This is a guest post from Duncan who is an online marketing specialist and keen blogger representing a producer of natural beauty products and skin care products.

Blogging has come on a long way since its infancy. All bloggers could do back in the day was write a post, give it a title and maybe include a few hyperlinks if they were lucky. Nowadays however there are all sorts of widgets, plugins and extensions to help make the blogging experience a richer one, both for blog owners and their readers. WordPress has undoubtedly had a big part to play in this development, allowing the masses to develop the open source code and customise blogs to suit their needs. The other blogging platforms aren’t too far behind however and their progress is driven by the very human desire to make things better and more engaging.

One such development that many blog owners are taking advantage of these days is music players that they can either embed into their posts or individual pages. A couple of examples of these are the ‘Audio Player’ plugin for WordPress , which can actually be imbedded in any blog if you know a bit of code. Or Groove Shark, which is a customisable widget that will play music on your blog from their own diverse and extensive collection.

Using music on your site can really enhance a visitor’s experience. If you are trying to create an ambiance or have a clear theme on your blog, music can reinforce this. You might also like to showcase your own music on your site so you can get feedback or maybe catch the ear of someone in the industry? What you need to be careful of however is crossing the line between enhancing a users experience and putting them off by forcing your audio choices on them.

It is worth remembering that everyone has different tastes and may not like the music on your blog. Also, these days many people have their own music players open whilst browsing the net and don’t want their songs interrupted by what you think they want to listen to. With this is mind it is rarely a good idea to have music start playing automatically when people arrive on the site, but instead give them the option to turn it on if they so wish.

For example, on this site the music player is closed when people arrive

But if you want to you can open the music player by clicking on the arrow and the song starts to play. In this case it is Michael Jackson’s – Man In The Mirror…classic!

The key is, by all means give your visitors something to listen to when they visit your site and read your posts, but don’t try to force anything down their throats or assume they want to listen to your choice of tunes.

It seems that my blog has been quite hungry lately so I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning to help it speed up a tad and be less server-side hungry.

So I have deactivated a few wordpress plugins these were the Cute Profiles, Wibiya Toolbar, Wordpress.com Stats and the WP Greet Box, also I removed several “buttons” from the columns on the blog which were not really needed.

And as another work around for speeding up the blog I have installed WP Super Cache, since removing the plugins etc and adding Super Cache I have noticed a real speed difference, so hopefully this will help others viewing the site and speed up the process.

So lets see how it goes and maybe I will remove some other plugins in the next few weeks, depending on how everything is running, I may also consider changing the design of the blog to something a little quicker

The other day Karen from Blazing Minds did a post on her Blogging Wire called Why I Enjoy Guest Posting on Blogs. It prompted me to write this long overdue guest post and I’m quite pleased that she offered a guest spot.

If you’re a new blogger just getting started you might not know what plugins are or how where to get started. For starters, read my post called So You Want To Be a Blogger before you dive in. Basically, using a plugin is a way to include additional functionality to your blog. Plugins help you customize your blog and give it some personality. Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s now 2010, wow doesn’t time fly, it doesn’t seem that long ago since it was the 1st Jan 2009. With another month flown by it’s that time ago to bring you a round-up of the previous months round-up, things have been hotting up on the blog over the last month and only today I was proud to announce on Twitter that my blog had hit the 3,000 mark in comments a wonderful milestone for myself and a true appreciation of those that stop by and decide to leave well written comments.

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Another list for those that are interested this time it’s a collection of the Blogging Tips that have been posted on my blog, these are a collection of my own posts and those by guest bloggers.

So I’m going to stop prattling on and let you get on to reading som very interesting posts that have been very useful to myself and those that read and comment here on Blazing Minds. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems to be that another month has gone by and that means it’s time for a chance to bring the readers of the Blazing Minds blog a monthly round-up of the best commentators, best posts, top referring blogs and some other little stats that I can throw in for good measure

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Welcome one and all to another Weekly Round up on my blog, as you know each week I bring you a list of blog posts that I have enjoyed reading over the last week as well has some stats. from Blazing Minds, all in a top 5 format….

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