Before I get in to the rest of this posting, let me say that although I'm a user of the hosting company I discuss below, I'm not affiliated with them. It makes no difference to me whether you sign-up with them or not.

There are many web hosting companies out there. Many are good, most are not worth being considered. And a few are great. I've been using one particular company, CrystalTech, for many years now and they've always stood out from all the others.

Writing is often an undervalued skill. We all think we can write because we know the sentences start with a capital letter and end with a period. The problem is that it's the words in the middle and how they're used that make the difference between engaging your audience and losing their interest.

I sometimes happen upon sites that are clearly automatically generated. I'm guessing they've been created to attract organic search engine traffic which presumably can lead to ad revenue. This got me to wondering if my blog posts were being picked up such systems, but I didn't know how to find out such a thing. Searches for my existing content using Google, Yahoo, or MSN would bring back too many results that I don't have the time to sift through. Then it occurred to me that if I included a unique phrase or word in a post, I could easily track the travels of that phrase or word.

A while back Google announced that they would be adding a new feature in Google Analytics that would hook into AdSense data allowing you to get more useful click data than ever before. After reading the announcement I eagerly waited for my account to be upgraded. And waited. And then waited some more. Lucky for me a co-worker sent this link my way allowing me to express my interest in getting the AdSense feature activated. Two days later I was good to go!

The inclination for most people upon hearing about the earnings potential of a successful blog is to start one of their own. This makes sense since owning your own web site provides you with the most flexibility when it comes to controlling the design and content. Creating sites is what I've done in the past and what I'll likely continue to do in the future. But it's not the only way to monetize your writing.

Not sure you can wait until 65 to retire? Here are 4 steps to making a fortune in just a few years.

Step 1: Start a niche service. For example, manage everyone's RSS feed and add a little value on top with some creative services.
Step 2: Convince venture capitalists to keep your business running for a few years with $10 million.
Step 3: Capture a good chunk of the market.
Step 4: Sell to Google.

Don't take my word for it. Check out this article on CNN. My favorite part is that, "prospects for high-paying bullshit job in the future are virtually assured." My second favorite part is the comment that, "You need a full, daily dose of imagination, guile, bile, and people pouring nonsense into your head that you can repeat." I think that nicely sums up blogging!

I'm often asked what skills one needs to be a project manager. My answers often emphasize hard skills which are easy to describe. The truth is that there are also many soft skills or traits which are critical. Alfonso Bucero recently wrote about the results of an informal survey he conducted with many IT project managers in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, and Russia. Although the US wasn't included in the mix, the results, I imagine, wouldn't be all that different if he had. Here's his list with my commentary on each trait.

A plan for earning a living from blogging has been put together by Stuart Brown of the Modern Life is Rubbish blog. Check it out!

Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger, was in NY yesterday and as part of his trip he managed to organize a gathering for bloggers at a NYC pub. Working 10 blocks or so away it seemed like a no-brainer for me to attend as there'd be plenty of upside to such a gathering with no downside.

First, I met Darren which was really my primary reason for going. Anyone that has an RSS membership of 20,000+ is someone worth meeting. I'm hoping some of his magic rubbed off on me while we shook hands!

There are many Web 2.0 sites vying for the attention of users. Two related web sites that I use frequently are Digg and StumbleUpon. Both do a good job of introducing new sites to me that I may otherwise have not discovered. However, I'm finding that I'm slowly leaning toward StumbleUpon as a more effective tool.

In my last post I provided an example of a very successful web site that uses tactics counter to what most bloggers would suggest because of their fear of annoying their users. I hope with that post that I provided some support to dispel what I consider to be a blogging myth. In today's post, I'm going to look at the myth that says it is important to establish a consistent posting schedule.

A lot of bloggers have opinions about what will annoy readers. And while I think it's important to consider changes to a blog carefully, I think it's misguided to think that readers are so easily annoyed enough that they'll unsubscribe.

If you're an information technology professional, wouldn't you be tempted to check out a blog with a press release that started with this: "The most quoted technology analyst on the Internet has a new Web home, and he invites all IT professionals to stop by for a chat."

Yes, that's right. I've got two secrets that can make an aspiring blogger a better one. And I better apologize up front because you're probably hoping for a quick road to success. Sorry, no such thing is forthcoming. Just a couple of observations that I figured made for a good blog post.

It seems that at least once a month, the answer to a question posed by a co-worker or manager is "we need a blog" or "we need a wiki". The problem as I see it is that these answers are sometimes being given because both of these technologies are popular, fun, and cool. And who doesn't want their work to be popular, fun, and cool?

In the January 2007 issue of PM Network there's an article about project audits. I've never been through an audit probably because I haven't run one of the mega-projects with scopes a mile wide and budgets large enough to buy an island that are the mainstay of auditors. Regardless, I found the article interesting.

I would like to ask you for something. I hope you'll agree to give it to me. It won't take but a minute of your time.

Just a note to let people know that I've moved all of the search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) content from this site to SearchGrit.com, a new web site I created that will focus on all things related to search engines. The MariosAlexandrou.com site will remain focussed on information technology, project management, web development, and software.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Recently I decided that I've become a blogging and, more specifically, a WordPress junkie. Every day I seem to have some idea for a post or modification that I have to try out as soon as possible. It seems I'm not the only one with this topic on the brain.

WordPress is the best blogging software. In addition to having a solid core with many features, it also includes functionality that allows anyone to improve it through the use of add-ons or plugins. From what I've seen there are hundreds of such plugins and possibly even thousands. The following is a list of the ones that I find the most useful. Do you have a favorite?

So if you're at the point where you're writing your own blog, you've probably already spent some time reading other blogs. From what I've seem, people normally track the various blogs of interest using standard web browser bookmarks/favorites.

In a recent post I wrote about the benefits of switching to portable applications that don't require installation in order to run -- a feature particularly useful when traveling or using a locked down computer. But the readily available suite of such applications wasn't enough for me. I also wanted to be able to make my WordPress blogs portable. And I wanted to be able to update my blogs while not being connected to the Internet. It turned out that this wasn't as easy to do as I expected.

In previous posts I've extolled the virtues of WordPress for running blogs and FeedBurner for managing RSS feeds. The problem, as I recently discovered, is that getting FeedBurner to work with WordPress when your web server is Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) isn't as straightforward as one would like.

Anyone that runs a blog should also set up an RSS feed to help people keep up to date with new postings. RSS feeds are also useful for distributing links to your site on various other sites. The problem with most RSS feeds is that there is little built in to them to let you track how many subscribers you have.

This blog has been receiving a lot of comment spam recently. The comment is always the same i.e. "You have an interesting site." The name and e-mail address change though. At first I couldn't figure out why someone would bother with such spam.

Every now and again I search for web pages that contain content from my site. In many cases I find snippets that have been used from my web pages as part of larger pieces of work which is fine by me. Other times I find entire pages that are clearly plagiarized versions of mine.

I was recently asked to build a simple web site. From what I was able to determine, the site was going to be content-based and it wouldn't require a complicated navigation system. I didn't want to get in to building a custom solution that would be flexible, but would require more time than I was willing to invest in the project. So I turned to WordPress.

The engine that powers this blog is custom built. I wrote the code a couple of years ago because I couldn't find any thing out on the web that was flexible enough for my needs. And then along came WordPress, a PHP-based blogging tool that is flexible, customizable, and free of charge. I highly recommend this software for anyone that wants to set up a blog. Here are some highlights.