times a day to see if your ranking on Google has improved. Forward movement makes you happy, backward movement make you hard to be around. You check how you are doing not only on Google, but also on MSN and Yahoo. Google Webmaster Tools need to be checked and rechecked. I have been dealing with the Stat’s Bug all day today. This article is my attempt to overcome. I decided to incorporate my searches today. I just hit the three month mark with My Newbie Blog today. When I searched for “Newbie Blog” my site was at position number 30 on the bottom of page 3:

It has moved up a couple of positions in the last two weeks. I did see some movement with my main keyword which is “How to Create a Blog“. It finally showed up on a Google search. I found out by checking my stats on StatCounter. Someone finally found their way to my site by doing a Google search for How to Create a Blog. Now, they had to go pretty deep to get there, but it did show up at position number 90:

This is the first time that I have been found by a Google search for that keyword. This is a good thing! I was getting some traffic from that keyword on MSN but I am no longer being returned as a result by them for How to Create a Blog. I am not sure why.

Getting Found

One of the things you should be doing to help get your site noticed is to publish some articles on the Internet. A lot of traffic that comes to this site is because of articles that I published using Article Marketer. I use the paid service because it makes the process a lot easier. When you get an article published it gives you two links to your site. When you write an article for your blog, rewrite a copy, (you don’t want to publish duplicate articles) and then submit it using Article Marketer. It will get published a lot of times. ((Let me go check the stats on how many times my last article got published, (that took ten minutes, I got the Stat’s Bug bad). My last article called “The Who, What, Why, When and How of Blogging” was found 22 times on a Google search, 54 times on a MSN search, 3 times on a Yahoo search, and 5 times on an Ask search. That article brings people to the site. That’s all for now, it has been at least an hour since I checked my StatCounter, I have to go!

When you create a blog you may need to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) from time to time. FTP allows you to transfer files either to your blog or from you blog for a variety of reasons. We will look at using FTP to get a file from our blog that needs to edited and then sending it back. We will also upload an audio file from our local computer to our blog so that people can hear it on the Internet. There are quite a few FTP platforms available, many of which are free. For this article we will be using the FTP Client that came with the web host we use at GoodNewsDomain.com.

Loading up the FTP Client

Go to your web host

Go to Web Hosting and My Hosting Accounts

Go ahead and log in and then click on Manage Account. At the Hosting Control Center Screen hover the mouse over Content and then click on the FTP Client

This usually takes a few moments to load. Once the loading is complete you should see this

This screen represents your Local System (your computer) on the left and the Remote System (your blog) on the right. If you want to bring something from the Remote System to your Local System you just highlight the file you want and then click on the << button and the file will transfer to your computer.

FTP Example 1

Let’s say you needed to edit the wp-config.php. On the Remote System screen, scroll down the list of files until you find the wp-config.php file. Click on the file and then click on the << button.

Now scroll down the list of files on the Local System and you should find the wp-config.php file there. If you needed to edit it, you could open it up in NotePad, make the changes and save the file. Then when you are ready to send back the edited file, you just highlight the file in your Local System and click on the >> button.

The file should transfer and you have successfully FTP’d.

FTP Example 2

I recently decided to make some mp3 audio files available on one of my blogs for people to listen to. Here is the process. At the FTP Client screen look to the bottom of the Local System screen and click on the Directory icon to make a directory.

When the Create Local Directory pop up screen appears enter in a directory called “Audio”

Press OK and you should see the “Audio” directory appear in the list of your Local System files. Now go to the Remote System side of the screen and repeat the process creating a directory called “Audio” in the Remote System. Once that is done go ahead and minimize the screen so you can work with your computer. You need to copy an mp3 file in to your new “Audio” directory. If you can’t find the “Audio” directory go to the Windows Start button and click on it.

Then click on My Computer

Now Click on Local Disk C: and you should see the “Audio” directory there. Copy your mp3 file into your “Audio” directory. Now go back to the FTP Client screen. Highlight the “Audio” directory on the Local System and then click on the >> button.

You should see a Transfer Status pop up screen.

Depending on the size of the file the transfer can take a few minutes. Once the transfer is done you have transferred the file to your blog. You should be able to access the file at yourblogurl/audio/nameoffile There you go! Another how to create a blog question answered.

I was installing a plugin (Calendar) on one of my blogs recently and I had to edit the .htaccess file to make the plugin work. It was an interesting process so I thought I would pass along how to do it. To get started go to your web host (I use GoodNewsDomains):

Go to Web Hosting and My Hosting Accounts

Go ahead and log in

At the Hosting Account Control Panel click on Manage Account for the blog you want to open

At the Hosting Control Center click on Content and then click on File Manager

Click on the box next to the .htaccess file and then click on the Edit button

Make any changes you need make to the file and then press the diskette symbol to save the file

Thats it! You have edited your .htaccess file. You can use this same procedure to make changes to other files in WordPress as the need arises. Another how to create a blog question answered!