I’ve been meaning to do this ever since I received an encouraging number of participants for this project through SocialSpark. Take a look at the top of this blog’s sidebar, and you will see a link called Take My Challenge. Read through the requirements before you request for one.

In case you missed my previous post concerning this topic, Take My Challenge is a project I started in SocialSpark as a way to build links to and from WebGrrrl.net. The way this works is that if you blog about and link to a post I made in this blog, I’ll respond in kind. Pretty simple stuff.

In a way, this also prevents me from going through a “writer’s block” — you know, when your brain goes through this weird spasm, and you suddenly don’t have any idea what to blog about? This is a pretty neat way for me to warm up my thoughts and start collecting ideas on topics I’m interested about.

I have tagged my posts as IBlogUBack on those related to this project, so if you’re interested and you like what you see, take my challenge now.

Since my preferred browser has always been Firefox, I thought I’d give the ScribeFire add-on a try. I would have been posting away with joy if it were not for my lame-slow Internet connection which I have to bear for another week.

Having the tool taking over half of my browser space took a little time to get used to, but it’s worth it for the convenience it gives me. I’m especially impressed with the multi-blog site and platform support, making it easy for me to switch from one blog to another whenever I feel the need to post in either one of the sites I own. I also like the fact that when I need to add a link I have copied, ScribeFire grabs the URL and automatically inserts it in the Add a Link option, then all I needed to do is click OK and the URL’s part of my post’s hyperlink.

I may take Wanderer Thoughts’ recommendation to use DashBlog, though. The part that caught my eye with this tool is its integration with Twitter. Active Twitter users may find this tool convenient for their use.

Despite it being a paid post, I am exactly in the same wavelength as Serial Box.net on using SocialSpark to connect with your blog visitors and increase your web site traffic.

I did blog about my recent attempt to use the Spark ad feature as part of my back linking strategy. What I haven’t mentioned (no thanks to my Internet connection) is that my advertisement was yanked a few days ago by IZEA for violating its terms of service. Specifically, I requested that there is no use of NoFollow on the link back from the reviewers’ blogs to mine, and removing NoFollow is a big NoNo for SocialSpark. For what it’s worth, responses for that short two days since I put up my Spark (after changing the title a bit by promoting my PR) was quite encouraging.

I’m thinking of making the IBlogUBack challenge a permanent one, as soon as I can find the time to put up a page on it. Will keep everyone posted.

Wouldn’t you want to blog every day for 29 days and be guaranteed a prize at the end? I would, and that is why I’ve accepted Eric Giguere’s One Page A Day challenge. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on his Uncommon AdSense e-book, and hope to be lucky enough to win his PLRSiteBuilder. I’m curious to see how and whether that tool works on a niche web site I’m planning to put up very soon.

Join in the challenge, and sign up by February 8 — not only does every one win, but it will do good for your blog to have not just daily posts, but quality ones at that.

After reading the comments from Ben and PapaJoneh concerning whether or not I should get a new domain for my baby blog, I’ve decided on getting a new domain at BlogOfRugrats.com. Now it’s just a matter of creating a customised theme which I plan to build from scratch. To do so, I’m currently reading the WordPress theme tutorial at WPDesigner.com as well as a little bit of referencing from NeedForContent.com.

The first couple of months may be easy for me in terms of adding content to the Blog of Rugrats, as I plan to copy-and-paste over the content from the old blog in Friendster once every few weeks. I’m still concerned with putting my children’s photos online, although I plan to continue making The Blog of Rugrats as a mix of posts and photoblog. Maybe there’s a WordPress plugin out there somewhere that can limit viewing of uploaded photos to a select few, while still displaying the posts that come with it.

If you have any suggestions as to how I can solve this dilemma, I’d appreciate some feedback.

I have decided to create a schedule of a themed post a day as my way to help sort out my compulsion to blog about everything at one time and ending up not blogging at all. My post schedule from now on will go like this:

• Monday: No post on Mondays. I don’t do Mondays.
• Tuesday: Multimedia day. This is when I’ll post some funky videos or audios that fancy me and which I hope others will fancy too, such as Matt Harding’s crazy dance around the world.
• Wednesday: WordPress and blogging improvement matters. I’ll be posting about WordPress widgets and modding matters, or some blogging ideas such as this post (coincidentally, today’s a Wednesday).
• Thursday: Gem of A Blog. It’s my glam word for bloghopping. I usually start hopping by visiting sites in my social networks and Top Commentators list. I’ll then be doing some brief reviews of blogs — and only blogs — that catch my eye or mind.
• Friday: Life-Changing Matters, One Little Step At A Time, similar to matters like my phantom power post. Maybe some intermittent posts called Matters that Matter on more serious issues such as my post on the Malaysian bloggers under threat.
• Saturday: I don’t want to-…. zzzzzz.
• Sunday: Fun, Funky and/or Freaky stuff online. In my previous online life, I used to call this my Doodads section. I have a lot of these on my blog, like my awesome astrological pair reading with Wentworth Miller and the Japanese slapping game.

On top of this, I figure that if I have a topic I want to blog about right now but doesn’t match the theme of the day, I’d simply schedule it for the appropriate day using the Future Post option in WordPress (i.e. changing the Post Timestamp to a future date). Also, if I have more than one post to blog about for a particular theme, I would still be blogging just one post a day, and set my other posts into the future. Not only will I not be at loss for words, I’ll also be free to do my sponsored posts and other matters that I’d like to be doing. I may even have extra free days for me to catch up on my sleep!

I’m sure this technique will be useful to solve one particular dilemma that I consider my major blogging pet peeve. When bloghopping, I do stumble upon blogs with posts that say “I don’t know what to blog about”, and suddenly went on to rant about something. My first reaction to that is to wring that person’s neck, but I usually give up on that feeling by screaming DUH!, and quickly leaving that blog, never to return again.

Heads up to One Penny Project for the inspiration.

If you have any doubt whether being a Top Commentator will actually bring visits from other blogs to your site, check out my Google Analytics’ Site Overlay report below.

Each bar represents the clicking popularity of the links in my site, in this case the main page. The humble WebGrrrl.net is viewed by around 1,200 unique visitors a month, and from the looks of it, one-third of the exit clicks from my site are made on the Top Commentators’ sites. (I have to note that my analytics for this month has dropped because I have forgotten to add the codes in when I did my site migration late last month; I only remembered to put it back in a couple of days ago.)

This goes to show that commenting more matters! Just remember, there is such thing as a blog commenting etiquette; don’t comment just for the sake of it, but make an effort and at least let it mean something to the blog owner. Otherwise, you’ll be turning yourself into a fool and may even get banned from the blog.

If you like to have a Top Commentators widget into your WordPress blog, it’s available at WebGrrrl.net for downloading.

Over the week, I’ve been pondering the fate that is WebGrrrl.net. To be honest, even with the seemingly lack of updates (seemingly, because I’m ignoring my paid posts), I actually have a lot of things in my mind I’d like to blog about. However, the topics I wanted to blog on doesn’t really fit into what I initially envisioned WebGrrrl.net to be, which was… umm, I wasn’t really sure what it was. I never really had a vision for WebGrrrl.net, but I know I wasn’t going to post on anything too personal, or too commercial, or short posts on what I found through my daily bloghoppings.

At first, I thought of refocusing the objective of WebGrrrl.net to topics concerning blogging and WordPress development; I would then create a new blog focusing on interesting doodads I found on the Web, and another blog on Web programming matters. Nah. I finally decided on creating just one more blog for my Web programming stuff called Coding Idiot, which will be launched next week. I may want to look for volunteers to contribute a post every fortnight, with some link love as exchange. Once things are really rolling, I plan to start paying bloggers who contribute to Coding Idiot. I’ll write up some more details in the new blog pretty soon.

As for my doodads idea, I may just dump them back here, because I’m sure others will find them fun as well.

So there. Cheers!