That’s right WordPress 2.8 is just around the corner.

The exact date it will be available I am not sure of but there are some cool changes with the widgets and theme installer.

I installed the beta (on a non working site of course) and created a quick video to show you some of the changes that will be coming.

Watch the video below and let me know what you think.

By the way if you noticed the Twitter Bribe below, I might as well tell you there is no bribe if you want to know more about that Robert Plank plugin you can read about it in the Tweet Rewards From Your Blog post.

It has been brought to my attention that I have never made a post on simply how to blog.

I actually thought I did but after reviewing the post on this blog I saw that I really didn’t cover the basics of how to blog.

Basically blogging is just writing that is shown on the internet for the whole world to see. That is all it is and to blog all you have to do is write.

The key is to (as Wizzer would say), “Do It Now!”

That’s right to get started just write, don’t worry about RSS, SEO, widgets, plugins or anything else just get your first post up and available for the world to see.

Why do I say the secret of how to blog is just getting that first post up there?

Simple a lot of people want to blog but they don’t have any idea what to blog about. Getting that first post up is a major step in blogging and it could be in a niche that will be profitable for you or is could just be about the weather but if you can’t make one post then you will have a hard time posting every week.

This doesn’t mean that you should blog about just anything, if you want a profitable blog you need to stick to subjects that people read but this can come later.

The key point is to get comfortable with writing a post. This can be on a free service like WordPress.com or you can install WordPress on your site.

Please note that I only recommend free services for getting started I don’t recommend them for running a profitable blog because of the limitations in what you can do, but for starting out the key thing is to get started.

The more post you write the better you will get at coming up with ideas and the more comfortable you will be at entering your posts on your blog.

Once you are comfortable creating post it is time to get serious, you need to find a topic that you are interested in that can be made profitable. This is called finding your niche.

Once you find a niche you like that you know people look for you can just start blogging and hope that you will turn up in the search engines or you can do some keyword research and target the keywords that people are searching to get targeted traffic to your blog. I have actually seen both ways work but if you the target the keywords people are searching for you will get visitors to your site much faster.

The reason that the just start blogging method will work is because if you create enough posts on any topic you are sure to cover some of the keywords people are searching for and this will get you some ranking in the search engines. But if you know your keywords and work on them you will find traffic coming to your site much, much faster.

With that said there are a couple of things that really contribute to the demise of a blog.

1. Burnout

2. Giving up

Burnout comes when you post constantly and you end up feeling obligated to post every single day or multiple times per day. This makes it seem like work instead of fun. Blogging should be fun! Yes, it is good to post everyday but if you get burnt out and stop posting will you still get traffic? That depends a lot on how the blog was set up, but we aren’t covering that here.

To avoid burnout write when you are inspired to write, this can be one post per day, one post per week or 20 posts in one day. When you have extra posts schedule those to be added to your blog in the future instead of posting them all in one day. This way you are covered if you feel like taking a day off.

Giving up, a lot of bloggers give up because they don’t see a lot of readers and think what they are doing is just a waste of time. I hate to say this, but it might be a waste of time in that niche or it could just be that you haven’t cracked the keywords that you need in the search engines yet.

They keep writing posts and when they look at their blog they don’t see comments and they don’t see sales through their affiliate links. This actually adds to the burnout because it is harder to write when you don’t think anyone is reading it.

But here a not so secret, all blogs start with very little traffic, very few readers and very few comments on the posts. From looking at my traffic stats I average about 1 comment for every 500 visitors and most of those are from regular readers. If you have done your homework for the niche and keywords you will end up with visitors sooner or later so just keep posting and use some of the other techniques to get traffic to your site.

How To Blog synopsis:

Do it now, get your first post up. Don’t worry about appearance or anything else that can come later.

Your topic should be something you love or at least like this will help you avoid burnout.

Once you are comfortable writing a blog you should do some niche research and keyword research but if you aren’t comfortable writing something for the whole world to see you probably shouldn’t be blogging.

Once you have found a niche you can work in it is time to actually set up your blog the right way and get your traffic from the search engines, social sites, RSS feeds and anywhere else you can get it from but the key on how to blog is to get your first post up for the world to see.

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.