Tech Specs

For those who want to know some of the ins and outs of how I put this blog together, check out the following topics:

• WordPress
• Hosting by DrakNet
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog
• Site Stats
• Template
• Plugins

I built the basics of this web site in WordPress. What a wonderful content management blogging tool! It has been easy to use since Day 1, which is much more than can be said for other blogging programs I have attempted. I use a stand alone version of Wordpress, provided by Wordpress.org.

To learn more about WordPress and blogging, I read these blogs regularly, and I would highly recommend subscribing to their RSS feed if you’re into such things:

• Lorelle on Wordpress
• ProBlogger
• Weblog Tools Collection
• Plagiarism Today (copyright issues)
• Smashing Magazine (graphic design)
• The Blog Herald
• Successful and Outstanding Blogs

I also attend WordPress Dallas meetups when I can, and plan on attending any WordCamp Dallas events in the area.

HOSTING BY DRAKNET

My host is DrakNet, who I would recommend to anyone who wants an affordable, reliable host. DrakNet is a smaller company, female-owned and operated, with a very strong green initiative and progressive business practices. In the year and half I’ve been hosted, I’ve had excellent customer support as the company is small enough to be able to get support from the owner. Seriously, if you need a host, give DrakNet a try. They will sell you the hosting package that is best suited for your needs without overselling services they cannot provide, and your uptime will be excellent.

THE ART OF THE FAN BASED BLOG

In working with other bloggers, I made a wonderful friend in Lorelle. She’s got an amazing blog, and she offered me an opportunity to do some blogging about the specific kind of blogging that we do – celebrity fan blogging. Here’s the links to the series if you want to hear more about the process of fan blogging, including how to start a blog, and the research process involved in keeping up with the news we provide here at No Fact Zone.

• Introducing the Art of the Fan-Based Blog Article Series
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Cultivate Your Passion
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Competition Means Collaboration
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Create a Game Plan
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Content, Content, Content Part II
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Copyrights for You and Your Content Sources
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Community Wins
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Crazy Fans
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Connections Make the Blog and the Community
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Cash is Necessary
• The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Continuing to Fight the Good Fight

SITE STATS

Here’s some interesting factoids on how much we’ve accomplished here in the first two years (7/16/06 – 7/16/08), taken from our Sitemeter account:

UNIQUE VISITORS – 1,253,637
PAGE VIEWS – 2,394,995
POSTS – 3647
INCOMING LINKS – 2,953 incoming links
FEEBURNER FEED – 849 Subscribers
SPAM LOVE – Akismet has protected your site from 399,873 spam comments

In addition, I’m a huge supporter of a site tracking software called Woopra. Woopra gives me live-stats on who is visiting by location, and allows me to see the search trends on the site as they happen. I would highly recommend getting on the Beta if you can.

SITE TEMPLATE

For the first two years of the site, I used some of the free themes available at WordPress.org. I would still recommend those themes to new bloggers. However, I wanted more coding stability and more features than could be provided by most of the standard themes available for free. So in December of 2008, I purchased a new premium WordPress web template, Flexx Professional from iThemes.

I’ve added some blog-specific widgets and tools, such as a Google Calendar and multiple WordPress plugins (see below) to add even more functionality to the template. I also continue to tinker with the layout as the mood strikes me, which is very easy to do with the Flexx Professional theme. Some of the mods I’ve made to the template are:

• New color for the background
• Custom header
• Addition of “Tags” links to bottom of posts
• Addition of “Previous” and “Next” links to single posts
• Changed the standard font size to 14pt

WORDPRESS PLUGINS

The beautiful thing about WordPress is that is is open-source, and there are tons of developers who are building plugins that are available for free on the WordPress.org site. Here is a list of the many different plugins I use here at No Fact Zone to give the site more functionality and customization options.

• Akismet (v. 2.2.7) by Matt Mullenweg.
• Align RSS Images (v. 1.2) by Janis Elsts.
• Angsuman's Feed Copyrighter (v. 1.0) by Angsuman Chakraborty.
• Bad Behavior (v. 2.0.36) by Michael Hampton.
• Clean Archives Reloaded (v. 3.1.10) by Viper007Bond.
• Delete-Revision (v. 1.3.1) by gohsy.
• FeedBurner FeedSmith (v. 2.3.1) by FeedBurner.
• Google XML Sitemaps (v. 3.2.2) by Arne Brachhold.
• No Self Pings (v. 0.2) by Michael D. Adams.
• One Click Plugin Updater (v. 2.4.14) by Janis Elsts.
• Pageear (v. 1.0) by Christian Harz.
• Plugins list (v. 1.0) by Davide Benini.
• Post-Plugin Library (v. 2.6.2.1) by Rob Marsh, SJ.
• Pretty Link Pro (v. 1.4.43) by Blair Williams.
• reCAPTCHA (v. 2.6) by Ben Maurer & Mike Crawford.
• Role Manager (v. 2.2.3) by Thomas Schneider.
• Simple Tags (v. 1.7.4.4) by Amaury BALMER.
• Style Tweaker (v. 0.11) by Mark Barnes.
• Theme Test Drive (v. 2.7.4) by Vladimir Prelovac.
• WordPress Admin Bar (v. 3.1.10) by Viper007Bond.
• Wordpress Thread Comment (v. 1.4.9.4) by 偶爱偶家.
• WP-ContactForm (v. 2.0.7) by Douglas Karr.
• WP-DBManager (v. 2.50) by Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan.
• WP Ajax Edit Comments (v. 3.02) by Ajay D'Souza, Ronald Huereca.
• WP Greet Box (v. 5.6.2) by Thaya Kareeson.
• WP Security Scan (v. 2.7.1.2) by Michael Torbert.
• WP Super Cache (v. 0.9.9) by Donncha O Caoimh.

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