Ah, the weekend is finally here, and while most of us want to sit back and relax, others are making the best use of the time available to them. One way to do this is by adding content to your site that will not take up too much of your time. This is where a recap of your content comes into play. Not only would you be be recycling older content, but you will also give readers who missed out the opportunity to catch up.

The fact of the matter is that it works. It gives you something to do over the weekend that is reasonably easy to complete while providing useful (even if recycled) content for your readers. There is no hidden science to this though, and this article doesn't even require much explanation on how to get this done.

It could be simple -- like a list -- or complex -- like a picture and a paragraph. Regardless, the point of this is to highlight your best content from the previous week, month, or even year (depending on how often you do this sort of thing).

However, there are even more creative ways to do a weekly or monthly recap. You might consider doing a podcast (similar to Perfcast) or a video blog for your site. You could take a different twist on a typical recap, and you could perhaps add updates to all your stories, inform readers of which content was most popular, or reflect on your stories to make your work even more worthy of a read. The more creativity, the more interesting your recaps can be.

Authors on other blogs like Read/Write Web and Complex (I really like how Complex does their recaps) do this on a regular basis. Perhaps, after reading this, you will have some creative ways to make use of your recent content as well.

If you happen to recap your work on a regular basis, why not post a link below in the comments section so that others can learn by example.

If you ever see a job opening for Chief Blogger, you might want to run far away. Kodak appointed a Chief Blogger position to a long-time employee, but the job description stinks of non-blogging tasks. Kodak is spindoctoring the announcement by saying that few companies have Chief Bloggers, and fewer still have female Chief Bloggers. So what? "Chief Blogger" hardly seems in the spirit of blogging, and ensures that I'll NOT be visiting company blogs who have such positions.

This recalls to my mind numerous corporate jobs in the mid- to late 90s - when the Internet was the next big thing - that used to be titled Webmaster but were really just PR (Public Relations) jobs. Such jobs often involved immense amounts of company politics while the people doing the real work (the real Webmasters) were scapegoated by executives for anything that didn't go right. (I happened to have been one, and have seen others go through it. It's not a pretty thing.)

Let's hope that this doesn't happen to blogging. I fear, though, that it will. Things to fear: when that executive in the corner office comes asking, "Why isn't the blogsite pulling in a million visitors a day yet? It launched a week ago. How long is it going to take, and how much money will we make from the blog?"

Am I overreacting? What do you think?

Some reading for the weekend:

1. Aspiring web publishers take note. Darren Rowse, one of the kings of blog networks, offers comprehensive advice on how he would build a niche-focused blog network.
2. Aaron Wall has added yet another tool, Rank Checker, to his Seobook site. Rank Checker, for Firefox browser only, tells you where your website ranks in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live.
3. If you have WordPress design or programming skills,  or can provide support services, check out WordPressFreelance for freelance work opportunities. There are no initial fees, however after the trial period, they take the greater of $5 or 5%. [via: WPThemesPlugin.]
4. If you use social media, or have online friends submit your articles for you, Chris Winfield at Search Engine Land has some tips on making your content submit worthy.
5. Google has confirmed an algorithm change for their SERPs, which some members of the SEO community have codenamed Dewey. I haven't delved into this, but if you're interested, here are some references: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal.
6. Moses at WP Themes Plugin recently released the free LightBreaker WP theme. He points out that it's not a magazine-style theme, though I think it's very professional-looking, and might suit a small network of sites. Or just one. It's widgetized, allows pullquotes easily, and is ad-ready for AdSense and 125x125 px graphic ads.
7. Michael Gray, aka Gray Wolf, always has some sage advice regarding leveraging news events. Read his recent post How to Get 1 Million Dollars Worth of Links. It's short but to the point.

Alan Johnson lays down some hard truths about non-productivity, in a guest post at Daily Blog Tips. The fact is that some people haven't found their calling and thus won't find much productivity in their current work. That also applies to blogging, especially if you're not working in your dream niche. (Though I should point out that in my experience, freelancers tend to be generalists and thus enjoy NOT focusing on a niche.)

This post triggered a thought I'd had recently, that many new bloggers seem to be relatively fresh out of college and some have never held a job offline post-college. Call me a pessimist, but I think it's a bad idea not to work offline for at least a while before trying to become a full-time blogger. At least unless you're absolutely certain you have a gift for entertaining through writing, and/or you're an experienced entrepreneur, in case blogging doesn't work out for you.

In a related vein, Daniel Scocco wrote at Daily Blog Tips recently, asking do you really need to go to university if you want to work on the Internet or be an entrepreneur? He listed later in the comments several successful, mostly American entrepreneurs who did not get a college degree. But some of these people came from money and others simply had entrepreneurial minds before entering college. Most at least attended college.

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The title of a blog post may or may not be as important as the content itself (depending on who's being asked), but it certainly serves a distinct and important purpose -- it draws people in. I've read and written on enough blogs to understand what does and does not work. There are no limits, no rules, but there are some basic things you can do to make your blog titles better

I previously wrote about how introductions serve the purpose of selling your article; however, the title of your article is what will grab the attention of the readers. It is the part of the article that should make them want to click to find out more. While I don't place as much emphasis on titles as other bloggers, I will say that I have likely reached the front pages of several social sites from some crafty and creative titles.

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[Advanced users:] In part 2 of this series, I discussed prettying up a "river of news" - which is essentially a mashup of several RSS feeds but is typically displayed on a web page instead of an RSS reader. What I built was a clone of Techmeme River., though my goal is to build a clone of Techmeme or Megite. To move from a river of news to a Techmeme clone requires a way to group or cluster related articles. Now, I've been racking the old noggin for about eight months to produce a suitable clustering algorithm, so I'm not going to give away what I've got. But I will give you some things to think about.

(Note: in the discussion below, "news item" is synonymous with "blog article". Also, there's no need to do this in WordPress, but that's my preferred publishing platform.)

1. Define a list of keywords and phrases that you'll want to cluster news items around. For example, in the automotive niche, you'll have cars, trucks, motorcyles and accessories. Under cars, you might subdivide topics by manufacturer and model, but under motorcycles you might subdivide by engine size. It all depends on what you want for your monitor.

2. Prioritize your topic list, from most important to least.
3. Partition your stream of news items by tagging each with the most relevant topic.
4. A news item should only appear once in your Techmeme clone - that is, in only one cluster. So once you tag it with a topic or sub-topic, it cannot be tagged for anything else.
5. Cluster items for each topic.
6. Rank items in each cluster by choosing the oldest item for the main headline. Display links to the remaining clustered headlines. (If you look at any Techmeme item, you'll see a "Discussion" section. Those are the news items that were published later.)

This is simply one possible high-level algorithm. I'm intentionally not giving away all details that I've come up with, but I've provided some clues. Overall, your niche monitor is only as good as your clustering algorithm. Spend time on a good division of topics, and list various clustering criteria before deciding on an algorithm. There's no rule stating that your algorithm has to exactly mimic Techmeme.

Bored or just can't think of anything to blog? Here are some links to check out, either to waste a bit of time or get some inspiration.

1. The Onion, if you haven't visited it before, is a spoof news site - a parody of CNN. What's that got to do with blogging? Well, here's an example of a fun article: Stop Making Movies About My Books, supposedly by Dr. Seuss rolling around in his grave. Storytelling is something you could incorporate in each post/ and all your little blogger friends will think you're the most. After you stop laughing and snorting out loud/ find your own storytelling style, of which you'll be proud.
2. Here's a fun (read "time wasting") imaging tool: Montagr, from Devious Gelatin (is that a great site name or what). Enter a search for a keyword, and Montagr will pick up images from Flickr, then reconstruct one image using a montage of other images. It needs refinement in the algorithm, but it's still fun. Too much fun.
3. Katy at I'm Blogging That provides a detailed explanation on how to use Technorati to find blogging inspiration.
4. Tired of the same old RSS feed icon? Smashing Magazine offers a set of interesting variations designed by Dirceu Veiga that might catch your fancy or give you ideas for your own.
5. Speaking of icons, Danny Outlaw over at Outlaw Design Blog lists links to 22 free icon sets that he loves. Some are fun, some are pretty slick.
6. Design Adapatations offers 5 WordPress optimization tips to clean up and speed up your installation.
7. Can anyone tell me what the heck is going on? I rarely Twitter, yet I've been getting regular new followers (some of whom I started following a year ago, others completely new to me). How are these people finding me and why are they bothering to follow me, a mostly inactive Twit?

Are you tired of the boring old WordPress blog you've set up? The platform does have CMS capabilities, as 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress proved, so you can create some pretty powerful websites and web applications. To do this, use a powerful but relatively underused WordPress feature known as Custom Fields, which allows you to add "meta" information for each post page and manipulate it with bits of HTML/ PHP code and WordPress functions.

Reasons To Use Custom Fields

You create a custom field, then choose on a post by post basis what information you will add. That information can be manipulated by custom WP/PHP code to present additional textual or visual content when a visitor views a post page. To summarize:

1. Add metadata for reporting or other purposes.
2. Add visually cohesive elements to your site.
3. Manipulate information and control its display programmatically.
4. Make global changes across all your posts with a single code change, instead of manually updating each post.

The lists below show some ways that WP custom fields can be used to provide more textual and visual info to your site visitors. If you decide to change something, say a border or background or even placement on the post page, without custom fields you would have to make changes manually to each and every post. If you have hundreds of posts, you'd have a daunting task. With custom fields, you have structure and homogeneity through custom handler code.

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Many of you have probably noticed that I've not been blogging much at Performancing over the last few months. The fact of the matter is that a few events have conspired together to bring me to a point where I need to step down.

First, and most importantly, I'm about to become a dad. My wife and I actually made a trip to the hospital the other day (false alarm). Because I'm becoming a dad, the second reason gets compounded. I really don't have the energy, even now, to put in 16 hour work days. So I've decided to start eliminating responsibilities.

James Mowery and Raj Dash will continue to make Performancing a great resource (they will do a much better job than I was able, with much more class and tact -> I've pissed a few too many people off).

I hope to stay in touch with everyone that I've met through Performancing and will continue to be a member of Hive (though now I will be a paying member).

Thanks for the great year everyone. I personally know that Performancing has many great things up its sleeve for the future.

I leave you all with this new video that I'm having produced over at RideLust (funny stuff):

There are nearly an unlimited amount of reasons why you might not read this, but if you want to know some tips on making your introductions stand out from the rest, then you should take the time to read it. Do I got your attention? Well, good, then let's jump right on in.

What's The Point?

The purpose of the introduction within any article should be to generate interest while informing readers of what you are writing about. It very well might be the single most valuable part to all articles, and because no matter how much effort you put into writing, if it does not grab the reader's attention, it wasn't much of a worthwhile attempt. In other words, you wasted your time. Make it habit to focus on creating a killer introduction for all your articles so that doesn't happen.

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Lately I have been getting back into the whole SEO thing and I have just been reading Khalids review of some very clever SEO software.

SheerSEO might have a funny name but it certainly seems to be very useful! :)

What it does is checks and reports your search positions for your most wanted keywords. Because it is automated (and currently free!) you can save a lot of time, time that you can put towards improving those rankings.

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[Advanced users] To review, a river of news is a mashup of RSS feeds, arranged in (reverse) chronological order and presented on a web page. Normally, an RSS reader might suffice to monitor a blog niche, but my intent is to produce a Techmeme clone. A step in that direction is a Techmeme River clone, which is what this post is for. Either tool can be immensely useful if you want to keep on top of

Please review Part 1 of this mini-series, which goes over the basics of building a clone of Techmeme River. In that article, we produced an HTML badge that shows a block of headlines collated from multiple source feeds. The intent in this article is to present the headlines block in the content area of a blog instead of in the navigation column.

As with the previous article, I am not supplying 100% of the code, just the basics. This article, unlike the last, is intended for advanced WP users as a stepping stone for producing a Techmeme River clone that lives on its home page. If you're serious about building your own version, I'm assuming you will likely pursue your own development, based on what I discuss here. (If you simply need such a tool, I'm available for consulting.)

I've built a tool, RideSpottr, for monitoring automotive niche blogs, and I'll use it as an example below.

What You'll Need

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