Tag Archives: website

Holy crap, I missed two milestones!

PolyWogg.ca
November 11 2022

I’ve been doing a fair amount of blogging in the last two years here and there, I’ve moved some stuff around, added some content that was pending. And somewhere in all of that, one of my “tools” stopped functioning. I had a word count plugin that wasn’t very good, and it even reached the stage where WordPress wondered if it was abandoned before it was updated recently.

So, I haven’t been keeping track of my word count overall between my two sites. I knew I was up there. I had hit 1.5M words quite some time ago, and I figured I was probably over 2M now easily. I had to be, right?

Today I did a quick dive to find a simple word count stats plugin to replace the old one, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are lots of REALLY complicated ones out there, but I don’t want all that extra bloat. I just want the basic stats.

Basic stats

For the number of posts, I have 1591 here at ThePolyBlog, although 26 are still in draft. PolyWogg has another 147 with 3 in draft, although that will likely increase as I revamp that site a bit more and add some regular blogging posts about HR or astronomy.… Read the rest

Since I blog about writing

PolyWogg.ca
September 27 2021

Way back in 2012, practically the dark ages of the internet, I bookmarked an article by author Veronica Sicoe called 13 Types of Writers’ Blogs – Pros and Cons. Fast forward 9 years, and it is still one of the better lists that I have seen of blogs / websites that authors use.

Sooooo, considering I’m a wannabe writer, and I do have a website, what elements interest me? I blogged the other day about not wanting to monetize my site, but this isn’t quite the same thing. This is more about using my website to promote potential book sales. It’s a very fine-line for a distinction, but it is a distinction of significance to me.

General writing advice — I have no extensive expertise to offer, but there are a few blog posts here and there where I have had an opinion that I hoped was worth sharing about small narrow areas. A different take on an issue, for instance. But, as noted in the original article, the posts are generally of interest to writers, not readers, so it doesn’t do much to sell your books.

The Writing Industry / Self-Promotion — I am a good analyst, and one of my skills is the ability to take a lot of info and synthesize or condense it down to meaningful, digestible chunks.… Read the rest

The Royal Wedding of Search Engine Optimization for writers…

PolyWogg.ca
April 19 2011

For anyone running their own website, one of the terms that comes at you fairly early on is “Search Engine Optimization”. This is a lovely term to basically say, “How do I get my website to show up higher in Google’s rankings?”. There are commercial companies that offer packages, individuals who offer tweaking services, etc…everyone wants to sell you tricks and tips on SEO.

Most of them are, umm, well, worthless. While some are outright scammers, some are just worthless because most of what they do is something you end up doing for yourself (my day boss’ regular comment is if you hire a consultant to tell you the time, they’ll borrow your watch first — as you’ll see below, a SEO consultant will quickly ask you for info to do the job for you). And it is a bit of a competitive crapshoot anyone. Certainly if anyone tries to GUARANTEE you a specific SEO result, run the other way — they’re scammers. No one can guarantee a result, they can only offer ways to LIKELY improve your results — your actual mileage will vary. And most of those suggestions fall into the categories below.

Background

For quick background, here’s what you need to know about how Google works.… Read the rest