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I just realised today that when I uploaded this new layout for the blog I forgot to enable the do follow plug in for the comments section. By default Wordpress disables the follow setting on any links in comments so search engines will not follow this link to the posters site. However I believe that if someone takes the trouble to provide a comment on your posts, they deserve to get the link back. Unless you’re a spammer of course in which case, may your digits drop off one by one (just kidding, actually not really, stop spamming and get a life)
If you’re interested in this plugin, it is quick and easy to install and doesn’t require any set up, you just simply activate it, if you wish to do so there is an option to disable it for posts beyond a certain age. The one I use is available at michelem.org.
So feel free to comment on any of my posts, especially if you have something good to add to the article and just remember you will get a link back for your trouble. By the way, if your interested in finding a list of blogs that enable follow in comments, there is a directory of them at dofollowblogs.com.
I’ve been working at home for some time now and I’ve learned all the good things and bad things about working this way. I know lots of people have strong opinions on home working, some just don’t understand and assume you loaf around all day, others thing you are so lucky to be doing it. But the truth is working from home can be hard too, you have to be extremely disciplined, you have to be able to manage your own time well and sometimes you can feel very isolated.
But despite all that, I love working from home and I wouldn’t want to be back in a busy office if there was any way at all to avoid it. So here are some tips from me on surviving home working.
1. Environment – If you’re planning on spending a large percentage of your time working at home, a laptop on the dining table or a little desk in the corner of the lounge isn’t going to work out. I know everyone can’t have the luxury of a dedicated office but you really need to try and get as much a personal space for working as you can. Somewhere you can shut the door and cut off the world outside when you need to. A spare bedroom maybe, a loft, whatever you can manage. Personally I feel this is vital to long term home working.
2. Planning – When you are your own boss of your own time, it is extremely important to plan your day out well as it is so easy to get distracted. At the end of your working day plan your next day’s activities, try to reserve times for general tasks like emails, book keeping etc. Also the thing I find effective, is to put those horrible jobs, the ones you like the least at the top of your list and do them first. Once they’re done the whole rest of your day will feel better. Also when planning your next days list, try to keep it sensible, put down enough tasks that you know you can achieve in a day, don’t make it impossible for yourself.
3. Take Breaks – When you’re at home, especially alone it can be so easy to lose hours working and then suddenly you realise your thirsty, your eyes are tired and your brain is no longer working effectively. Don’t be afraid to take breaks, your working at home to give yourself flexibility so use it. I advise though not to go turn on the TV, it is too tempting to pass too much time once that box is on. If it’s nice go and sit in the garden for ten minutes, or do a little gardening, if it’s not then maybe a little housework or DIY. This brings me onto the next point.
4. Avoid Distractions – When I am working at home I have found that I have to be very disciplined with myself in terms of distractions. I have no TV in the office or games consoles, when I am working I allow myself Internet Radio or iTunes but nothing else. I know some people can cope with the TV as just background noise, but for me I just find it far to distracting.
5. Enjoy It – Always remember why you chose to work from home. Keep that thought in your mind when you’re struggling with it, when you’re feeling isolated or tired, or frustrated. Think of the freedoms it gives you, enjoy every cheque that comes in, knowing that it is only you that earned yourself that cheque. Just remember the alternative is driving through rush hour traffic, being told how to run your day, hardly seeing the family.
Well these are the things that I have found to help me with working from home, I hope something here might be useful to you. Feel free to comment, I’d love to here of your experiences of home working.
I wanted to add a section to the sidebar today for the blog to list all the affiliate networks I use to make money. Because the new blog design is widget ready, I wanted to make it as a widget ready plugin as opposed to just a normal bullet list. Of course there was no great reason to do this with such a simple list, but I was curious to see how it’s done and I wanted to control my whole side panel from the widget menu in Wordpress.
As it turns out, making a basic widget ready plugin is not that difficult as long as you have a basic understanding of php. All you do is write it as a standalone php document, upload it to your plugins directory, enable it in your control panel and then add the widget to the side bar.
In terms of writing the php inside the plugin file I won’t explain the whole process here, there is a much better explanation that I used at a site called Lonewolf Online I followed this example to create mine and if you look down the side bar you can see that it worked perfectly.
The only thing I really needed to change from this example was to change the class of the title “H2″ tag to the correct class from my CSS file.
Now that I’ve done it and seen what’s involved I may have a go at writing something more sophisticated. If that is I can think of something that hasn’t already been done and done better, wish me luck.
As you can tell if you’ve been here before, the blog has had a bit of a makeover with a brand new theme. The theme was actually designed by a very skilled graphic designer I know and I coded it myself, using other themes as a guide to how on earth to do it.
I am very happy with it, not just because it looks great but also because we were able to do the whole thing in house and it was much less complicated than I feared it would be.
I have tested just about anything I can think of but it’s possible that there are still bugs in it somewhere. If you do see anything feel free to comment. In fact I’d love to know what you think of the theme, so drop a little comment and let me know your opinion of it.
One thing I am always looking out for is good CSS resources, so I thought I’d share some of the the ones I’ve used in the past for making things like navigation bars, rounded corners etc. I try to create these things from scratch myself but often these sites can give you a good nudge in the right direction, or they may have a template that fits perfectly with your design.
After the blog hack last week I decided to upgrade Wordpress to the latest version. There were two reasons to do this, firstly it made me feel more comfortable to overwrite the php files with all new versions and re-install all my plug ins (paranoid I know).
Secondly I’d used the latest version on my new blog I’ve launched for bargain hunting and vouchers etc. I really like the new admin console with the latest version so I was very eager to get it running here too. (more…)
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