What is the What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in for Wordpress?

Posted by Dawn Farias

OK, I admit it: the only things I know about Seth Godin are that he is bald and doesn't have a horizontal header on his blog.  He has a vertical one.  Both points can be easily illustrated.  Observe:

Actually, I should say that's all I knew about Seth Godin until recently.  Blogging with Amy published a post talking about how to use and optimize the What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in for Wordpress.  That's how I came to find out more about Seth Godin. But first, more about plug-ins.

A plug-in for Wordpress and Typepad is a lot like the header gadget for Blogger: a plug-and-play functionality that allows you to optimize your blog in a particular way while minimizing the amount of coding you have to know yourself.  Now, back to Seth Godin.

Mr. Godin publishes books, blogs, speaks in front of people and enlightens others about marketing, business and such.  He wrote about the unique-to-blogging problem of new visitors to your site being unclear about what was going on but how constantly clarifying things for them would bug out your old readers.  Richard K. Miller grabbed on to a bit in that post which recommends using browser cookies to show relevant information, in a prominent place, that changes depending on how many times the visitor has come to the site.

Would you like to see this plug-in in action?  Visit Musings of a Housewife.  Upon arriving, you'll see a message box under the post title:

When you visit, I want you to refresh your browser window a few times (three should do it). There. Now, you're no longer a new visitor and what you should see is this:

The message box is gone!

Removing the message completely for return visitors is only one way to customize this plug-in.  You could change the message after a few visits as Darcy at My 3 Boybarians does or leave the message the same for all visitors, new and old, as Theta Mom does.  Visit their sites and refresh your browser to gain Regular Reader status and see what happens to the messages.  You can even decide on the location of the box:  under the post title, under the post content, between the banner and content, and so on.

And now that you know what to look for, why don't you keep an eye out for this plug-in and leave a comment if you find any really clever ones?  I love seeing how creative people can be when given the exact same raw materials to work with.

Up next: What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in for Blogger

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You can find more from Dawn Farias at her site A Bit Bloggish - a place with digital scrapbooking kits, tutorials and tidbits on daily life.  Feel free to follow her on Twitter, too!

Wordpress Bloggers - You'll Be Happy

Nobody fall over in shock that I'm posting again. I've had quite a nice time obsessing enjoying my new camera and lens so much that I have had a hard time pulling myself back to BBD.

So, the point of this post is to share with you that I have moved my personal blog, Moving Forward, to Wordpress.com. I was starting a year long photography project and I didn't want to move the blog in the middle of it, so I pushed myself and moved right at New Year's. I'll share why I moved in another post.

A down-side of Wordpress.com is that it is not very customizeable, but it is free so I took that route instead of Wordpress.org (more about that in another post). However, there are ways to get a WP.com blog to be more attractive and have some personal touches. If you jump over to Moving Forward, you can see what I've done so far. I have a lot to learn about that platform, and I will be sharing tips and tricks as I learn them.

Special Note: BBD is celebrating it's one year blogoversary next week. Be sure to check in daily as there will be lots of giveaways!
 

To Wordpress or Not To Wordpress

Last night and this morning I had something on my mind that I hadn't thought about in a few months - should I move Beautiful Blog Designs to Wordpress? There are certain advantages to moving, which my inexperienced self wouldn't even dream of trying to explain. However, something weird happened this morning that I can't help but think was my answer that an eventual move is "meant to be."

I go through my little ritual of checking in with various blogs, seeing what they're up to, and one of them was Darcy (designer at Graphically Designing) at her personal blog My 3 Boybarians. Low and behold, her most recent post was all about why people are moving to Wordpress. She gives a little test at the end to help you make your decision. I highly recommend reading the post if you are at all curious about Wordpress.

While I do not currently run ads or make one red cent from this blog, and don't really plan to ever earn money from it, I have an idea that would allow me to feature ads that can benefit readers and designers. A move to Wordpress would better enable me to do that.

Now, don't fear, I won't be moving any time soon. I just got this rockin' new design from Designer Blogs and I want to "wear" it for a while. Hopefully by the time I move, Erin will be designing for Wordpress also (hint, hint, Erin).

And, a positive result from a move would be that the current Wordpress bloggers who feel like red-headed step children hear at BBD, will definitely get more attention.