As a last resort I read the documentation on the All-in-One SEO wesbite

The problem was simple. For some reason I had deleted wp_head() from my header. (I often edit and customize my templates so it was possible I did this!)

The fix:

1. In your admin panel, go to Plugins – Theme Editor
2. On the right bar, click on Header
3. Locate the line with
4. Insert the following line before it:
“

” (without the quotes)
5. Save

Since this is posted in their Help, the issue must come up often. So glad to know I am not alone…

Think about the times you have come across websites with a dark background and some kind of pastel font color. Or worse, a light background and a pastel font color. Why make a reader work to read your site? It should be easy on the eyes. I personally recommend that your content text should be black on white. You can have whatever colors you want around the content, but make sure the content can be read.

So, using a robust color contrast test, you can determine the readability of your site.

Accesskeys offers the following functionality:

• tests the color contrast and color brightness between the foreground and background of all text elements
• ensures enough color contrast for readers with visual disabilities (such as those with low vision or color blindness
• automatically finds the values of all color combinations and tests them for you
• finds color combinations by evaluating internal and external CSS files
• two modes of report presentation: 1) complete line by line report of the HTML document or 2) reporting only errors and warnings
• Warning are reported when either color contrast or color difference fail
• Errors are reported when both color contrast or color difference fail
• Works only on websites that contain true text (no text on images, flash, etc.)
• Mouse over text effects are ignored

Why work towards a readable website?

1) Readable text stands out AND is recognizable.

2) A website that can be read can be read again, and again.

3) Readable text connects to your reader.

4) Readable text lowers barriers to other content on your site.

5) A readable website puts your readers at immediate ease.

But what happens when, after a post is scheduled, it needs to be unscheduled for whatever reason?

It is a tad tricky at first, because our instinct is to look for the “unschedule” button. There isn’t one. The “Publish” button has disappeared as well. How can you get back to either a normal draft status or to publish immediately?

First, edit the scheduled date to a date in the past. This will re-establish the Publish button. So you can choose to Publish immediately if you want.

Second, edit the Status from “Scheduled” to Draft. The kicker here is that the “Update” button does not update. If you reset the date to the future, the “Update Post” button will return. Clicking Update Post will save the post and not publish it nor schedule it.

A bit of a hassle, something that should be fixed in a future version I would hope.

When I am asked “why?” by my colleagues and friends, I respond with a simple metaphor: “I am neither a stripper nor a voyeur.” To which, people either laugh or give me a look. So I explain.

Strippers are those individuals who bare their all on Facebook. They share the who, what and where of their daily lives and personal identity in detail. They are willing to share it with most people; essentially whomever is willing to read their profile.

Voyeurs are those who actually digest all the stripper has to offer. They consume the date without any real personal interaction. They like to read, watch and remain anonymous even though they are technically “a friend”.

Let me give an example to illustrate. About a year and a half ago, my wife ran into an acquaintance of hers at a local store. I will call the acquaintance, Ann. In the midst of their discussion, which included the typical “how are you’s” and “what’s new”, the conversation turned to a mutual acquaintance named Shirley. Shirley lived about a block or two away from us, around the corner. We were not close to her family but would occasionally interact. Ann went on to describe some of the difficulties Shirley was having during her pregnancy. On top of which, Shirley’s house sold a month before she was due and actually, they moved the very week she gave birth. Ann went on and on about the stress of that week, everything Ann’s husband had to do and organize (which also included caring for two other children!). Quite the story! Most of which my wife was not aware of.

My wife asked Ann when she had talked with Shirley. To which Ann replied that she had not actually talked to Shirley but had just read her Facebook page.

In this example, Shirley is the stripper and Ann is the voyeur.

Now, I am not going to blame Facebook for the behavior of strippers and voyeurs. But it is fascinating that people have let themselves fulfill these roles. My concern for the strippers and voyeurs is two-fold. First, that the sharing of intimate life details has become non-intimate. Second, I questioned whether these two individuals were really and truly “friends”.

So all along I have had a concern with how people tend to behave on social networks, which is why they have never appealed to me. But again this is not really Facebook’s fault.

However, when I think about the story above and consider how Facebook has changed their privacy policy over the years, the details Shirley intended for friends could now easily be shared to a larger community. Unless Shirley was on the top of her game, her life would have been unwittingly shared with many.

Fast Company posted a fascinating infographic the other day: Privacy on Facebook is Vanishing. The author’s commentary on the infographic: “But it does show that Facebook has transformed itself in the last five years from a service were privacy was an opt-out feature, to one where privacy is opt-in. As any behavioral economist will tell you, that single difference can massively affect the choices people make. Facebook might easily claim, “Hey! You can change things as you wish!” But in fact, they’ve created a massive shift in the privacy settings of Facebook as a whole. ”

A Fast Company post today displays how complicated privacy settings have become on Facebook.

I will stop short of telling people to get off of Facebook. Rather, I encourage them to 1) be careful and 2) to investigate alternatives that are privacy minded and allow total personal control. (Simple email comes to mind here).

Consider these five ways to improve the readability of your website:

1) Use a black colored font on a white background. Your main content should at least be in a content box with a white background, similar to how this website works. You can use other colors around the content box. You can do ALL sorts of things outside the content box, BUT make sure you use black on white for the main article. Use pure black, #00000. Do not use some almost black color that is actually a form of grey or taupe. Black on white reads the best. It always has and always will.

2) Choose a readable, yet interesting font. Arial and Helvetica are the ole standbys. Very readable. Not very interesting. Try Verdana inside. Other good fonts to consider: Georgia or Tahoma.

3) Line spacing (or line height). This is the distance between the line below and the line above. Make sure it is at least 1.5. Make it too small and the words run tight, too large and a readers eyeballs fall all over the page.

4) Keep advertising out of the main content of the article. Put your Adsense at the top or bottom. Forget using word-sense technologies that highlight key advertised words. Annoying and distracting. I know Internet marketers will disagree here. Here is my deal: Good content ultimately sells. If readers read it (and CAN read it without hindrance) and find it worthwhile, they will be back. I am a believer in letting your content sell itself. Readers will come back and reward you in other ways. Don’t try to force them to click something when they are in the middle of your content.

5) Remove all other annoyances to reading. This includes fly-ins, Flash, etc. The goal here is to ENABLE people to read, to create VALUE, so people come back for more. You want them to come back right? Do not chase them away.

Once installed, a little piece of paper with a pencil icon appears in the Firefox status bar. Double-clicking that icon gets ScribeFire started.

If it is the very first time you are using ScribeFire, it will startup in the Account Wizard. It is here that you will have to define the parameters of your blog such as URL, username, password, etc.

Once your credentials have been successfully entered, you can now see various administrative portions of your blog from the ScribeFire interface. You will be able to see all your current Posts, Pages, Categories and other options.

The most important part of ScribeFire is being able to write your blog entry from the ScribeFire editor. The editor contains a pretty standard tooolbar,

plus a similarly common editor interface

So, the $64,000 dollar question is why use a tool like ScribeFire when you could just log into WordPress, etc?

I have found it depends on the type of writing you are undertaking. How often do you flip back and forth between tabs when you are reading and then writing something. Imagine being able to read the material in the top pane of the browser and write in the bottom pane of your browser. All without switching tabs to windows. If you are a “reactive on the go” kind of blogger ScribeFire could be a boon to your blogging. Even for us slow, methodical, research types, ScribeFire makes it easy to blog about the product being review while viewing the product screen.

Remember, turn Firefox into more than a browser, turn it into a tool.

I was updating some of the settings of the plug-in, in particular, updating the priority it gave to updating sections of my website:

I went to manually recreate my sitemap so it would update the sitemap XML file.

Once it rebuilt, I noticed that the priorities were not updated. I did it again. And again.

I was baffled for a moment. Then I decided to post something. Upon a real post (XML Sitemaps will auto generate), the sitemap was generated AND the priorities were UPDATED.

Not sure if this is a bug or not. So if you have problems getting your XML Sitemap to update it’s settings, do a real post!