Believe it or not being a rock star and having a successful blog are quite similar and I will point out some of those similarities here.

First off both successful blogs and rock stars have a lot of people that come to see them and are anxiously awaiting the next song or post to be released to the public.

They also have people that spend money to purchase their merchandise as well as pay them to endorse their product. 

With rock stars these are usually things like t-shirts, songs and possibly endorsements on TV commercials. 

With successful rock star blogs these are things like your own products, t-shirts (yes, there are a lot of blogs that sell t-shirts) and the endorsements are usually affiliate products.

What does it take to create a rock star blog?

Basically it take same things to become a rock star blogger as it does to be a rock star but there are many more opening for rock star bloggers than there are for true rock stars.

But here are the basics for how to create a rock star blog.

Sing your own songs in your own voice – This is obvious for the true rock stars for bloggers it means that you need to provide original content on your blog.

This doesn’t mean that you have to write all your own content, there are a lot of rock stars that hire people to write their songs BUT they always review and rehearse these songs and change what they don’t like before they release them to the public.

If you are purchasing content (and I don’t care where) you need to review it, check to make sure it fits with your blog and change what you don’t like or what doesn’t sound like you.  This way all the songs (posts) will sound like they came from the same band no matter who wrote them.

Prepare your stage – every big rock star has a stage that is part of the show.  Your blog is your stage and it should present an image that you are proud of and reflects you and your content.

This doesn’t mean that you have to have explosions and flashing lights everywhere you look but you should have it look professional.  It doesn’t have to be flashy to be professional but it does need to be clean easy to read and navigate.

Make sure your roadies know their job – Most rock stars are their own roadies when they first start out. The carry their own equipment, set up the instruments and test them all by themselves.  As they grow in popularity they hire roadies to take care of this.

For rock star blogger you already have at least one roadie and this is your hosting service.  The amount of help you get from this roadie depends on the service.  If you just want the basics you can use sites like Blogger.com or WordPress.com and just get the basics.  If you want to have the roadies take care of some of the technical aspects of your blog like SEO and plugins you can go with a service like Blafeo.com.  If you are a unique show (special features and plugins) you will need to find a hosting service that is reliable and either you need to know the specifics (plugins, SEO, product creation) or you need to hire a roadie to handle them for you.

Train your stagehands – Rock stars usually have stage hands that are responsible for specific items such as lighting, sound and special effects.

If you are running your own blog with special features then you can look at plugins as your stage hands, they will take care of much of the process in the background and you can tell them what they need to do and just forget about it.  You will have to check up on them every now and then to see if they are still doing their job, in other words you need to check to see if the plugin needs updated.

Sing on key – This goes for your back up singers too. For a rock star this is an obvious point, for a rock star blog this means you need to stay on topic in your niche.  And you need to make sure your backup singers are on topic too.  Who are your backup singers?  They are guest bloggers, affiliate programs and anything else that will be visible to your fans on your rock star blog. 

How do affiliate programs become your backup singers?  Here is an exaggerated example; let’s say you have a blog on saving the whales and an affiliate program that sell harpoons, this affiliate program would definitely be a sour note on your performance.

Everything should stay in your niche or be something that supports your niche, this is how you stay on topic through out your blog.

The more gigs you schedule the better – every time a rock star plays a gig he can add fans and followers to his product and the more fans and followers he has the more tickets, CD’s and merchandise he can sell.

For a rock star blog every post is a gig and you have the chance of getting new fans with every post.  The more posts you have that are on topic (in your niche) the more chances you have of building your fan base and selling your merchandise. 

One of the major keys here is to stay on topic in your niche. You won’t find many rock stars singing opera to gain fans they might stray into country a little to steal a few fans because there is some overlap in those niches, but their main following will always be rock and roll.

Promote your gigs – before rock stars are rock stars they usually do all their own promotion, usually by word or mouth or putting up posters in high traffic areas.

A rock star blog will do the same thing. Except their word of mouth is usually an RSS feed, a tweet, search engine optimization or an email and their posters don’t go on telephone poles they go on social bookmarking sites like Stumpleupon, Digg and countless others.  Of course, just like with the rock star the more promotion you get the more people there will be that show up at your gigs.

As you can see there are a number of ways being a rock star is comparable to creating a successful blog.  There are more ways that they are the same such as learning your chords instead of lip syncing but I covered that in another post.

I bet some of you are still wondering what all this has to do with “How to create a rock star blog”.  The answer is that all the steps listed above are needed to create a rock star blog all you need to do it follow them and you will find fans of your blog showing up at your gigs.

If you liked this post how about putting up some posters for me using the buttons below.

Tags: Affiliate Products, Big Rock, Big Star, blog, Blogger, Blogging Instructions, blogs, Endorsements, Explosions, Flashing Lights, Lot, money, Rock Star, Rock Star Blog, Rock Stars, rockstar, True Rock, Tv Commercials

WARNING TECHNICAL POST! ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!

 

Yes, this is covering technical (geeky) aspects but I am trying to put in layman’s terms.

I wrote a post talking about having suPHP on the server was actually a benefit for people using WordPress 2.7. In response to that post I was asked, “What is suPHP?” I will attempt to answer that here but I will have to put out some background first.

suPHP is a program that controls who can access certain files. The earlier version was PHPsuExec but that is quickly being replaced by suPHP and the two do basically the same thing.

Now to explain about permissions I am going to have to start at the very beginning.

It starts with scripts, scripts are programs that run on your server that give your website or blog the ability to process information that can be stored or displayed when requested. WordPress blogging software is a script.

All script files need to be authorized to run on the server and this is done by setting permissions (CHMOD). There are three categories that permissions can be set for and three types of permissions.

The categories are:

User – this is the site or file owner.

Group – this is for select members that have access to certain areas of your server or script.

Other – covers anyone that isn’t the user or the group.

Permissions

Read - allows the file to be read

Write – allow the file to be modified

Execute - allows the file to be run on the server.

The permission are usually described with either letters or numeric values

1 or x = execute
2 or w = write
4 or r = read

Most commonly you will see instructions telling you to set the permissions (CHMOD) to a file to a number like 755. The numbers come from a sum of the permissions granted. In this case it would be:

User = 7 – this is 1 for execute, 2 for write and 4 = 7
Group = 5 – this is 1 for execute, 4 for read = 5
Other = 5 – this is 1 for execute, 4 for read = 5

This permission would let anyone that comes to your site read the file and execute it but they couldn’t change it only you (the server) can change the file.
PHP scripts usually run with the user as “Nobody”. This means that the control of the file or directory is directly related to the permissions set for the file.

Since “Nobody” is not the User or a Group member that means it is Other and for the script to run properly you might have to set the permissions to a file or a directory to allow all these categories to use the file. This would be a read, write and execute for all categories (777)

The problem with this is that you are letting people from off your server execute files. This opens up the possibility of adding code to a URL and giving them access to your entire site depending on the file they can get into and how it is coded.

This is a big, make that BIG, security risk and should be avoided.

Now enter suPHP or PHPsuExec, both of these will stop PHP from running as “Nobody” and make it so the files can only be written by the User.

This is one layer in defense against hackers but it does affect the way that you have to set your permissions on your site.

If your server is running suPHP or PHPsuExec and you are told to give a folder or directory the permission of 777 and you do so, when you try to run the program you will probably get an error, usually a 500 Internal Server error.

How do you know if your server is running suPHP or PHPsuExec?

Basically, if you set your permissions on a folder to 777 and you get the 500 Internal Sever error your server might be running suPHP or PHPsuExec, but it could be another error with the script. Your best bet is to ask your hosting service if you are. I know HostGator and Niche Simple (two of the hosting companies I use for blogs) use it and more and more hosting services are starting to use it.

The key thing to remember is that if you are installing a script and you have suPHP or PHPsuExec running on the server and you are told to set permissions (CHMOD) to certain files and folders and you do this and the script doesn’t work, change all your folder/directory permissions to 755 and all your file permissions to 644 and try again this usually fixes the problem.

Tags: blog, Blog Security, Blogging, CHMOD, PHPsuExec, Scripts, suPHP, WordPress

I am not going to tell you that there is only one “best” hosting service for WordPress blogs but I will tell you that some are considerably better than others especially with the release of WordPress 2.7

What are you looking for when you look for hosting for a WordPress blog?

For the most part the same things you will look for in any reliable hosting service:

• Lots of storage space
• Lots of bandwidth
• Fast reliable support
• Very little down time
• Low cost

This are the common factors you want to look for when you are looking for hosting for any site but when it comes to a WordPress blog there is one other feature you might want to look for, suPHP.

Right about now most of you are saying, “What the heck is suPHP?”

I can give you a very technical definition that I barely comprehend myself or I can tell you this. It is a php code that lets you run files and folders on your site with different permissions.

Permissions (CHMOD) are set to let the server, user or anyone modify a file on your site and are usually represented by numeric values such as 777 (let anyone in the world modify this file) sometime files need to have the permissions changed to a value that is not secure and invites hackers into the site, such as the 777 above.

Once you have suPHP installed the site will use different permissions to have the files modified without opening them up to every body in the world.

So why does this affect WordPress blogs?

With WordPress 2.7 new features were added that will let you automatically update your version of WordPress or automatically download and install plugins. If you have suPHP running on your server these features work very well without modification or the need to FTP into your site to change permissions.

If you don’t have suPHP on your site you will have to change the permissions of files and folders to make sure everything works correctly. With some hosting you might have to set the permissions at 777 and this could just be inviting hackers to your blog.

How do you know if your host is using suPHP?

The easiest way to find out is to ask them?

If you aren’t already hosting with them this would also be a good way to find out how well their support system works before you purchase.

Just go to the support section (make sure your request goes to technical support and not sales) and ask them if they are running suPHP. If it takes them a week to get back to you then you probably don’t want to use this service. If they get back to you in less than 4 hours it is a reasonable response anything under one hour is good.

One thing that might happen to you that will point out that your server has suPHP running on it is, if you ever change a file or folders permissions in a PHP script and you get an error, specifically a 500 internal server error that usually means you are running suPHP. To fix this error set all your folders at 755 and all your php files at 644 and it everything should work for you.

I am sure there are a lot of reliable hosting services that offer everything that has been mentioned here but one that I have worked with and have personal experience with their support and service is HostGator. For blogging purposes I haven’t found a better hosting service for Blogging Beginners.

If you know of any other services that have all the features listed above go ahead and leave a link as a comment to this post. But do not put in more than one or your post will go to moderation.

Tags: blog, Blog Hosting, Blogging, blogging software, WordPress Blog