WordPress Direct Misses The Point
Nov 26, 2008

Mashable tells us about WordPress Direct, which has apparently reached ten thousand users.

What do I think of this? I think it’s really sad – the number of people who don’t get it.

Yes, you can probably make a blog with decent content using a plugin like that (albeit by stealing it from others). And yes, you probably can earn money from it, because it’s optimized and all. And it doesn’t take that much work.

But in my opinion, in doing so, you miss the whole point of blogging. Blogging shouldn’t be about making money. Far from it. It shouldn’t even be about the content per se.

More than anything, in my opinion, blogging is about the community.

It’s about who you’re reaching, who you’re interacting with. It’s about the connections you make, and the people you can influence or inspire. It’s about connecting with like-minded, intelligent people and improving each other.

That’s the value of blogging, in my opinion. It’s about the people, the community.

Why do you blog?

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Comments in RSS
May 30, 2008

This is a WordPress plugin I added to my blog a while ago. I really like what it does, and I’ve been spreading the word about it as much as I can. Thanks to Pelf for sharing the plugin with me, and to Jeriko for developing it.

What it does is basically it embeds the comments into your blog’s feed. There is quite a bit of a lag time (maybe one of you smart folks could help improve that?), but it’s still better than nothing, in my opinion. And it makes it easier for your readers to keep track of the conversation.

Here’s what my feed looks like in Google Reader, with the plugin:

I personally think it’s really useful, so I wanted to share it. I’ve uploaded it since Jeriko’s original page doesn’t seem to work (at least not for me). You can download it here. All you need to do is to upload it to your plugins folder and activate it.