Are You Just Another WordPress Blog?

January 31, 2008 | By Lorelle VanFossen | Filed Under Featured, Features, WordPress

I must have been really bored one day. I went through the Blogs of the Day list on WordPress.com and counted 7 out of 100 blogs with the tagline: Just another WordPress.com blog. Not a bad ratio.

I did a search on Google and found 6,490 with the same tagline on WordPress.com.

Looking at self-hosted versions of WordPress, Google turned up 12,900, including some articles on how to how to remove “Just Another Wordpress Blog” from your WordPress blog.

Last year, on another boring day, the numbers were more than triple that, so people are getting the clue that they need to write a tagline for their blogs.

A tagline is also known as a blog’s subtitle, the words or phrase that describes what your blog is about.

It’s amusing is that some of the top bloggers and businesses using WordPress to run their blogs have not changed their taglines, including FORTUNE: Apple 2.0, FORTUNE: Daily Briefing , and FORTUNE: Big Tech, all very popular blogs run on WordPress.com by CNN.

The problem comes when the WordPress Theme design removes the tagline from the Theme, or buries it beneath a graphic header. Unless it’s visible in the design, people tend to forget it is there.

Changing Your WordPress Blog Tagline

If you are one of those who still has a tagline, or doesn’t know, that reads “Just another WordPress or WordPress.com blog” it’s easy to change.

In the Administration Panels, go to Options > General Options and look for your tagline.
Change it to something that describes your blog’s purpose. Using clear keywords is helpful to the reader and search engines.
Click Update Options.

WordPress tagline - how to change your WordPress blog title tag line

If your WordPress Theme displays the tagline, it should now be updated. If it isn’t visible, turn off your blog’s CSS in your web browser, or go to View > Page Source or Source and look at the source code view of your generated web page. Scroll down or search for your tagline and if your design supports it, you will see it. So will search engines and the visually impaired or disabled using text reader browsers.

Don’t be just another WordPress blog. Be your own blog. :D

Digg it

About the author: The author of Lorelle on WordPress, as well as several other blogs, Lorelle VanFossen has been blogging in one fashion or another for over 14 years, covering travel, nature and travel photography, web design, web theory and development, blogging, and WordPress extensively as web technologies developed. Lorelle is also the author of the fast-selling book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging, available in the new Blog Herald Bookstore. Lorelle will be speaking at WordCamp Dallas March 29-30, the Alliance for Distance Education in California Summit April 2-5, 2008, and the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference May 2-5 in Chicago.

Comments

5 Responses to “Are You Just Another WordPress Blog?”

Aaron B. Hockley on January 31st, 2008 11:49 pm

I just bought an appropriate domain for my self-hosted WordPress blog: http://www.anotherblogger.com
Ryan Detzel on February 1st, 2008 12:55 am

Haha, that’s great…I bet 80% of those are splogs.
Chetan on February 1st, 2008 9:13 pm

Haha i wonder why people are so lazy, and why do they really think to blog when they don’t find time to change the default title and description too :P
Joanne on March 3rd, 2008 1:14 am

You know… there are people who don’t really care in changing their title and description. What really matters to them is that they have a place to outburst what they feel or to poured out what they are thinking.
el chefe on May 14th, 2008 8:38 am

Thanks for this article! I got crazy on that “just another wordpress blog”.. :) thx

Leave a Reply

News

Do You Tag Yourself?
May 16, 2008 | By Lorelle VanFossen | 2 Comments

Do you tag yourself? Honestly? No, this is not a game.
With everyone back on the tag versus categories versus tags bandwagon, have you checked to make sure you are tagging yourself?
Inside of Lorelle on WordPress is the tag attribute that turns “Lorelle on WordPress” into a tag.
<a href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/" title="Lorelle on WordPress" rel="tag">Lorelle on WordPress</a>
When […]

A BIG Reason to Read a Pet’s Blog
May 16, 2008 | By Andrew G.R. | Leave a Comment

I’ve often taken a snarky approach when it comes to people who set up blogs for their pets. I barely want to read about humans’ mundane lives, let alone issues with litter and pooper scoopers. However, there might be a new reason to subscribe to Lucky, Fido or Buddy’s blog.
Animals’ ability to prognosticate […]

Yahoo Nabs Safari Plugin Inquisitor
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

Inquisitor is a cool plugin for Safari, and now Yahoo owns it. The developer, David Watanabe, won’t be joining Yahoo, but will continue the development.
I look forward to assisting Yahoo! in refining and extending the Inquisitor user experience beyond where it is today. I truly believe that Inquisitor and its users can only benefit, both […]

YouTube Gives You Insight
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | 1 Comment

Now you can get some more statistics for your YouTube videos, with the recently launched Insight tool, available in your YouTube account (under Manage my Videos, which is probably temporary). The new stats feature is described like this by Tracy Chan, YouTube product manager:
For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in […]

Google the New Number 1 in the US
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

I thought they were already, but obviously not so. Google has been the leading search engine, but overall Yahoo is the most popular web site according to ComScore’s rankings. No more though, according to an AP report:
According to comScore, Google’s unique U.S. audience in April was 141.1 million, an 18 percent increase from the same […]

Blogging from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
May 16, 2008 | By Thord Daniel Hedengren | Leave a Comment

Stephanie Stockman is a NASA contractor working at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which is cool by itself. What’s even cooler is that she’s blogging it, talking about rocketships in voice and text, as well as posting photos, something every space nerd should follow for sure. Her blog is Geosteph, which incidentally is her Twitter […]

Patrons

Recent listings from Blogger Jobs

MBA Blogger Wanted
We got this from MBA Channel: MBA Channel is looking for passionate bloggers to write weekly posts for our new community MBA Channel Insider. You c [...]

A Slew of Blogger Openings
This batch is courtesy of our sister site, Performancing.com: Mom Blogger Openings — “Type-A Mom is currently hiring mom editors for a [...]

Horoscopes Writer Wanted
We got this from Jeffrey Kishner: Horoscopes Writer for astrology blog. Write 12 Sun sign horoscopes weekly, plus a General horoscope. $130/1300 wo [...]

Wanted: Tech Blogger
We got this message from from Veselin Nedeff: Hello folks, We need a tech orientated blogger to write on mobiletopsoft.com’s blog. We look for [...]

Call for Writers
Renowned Filipino problogger J. Angelo Racoma is looking from writers: Here’s a great income opportunity for individuals or teams looking for work [...]

More at Blogger Jobs