Celebrate Life; WordPress plugins

Note: This post isn’t directed at anyone, outside of the Top Commentators section which was added this morning, this was a scheduled post that I’d written several weeks ago. These are just some random observations, from someone that hasn’t done too much personal blogging in over a year.

Adding a blogroll to my main page, is a good indication that I’m happy with my virtual home, and I intend to hang out at that virtual spot for quite a while.

Around a year ago, when I created Celebrate Life, I didn’t have a blogroll on my main page. Sure, I had a links page that has a variety of links that covers numerous topics, but although I recognized several within my blog posts, none of them ever made it to my main page.  That was because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with this website.

I’m happy to say that I’ve stopped dragging my virtual feet, and have added small blogroll to my main page. Not all of the bloggers update their site on a weekly or monthly basis, however, I’ve found them to be friendly folks, and I’m always been inspired by what they do.

I’ve been making money online for several years now, and a big part of how I make money is through some of my sites. While those sites might be a bit more structured to get Google’s blessings, in the past my personal blogs, like Vegan Momma, did fairly well too. making hundreds monthly. That wasn’t bad for a personal blog. I have no plans on monetizing this site for some time, however when I do it won’t be tastefully done.

Since I enjoy giving back to my visitors, I’ve also included a Top commentators widget on the right hand side of this blog. The top weekly commentators get a link bank to their site. At the moment, that’s not too spectacular since I’m still recreating this site, but in time I’m hoping it sends traffic to my online pals. Currently, the widget is set to rotate on a weekly basis. I’ve set it for the top ten commentators. I recently started becoming active with this site, so my traffic is still small. Therefore, I could get away with setting the widget to a monthly basis.

Dofollow is included on this site, along with my others. I don’t require you to comment X amount of time before your links are followed. I’ve always thought to be a bit silly. I feel the same way about way regarding some  of the CommentLuv features, where some bloggers force me to promote their post in order to link to anything besides my current post. You’ve got to be kidding me? I won’t be doing that here, I never liked forcing my readers to promote my sites. If you like what you’ve read, definitely promote my work through Twitter, Google +, Facebook, etc., but I won’t force you to do that. With my business, and personal blogs I still was able to promote my work without dangling a carrot.

Although it’s been a while since I’ve done any personal blogging, I believe I’ll be able to accomplish that on this site too. Sure, I’ll eventually purchase CommentLuv premium. It’s a great addon, but you won’t have to worry about the dangling carrot to link to another one of your posts. It doesn’t bother me if you link to a business site either, as long your comment isn’t spam. Regarding spam, I get hundreds of those daily. You’ll never see them on my site, since those comments get tossed into my virtual trash.

Of course it’s not always necessary to leave a comment for every person, or every post. However, it’s always nice to see a blogger interacting with their visitors, by dropping by their comment section and leaving a response to questions asked. For a person just popping by their site, it always gave the impression that they weren’t even reading their comments, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding a few other WordPress Plugins to recognize those who leave comments, so please stop by again and join in on the conversation.