I’ve pretty much neglected the comments area on this blog, probably because there was never much activity. But as the blog starts to pull in more readers this year there’s been more feedback and I was beginning to realize how crap the default Wordpress commenting system is. Ideally I was looking for a plug-in that offered threaded commenting to keep the conversation flow more fluid and easier to follow.

I’d seen Disqus on a few other blogs but was unaware of the speed and efficiency of this neat little Wordpress plugin.

In about half an hour I’d downloaded the plug-in, installed it and set it up. The other really neat feature is that Disqus will import all the comments already on your blog. It makes it more user friendly with its threaded commenting.

Its also integrated with the option to include Facebook Connect so people can comment using their Facebook login details rather than having to go through the new sign up process just to comment. Will have to see how much, if any difference this makes, but whatever, am really loving this set-up right now. Highly recomended.

With all the hype about ‘music 2.0′ tools, hosts and websites for musicians, bands and artists, its quite possible that you could easily forget one of the most important aspects of having an online presence as a band/label/DJ/creative. Its strictly old school too. Its your own domain name.

I wrote about it last month here and this is just to expand on the advantages. OK, you have your MySpace sub domain name, one at iLike, Multiply, iMeem and all the other free social music sites. Great, but unless you’re paying for a premium service there’s a possibility that any of these services could disappear down a dotcom black hole. OK then, maybe not MySpace, but its a crowded marketplace and sites do go dark.

“Dec. 2, 2003 was doomsday for independent music. As of noon Tuesday, Mp3.com closed its server and deleted its roughly 750,000 files, marking the end of the largest catalogue of free Internet downloads from hundreds of thousands of unsigned bands..” (from the Eagle Online)

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Hit Singularity have a great article on how to market your band without having to spam MySpace. ‘10 Fast and Free Strategies To Market Your Band (Without Resorting To Spamming People On Myspace)’, in it they highly recommend starting your own blog.

“In 2009 the single most powerful bloc of people in the music industry are music bloggers. If you are written up by 40 blogs then your album will sell twice as much as it would otherwise. Music blogs are a far more powerful promotional tool than MySpace.”

So says a study by New York University which you can download as a PDF here. 

If you’re wanting a bunch of MP3 blogs to approach with a promo drive there’s a list of over a thousand MP3 and music blogs at aggregator Hype Machine.

The Buzzsonic.com blog runs on the latest version of Wordpress, which if you didn’t already know is a beautiful piece of open source freeware. You can get one of these on a sub domain via Wordpress.com or, better idea, you can host your own Wordpress install on your own domain name.

First things first. Buy your own domain name (if you don’t already own one). I’m now using Google Domains, not just because its Google (they actually go through Godaddy anyway) but because the domain (a worthwhile spend of $10) comes preconfigured with Google Apps and email.

You’ll need a webhost next. We use Hostgator, simply because they’re very fairly priced, are reliable and more importantly have great support if something goes wrong. A lot of people make the fatal mistake of choosing a webhost on lowest price and then discover that the only support is via an email address that never gets answered. You get what you pay for.

A typical hosting account here will cost from around $5 to $13 for multiple domain hosting. Another important part of Hostgator’s (and many other hosts too by the way) service is that they use the online website manager CPanel which has a really great add on called Fantastico.

Fantastico is basically is a script auto-installer, so forget any messy FTP uploads of source code. A Wordpress install is literally ninety seconds away.

For a more pro look you’ll need to add a nicer looking theme/template to change the Wordpress default look. Thousands of freebies around, start here.  We use one from the rather cool Design Disease.

The only other thing we did here was add a few plug-ins like Sociable, Social Homes Widget, the MyBlogLog and Last FM widgets. Most of the other stuff I’ve added using the built in Wordpress text widgets which you can drag into the sidebars in the admin area.

And that’s it. Buzzsonic.com cost less than $20 to set-up, the only other cost is time and imagination.

Related Blog Promotion Resources

Fantastico!Installing Wordpress in CPanel (Information Marketing Central)
NYU Researchers Study Music Blog Buzz (Coolfer.com)
Does Chatter Matter? The Impact of User-Generated Content on Music Sales (NYU-PDF Study)
Hype Machine Top Music Blogs (HypeM.com)
20 Tips For Pitching Bloggers (TheFutureBuzz.com)
5 Remarkable Things You Should Learn From Music (And How You Can Apply Them To Your Blog) (DailyBlogTips.com)
Tips For Starting Your Own Music Blog (Squidoo.com)
Hit Singularity (Hit Singularity)
100 Social Media Resources For Musicians (GenYRockStars.com)
Social Networks For Musicians (SocialNetworksForMusicians.com)

Since the blog makeover a couple of weeks ago I’ve been bombarded by comment spam for some reason. Its one of the things that makes blogging work and not fun. So, I finally activated Askimet (Automattic Kismet to give it its full name) on my WordPress install (didn’t really pay attention to it before for some reason?). Its actually working wonders right now and since activating the plug-in its halted more than 2,200 of the most bloodcurdlingly despicable types of spam you can imagine that up to now I’ve been having to edit manually daily.

Askimet comes installed by default in Word Press but you have to activate it in the Plugins area in your admin area and get a free APi key. A five minute task that’ll save you hours of work weekly.

Related Links

Askimet FAQ ( Askimet)

I’m toggling between using Windows Live Writer for posting right now vs. using the Performancing Firefox add-on ScribeFire. Though for the last two days the Live Writer has been crashing everytime I try to add an image to the post. After losing two hours work yesterday I was on the brink of dumping the app completely and returning to ScribeFire.Having second thoughts Writer is simply fuller featured and offers things like the ability to add images to posts (ScribeFire doesn’t) and preview the post in your blog before publishing (much like WordPress does in the admin panel), two features I cant really do without.

Also ScribeFire doesn’t seem to have a minimize option so you either have to put up with it hogging the bottom of your screen, or you save and close. Obtrusive and I hate obtrusive, its what sends me rushing to the delete option!

Anyway, the crashing. Until I find the conflict (it used to work fine) I found an excellent plug-in which works around the problem Flickr4Writer.

Flickr4Writer is a simple plugin for Windows Live Writer that enables you to browse Flickr and insert an image from Flickr into a Writer post. The project is part of CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.

I mentioned this WordPress plug-in briefly in yesterdays post here , though I didn’t elaborate much. But anyway, Postalicious is another useful plug-in that you may find of use if you’re running a WordPress blog.

Postalicious is a plug-in that automatically posts your del.icio.us bookmarks to your blog. I’m using it here and it works great if you are running Firefox with the del.icio.us browser extension. That way you can add bookmarks as you browse without visiting del.icio.us and at the end of the day the plug-in will add your daily finds as a post. Neato.

Related

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection (QuickOnlineTips.com)
Del.icio.us Firefox Extension (Del.icio.us)
Del.icio.us A to Z By Function (Econsultant.com)

I’ve been using the blogging software WordPress for around three years now and in all of that time there really is nothing to touch it. Why? Its free (Open Source), it has a massive user base and support network, plug-ins, mods, widgets and themes galore, oh and did I mention it doesn’t cost a penny?

Of course free doesn’t always mean great but in this case, you get what you don’t pay for. I have tried literally hundreds of mods over the years, different themes/skins and modifications. Basically I like to tinker and I think I’m getting closer to my ideal WordPress install (at least for my needs).

Buzzsonic.com (as of today) runs on WordPress v2.0.2, so its not the latest install (which is v2.1.2). Anyway, I thought I’d list my top ten (or eleven!) modifications which I’m finding the most useful right now. This could well change soon but these are what I consider the most useful WordPress mods.

1. Glossy Blue Theme- For a simple, quick overhaul of the default WordPress look this neat two column Web 2.0-ish looking theme is one of the easiest ways to get a cool looking make-over. A close second was Glued Ideas Subtle which you might go for if you prefer a three column look. Honorable mentions go to Misty Look and Semiologic (I’m using an older install of this theme here). (more…)

OK, its been a long time since I even looked at this blog, let alone posted to it. Main reason? Well, I simply had too many projects running, including four blogs and two directories, so cutting those down is going to help to prioritize. Oh, the full time job kind of gets in the way too! So its down to Buzzsonic and iExploreFlorida.com only now and I’ve been trying two blogging tools that I think are going to help in shaving off some time wasting. I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to do my posts at Florida Travel Hacks which has actually been great, though I’m now also trying the Performancing plug-in (since renamed ScribeFire) for Firefox which is enabling me to blog using the browser rather than having to log-in to my Word Press admin area.

Live Writer also has a Firefox extension which I’m going to be trying as well. So, will be adding feedback here and seeing if a favourite emerges. Post wise, I’m pretty much going to be covering the same stuff though will adding more resources for fellow bloggers. Stay tuned !

OK, as you can see if you click on any of the category links or archives we’re having major problems (php errors) right now as well as going through a webhost move and several database issues so please have patience. I’m hoping everything will be sorted out by the weekend OK. And there will be more posting  asap. Thanks for the patience !

Well I struggled with the Word Press upgrade. Even following the helpful support links at Word Press itself and doing the usual Google search I had some scary moments, php errors, parts of the site vanishing etc. Ouch. I’d backed up the whole website archive to my desktop so I was able to restore the site and try again (thankfully!).

Anyway, I decided the safest way (but not the quickest way) was to install the latest version of Word Press side by side the old version in a different directory on my server and painstakingly move all the old posts over by hand. One thing that Word Press dosn’t seem to support as yet (at least I couldn’t find it) is migrating the content over from Word Press to Word Press, although there is support for moving from alternate blogging platforms over to Word Press (I hope you’re still following me here).

So thats the latest, a weekend of moving content. The old Buzzsonic was running on Word Press 1.5 using the Semiologic theme by Denis de Barnardy. The new Buzzsonic is running on Word Press 2.0.3 using the rather cool looking Durable theme by CSS whizz Andy Partling.

Word Press Resources

Word Press Codex (WordPress.org)
Word Press Theme Browser (AlexKing.org)
Word Press News (Wordlog.com)
Word Press Guides (Tamba2.org.uk)
Word Press Station (WPStation.com)
Word Press Theme Park (WebDesignBook.net)
Word Press Plug-ins Database (WP-Plugins.net)
How to Make a Word Press Theme (TheUndersigned.net)
Social Bookmark Link Creator (TwisterMC.com)

Forever changing….We seem to have been taking one too many ’sabbaticals’ from this blog over the last year, juggling too many projects is one excuse, another is that my ideas are continually shifting.
So, another bit of a slight change on the editorial front as we’re now focussing the blog on highlighting more personal technology like blogging, RSS, bookmarking, popdcasting, software and the like as opposed to the original focus, which was the digital music industry when we started as MusicBizNews24.com (a while ago now!). Call it convergence if you like. Not jumping on any bandwagon you understand, just trying to focus a little clearer.

The remainder of this week will be a bit of a site makeover to hopefully make things easier on the eye, an update to our Word Press (we’re still on 1.5 here as apposed to 2. whatever its at now) and shifting the old database over, oh, and the more search engine friendly URL feature that the latest Word Press has.

Anyway, proper new posts and more updates at the weekend. Keep your eye out.
Adrian