Learning from Dogs

Recent significant rise in subscribers.

Just a short note to say how very grateful I am for the number of readers who have signed up as subscribers over the last couple of weeks.

Many of you are already bloggers and very soon I’m going to find a way of linking Learning from Dogs to your blog.  The obvious way would be to use the Blog Roll feature but methinks the list would be too long.  I shall put my thinking cap on this aged head and see what would be an effective way of linking back to all those subscribers who also Blog.  Feel free to add a comment if you have ideas.

Thank you.

Reflections on a year of Blogging.

Learning from Dogs would not be anything without you, dear reader.  So what follows is an accolade to you.  This Blog first saw the light of day on July 15th, 2009.

By the end of 2009 there had been a total of 15,800 viewers.

In comparison, by the end of 2010 there had been a total of 85,200 viewers, a growth of 439%!

Today, the last day of 2011, the total number of viewers for the year will be in excess of 243,000, a breathtaking increase over 2010 of nearly 158,000 viewers (184%).

So from Pharaoh and me, thank you all so very, very much and a Very Happy New Year to you all.

Happy New Year everyone!

Two moving films.

I am indebted to Merci O. who regularly comments on Learning from Dogs for sending me the first film, see below.  In my efforts to find a YouTube link (there didn’t appear to be one) I came across the second film.  Both are good for the soul.

So click here to watch the first film.  The film is comprised of a series of slides melded together with a beautiful music track. Do watch and listen.

Then here is the YouTube video, Morcheeba’s Enjoy The Ride.

Have a peaceful day wherever you are in the world.

I love taking photographs but this takes the cake!

(Note: there’s an option in WordPress to insert a ‘read more‘ link, the effect of which is to limit what you, dear reader, can see when you first come to a Blog article.  I prefer normally not to insert that link.  But for reasons that will soon be very obvious, it has to be used in this Post.)

Just watch this.

OK, more about this amazing man follows,

Read the rest of this entry »

What a fabulous gift to openness!

Wordpress Logo

I subscribe to a Blog that comes with the rather intriguing name of The Gospel According to Rhys.  It’s a bit ‘geeky’ for my tastes but it offers sufficiently good advice on Blogging and other Social Media systems that it is a worthwhile entry in to my email in-box.

Anyway, in today’s in-box was a piece from Rhys about WordPress turning 7 years old.

Learning from Dogs is, of course, a WordPress driven Blog and thus is an example of the power of this wonderful software.  I trust that Rhys will forgive me if I quote at length from his article – I can’t better it.

Recently it was WordPress’ 7th Birthday. On the 27th of May in 2003, Matt Mullenweg released a fork of b2/cafelog, called WordPress. From the 0.72 release, it’s become the defacto blogging solution for thousands of publishers.I love it, I think it’s great, and although I’m probably preaching to the converted, here’s 7 reasons why I think your blog should be on WordPress.

It’s Free

For what it does, and for amount it costs, it is amazing that it costs nothing. Sure there’s hosting costs & domain names, but there’s nothing stopping you playing with the software for nothing.

It’s Open Source

Fancy yourself as a bit of a coder? Well WordPress is entirely free to see the code. In fact, I recommend playing with WordPress to learn the basics of PHP. There is great documentation (again, open source wiki) to help you with the WordPress framework, itself a great introduction into advanced PHP programming & working with API’s & frameworks.

Furthermore, with it being open source, if a bug is discovered, it’s fixed relatively quickly.

It Is Quick & Easy To Use

WordPress is famous for it’s five minute installation, and when you get good, it should take you half of that time. Logging in you can write a post within a minute, and it’s ridiculously easy to use. Changing design & adding plugins is easy as well.

As CMS’s Goes, It’s Pretty Good for SEO

Out of the box, f0r search engine optimisation, it’s okay. However, with a few tweaks, WordPress becomes a solid SEO platform. It’s certainly one of the better CMS’ out there.

It’s Well Supported

I’m not sure if there’s been a “state of the wordpress community” post ever done, but WordPress itself hosts nearly 10,000 plugins, and there must be tens of thousands of themes available online (WordPress itself only holds about 1 and a half thousand). Each one has a programmer or designer behind it, and although support varies (the official wordpress forum is average at best), enough people know what they are doing, both paid or free, to help you out.

It Can Make You A Rich Man (or Woman)

Whilst I’m not a rich man, running this blog & a few websites on WordPress have allowed me to make some money, and anybody can do this. As well as ebooks, adsense, affiliate marketing & god knows what else, you can make a fortune carrying out WordPress related services for other people.

It’s Never Going To Disappear Overnight

WordPress has some huge sites supporting it, a company fully dedicated to it’s production, and a thriving community. It’s not here today, and gone tomorrow.

So happy birthday WordPress, here’s to the next 7 years!

Well said, Rhys.

By Paul Handover