The good news is that even with 737 confirmed attendees (as of a few minutes ago) they are still accepting registration. Tickets are priced at $50, $250, $500 and $1000. The great thing about ticket pricing is that you get to pay whatever suits your budget! That means that even if you get the $50 ticket you still get all the same perks during the conference and hear all the big bucks people will hear. The only perk to paying more is that you get to have your name and website listed on the WordCamp SF site (great for link building!) and will be considered a sponsor. According to the site the actual cost for each attendee is actually $200 each please don’t abuse the $50 tickets because they really are for “scholars” who really need a break. Got it?

As for the actual conference content the two tracks will have the following topics:

Track 1

WordPress in 2020
Bodysurfing the Blogosphere: How an Audience-Distributed Film Won Big
Why We Turned Microsoft Office Into a Game
Living with Our Computers… and Keeping it Healthy
State of the Word
The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System

Track 2

Writing Plugins for n00bs
WordPress, Audience Engagement, and SEO
WordPress: A Key Link in Blogging’s Evolutionary Chain
User Experience the WordPress Way
Writing Secure Plugins and Themes and Abstract Your Code!

Mobile blogging – an essential component in your blogging life.While you can always carry your laptop around for mobile blog posts, sometimes there may come a time when all you have is your iPhone, and the situation will call for a quick way to blog. It may be because of a breaking news that’s worth blogging or simply an error in a previous post that got passed your proofreading and must be corrected as soon as possible lest the Internet sees it first and correct you in droves. It is therefore essential that you have iPhone apps that you can quickly use to create a post or edit existing ones.

Wordpress and TypePad [iTunes links] are the currently the only major blogging platforms that have their own iPhone apps. These apps are both excellently-crafted and gives you all that you need for quick and dirty blogging on your iPhone if you’re using their services. Not using wordpress or TypePad? Shozu should save your day.

Shozu’s iPhone app supports Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress, LiveJournal, Vox, Freewebs, moblog, and even the metaweblog API. It also supports twitter, facebook, flickr and photobucket for the social and media aspects of your blogging. Used with iPhone’s built-in Notes and Voice Memos app for quickly taking notes, a decent Internet connection, these three essential blogging apps for your iPhone will assure you that you can be mobile and still take care of your content. Of course, you also have with you a very capable web browser, Mobile Safari to complete your mobile blogging arsenal.

To know for certain if your blog is affected check if your site has weird additions to the permalink and if you have a backdoor created by a mysterious new Administrator.

To clean up your blog, in case you have been hacked, export ALL your content in XML format and totally reset your entire Wordpress installation. Import back your XML backup after you’ve cleaned everything out. This should bring back all your content including images and post comments.

To avert such problems again, make sure you always check on Wordpress updates and update to newer versions when they ask you to!

The ironic thing was that I clicked on a link that was supposed to be giving tips on blogging and contests. I guess the blogger, whose good enough to give tips, didn’t even know the first rule of blogging: Don’t violate rules and if you do, don’t get caught! I mean isn’t that the rule in life?

Anyway this made me think and I realized that I personally haven’t even read Wordpress fine print in its entirety. Come on, who has? The fact that no one really reads every site’s Terms and Conditions doesn’t excuse anyone from suffering the consequences when rules are violated. We all know after all that ignorance of the law excuses no one.

So what does this mean? It simply means that we should all get our act together and start reading the fine print. Starting with that of the services we use to create and maintain our blog – from the hosting service to feed readers and search engines. At least read the most important parts, which for me is the privacy part and the responsibilities part, which is where we find the DONTs.

For now here are some of the DONTs listed on Wordpress’ Terms and Conditions:

1. infringing on proprietary rights
2. content that contains or installs any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content
3. spam
4. content that is pornographic, libelous or defamatory, contains threats or incites violence towards individuals or entities, and violates the privacy or publicity rights of any third party
5. blog name that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company

Just an added warning: Don’t post comments in the heat of the moment. If you will be commenting on something controversial or simply disagree with a blogger or another commenter pause first and process things before you reply. First of all you don’t want to sound idiotic. Secondly you don’t want to sound unprofessional. Remember you can disagree without being argumentative. And third, you want to be persuasive and witty so that your comment will catch people’s attention (in a positive way) and hopefully end up in more traffic for you.

As a blogger, yesterday’s tale serves as a reminder for us to be more vigilant in moderating comments. If your blog is hosted by Blogger comment deletion is that big a problem since commenters can delete their own comments on their own (except for anonymous comments). If you are using Wordpress and don’t moderate comments (require author approval before publishing of comments) make sure you check in on your comment section regularly. You want to not only keep track of the discussion in your comment section but also clean it up. You should delete comments not only when asked by commenters but also when you see spam, and accidentally repeatedly published comments.

Setting apart the author comments – This is an advantage to your readers because it will make it a whole lot easier to scan comments so that at a glance they can pick out your responses to their and fellow reader’s questions and comments. This is even more important when the comment section gets really busy and threaded comments appear making it harder to see which reply is the author’s.

Showing the readers your extra effort – As I said it is pretty easy to do, which means no real hard work on your part, but to readers the extra effort will reflect on how much you pay attention to details and how much you want to make things more user friendly to your readers.

As I have mentioned above the main purpose of stylized author comments is a better UI for your readers. Now this means that when styling your comments you should keep it simple. Highlighting your comments is the usual way to do it. You can also add an image that will really easy to spot and is distinctively you but make sure that it is not overdone to keep the professional look.

Here’s a couple of useful links to help you style your author comments:

Highlight Author Comments
Style Author Comments in WP 2.7

What I really liked about the blog though is not only it’s content but also the layout. It makes for a great resource because it is so easy to find what you need. The blog makes use of a three-column layout where snippets of blog posts can be seen on the left column, various less important (at least important for me as a reader) stuff on the right column, and a very useful list of theme, plugin, and Wordpress news smack in the middle of the page. This is my favourite part because at a glance I can start picking links that will help me see the info (i.e. themes and plug-ins) that I need.

I would give an example of their content but Mark Gosh just recently complained about him being sick of splogs copying their content. Though we’re definitely no splog I think you’ll just do as well looking for the themes and plug-ins at their site yourself. Just remember we pointed you to their direction! ^_^

You can…

1. Write posts and save them as drafts of publish them;
2. Delete drafts;
3. Resize photos and upload the photos;
4. Edit pages; and
5. View and manage your comment section.

If you thinking that typing up a blog post with such a relatively small device can be tedious you are right but this is made more bearable by the fact that Wordpress can be viewed using landscape mode (not possible in the previous version so upgrade your Wordpress version if you still can’t do it).

The Wordpress app works with the new iPhone 3G, the original iPhone, and iPod touch. Note that upload and publishing speed will depend on your internet connection so make sure you have a reasonable signal before attempting to publish posts.

Wordpress for iPhone is available via iTunes and your iPhone App Store. For more info head to the Wordpress for iPhone website.

So, which platform should you use for your blog? I don’t feel comfortable dictating others on which platform to use but here are some things that you should consider when deciding on a platform.

What do you want to achieve with your blog?
This is the main question that you should answer before anything else. Do you simply want to write and create a network of friends? Or maybe you want to write paid posts? You want to have affiliate programs? Ads? If you are leaning towards the monetary side, you might want NOT to use Wordpress (dot com, not dot org) as they do not allow paid posts and the like. Try to answer this question as thoroughly as you can and then compare your needs to the features and limitations of the different blog platforms available today.

Are you willing to shell out money on your blog?
If not, then your options are limited to the free blogging platforms. They are not few, so you still have a lot of choices. If you are willing to spend money, then you can look further into buying your own domain name and even pay for your own hosting.

At the end of the day, the decision is yours. I suggest actually looking at sample blogs using the various platforms. Also ask around – ask your friends which platform they are using and why. You’ll gain a lot of insights doing so.

The best way to let out your problems is by talking with people. However, what if there is no one around to lend an ear to you? What would you do? Talking to yourself will not help so why not try out something that can help take that load of your shoulder?

Blogging has been known to bring out the best in people. In fact, some people look at it as an unofficial way to resolve problems, a type of therapy that doesn’t need a physician to help direct people towards it. Blogging is about expressions. It allows you to compose what you want and in the process, you may be surprised at the things you can understand through it. And the best of it all, you are not just talking to one person but an entire community who may happen to drop by your blog to leave some comments to get some conversation started.

Personal blogs often contain these things. But if you make a story out of it, you may be surprised at how other readers may admire you for it. There are no restrictions to blogging. Only grammar perhaps but being a blogger for finding some type of outlet doesn’t really matter. You are blogging for yourself and not for anyone else.

Today most of us face a lot of trials that include personal and professional aspects. Most of us have a social community account like Friendster or Multiply. There are blogging options over there. Try it out. You will be surprised at how it will make you feel better.