Back in June, Ida Horner approached us to see if we wanted to do ‘Africa on the Blog’. Knowing how much the Blogmistress loves a challenge she swiftly set to work on setting up Africa on the Blog (why change a winning formula ). Given the brief of , colour it like Africa, she came up with a golden brown design on the Studiopress framework that is consistent theme on the ‘On the blog’ sites.

It’s visually stunning.

Ida in the mean time started recruiting bloggers – please welcome @naomiestment @AshantiGirl @taluta @Chocolat_a_toi @jkainja @TonyBurkson @STM95 @sportinkenya @Chiira

From start to launch it took 14 days and three of us working at it – and the first blogger posted a blog about African traditions and since then, 5 days a week there has been a huge amount of discussion on the site. Significant amounts of retweets and a tremendous amount of traffic.

I learned a huge amount from this experience – blogging about what you are really crazy about, what gets you hot and bothered is a good thing. Ida who also blogs about African development and manages ‘our girls‘ through her charity, is relentless in bringing the voices of Africa to a wider audience. To the tune of a 1000 people a week, and then some.

An example of this is the blog post The Cut, about female genital mutilation. Yeah I know, it’s been spoken about for years. This time the story was told by a man and the impacts on the community and different perspectives. Just when you think you have been de-sensitised about something and nothing can be done, a blogger gives you fresh perspective and puts the fire back into the fight against it.

I have learned about Eba, the African equivalent of tapioca or semolina. I have learned that Nigeria has a thriving film industry. I have read about what it was like to be a child in Egypt. I have read what the World Cup really did for South Africa and I saw some stunning photographs.

If this blog can change my thinking about Africa, and her people in diaspora, show me sides of Africa that I never knew existed, I think you could learn something too.

Sarah

@AfricaOnTheBlog for tweets of the blogs and African news updates or join the Facebook page to get the updates there.

Sometimes you want to have columns, nice and neat, easy, with no fancy borders or anything.

Simplest thing we’ve found is to install the WP Columnize plugin.

Once activated you do need to carry out a couple of actions to get working:

Add your preferred style details to the style.css file for your theme (Appearance, Editor and be sure to select the style.css file). You can use the plugin creator’s suggestion here, as follows:

div.column-sect {
    clear: both;
    display: inline-block;
    overflow: auto;
    }

div.post-column {
    display: inline;
    float: left;
    margin-right: 18px;
    text-align: justify;
    width: 45%;
    }

Just add that code to the end of the style.css file, save it and your columns will be nicely formatted.

Next you want to use the columns. With the plugin activated and using the HTML sheet, you will see the two extra buttons – one for “column” and the other “col-sect”.

The first thing to do is write your first column, highlight it and click the column button – this will add the required code to make your first column. Then do the same for your second column. And after that, select both columns and click the col-sect button – encompassing the whole into a column section. And hey presto – columns. The plugin programmer offers more detail on his website here.

We’ll add a short video to this post next week, or if you get stuck, give us a shout.

Babs

So – you’ve decided to work with WordPress, the version that you arrange hosting for so that you can really make the most of the full functionality available, such being limited on the totally free WordPress.com version.

And before anything else, you need to know where it will live. Do you want a blog that lives within your website’s domain and hosting? Or is this to be a separate, new project?

What we’re outlining here are the essentials you need for hosting your WordPress. And if you cannot find the information you need on your host’s website, just ask – these are not silly questions, indeed some might think them a tad silly for not making such information easily available!

WordPress offer you the wording to send to your hosts asking for the information, as follows:

I’m interested in running the open-source WordPress <http://wordpress.org/> blogging software and I was wondering if my account supported the following:

• PHP 4.3 or greater
• MySQL 4.1.2 or greater
• The mod_rewrite Apache module

Thanks!

Once you know that these requirements are met, we suggest you then consider the pricing, the level of customer service, and also how helpful they can be for WordPress hosting. Some now offer specific packages just for WordPress, so that would certainly suggest they know what they’re on about. But another thing to consider is how well their servers respond, are the load times good – if you can visit some of their hosted websites to gauge load times for yourself, that can offer you a further level of confidence in their service.

My current favourite is ezpzhosting (not an affiliate link) – for the price, the ease of installing WordPress (a few clicks and it’s done) and the exceptional support. There are of course plenty other reliable and excellent WordPress hosts, feel free to add yours, with reasons, below.

We have helped people set up their WordPress on some of the bigger names and too often it is not as straightforward as it really should be. So go with a recommendation from someone you trust.

If we can help further, just ask…

Babs

It’s a privilege to work with and on a number of collaborative blogs, such as the “on the blog” brands – with Birds on the Blog proving to be a huge hit already, especially as Sarah only launched this in January! The Blokes on the Blog soon followed and has promise, and then we have a new Kent Business Buzz blog along the same idea.

To build on these and new projects, we need more bloggers. You don’t need to be a professional writer, indeed we love encouraging and enabling those of you with an interest to start blogging. And we have plenty of places to publish you! If you don’t fit a category we may just knit a new one!

So whatever your topics and level of experience, we need you!

Especially:

• Blokes - the Blokes on the Blog site includes all kinds of posts with the opinions, family and life blogs as well read as business blogs.
• Birds - already a welcome success – eclectic and readable – a strong team with guests always welcome.
• Kent business owners – a baby that we know will grow strong and popular – if you run a business in Kent, jump in.
• African heritage bloggers for a new project.
• Mums who want to blog – another “on the blog” kicking and screaming into the world following overwhelming insistence!
• Over 45s who like to let off steam – Grumpy Old Bloggers! Go on – let it out!

So if you enjoy writing and keen to spread your words far and wide, or just fancy dipping your toe in the water, then we have a use for you!

Why bother? Well it attracts people to you – they get to know you, your style, your area of expertise perhaps, or just your way of thinking. Many of us have a secret desire to write, and many of us won’t get to the book stage – but we can blog!

Either add a comment below or email hello@blogmistress.com with your ideas, available commitment or if you want to guest, on which topic, or if you just want to explore blogging for the first time. This really can be a good way to find out if it’s for you and we’re very helpful!

Guest bloggers always welcome too, so even if you just want to dip your toe in the water, get in touch. We’ll hold your hand and help all we can.

Babs

Long recognised as an essential plugin for WordPress blogs and websites, and something we’ve encouraged you to activate, Akismet does a good job of halting spam comments. Indeed each time we install a new WordPress blog, we’ve include the activation of the Akismet spam filter as standard- it’s always seemed sensible, being pretty good at what it does, and already sitting there ready for it’s API key (which makes it work, basically).

But last weekend, for the first time, on popping to the Akismet site for said key, I found that they’ve started charging for any but personal blogs. Now this is fair enough, in the grand scheme of things – a good service is provided and they’re not running a charity, after all.

Now we need to know if it is still the best option for those of us running business or even non-profit WordPress websites or blogs (though they do offer the latter a discount). Is Akismet worth the $5 per month? Should we pay it anyway out of loyalty for a service well provided?

I did ask the fine folk at Akismet what will happen to existing accounts but have yet to receive a reply – it may be that we’ll simply find out in due course, perhaps when their next update is due, or they may just let it go – there are a lot of us! In the meantime we’re reviewing the alternatives and considering the best service to halt the waves of comment spam. It’s unlikely that any free service will remain so if the mighty, omnipresent Akismet is now charging, so that needs to be taken into account before changing providers.

We’ll update you further as we are able. And if you have thoughts, suggestions, ideas for this, please share them…

Babs