I would like to thank everyone who has visited this blog in 2006, and wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! 

I will not be posting until early January, so I'll see you then! Happy holidays, everyone!

If you're new to blogging and you're just thinking about starting your own blog somewhere on the web, this series of articles is for you. 

So you have decided to start your own blog. To me, this means that you probably have some needs this blog is supposed to serve, and that you have most likely thought about you blog purpose in general. I simply want to make sure that you have given it all a proper thought. So, to make your life a little bit easier, I've prepared a list of the most obvious questions to ask yourself before starting a blog.

Today I'm going to ask you the first three questions.

1) What is your blog about?

You have to pick a niche for your blogging, and try your best to stay within the defined set of topics. There are few reasons for this:

– you're better off blogging about a subject you're familiar with. If your posts don't make any sense or don't provide your visitors with any value, no one will read you

– people will ask the same question as they stumble upon your blog. Unless it's an easy enough answer for them, they will not know why they want to
read you

– without a clear understanding of the purpose of your blog, you will not be able to share the knowledge or achieve other blogging goals you might must have

2) Do you really need (want) a blog?

I mean, have you considered any other options of putting your content online, and came to the idea of having a blog this way?

Surely, blogs are among the easiest ways to present content these days, but you have to be absolutely sure that blog is really the way you want your website to be.

If in doubt, read some definitions of a blog. Start here if you like: Glossary: Blog.

3) Do you have time to blog?

It takes only few days to realize one of the most crucial features of any blog – a regular update of the content. Unless you have the time to post regularly, your blog isn't going to grow and gain popularity.

You don't have to be posting 5 articles a day, but once a day is the most recommended approach. I myself haven't been following this rule yet, and this is the only reason the readership of this blog grows so slowly.

Just remember: it's not about frequency, but about being regular. People will be coming back to your blog when they expect new content to be posted. If it's once a week – that's fine, as long as it happens every week.

Yes, there are some fairly successful blogs out there which aren't very regular, but they actually miss out on traffic and visitors because of their irregular posting.

This concludes the first part of my Questions To Ask Yourself Before Starting A Blog series. I will post more in the coming weeks. Please feel free to let me know your answers to the above questions, or suggest more questions which you believe to be important for any blogger.

Steve Smith from Ordered List has just made my day. He's finally released his WP Tiger Administration v3.0 plugin, which completely changes your WordPress-powered blog administration experience. It's hard to believe, but all the improvements are done using CSS2 only, no change to XHTML templates were made.

I've been watching this plugin for quite some time, but today I have gone and actually installed it. See for yourself how different my new experience is!

This is how my WP admin panel looked before:

And that's how it looks now!

Like it? Then go visit the plugin page and download it yourself: WP Tiger Administration v3.0.

Thanks a lot, Steve!