Category: Weblogs

  • 3 Posts to Read at Kristen’s Blog

    I’m a big fan of my wife’s blog. She is working hard to create a blog for mom’s like her. If you have never checked it out, here are 3 posts I think you need to read.

    1. God of this City
    2. Early Modern Ghetto
    3. When I am Bigger I Want to go to Hwiey

  • Blog notes

    Careful observers of adammclane.com will notice that I constantly tinker. Anyone who has met me in person knows that I’m a total gadget geek. I sat next to a friend at a meeting yesterday and she kind of laughed at me as I casually hooked up my gadgets. I turned my phone into a mobile wifi router, popped open the macbook, and posted notes about the meeting on my twitter account. (Appears here as the mini-blog) That’s the kind of thing I do all the time. I am a relentless multi-tasker. And I have a serious appetite for all things web-geek.


    So, a couple changes worth noting.
    – I tweaked the about me page as I saw it was getting read a lot.
    – I added my rules for blogging to the tabs up top.
    – I created an ability to rate posts. It’s super simple to do, completely anonymous, and a fun way to tell me what you think of a post.

    These are all pretty minor. But worth pointing out as I rearrange the furniture here and there.

  • Adam’s Rules for Blogging

    Rules for BloggingWhen it comes to posting things online, you’ve got to be careful. As soon as you post a post or comment you’ve created a digital record that may go on living online forever.

    With that in mind I thought it was a good time to revise my Rules for Blogging. Whether you are new to blogging or a seasoned veteran, consider following these hard earned lessons to help keep your blogging life positive.

    These are the rules that I follow at adammclane.com and I suggest you adapt them for your own blog.

    Rule #1 Don’t ever write something you wouldn’t want your mother to read. Some have a false impression that their blog posts are private or that if they haven’t invited someone to read it, they won’t. Don’t make that mistake. If you journal on a blog it will eventually be found by people you know. Everything you publish online is public.

    Rule #2 Opinions are like…. bellybuttons… everyone has one. The cool thing about blogs is that it gives you an inside look into what someone is perceiving from their point of view. The bad thing about blogs is that you are only getting a snap shot. It’s their perception, their raw and unedited thoughts at a specific time. It’s perfectly OK to have an opinion and express it on your blog. But it’s always a good idea to save a controversial post for 24 hours to think about it before pressing “publish.”

    Rule #3 Don’t throw gasoline on a fire. I would highly recommend that if you read something about you or your blog or your people that is negative… just do yourself a favor and don’t hit that “comment” button or send that person an e-mail, OK? Just leave it lie. I’ve made this mistake too many times… I’ll see something someone wrote about me or YMX and I’ll want to “vindicate” myself by commenting or dropping an e-mail to the author to address the “attack.” The truth is that it is always better to let that sleeping dog lie. I can’t think of a single good thing that has come out of me doing that.

    Rule #4 Give credit where credit is due. If you want to post something you saw somewhere else, that’s cool. Just make sure to give that other site credit. If you read blogs you’ll see the acronym “HT.” That means, “hat tip” and is a polite way to acknowledge your source. Bypassing this rule makes you look like a jerk. The same rule doesn’t hold true for pictures. Unless an image is specifically marked as copyright protected, feel free to use it for your blog. The biggest etiquette with pictures is to host that image on your blog instead of hotlinking it to the place you found it.

    Rule #5 Beware of Trolls, learn to love Lurkers, reward contributors. A troll is someone who reads your blog to get information about you to use against you. A lurker is someone who just wants to read your blog to get to know you. A contributer is someone who participates in your blog somehow. Maybe they mention your blog to you in person or they post comments often. Find ways to reward them for their loyalty to your blog.

  • A brand new RomeoKids.com

    It took several month to say this, but RomeoKids.com has a brand new look. This was the first project that the church has ever sent out to a web designer and I think it turned out awesome. Matt Adams, that guy is great to work with. If you ever need a WordPress theme totally custom designed from head to toe… he’s your man.

    I think the new look is very bright, cheery, inviting, and screams “Kids!” as soon as you load it. What do you think?

  • The YMX blog

    For a few weeks now (eternity in my library of ideas) Patti and I have talked about having a YMX blog so that our blogs weren’t quite so clogged up with stuff about the company and/or youth ministry stuff for others.

    It’s not that we don’t love youth ministry or youth workers coming to our site, it’s that beyond our friends people aren’t getting a central location for all of our youth ministry stuff. Also, we need to feature bloggers from YMX more regularly and we really didn’t have a place to do this on YMX outside of the forums. (Right now, only half our traffic goes to the forums so that was out.)

    So, the YMX blog was born last week. It’s got a fancy look that I love and we’ve got a growing list of writers to go along with all the collaboration we do all around the sites.

    Three quick things about the YMX blog:
    1. It’s all original content. We’re not recycling stuff we’ve already posted on our personal blogs or stuff that is making the rounds of blogs.
    2. It’s all about youth ministry. No personal musings allowed.
    3. It’s informal. We’ve got standard on the main site for polished content… we’re relaxing that on the blog.

  • First Things First, How Most Mornings Start

    dawnI start each day pretty much the same way. Here’s a list of things I try to do in the morning. The days of grabbing a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper are long, long gone.

    1.  Download e-mail. This usually takes just a couple of seconds as almost everything I get is spam. Even if I get something compelling enough for a response I typically will wait until I am more awake. The only thing I’ll do right away (typically) is send out a prayer request if one was sent to me.
    2. Login to feedburner. Actually I login at least twice so I can check out the subscriber levels of YMX and my personal account. (With blog accounts for Kristen and I.) Here I’m looking for a spike in additions or subtractions. If it has spiked, I’ll update the YMX team.
    3. Login to Google Analytics. Since I’m managing about 20 websites now, this is my one-stop shop to see how everything is doing. (It doesn’t update live, so the morning is my first look at what happened yesterday.) Again, I’m looking for spikes and dips. For YMX, my blog, the church site, and any other site I’m paying special attention to I’ll look at the referral tab. I alway like to see how people are making it to my sites. The vanity search thing is sending us bucket loads of referrals lately. (People googling their name.)
    4. Check site rankings for my favorite search terms on Google. (No, I’m not checking out my name… I get emailed when that pops up anywhere on the internet!) But I like to know if there has been any shift in organic search terms I care about. In just the last 30 days Google has sent 4100 visitors to YMX… our number one referral. (Gospel.com is moving up quickly, love that site!)
    5. Google Reader time. I subscribe to about 100 blogs. My goal in the morning is to clear out the blogs… meaning I want to drop the number of unread things to 0. If it’s good I share it (appears on the left side of my blog), if it isn’t I don’t finish reading it. This is also my primary news source. So if there is something going on in the news I am depending on bloggers to cover it. This is also the source of my morning Bible reading, devos. (Check out RBC’s RSS page)
    6. Pop into YMX. That may surprise people but I only pop into the YMX forums a couple of times per day. I love having a great team of folks that keep the forums going! Patti is the forum-meister and the more I trust her, the better.
    7. Post on my blog. If there has been something on my mind or if one of these other steps brought something to mind that was compelling. I’m also becoming a bigger user of the draft feature, so sometimes I’ve got 8-10 posts that I want to work on when I get a chance. I also go through big “writing feasts” where I may write more posts in a day than I should publish… so I time them to release later.
    8. Publish stuff for YMX. I login to Google docs and see if there is something Amy wants me to publish. It takes me at least 20 minutes to publish an article, do the graphics, and pimp it out. If I’ve got time and it needs to get done, I’ll do it then. If I can’t swing it, it’ll wait until after work.

    How long does all this take? It depends on what I’m doing, how much time I have, and a lot of other factors. (Like getting picked by Megan to take her to school.) I can do all of this in as little as 5 minutes… or if I’ve got a lot of time, it can last all morning.

    What about your morning routine? What do you do?

  • 3 Things Big Name Bloggers Need to Learn from the Little Guy

     I have  a  mixture of blogs that I  read. Some of them, I am their only subscriber and others have thousands of  people whoBlog snob read their  stuff every day. Seth Godin‘s blog apparently has more readership than 95% of all magazines in the United States. In doing this every day I’ve made a couple of observations. You see, while these “blog celebrities” may be online moguls, they are generally not that famous. (Just making a couple hundreds bucks a day from Google to blog… or in Seth’s case, no money to blog as he refuses to have ads.)

    But there are a couple of things I don’t like about the big name bloggers. Even in the Christian world, big named bloggers take on an aura of superiority. They tend to communication that blog rules don’t apply to them when you get to be super big. Here’s three things that big named bloggers need to learn from small named bloggers if they want to remain on top. Because folks like me are getting annoyed and are going to drop you like a bad habit if you don’t straighten up and fly right.

    1. Leave comments on. I’ve noticed that once a blog hits about 1,000 subscribers they like to turn off comments and leave on trackbacks. (Some truly elite turn off both!) In other words, the blog owner wants you to send traffic to them and doesn’t want traffic to go to you. Once you turn off my ability to respond to your blog post it isn’t a blog anymore. Now you are running a consultancy or a business, but not a blog. Some say they don’t have time to respond to comments. They joy of commenting is that you don’t have to respond as your blog will take on a life of its own. I recently noticed a speaker from a conference on blogging who told his audience “If you don’t allow comments you aren’t blogging.” He is now only accepting trackbacks.
    2. Don’t forget you’re a human. One of the things I like about reading blogs is that you get a snapshot of a person’s life. Big name bloggers tend to stop writing personal thoughts, schedule snippets, and other stuff because they think it doesn’t pay well. (Yes, big named bloggers write with the purpose of drawing traffic and getting paid. The big trend now is to write the perfect eye catching subject line.)  One of the reason I am reading your blog, Mr. I Make $200/day on Adwords alone, is because I am curious about you. If you think I just want to read essays that aren’t good enough for your book, think again. Just be human.
    3. Ads are OK, just be upfront about what you are getting paid for. When I read a bloggers recommendation for a book, website, or any other product… I am automatically trying to figure out how that blogger is getting paid. (ebooks are the #1 culprit of this) Amazon affiliates, ad networks, and Google Adwords are all easy to spot. But I’m finding that a lot of these big named guys are getting paid to plug in about half their posts. (Or so it seems) That’s pathetic. Another thing I am noticing with big named bloggers is that they aren’t giving credit for their sources. Not only will they not link to a commenter, now they won’t link to their sources? Why is that? Oh yeah, because big name bloggers only want to link to things that increase their page rank and/or pay them.

    I’m a capitalist and I’m all in favor of new media and I’m perfectly fine with blogs becoming the most powerful medium on the internet. But I want to caution blog readers that while blogs may seem like citizen journalism, you have to be certain to ascertain a bloggers credibility.

    Do you know the ethical standards of journalism? Bookmark this page!

    Here’s the thing… most “big name blogs” are not journalist. They are marketers and they are profiteers. You have to use the same wisdom in reading a blog that you do in watching the news. At least in the news there is some editorial control. Blogs are like the old west of journalism… there are no sheriff’s in Blog County.

    No, I won’t name names. And no, I’m definitely not talking about any youth ministry blogger. In fact, the “big name” youth ministry bloggers that I read tend to be true gentlemen about all of this. Sure, some of them make money off their blogs… but they aren’t crossing the line. (yet!)

  • 10 Signs Your an Internet Junkie

    I think Kim has aimed this directly at her husband.

    Even still, it is a good list.

    10 signs you are an internet junkie.

    1. You watch TV while cruising the internet.

    2. Your keyboard has crumbs in it

    3. You begin to talk in html language when describing a link to your best friend

    4. You met your best friend online

    5. You check your email more than you sit down for meals

    6. You can’t go to bed until every Myspace, Facebook, email, website and forum of yours has been checked for new messages or comments.

    7. You have more internet friends than friends.

    8. Your couch has a permanent TV tray in front of it so you can rest your lap top.

    9. You base your decision where eat out on whether or not they provide free WiFi

    10. You post from the toilet

  • It’s official

    My Typepad blog is officially dead as of this morning. Again, I can’t say how much I appreciated Typepad. The reason I made this switch was because of the cost. $90 for hosting and running the blog was just a little too spendy for me.

    To people on the RSS feed this doesn’t matter at all. But I sure how people still find me who had a bookmark.

  • bridging online relationships to real life

    Being that it’s fall convention season for ministry folks, I thought it was a good time to talk about bridging "virtual" relationships into "real world" relationships. (A strong sub-plot at YMX) I’ve done a lot of this… in fact some of my best friendships right now started virtually before becoming real world. With something like 50% of 2006 weddings having resulted from meeting online… this is something we all need to get comfortable with.

    Here’s a cool post about that. Chris provides some great advice for me in that I’ll be meeting tons of people and even vacationing with some that I’ve only ever talked to on the phone or chatted with over AIM.

    Personally, in meeting people whom I only know from YMX or their blogs… it’s been a very cool experience. People are just people. It doesn’t matter where or how I meet folks. People are pretty much the same all over. There is always a little anxiety right before the meet. But very soon afterwards it falls into a normal friendship. (Fast friends, so to speak)