There’s one aspect of professional blogging I feel doesn’t get the cred it deserves: the Hired Blogger aspect.

Hired blogger are on a company’s payroll like regular employees or a consultants on a retainer. Depending on the arrangement, the hired blogger may be paid per per post or a fixed salary with specific goals and measured performance indicators. Responsibilities include writing blog posts on topics surrounding the company’s business and making sure that the blog posts are error-free and interesting enough to be shared around by the blog’s readers, and hopefully the company’s customers.

If you ask me, this kind of professional arrangement makes sense to the company and the blogger.

It really boils down to stability and consistency in the professional relationship– the company has a steady hand behind the blog and the company can give direct feedback about the posts with little fear that the blogger will just jump ship. The blogger, on the other hand, will have a predictable stream of income.

The only caveat here is the motivation factor. Money will never be the full motivator for the blogger to come up with good posts, so the company has to keep an eye on the hiring process to really see the candidates who really has the passion.

As I’ve said, blogging is marked by passion and but when a company tries to leverage on this passion, is there really anything amiss? From the professional side of things, it just makes sense if you ask me.

WPWorldMap.net is a new website created by Oliver Schloebe of WPSeek.com that lets Wordpress users mark their location onto a map for others to see. Each marked location reveals user profiles complete with personal information, a link to their blogs, and also their Twitter accounts.

Powered by Google Maps, the site is relatively easy to use. To map yourself all you need to do is to place a pin marker on your location and then signing up by filling in the required fields on the site’s registration form. It’s so easy that it only takes a few minutes.

Surveying the world map, on the other hand, is as easy as clicking and dragging. You can zoom in and out and even display the world in terrain, map, or satellite form. There’s also a search functionality that let’s you search according to users. You can even add a filter if you just want to display Wordpress users, developers, core developers, Wordpress related companies, or even fans.

The great thing about this new site is that it gives us a good picture of how many Wordpress users there are, not just in the whole world, but also in a particular country or area. This is great tool if you want to find out if there are any Wordpress users near your location which is ideal for making new friends and for blog networking!

But of course, the site needs the cooperation of the community as it cannot populate itself. So if you don’t mind revealing your location to others, why not sign up and map yourself now. Oh, and don’t forget to share it to your friends!

Go Wordpress Warriors!

This is the main reason why most people are afraid to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. Thank God Wordpress is always on the lookout for better ways of making things easier for its community. Alas, comes the birth of the Plugin Compatibility Beta.

Compatibility Check

If you would drop by the Wordpress Plugin Directory you would notice that there is a new section titled “Compatibility” found on the right sidebar of every plugin homepage . This is a new feature that aims to help inform people on whether a version of a plugin is compatible on a particular version of Wordpress based on the votes casted by those who have already tested it.

So if you’re not sure whether you should upgrade, just check out the Plugin compatibility consensus of the plugins your using. Though it doesn’t tell us exactly what made the plugin incompatible, at least it gives us a good overview on whether we should continue the upgrade or not.

Powered by the Wordpress Community

Of course, this feature would not work without the input of the community as it is mainly powered by votes. If you do happen to experience any problems with your plugins, then please take the time to inform everyone else! All you have to do is to go to the Plugin’s page and log in to vote.

The voting process is simple. Just specify the version of Wordpress and the plugin and click on whether it is “broken” or if it “works”. After that, Wordpress would automatically log your vote and it will be added to the “consensus” along with the votes of other users.

Wordpress warns users, however, that this feature should not be used to report any minor issues with the plugin. You should only vote “Broken” if the plugin is indeed broken to the point that it is unusable or causes problems with your blog. Otherwise, it might give an inaccurate consensus.

More power to Wordpress and its community!

What do you think about this new feature? Do you have any other suggestions that could make it better?

But once the template has been selected, one big assumption oftentimes  arises: This template works in all browsers.

Blog templates are never 100% working, especially with some broken browsers (*cough*IE6*cough*) still out there.

It’s good practice to test the browser yourself with the common browsers. You can start with Internet Explorer (version 7 and 8 if possible) and Mozilla Firefox. These two browsers would already comprise almost 80% of browsers out there. For good measure, you can also check on Google Chrome and Opera Browser. To be sure, you can refer to your blog’s stats (if available) to see which browser the majority of your readers are using and test your blog’s template.

If you don’t want to install extra browsers in your machine, there’s always BrowserShots, a web site that will take a snapshot of your sites using different browsers.

Just remember not all browsers are created equal and a blog template not working could spell the difference between a successful blog and a lemon.

By now, tips are all over the web on how to make your blog search engine optimized and how to get to the top SERP (search engine result page) for keywords related to your niche. But while it is generally accepted to be aware and avail of the basic SEO techniques, most bloggers are concerned that they are not concerned about SEO enough.

But really, how concerned should bloggers be about SEO?

If you ask me, not as much as before.

These days, the entry point to the web just got wider because there’s social media. Content discovery is the primary function of search, but social media (in the form of blogs and microblogs) may give users what they need. Thus, instead of being concerned about being “findable,” bloggers should now strive to be “shareable.”

PodPress was supposed to have resumed development back in August but two months has already passed and no news about its progress has been revealed at all.

Supporters of the plugin have been trying to contact the author for confirmation but to no avail. Rumors are circulating that podPress might not continue its development but some argue that this is not possible as there are already sponsors backing it.

Whatever the reason for the lack of updates on the plugin, I guess we have no choice but to wait for Dan to reveal any news. I’ll be sure to post updates regarding the progress of podPress here on BloggingPro so be sure to tune in.

Anyone else excited about podPress’ return? Be sure to leave your comments!

When a mobile phone views a Wordpress.com blog, the contents are now shown using special mobile themes. The theme that is displayed differs depending on the device used. For IPhone and Android devices, a theme which is a modification of WPTouch is displayed. Visitors get easy access to posts, pages, and archives, as well as AJAX commenting and post loading. When viewing using other mobile devices, a theme developed from an old version of Wordpress Mobile Edition is displayed which shows the all the important important information of the blog’s content while making sure that it loads everything quickly.

The only thing lacking with this new upgrade is the ability to customize the mobile themes. There’s no option that lets you change colors or even the use of CSS. This means that your blog will look the same as all the other Wordpress.com blogs. Well, at least, visitors are given the option to switch the “Full site” mode to view the original non-mobile version of your blog.

This new feature is automatically enabled on all Wordpress.com blogs. To turn off this feature, go to Appearance > Extras in the Admin Dashboard and uncheck the “Display a mobile theme when this blog is viewed with a mobile browser.”

For self-hosted Wordpress users, you can also make your blog mobile-ready using the following plugins: WPTouch, CarringtonMobile or MobilePress.

Here’s a review of the different methods bloggers can earn money through their blogs:

• Banner Advertising – The granddaddy of online business model still works today, despite the ad spend slowdown. Of course, advertisers are attracted to popular, high-traffic blogs.
• Pay Per Click Advertising – A democratized method since this requires more focused niches,  this is perhaps the most common way bloggers earn. Ad networks like Google AdSense, BlogAds, and AdBrite provide relatively easy way to monetize blogs.
• Paid posts/reviews – An ethical grey area for most bloggers, this will surely be affected by the recent FTC announcement about blog reviews and testimonials. This type of regulation is not new, but may blaze the trail for other governments to implement their own version.
• Getting hired as a Blogger – Bloggers can also take the “Professional Blogger” route by getting hired to blog or join a blog publishing network. This is most stable ways of making money but the most restrictive if you ask me.

For some people, this is obvious but new bloggers who have just entered into the fold must be reminded that there’s more to earning online than just Google AdSense.

Maybe you haven’t tried these five things to help your blog traffic:

1. Invest some cash on advertising – You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to get some advertising on the web. Pay Per Click advertising is pretty flexible when it comes to budgets. Or try to put banner ads on a popular blog. (Ideally, that blogger is a friend of yours. )
2. Promote via micro-blogs – There’s a school of thought that micro-blogging (read: Twitter) is killing blogging. While it’s arguable, but if you have a healthy number of followers, try to tweet about your latest blog post.
3. Tell your friends – Don’t underestimate the power of the offline social network. The common irony is that bloggers often tell the online world about their blog but not their offline friends.
4. Alter your writing style – You don’t have to take writing classes, simple alterations to your writing to make it easy to absorb. Focusing more on web usability can also help your new writing style.
5. Change your blog theme – Blog themes are not expected to blow anyone away, but it should facilitate the reading of blog posts. Maybe your blog template is as cluttered as your closet– better change it ASAP.

Your blog may not be the Boing Boing’s or the Huffington Posts of the world, but trying other things to get people to notice it can help your voice be heard.

Here are two situations wherein Blogger may be a possible CMS for you:

1. When you’re pressed for time – You can purchase a domain name and use it on a Blogger blog very quickly. Themes for Blogger is also available and easy to implement.
2. When user management is not crucial – The thing with Blogger is that, as of now, there are only two levels of users: Authors and Administrators. If you’re the one who will be managing the content, then Blogger is OK.

Undoubtedly, making Blogger as a CMS is a challenge. Unlike WordPress, there is no “Page” content type, only generic blog posts. Also, the URL’s of Blogger posts are automatically generated. This feature makes it hard to create pages with specific titles reflect on the URL.

To make Blogger into your CMS, a few simple steps are needed:

1. Remove all gadgets, expecially the archive and label
2. Download a Blogger template with a navigation menu and removes the post date.
3. To manually remove the date header in the post, go to “Edit HTML” in the Layout editing section. Make sure that “Expand Template Widgets” is checked and look for “<data:post.dateHeader/>” and remove it
4. After writing the site’s content, take note of the URL. Edit the template’s navigation bar to direct to the post’s URL.

Blogger may not be the most elegant of CMS solutions, but there are select situations that it might work.