No, not a guest blogger here (who'd want to! ). I was asked last week if I'd like to write a couple of posts for another blog whilst the owner was away for the week so I figured it was worth a go and would write about WordPress and using it as a static site. This is only a brief introduction really, and it won't take the place of my WordPress tutorials (which I'll get back onto writing in September, once this manic week has passed!).

There's been a lot of debate on Guest Posts which I kept in mind when writing mine. Hopefully I've done Guest Bloggers justice. It seems to have been well received so far after the first post, the second is scheduled for about 2pm today (GMT).

Anyhow, you can read the first post on Blogtrepreneur at Building a Static Site Using WordPress.

Hope you like it

Update: Second post is online – Part 2

Sorry for the delay on the weekly roundup. It was a bank holiday this weekend here in the UK plus we've been away from home since last Tuesday and only got back Monday evening.

This week's been pretty busy. Last week, as just mentioned, on Tuesday we travelled down to my parents. My Mum was due to come up to us for the week however with my Dad's car still waiting for a new engine (since he took it for a swim) I told them it'd be daft hiring another car so she could come here. So we drove down there. My Mum has been having major problems with her ADSL connection since about June so once we'd unpacked I set to work looking at the connection and equipment. A Speedtest showed a speed of 168kbps download. Pretty poor for an 8MB line! I discovered that it wasn't the ADSL in the end, but the wireless part of the router. Connected via cable gave 6000+kbps. So after trying various settings and getting nowhere, I restored the router to factory settings and that seemed to kick the wireless into life again. However the reach for wireless is pretty poor from it so I'll still probably need to get another router to help boost the signal downstairs.

On the Thursday my Mum and I baked cakes! Yep, haven't done that in years with her. I'd been given a large jar full of muffin mix (all measured out dry ingredients) from Dave's niece for Christmas, and finally got it cooked. However, soon after using the mixer, it blew up right in front of us. Nothing was happening with it at the time, and something blew inside causing a great deal of smoke and a horrible stink. Must admit it scared me into realising how easy a kitchen fire is started. I've taken to unplugging everything that isn't in use, when I remember. Plus it uses less electricity. But I'd rather not wake up to a fire in the kitchen!! However, the muffins came out pretty nice. There are a still a few left too

On Friday we headed up to London for a meeting with a new client of Dave's. We'd never met them before so it meant smart clothes and heels (yuk). We first met Martin as he lives in the same area as the client (purely coincidental!). So we grabbed lunch with him beforehand, saw the client (bit of a awkward meeting to be honest) and then met Martin after for a few drinks in his favourite pub and then grabbed some Chinese. My thought after was icecream, so I managed to persuade them both to go to Leicester Square for some Haagen Dazs We finally got home soon after 10pm. Had a really good day.

Saturday I filed my self assessment for 2006-2007 tax. A few years back I wrote my own web based software for my Mum to do my accounts on. Have to admit, it's good as it's absolutely accurate! 3 years in a row it's been right on the figures which I'm really happy about. Plus the outcome was that I have to pay £200 less tax this year. As I've already paid the tax for 07-08 I get a £200 reduction on January's payment, so it's actually £400 less than the last payment. A welcomed sight, especially with January being straight after Christmas, the most expensive month of the year!

Sunday we headed up to a small village called Stilton, in Peterborough, for the yearly family BBQ. The weather was great and we caught up with all of my Dad's family. Plus my brother came over for it this year so I got to see him and his girlfriend. We stayed up in a Travel Inn just by Stilton, and must admit, I was impressed with it. It was so modern and clean. It even had a swimming pool! Much different to the usual Travelodge that we stay in. We all stayed there – my parents, my brother plus girlfriend and us. It was nice to be able to sit and chat to them all. Something we don't do that often as we live so far apart. Oh, and Sunday's sunset was gorgeous

I've always loved taking photos of flowers. Even with my first digital camera, a Fujifilm 1.3MP one, I used to go out into my parents garden that's always full with flowers, and take photos. Usually it was because I was looking for a good colourful shot to then isolate from the rest of the photo by keeping it in colour and making the background and rest of the photo black and white. Simple digital alteration which really looks nice in my opinion.

Anyhow, seeing as we're down at my parents for just another day, and the sun was shining (yes I know, the books say you should only take shots on an overcast day, but I'm no pro now ), so I figured I'd grab a few shots with my new found knowledge of using a different angle to the one of 'from above'.

The colours in their flowers are really strong (so much for the sun vs overcast theory!) so I may try doing a little isolation on a couple of them.

I also came across this spider's web which despite my fear of spiders, came out quite well. Any of my Flickr contacts can view a 1280*960 px version if they wish

Now all I need is a 0.5m tripod

There's been a lot of discussion on guest blogging, the art of a guest writing one or more posts for another blog whilst the blog owner is away. This allows the blog owner to keep continuous content on their blog that usually has one or two posts a day. Their visitors have expectations and perhaps may drift away if the blog isn't updated for a week.nnThe main discussion by most has been that it's annoying for a reader. You subscribe to a person's blog to read their information, their posts and their opinions, not posts made by others. As a reader of a couple of blogs that set up guest blogging when they're away, I'll admit, I do tend to just skim over the guest post and rarely read it in full. This is also shown by commentators who remark 'great post *blog owner name*' when it's already been stated at the top that it's written by someone else. However, on the other side, as a guest blogger on a busier blog, you can potentially get your post out to a lot more visitors, get more exposure for yourself and your own site.nnA few remarks I've seen from bloggers is that a guest blogger will not put 100% into the post otherwise why not post it on their own site? A guest poster is only doing it for the exposure. A guest poster will no doubt have a pretty poor post as it's doubtful they're very good else they'd be happily blogging on their own site with plenty of visitors.nnThis week I was asked to write a couple of posts for another blog, one that has far more RSS subscribers than my blogs put together, and no doubt many more site visitors on top. My first thought was would it be hypocritcal of me. I don't tend to read guest posts so should I be the one writing a guest post? Then, of course, was my thoughts on what I would write about. My conclusion was that the best post I could produce would be on a subject I was very comfortable writing about. Then my thought moved to why I fancied the idea. Exposure for my own site? Yes, of course, who wouldn't want to guest blog for the potential to receive a few new visitors. However that wasn't the full reason, the other reason was to simply be heard. Call it an ego boost, but if I could write a post and it be well received on another person's site, then it would make me feel all warm and giddy inside nnIn comment to the few comments by other bloggers that I mentioned above, the posts I've written have been 100% for effort, and they're not what I'd post on my own blog as they're more designed for people new to websites and AIS sites. Yes they've been written in part for exposure of my own site but also for the warm and giddyness I could get (they're business terms you know ), and whilst my blog may not be exceptionally busy, I don't think it's that bad. Just because you write content, be it good or great, doesn't mean the visitors will come. Sure, knowledge and great post writing should pull in the visitors, recommendations and links, but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll get up with the B listers, let alone the A listers.nnOf course, after reading the various comments made my bloggers about guest posts, a lot of people are getting tired of seeing them (it is the time for summer holidays I guess!) and some of the harsher blog posts trashing guest bloggers, I have started to perhaps feel nervous about the prospect of my own posts to be trashed. Could it potentially be the wrong idea? Or is it a case of what have I got to lose? I guess I'm just too paranoid for my own good at times nnStill, the posts are written and sent to the blog owner and will be put live next week. I'll post up when they're online, just in case it is of any minor interest to you

A bit of light hearted fun. With all the checks to see how great your blog is doing, Adnan came up with the idea to create a tool to see how bad your blog was. A bit of a joke, simply using the Technorati API to count how many links a given site has and then giving it a rank. The ranks come in two flavours, offensive or nice. Anyhow, after a chat over some other stuff he asked me to sort out the programming side of the tool.nnSo if you fancy a go, have a laugh at the comments (don't take them seriously!) then visit How Bad is your Blog? or read Adnan's post (which is a little more indepth).nnAlso thanks to Deron for the widget buttons nnOh and if you fancy Digging it then that would be appreciated too