RAQ: Can I keep my username from showing on a WordPress.com blog post?

SMUGgle Pam Larson, who is starting a new blog as one of her projects for 2009 (and who also lives across the street from Old Main), sent me a text message this morning with the following question:

If I don’t want my user name to show up under each post, can I delete that line? I can’t find that option.

As I see it, there are three potential ways to accomplish this. The first is easy. The other two aren’t. And this points to a new phase of learning I’m beginning as your Chancellor.

Solution #1: Pick a different theme

I was surprised when I helped my parents start a blog with some of their locally politically active friends, that when they wrote some posts the usernames weren’t published. They had picked the “Cutline” theme by Chris Pearson from among the free choices on WordPress.com.

So switching themes would be the quickest and easiest way to accomplish this goal. But Pam likes her current theme, so it doesn’t solve her problem.

Solution #2: Edit CSS

This is a paid upgrade option on WordPress.com that lets you tailor the look of your blog. It costs $15 a year. The best part is you can experiment with CSS and learn how to use it, and preview the changes, before you have to pay. Then, when you pay for the upgrade, your changes become visible to the world.

You need to know about CSS to use this productively, but the good news is that WordPress.com has a CSS customization forum where you can learn. I think I’ll spend some time playing with this.

But because editing CSS doesn’t allow you to edit the underlying theme, I have a feeling this still won’t solve Pam’s problem, unless she were to switch to the Sandbox theme and try to rebuild her blog’s look from scratch. I won’t really know that until after I’ve played with CSS for a while.

Solution #3: Self-Hosted Blog

This is the most complicated option, but it gives you the most control over the final look and feel of your blog. It also requires that you rent server space and install the free WordPress software on it (from WordPress.org.) As the next step in my social media learning (and to help me write some 300-level courses), I’m planning to move SMUG a self-hosted platform in 2009. More on that in a future post.

Conclusion:

It doesn’t appear that there is an easy answer for Pam’s question, that would let her keep the look she likes. Option 1 gets rid of the username but by changing the theme, Option 2 probably doesn’t solve the problem (and requires substantial work) and Option 3 could definitely work, but would cost more and take more work.

If any other SMUGgles have a better solution, please chime in and let us all learn from you!

Top 10 SMUG Posts for 2008

2008 was a great year for Social Media University, Global (SMUG), with total traffic up by more than 225 percent over 2007. Here are the posts that were most viewed:

  1. Top 10 Facebook Business Uses. It’s kind of wild that a post I wrote in Aug. 2007 would be the most-viewed post for 2008, but this one typically shows up in the top two Google results in a search for Facebook business uses.
  2. B2B Facebook: Limited Profile. This one also is from Aug. 2007, and probably pops up high for some of the same reasons. It’s #1 in Google for B2B Facebook.
  3. Why Organizations Should Join Facebook Group Land Rush. More gold from Aug. 2007, a few months before Facebook developed Pages as an official presence for businesses.
  4. 8 Steps to Successful Change – A review of John Kotter’s theory on organizational change that I wrote in 2006.
  5. Facebook Business (Page) – A compilation that pre-dates the SMUG makeover. I had been writing a bunch of posts that were related to using Facebook for business, and so I decided to pull them together.
  6. Best Buy Using Social Media for Employee Engagement – Finally, something from 2008! This is a post I wrote from an Advanced Learning Institute conference I attended in February. Steve Bendt and Gary Koelling had a great presentation, and the winning video from their employee contest was hilarious.
  7. Facebook Group Organization Examples – Another 2007 post highlighting various applications of Facebook groups by organizations. Again, this was from the pre-Pages days.
  8. Simply RSS: Add RSS Feeds to Your Facebook Profile or Page. A tutorial from late last year that helped me to start thinking that my niche for this blog might be the kind of educational courses that have become SMUG.
  9. 12-Step Social Media Program for PR Pros. I wrote this one in conjunction with a conference at which I was a panelist, to give the participants some concrete steps they could take to explore social media. Another precursor to SMUG: in fact, it was subsequently renamed Social Media 101.
  10. 4 Tips to Prevent Facebook Identity Theft. This is one I wrote, somewhat in exasperation, during a time when there was some buzz about Facebook being used to steal people’s identities. I believed that the concerns were seriously overblown then, and still do today. But when people search Google for Facebook identity theft, this post comes up #2.

Some more recent posts that finished just out of the top 10 for the full year (but should be strong contenders in 2009):

Facebook 101: Introduction to Facebook

Facebook 109: Uploading a Video to Facebook

SMUG $100 Facebook Hacker Challenge – A response to what I consider overblown concerns about the security of Facebook groups.

Facebook 210: Professional Profile, Personal Privacy – A tutorial on how you can use Facebook for both personal and professional networking.

SMUG exemplifies The Long Tail: The rest of the posts combined got more than twice as many page views in 2008 as these top 15 or so. Once the content is created, the cost of making it available to anyone who wants to find it is zero. And thanks to Google, it’s easy to find. So even a year or more after a post is published, it’s still providing value.

I’m glad you’re among those who have found your way to Social Media University, Global. If you haven’t yet enrolled, I hope you’ll do so today, and begin your journey of hands-on exploration in social media.

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@SMUG_U Twitter Profile Lets You Connect with SMUGgles

In addition to the SMUG Twitter Group, I’ve also established a SMUG_U profile in Twitter as a way to enable SMUGgles to connect with each other.

I’ll be logging into it regularly (probably increasingly as we progress), and may use Twitterfeed to automatically publish some links to posts from this blog, but one of the key benefits will be that you can see who else is following @SMUG_U, and you can follow them, too. That will be covered in Twitter 103: Following and Being Followed.

For now, just follow @SMUG_U.

If you’re a smarty pants who wants to skip ahead, you can see who else is following @SMUG_U and follow them.

And as you are tweeting, feel free to use the #smug hashtag if you think the item will interest your fellow SMUGgles.

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SMUG Twitter Group

As part of our ongoing exploration of Twitter, I’ve formed a couple of new outposts to explore ways to enable SMUGgles to get to know each other and interact.

The first is a Social Media University, Global (SMUG) Twitter Group, on the TwitterGroups site. The user interface reminds me a bit of Craigslist, and it seemed kind of odd that although I’m the group creator, when I went there today it gave me the “Join Group” option instead of knowing that I am a member.

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So, I joined again. Now I’m on the list.

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I hope you’ll join too, so we can explore together and see whether this service is worthwhile.

That’s part of the idea of SMUG: Get hands-on experience with social media tools, so you can see whether they make sense for you to use in your own business or non-profit organization.

So if you post tweets about it, use the #smug hashtag, and we’ll see if they get pulled into the group.

I’ll be interested to see what you think!

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Twitter 102: Creating an Account

This slidecast is part of the Twitter curriculum at Social Media University, Global. It takes you step-by-step through the process of creating your Twitter account.

Below is a narrated slidecast from slideshare.net. If you like, you can click this link to open another browser window at the Twitter home page, and then come back to this window and start the slidecast. Hit the “pause” button whenever you’d like, and go back to the other window and do your own Twitter signup.


Creating an account in Twitter really isn’t that hard, but if you’re just starting I thought having this step-by-step illustration might be helpful.

Assignments:

  1. Create your Twitter account.
  2. Follow me on these two Twitter accounts, @LeeAase and @SMUG_U. I’ll follow you back. And that will enable us to create a much more interactive community of SMUGgles as we learn about Twitter together.

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