When you visit your favorite blogs, you may have noticed that some of them have the entire blog post available for you to read on the front page, while others only allow you to see a short snippet of the post and require you to click in to view the whole thing. The ones with the snippet are taking advantage of the “More” tag, that allows them to decide how much of a post gets shown on the front.
When you have your own blogging website for any amount of time, the chances of something breaking seems to go up. In most cases, the admin side is completely different from the user side, so when something does go awry, it can be difficult to notice, unless you make a point of checking your site regularly for problems.
Anytime you make changes, such as altering a graphic or installing a new plugin, go through your site from the user end and make sure everything looks and works fine. Some plugins can cause compatibility issues with other plugins, so things like comments, user accounts and even page layout can be affected, costing you readers and making your site unusable.
I come from a family filled with members who are terribly afraid of things. My grandmother never got on a plane in her entire life because she was afraid it would crash. My mother is worried about falling down the stairs, even though she's perfectly able-bodied and fit. They both think about the bad possibilities that could, but probably won't happen. While there's certainly something to be said about being cautious, the line of letting fear cow you out of doing something is toed far too often.
Some may not agree, but blogging is an art form. You have to combine the right elements in just the right way to have a successful blog, and one of those elements is photos. Without photos, a blog post can look bland, and while photos may not be necessary to get the point across, they do make it a whole lot more interesting to look at.
When you first start blogging, it can be very frustrating to source good quality images that you can freely use. In case you didn’t know, it is not legal to copy or use pictures from a website without first getting the copyright owner’s permission. The burden is on you to prove that you have permission, so you must be very careful where you get your images.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Proofreading is absolutely necessary when you are a writer. But like all good things, there is a time and place for it, and if you are proofreading at the wrong time, you are simply procrastinating when you should be writing.