CakeBlast

Thank you Dimez 2 Vines for giving me the Sunshine Award! This is my first Blog Award so it is very special to me. Below this award you will find the rules for accepting it and the blogs I am passing it on to!

Here are twelve blogs that are very deserving of the Sunshine Award!

Bless Their Hearts Mom

Run the Earth, Watch the Sky

Principled Life

Raising Olives

Home Grown Hearts

Mama To 3 Blessings

But First We Have Coffee

Texas Angel

Duckabush Blog

Sister Wisdom

Anne Elliot

Totally Tots

Here are the rules of acceptance

1. Put the logo on your blog or within your post.

2. Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.

3. Link the nominees within your post.

4. Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

How many of you look at expiring sweepstakes on websites such as All Things Bloggy and Online-Sweepstakes? Have you ever found an awesome giveaway that you wanted to enter, only to find out that it ended earlier in the day? In the months that I have hosted giveaways I have discovered that my two biggest days are the first couple days and the last day of the giveaway.

The first day of my giveaway, my newsletter goes out and attracts a few visitors. Then, as I continue  my promotion in the opening days of my giveaway, it is listed in all the “New Sweeps Added” sections of the giveaway sites. The last day, I usually see a nice upsurge in visitors due to being listed in the “Expiring Sweepstakes” area of many websites.  PR Bloggers who end their giveaways early in the day are losing visitors and potential subscribers.

Many giveaway entrants will become subscribers, followers, and friends. It is also common practice to gain contest entries in exchange for  backlinks/button placement. These are all invaluable tools to help promote the growth of our blogs. I am surprised by the number of people who end contests as early as noon!

A few weeks ago my computer failed. In the weeks that it took to get back up and running, I didn’t enter hardly any sweepstakes. Once I had my computer reformatted and texter reinstalled, I wanted to catch up on giveaways that I had missed. I checked up on many Expiring Sweepstakes to gain some last minute entries on giveaways I had previously missed. I am usually only able to “sweep” in the evening after the kids go to bed, so about half of the sweeps “expiring” that day had already ended!

When bloggers are promoting their giveaways, they are always asked to provide an ending date. The date (and not the time) is usually used to categorize the giveaway, so participants can find it when they seek out giveaways ending on that particular date. Failing to end a giveaway at 11:59 pm causes listings in the popular Expiring Sweepstakes sections of websites to be valueless.

Of course, the reason I say 11:59 pm and not midnight is because once midnight strikes, it becomes a whole different day. I currently end my giveaways at 11:59 pm CST, even though I would be better off ending them using PST which is an hour behind my time zone. I know that I have missed certain giveaways due to EST being ahead of our time zone.

For a blogger just starting out, it can be a huge mistake to end giveaways too early in the day. I have discovered many great blogs from looking at expiring sweepstakes lists. There are many other blogs that I have found from these lists and then left disappointed after realizing that a contest is over. This is probably why almost every PR/giveaway blog I subscribe to ends their contests at 11:59 pm. There may be many more reasons, but I don’t think any more reasons are necessary.

One of my major pet peeves is encountering the message “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.” This happens to me on Wordpress blogs fairly frequently when I am entering giveaways. As many of my readers know, I use Texter to make posting my entries a snap. With two keystrokes, I am able to enter multiple sentences and html links. This method of entering is similar to the “Quick Comment” buttons on my own comment forms.

I believe that the majority of a visitor’s giveaway entry time should be spent at the sponsor’s website. After thinking through their initial answer, the extra entries should be like a good medicine; quick and effective. Comparing entries to medicine may seem odd at first, but please consider.

There are thousands of blogs offering giveaways. Many giveaways offer 5 or even 10 entries for creating a blog post mentioning the giveaway. Using an application like “Press This” can make a Wordpress article take 2 minutes or less (this is a topic I have in my overflowing drafts folder). I want Cakeblast to be more than a tool to gain entries, but when I blogged about the Mommy-Files Leapster Giveaway (now closed), I was testing “Press This” for possible use on a new blog.

Anyway, upon completing an extra entry requirement, we often need to submit entries into the giveaway that say something like “I blogged #1 (url)” followed by “I blogged #2 (url)” etc etc. Wordpress, by default, requires 15 seconds between comments to deter spam. For sites that use an effective anti-spam plugin (e.g. WP-Spamfree), this wait is unnecessary.

Furthermore, the wait time is frustrating if we are trying to submit several near-duplicate comments. It is just as frustrating if we use texter, and take less than a second to enter comments such as “I have your button (url).”

Wordpress needs a way to lower the required time between comments under Settings/discussion. I found a way to hack into WP’s core files and change the default, but whenever I update my Wordpress installation it would likely change itself back. After doing a little bit of searching, I found a plugin that fit my needs. It is called Smart Throttle, and it was developed for the exact opposite purpose of what I am using it for.

Smart Throttle allows WP bloggers to adjust the time-out between comments. The plug-in was created as a means to decrease spam comment flooding, but the required time between comments can be set to anything the user wants! Now Cakeblast visitors only have to wait one second between comment posts! I did a lot of testing and was unable to post comments fast enough to receive the dreaded “Slow Down” message.  Setting up the plugin is easy.

First, go to the Smart Throttle website and download the plugin.   After downloading the plugin from the Smart Throttle website, install it and activate as you would any other plugin. Next, click on the Smart Throttle link which will be under Settings in your Wordpress dashboard. Then you will be confronted with the Scary Massage “Do not edit unless you know what you are doing. We believe our time out break down is well balanced .” If you do not have good spam protection, heed this advice. WP-Spamfree stops bots and if a human user were to flood my site with comment spam I would solve the problem by blocking his/her IP.

I set the time-out rate for less than 10 (< 10) comments at 1 second. For a comment rate (> 10) (< 15), I set it for 5 seconds. For ( >14) consecutive comments, I set the rate at the WP default of 15 seconds. I’m using all the symbols because that is the way they are written on the Smart Throttle page. Click Save Changes, and you are finished. If you use this plug-in on your site, please leave a comment and/or a link back to my site.

If you want to test out the speed of this system on my site, please do not do it on this post. Instead, go to one of my current giveaways. After completing the mandatory entry begin fulfilling some of the extra entry requirements without commenting right away.  Put my button on your blog, Fan me on Facebook, follow me on blogger & twitter, copy/paste a quick tweet, and subscribe to my RSS feed or by email.

Once you have all of these entry methods fulfilled, use my Quick-Comment (QC) buttons to enter comments as quickly as possible. If you want the link to your blog/website (where I can find your button) to be clickable, highlight the url and click the “link” QC button. Continue down the list as quickly as you can, and you will discover that at Cakeblast, you are allowed to post comments as quickly as your fingers can click a button.

Once you have fulfilled the extra entry requirements, you will have extra entries into all of my giveaways. Unlike many sites, these extra entries will take mere seconds to claim. I want my visitors to spend their time visiting my sponsors and spreading the word about my giveaways; not wasting time between comments until being allowed to post more.

Out of the thousands of blogs hosting giveaways, I appreciate everyone who stops by for a few minutes to enter mine. I’ll always strive to save my readers time while offering the maximum benefit to my readers and sponsors.  Thank you for taking the time to read this.

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A few days ago I added a new feature to the comment area of all my pages. I’m  referring to the little buttons above the text area of my comment form.

These little buttons say things like hve btn and when you press it, the words “I have your button on my blog/website. The url to my blog/website is” appear in the textbox. If you are entering a giveaway, all you have to do afterward is paste the url to the webpage where my button can be found, and hit submit. It is like having Texter integrated with my comment form!

It is kind of funny and kind of sad that I spent two weeks trying to do something similar on my own before discovering the simple plug-in I am now using. My original idea was to create a drop-down menu of options that would automatically add text. I spent a several hours between deciding default options, styling, and programming my menu. Then it dawned on me that a button-text utility already existed. It had already been developed as a way for users to add custom smileys to their comments!

Surely, I thought,  if a plug-in exists that creates buttons  to add smileys, then it could be recoded to add blocks of text. After doing a little research, I discovered that this had also already been done!

The plug-in I am using to create the buttons at the top of my comment area is called Comment Quick Tags! The plug-in’s webpage is in Japanese, so the link I’ve included will take you to the download page on the Wordpress website. Comment Quicktags was created to add basic customizable WYSIWYG features to the comment area. I used the simple customization features to create the options I now have available for my users. I am going to give a rundown of the steps to creating these buttons in case anyone wants to follow suit.

First go to Comment Quicktags, and download the plugin. Second,  upload it to your plugins folder and activate it. Next, go to your Settings menu and find Comment Quicktags. When you click it, you will find instructions listed as Tag Options. I deleted all the tags except for “link.”

Editing quicktags is simpler and more straightforward than it looks. Click Add/Edit to create a new tag.  Next, give the tag an ID. You can make this anything you want because it won’t matter unless you decide to style your buttons differently. Next to Display*,  type the shorthand text that you want your visitors to see. Finally, type the block of text you want next to Start Tag!

You can make the Start Tag text as long as you want, although it will all be in one paragraph. For my purposes, this was fine. Leave the text area next to End Tag blank. If you have a handicap accessible site, you will want to add an access key. After you hit the big blue Update Tags button you’re finished! Its easy to go back and edit your tags later to make any changes.

In case you don’t understand access keys, click inside my comment box. If you use Firefox, hold Alt+Shift and then type “s.” In IE, Hold down the Alt key, press the number or letter of the access key, then release both keys and press Enter. My site is not as accessible as I would like, but I added access keys because it was so easy using the plugin.

The Comment Quicktags plug-in actually works better than what I was originally trying to do. The line of buttons I now have, seem more obvious and less intrusive than using a dropdown menu. I also like the simplicity of customization. The buttons can be dragged around to change their order and user roles can be assigned if you only want registered users or admin to see them. The one thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to limit the buttons to only appearing on giveaway posts.

If you download this plug-in and repurpose it to automatically generate plain text in your comment forms, please add my button to your blog/website. If you don’t have room for the button, a text link would be great as well. I didn’t create this plug-in, but I am using it in a way that I’ve never seen anyone else do. If you have any trouble implementing autotext comment buttons, contact me or leave a comment and I will try to help.

Eventually I will figure out how to make the buttons only appear in certain categories, but that is another project for another day. If there are any other features that you would like to see in my comment area, let me know.

I ♡ symbols because they are a cute and fun way to personalize text. I used to enjoy putting them in comments and forum messages. Then, somewhere along the line I quit doing this. Maybe I decided it was more practical to say what I wanted without cutesying everything up?

Lately, I have been going to lots of forums and comment forms and I never see people using these symbols. This symbol deficiency makes me want to go symbol CrAZy and start putting the fun back in functional!

I realize that the only reason many people do not use symbols when they write is because they don’t know how. If that is the case, prepare to smile because I am going to tell you!

The first thing to Read the rest of this entry »