I’ve read a lot of comments on other blogs as of late that talk about how long it takes them to post. We’re talking a half hour, an hour, sometimes more.

That’s too long for you to be spending on a single post.

Now, there’s a time and a place for a long post. I tend to spend a lot of time on resource lists or how-to guides I’ve posted on other blogs, but I know some of you out there are spending at least that much time on short, choppy posts like this one.

Sometimes people write slow. My old roommate was a very slow writer. It would take him days to finish a short four page double spaced essay–no matter the topic. And aside from “practice makes perfect”, conquering your slow writing isn’t going away any time soon. Unless, of course, you’re a slow typist. Then you just need to train yourself.

But enough rambling. Let’s get to the point.

There are a number of ways that you can improve your posting speed, and they won’t take you too long at all.

First, start a word processor file that you can use to keep your post notes on. Title ideas, topic ideas, websites that you’re drawing inspiration from, and anything else that can help you become a faster poster. Keeping all of your ideas in one place will significantly improve your posting times.

Next, visit your favorite free photo site, or one of the photo search engines I’ve previously recommended, and download a ton of pictures that you can use with your posts. Do they have to fit with the subject matter? Nah, the more unique the picture, the better. (And yes, I know I haven’t been using post images myself–but I’m working on it.)

Finally, keep your RSS reader updating as quickly as possible. When you get the scoop about a news story or something else that’s fast breaking, write up a couple of paragraphs on it as fast as you can, slide in a few links, and submit the post. If you can do a few of those a day, you’ll be well on your way to hundreds of posts in a couple of months.

This post took only 10 minutes to write. Simple as that, I had all of my research in front of me and all I had to do was type.

A few days ago, I posted about six sites you can use to help you find images for your blog posts in just a few seconds. But what if using photos from Flickr isn’t really your thing? What if you want to use a snazzy icon or two to go along with your text? A Flickr search engine certainly isn’t going to help you there.

That’s why I’m showing you some of the best icon search engines on the internet. Whether you like to include icons with your blog posts or you’re just looking for a little something to spice up your desktop, these web apps should be right up your alley. Check them out, see if they offer what you want, and move on down the list if they don’t. And, in case you’re wondering, they’re in no particular order.

[For each site, I looked up two icons, one for Safari and another of a Dog. Some could find an image for both, some could only find one, and others couldn't find any--but your mileage may vary.]

1. Iconlook On first glance, Iconlook seems to be the most professional of the icon search engines. Glossy logo, big search field, it’s a regular web 2.0 site. Even when you search, you have plenty of options to check. Do you want big icons, small icons, or something in between?

However, Iconlook only found one icon for Safari (and it looked amazingly similar to the default icon) and only one icon for a Dog. Both were usable, but for a site that looks so promising, I would have expected more.

If you’re willing to browse, though, Iconlook gives you the option to check out all of the popular icons in a handy grid.

2. Iconfinder Iconfinder’s appearance is surprisingly similar to that of Iconlook. Big logo, big search field, grid layout for found icons. However, it lacks the selection feature to choose a particular icon size you need and it is missing a page filled with popular icons.

Also, searching for both Safari and Dog rendered nothing. In their defense, though, searches for more general topics like Drive, Computer, or Internet all came back with a fairly large number of results.

3. Iconlet Iconlet strays from the gaudy, glossy look of the previous two sites and goes for a more minimalist approach. While this is all well and good, their search feature can be annoying when you find multiple sizes for a particular icon–each size gets its own listing instead of simply combining multiple sizes and showing the largest. Not particularly user friendly.

Iconlet’s database is rather large, however, as a single search returns a number of results in multiple sizes. All icons are free, open source, or creative commons licensed. But, it wasn’t able to find a Safari icon–though it did find a couple of Dog icons.

4. SearchIcon SearchIcon is supposedly listing over 60,000 icons as of this writing, and I can totally believe it. The search engine feels stronger and more robust than some of the other contenders, and it really shows with the quality of results it returns.

SearchIcon also includes a handy feature that I’d like to see all of the other search engines incorporate. A path button which takes you to a page filled with related icons from the same series.

Searching for Safari came up with quite a few attractive results while the search for Dog churned out a handful of others (though no true picture of a dog).

5. Icons Search To be honest, I wasn’t too fond of the way Icons Search looked before I entered any search terms. It seems almost amateurish–but then again, so does Google.

The search feature itself, however, is fast and accurate, coming up with quite a few results for both Safari and Dog. Icons Search is also the only site thus far that 256×256 size icons. Really the only drawback here is the way the icons are displayed after a search. Much like Iconlet, there are multiple pictures of each icon depending on what sizes they come in.

6. The Icon Browser The Icon Browser is easily the most hastily put together of all of the icon search engines we’ve seen. It resembles an early web app from a decade or so ago. In a lot of cases, appearance can be deceiving–but that’s not entirely true here.

The search for Safari returned nothing while the search for Dog returned quite a few results, all of which were low quality, pixelated GIF files that look like clipart from the days of the Windows 3.1.

7. deviantART Last, but certainly not least, we have DeviantArt. Yes, I know it’s not a true icon search engine, though they do have a massive supply of amazing artwork that really blows the rest of the sites out of the water. Just type what icon you’re looking for then click on Customization followed by Icons on the left side of your screen.

Obviously, given the huge amount of art hosted on DeviantArt, finding a Safari icon and a Dog icon was a piece of cake.

So which of these search engines was the best? Search Icon is the clear winner as it totally outshines the rest of the true icon search engines. However, if you really want the highest quality content, you’re going to have to pay DeviantArt a visit.

A lot of bloggers recommend adding pictures to the top of every post. While that’s all well and good (and I promise I’ll be doing the same at some point), finding the right picture can be a huge waste of time. You’ve already spent the last ten minutes to an hour writing your post–now you need to take a few more minutes to find a picture, scale it to the right size, upload it to your image gallery, and then add it to the post. Talk about tedious. Yawn.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, thanks to a number of great sites to help you search through the millions of photos at Flickr (and other photo hosts) for one special shot that can make your great post into something truly memorable. Here are the six best tools to aid your image search.

1. Picitup. Picitup is an image searching machine that blows away other web focused searches like Google Images. You start by typing in a keyword that you’re looking for. Hit search and you’ve got hundreds of images at your fingertips.

But a bulky load of images is nothing if you can’t narrow the results down. A good place for bloggers like you and me to start is to switch the settings over to Flickr and select Creative Commons in the process. This gives you access to a ton of high quality (and not so high quality) images that are free to use so long as you attribute the original author.

Creative Commons sorting is not the only way to filter pictures on Picitup, however. You can even break your search results down by color, size, orientation, type of picture (person, advertisement, etc.), and even object shape. The shape search has some issues, but the rest of the settings work really well.

2. Compfight. Thanks to coverage by a number of big name sites, Compfight has generated a ton of buzz about it being the “best” Flickr search app. While it doesn’t have nearly as large of a scope as Picitup does, Compfight more than makes up for it with a friendly and easily accessible user interface.

Unlike so many image searches that don’t show a lot of pictures per page, Compfight breaks free by displaying loads of pictures at once. All it takes is a quick scroll through the first couple of pages to find just the picture you need.

Of course, as with all of the Flickr search apps, Compfight allows you to sort your results by Creative Commons licensing, as well as whether or not you can get the original straight from Flickr. Search can also be done through tags or all text, whichever floats your boat.

3. FlickrStorm. On first glance, FlickrStorm doesn’t look like much (especially in Safari). You type in a keyword and you’re given an assortment of images straight from Flickr with whatever type of licensing you need for your project. And it seems like that’s all this app does.

Then you click on a picture.

Boom, the image pops up right on the side of your search so you never have to leave the page. And it appears in your history to the left so you can compare shots as you go.

Perhaps the handiest feature on FlickrStorm, though, is the tray. Shift-Click on a thumbnail of your choice and that picture is added to the tray. When you’ve had enough photo searching for the day, just click on the save icon and you’re given a website with all of the pictures from your tray displayed in whatever size you want. Link to it, save it, download the pictures in bulk. Whatever you want to do.

4. PictureSandbox. Don’t let the amateurish design fool you. PictureSandbox is a hell of an image search with capabilities that span from Flickr to Webshots to Fotolia and more. Its a great tool if you’re looking for stock photos too–but there are better search apps out there for Flickr alone.

After a search, images are displayed in a similar fashion to Compfight, but not nearly as many per page. You can then click on the images to display a larger thumbnail and show some of the photo’s specs. Unfortunately, there’s no way to sort the images by license, size or anything else.

5. Creative Commons. Then there’s the tried and true Creative Commons site. They have a pretty handy Flickr search engine built into their web page that takes you directly to the Flickr site itself. Searching this way yields plenty of results, but it can take a while for you to find exactly what picture you want thanks to the limited amount of pictures per page. Also, every search from the Creative Commons site ensures that you get a picture with CC licensing, obviously.

6. Flickr. The last great way to search Flickr is to use Flickr’s built in search itself. You don’t get the hundreds of photos at your fingertips like you do with some of the earlier tools, but there are more than enough search options to please even the most diligent image searcher. Sort by camera, content type, licensing and more.

So which app do you use to search for post pictures? Did I forget to add your favorite to the list? Let me know in the comments.

The core of this post is designed for WordPress users–but there are just a couple more steps needed for everyone else.

You’ve heard me mention it before–the pain and suffering that goes into working with Internet Explorer 6. It just doesn’t follow the rules.

While layout problems are a major pain, one of my pet peeves is the lack of transparent PNG support in IE6. That’s what we’re here to talk about today–how to fix these problems in just a few seconds without having to do any code editing yourself.

For months (years), there have been quite a few different solutions out there on how to fix these PNG problems. Most of them revolve around inserting some JavaScript into your site’s head and changing the names of all of your PNG files. Unfortunately, a lot of these workarounds have been limited, unable to deal with outside the box PNGs, such as those which have been tiled or used as backgrounds, or so on and so forth.

With all of these setbacks, one solution has seemed to work the best–the Unit PNG Fix. It’s small, simple, and does the job really well. Certainly better than most. I’m using it on some of my other sites, but not this one–yet.

The only real problem remaining is that you actually have to edit your site’s code to ascertain the benefits of the PNG fix.

But those days are gone.

Thanks to the work of Vincenzo Russo, we now have a plugin (aptly named the WP-UnitPNGfix) that can do exactly what the Unit PNG Fix is capable of doing, without having to edit any code. It’s only for WordPress, but that’s better than nothing.

So, if you’re having trouble making that step to edit your own code, try installing this plugin instead. You’ll thank yourself later.

To have a successful blog these days, you have to build community spirit. Contests, giveaways, guest posts, and all that are great ways to get people interacting with your site–but nothing screams community to the average visitor than a lively comments section on your posts.

Comments are a catch 22. You need comments to build your blog’s community spirit to boost your success and notoriety on the web–but sometimes it’s tough to get those comments when you’re just starting out. With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of some of the best tips to get those comments flowing.

• Encourage Comments
  Sometimes all your readers need is a bit of encouragement. Pose a question at the end of your posts or throughout the body. Ask what your readers thoughts are about your posts. If you’re doing some kind of a tutorial, tell them that you’re happy to answer any questions they may have. That little push can help you build tons of comments on your posts.
• Don’t Make Your Readers Register or Fill Out a Capcha
  A lot of people are easily dissuaded from adding a comment to your blog–so don’t make it any more difficult on them than it already is. You readers are spending a few minutes (or more) of their time typing their comment already. Including required registration or a capcha is a great way to turn off a would be commenter. You’ve got a spam filter, what are you so worried about?
• Reply to Every Comment You Get
  What’s the point of filling out a comment if it seems like the blog’s owner doesn’t even read it? Much like you reply to people in a forum, do the same with comments. Your readers care enough about your site and your post to let you know their feelings, so make them feel like they’re welcome members of your community. Plus, adding your own comments further increases the comment count on your posts.
• Choose a Side and Stand Your Ground
  It’s your blog, you can say whatever you want on it. And if you’re looking for comments, you need to stop playing the part of the flip-flopping politician and talk about how you actually feel about an issue. Maybe you love Mac OS X and hate Vista. Perhaps you want to slander people who would spend money on a blogging platform like TypePad. Post a love-fest for Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign. Go ahead. You’ll get loads of comments weighing in on how right or wrong you are.
• Make Your Top Commenters Feel Special
  There are a few plugins out there that make it easy to show off the people who comment the most often. Install one and “reward” those who contribute the most to your blog’s community. Or, if your blog is generating a large amount of income already, consider offering monthly giveaways to top commenters who provide good information with each comment.
• Can People Relate to Your Posts?
  Drafting that perfect post can take a lot of time and effort. And, if you’re not careful, you can come across as sounding elitist, know-it-all-like, or just plain boring. I know I’ve been guilty of all of the above at some time in my writing career. You need to be able to write conversationally, or at the very least, in a style that people can relate to. Since comments are a conversation, make your posts the stepping stones for starting off each topic.
• Turn Off Comment Moderation
  You may be tempted to moderate your comments before you allow them to be posted on your site. I know I’ve gotten quite a few scathing comments on other blogs I own–but let them get posted anyway. Every time I’ve had someone post a negative comment, two more have followed with a positive to back me up. Let the conversation flow naturally–without the need to look over each comment as you get it. When your blog grows, you’ll turn moderation off anyway, so why not turn it off now?
• Don’t be a Jackass
  Remember those scathing comments from the previous tip? Yeah, those comments that you are tempted to moderate but you’re not going to. Whatever you do, try not to respond to those with the same nasty tone as they used. So you don’t agree on a topic or he called you a name–get over it. You have a reputation to uphold, and if you tell off too many people, you’ll end up scaring away any potential commenters.
• Set Your Comments to DoFollow
  By default, most blogging software sets commenters’ URLs to be “nofollow” links which have no bearing on the majority of search engine rankings. By setting comments to “dofollow”, you give commenters a nice little backlink for their troubles. While you may not be too keen on doing this if you somehow feel that you need a level 9 PageRank, everyone else should consider this option.
• Turn on CommentLuv
  CommentLuv is a relatively new plugin for WordPress that automatically finds and adds a link to your commenters’ last blog post. Much like the DoFollow tip, people actively search out blogs that include CommentLuv as one of their plugins, bringing in more traffic and comments to your posts. However, you need to reign over your comments with an iron fist, or you may find spammers trying to take over your site’s comments section.
• Fake a Few Comments Here and There
  Alright, so this last tip is a little underhanded, but it can work. Much like some people need encouragement to post a comment, they also want to feel like they’re not the only people reading the post. If you’re just starting out and not getting much traffic, put a few “fake” comments here and there to get the community going. You can even combine encouragement and fake comments for double the commenting benefits.

And there you have it, a nice set of seven tips to help you get more comments on your blog. If you have some tried and true idea that I overlooked, let me know in the comments below.

WordPress is easily one of the best blogging engines around. It’s got thousands of plugins, nearly as many themes, and its easy enough for anyone to use. But, for some time now, there hasn’t been any place to find all of the newest themes in one centralized location. That’s all about to change with the creation of the Theme Directory at wordpress.org/extend/themes/.

Taking a page from the highly successful Plugin Directory, the Theme Directory lets you search and browse through themes with ease. There’s even a “Preview” button to view a live demo of the theme in action. Is it perfect? Not yet. Is there a lot of content at this point? Nope. But I’m sure it will start to grow quicker than anyone can possibly imagine in due time.

According to the WordPress development blog, it’s as easy for developers to include a theme in the directory as it is for users to download one.

We’ve gone through great lengths to make this as painless as possible for theme authors. You don’t need to know anything about Subversion (our back end magic takes care of all that for you), just login with your WordPress.org username and password and go to the upload page. From there you upload your regular theme zip file and we take care of the rest.

Once you upload your new theme we do a few automated checks for some of the requirements for each theme. If we find one that you missed we’ll provide you an error and description of what needs to be fixed. When a theme upload has been accepted we’ll send you an email and put it in the queue to be reviewed, to make sure we didn’t miss anything. After the theme has been approved you’ll get another email letting you know that the theme is now live.

It’s about time the world’s most popular blogging platform finally has a place where everyone can go to check out great themes. Though, it may soak up some of the traffic that theme authors were used to getting on their own websites.

[Via Weblog Tools Collection]

I’ve mentioned a few times that Contented Niche has undergone some changes over the years, and most of you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. To the masses, it seems as though this site is as fresh as a newborn baby–but that is really not the case.

After graduating from college and tiring of my job as a medical writer, I moved into freelance copywriting for a little extra income. The pay was OK, but I wanted more, so I came up with the original idea for Contented Niche. The site was designed to be a place for people who needed content for their niche sites.

The site went live in 2006 and my small team of writers and I worked on creating numerous article packs, ebooks, and other goodies for the would-be internet entrepreneur. Over time, we branched out to other projects, mainly custom content as opposed to pre-written niche packs. The name stayed the same, but the idea behind it began to morph into something different.

And that leaves us where we are today. The old Contented Niche has passed on to make way for something new. Instead of a small team, it’s now a one man show. Instead of pages filled with pre-written articles, I’ve come back to the roots of what I wanted Contented Niche to be. A site designed to help make the internet a more interesting place.