The Reader Appreciation Project

Many bloggers love readers who leave a lot of comments. If a person leaves a lot of comments, that probably means that the person is adding more value to your site compared to people who leave fewer comments. While it is nice to appreciate the people who leave a lot of comments, it is also nice to appreciate people who leave only a few comments because they also take the time to read what you write.
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My name is Ronald Huereca. I decided to join the Reader Appreciation Project because I felt that readers were being looked over and taken for granted. I hope to add my own take on blogging, as well as write technical articles relating to WordPress and WordPress plugins that directly benefit the readers of blogs. You can currently find me writing for Weblog Tools Collection, Devlounge, and my personal website (Ronalfy.com).

This is the second post in a series called Blogger Anxiety. Please read the previous post on Blogging and Comments.

These next forms of blogger anxieties deal with blog hosting and blog themes. The topics that will be covered are hosting problems, theme manipulation, and stats packages. Read more…

Slowly, more bloggers are starting to respond to comments. While comment responses are good for bloggers, comment responses are different than comment acknowledgments. You should figure out if you are acknowledging comments or responding to them. That way, you can set a style on your blog so that people do not think that you are responding to comments by only acknowledging them, in order to fulfil the “duty” of replying to all comments.
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This is the first post in a series called Blogger Anxiety. The series will talk about the causes and possible solutions to various forms of blogger anxiety.

Bloggers have a lot of pressure put on them to keep up with post counts, comments, and a wealth of other factors. This post will go into several causes of blogger anxiety. Not all causes have solutions, but I personally found it helpful to know that I am not the only blogger going through these trials and tribulations. Having an awareness of the anxieties and that you are not alone will hopefully serve to boost your morale as a blogger and enable you to further appreciate your readers. Read more…

You probably know how it feels to see a comment where someone disagrees with you over something you passionately believe in. It could be a comment left by someone who probably got offended over something you said, or you got offended by their comment. Just as in real life, sometimes there are people you do not want to talk with anymore or for a while for various reasons.

While it is perfectly normal to not interact with a commentor because you feel that any interaction may lead to hostility or more disrespect, I think it is better to let a person know, either in public or in private, that you do not wish to respond to their comments anymore because of specific reasons.
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To engage in manipulation is to use your influence on the behavior of others. One official definition of manipulation is as follows:

Exerting shrewd or devious influence especially for one’s own advantage; “his manipulation of his friends was scandalous.”
WordNet

So what is reader manipulation? Reader manipulation — according to my personal definition — is to use one’s status as blogger to selfishly or scandalously influence the readers to act in a way that will directly benefit said blogger. Within this post, I will point out three types of ways to manipulate readers. My hope in pointing these out is so that you may avoid these techniques at all costs. Read more…

Guest blogging is the concept of inviting commentors, other bloggers or someone else to blog on your site temporarily. Carolyn from Thoughts and Philosophies did this recently, and that gave me a small idea. If you want to appreciate readers who disagree with you a lot, invite them to guest blog on your site on any topic they wish. Invite guest bloggers to talk about things you may disagree with, so that you can show your appreciation to people who disagree with you over certain things.

If you want to be on the safe side, you can setup a rule to first review the blog post by the guest bloggers in order to see if the post can be published. If you do publish the post, you will be appreciating that guest blogger and showing through that appreciation that you are willing to help others voice their opinions. I cannot think of a better way to show respect for someone who may have views that you yourself do not agree with.
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On your blog, you may be tempted to focus on marketing a lot. Marketing your blog to new readers is a good thing. Keeping your current readers happy is an even better thing. You should focus more on interacting with the people you already know and on developing more bonds with your current readers. Otherwise, what good is it to bring in new readers when you do not appreciate your current readers?

Try not to prefer prospective readers over your current loyal readers

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WP Categories and Posts now has a new page and author. Please visit the new WP Categories and Posts Page on the Phill McDonnell website.

WP Categories and Posts is an extension of the core WordPress function called wp_list_categories. This plugin adds in a template tag you can use to display categories and sub categories and the posts underneath those categories.

For working examples, please see the following pages:

• Reader Appreciation Project Sitemap
• Ronalfy.com Sitemap
• Books Love Me Sitemap
• Untwisted Vortex Extended Categories

Here is a screenshot as well.

Download

Please download the file WP Categories and Posts v1.0.

Installation

Installation is simple. Just unzip into your plugins folder and activate the plugin. From there, you may call the function ronalfy_list_categories_and_posts() from within your WordPress page.

An example page template called sitemap.php is included in the zip file. You can copy this file into your themes directory and use it as a page template for your sitemap if you wish.

Usage

The function by itself will return the categories and posts. It will accept most of the same arguments as wp_list_categories, but not all of them. One argument that I noticed that didn’t work was showcount.

Support

This plugin is provided as is, but I will try to answer most of your questions in the comments. Thank you.