The Wardman Wire

I’ve had a number of blog-related questions “how do I do this” questions over the last few days, including these:

• How do I find out my RSS feed address in Blogger?
• How do I prevent a particular Google advert appearing on my website?
• How do I put a button in my blog sidebar on Blogger?

So I’m continuing with a series of postings I started last summer under the heading “Defogging Blogging” by doing detailed answers to these three questions. The aim is to answer the question, but also to give enough information to give some insight into the “how it works” as well as “how to do it”.

The last time I spent a lot of time on “blogging basics” was when I wrote 2 chapters for Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging in the UK back last September - and perhaps it’s a good idea to do some more.

At 6pm today I’ll be putting out an article on “How do I find my RSS feed address in Blogger” as the first answer.

Do we need a “Getting Started” resource?

Previously I was thinking about publishing an E-Book about “Getting Started in Political Blogging”, covering different aspects of creating and developing a political blog.

The project never got off the ground due to time commitments elsewhere.

The original idea came from the quip:

“Political Bloggers usually know far more about Politics than they do about Blogging”

which has more than a grain of truth in it - and the thought that “polibloggers” knowing just a little more about some of the slightly technical aspects of blogging could be a boost to encouraging wider political debate.

I’m wondering if it is worth resucitating the project, and putting some time into it. A couple of conversations indicate that it way be worth doing so. However - it would take perhaps a week or more to put together, so I’m after some more feedback.

The publication I am thinking would be somewhere between perhaps 50-80 pages, and include a series of pieces and around 100 “questions and answers”.

1. Why a Political Blog?
2. How to Get Started.
3. The First 6 Months.
4. Keeping Going.
5. Tips from existing blogger.
6. Questions and Answers.

Material would come from my own new and existing writing (there’s a lot that I published in the first 3-6 months of the blog), and contributions from a few others (I hope).

I’m I’m putting a week or more of time into it, then I’d probably need to charge around a fiver.

What do you think?