Ok, smileys are old history, I know that. Smileys are also called emoticons and are known as glyphs. They are used on various platforms to convey your emotions when you write. Most people use smileys in blogs, on mobile phones, in forum posts and while using instant messaging. Despite their popularity and age, some bloggers still don’t know that they can disable their blogs to display smileys. By default WordPress convert text using two or more punctuation marks to graphic images we commonly known as smileys.
To turn smileys off via your WordPress admin panel, do this:
While turning them off stops smiley images from appearing, you can still use text like semicolon/hyphen/brackets to show your emotions in your blog. Check out the different text options for smileys below:
While smileys are a great way to liven up your blog and your conversations, we can also go overboard with them. Although I like to use them in my comments, I hardly ever do in my posts. The reason being is that while I love to laugh and have fun, I feel no problem in using them in conversations. On the other hand when I write a blog post it is different. To me anyway. I guess I’m trying to bring a message across at times and while smileys would sometimes help to form a picture, in my eyes using them too often, they would make the posts look tacky.
What do you think about smileys? Do you find them loud and garish, or do you use them sometimes in your communications?
Pawan Agarwal, who has previously released a lot of free plugins including the 
Is Your Blog Full Of Gaping Comment Holes?
It’s been another day of blogging for you. You studiously posted your latest entry, hoping to hit the jackpot this time. You go to bed feeling great. After all, you accomplished something haven’t you. The next morning you get up only to find that your blog is eerily quiet.
No comments!
You grab your head, tear your hair out and shout “What the f#$@ just happened? Why are people not storming my blog. What is it I’m doing wrong?”
Here is the thing. Probably nothing. You are doing nothing wrong except…
…not taking action.
If you are anything like my husband (who by the way is a great blogger) and feel like writing a post once every week and then sit back and wait for the action to start, you will be disappointed just like him. See, you can’t expect an avalanche out of nothing. Posting a great blog entry doesn’t necessarily mean that the troops will storm your castle at the first opportunity.
They will first have to know where your castle is!
Aha. Do I hear a common breath of relieve just now? Bloggers don’t get discovered miraculously. They too have to work for recognition from their peers.
I’ve been trying to explain that to my husband too and while he totally understands were I’m coming from, he still doesn’t spend time to network. So his blog stays quiet. The sad thing is that he has so much potential for greatness like so many of you who blog in the darkness.
Eventually you just give up. I can see this gradually evolving and many of my former blogging buddies have since bit the dust, so to speak.
The first signs were infrequent posts, then came the long periods of no action followed by sudden death.
This saddens me, as so much effort goes into a blog when we first start out. We feel like we can embrace the world, only to crash to the floor in full speed.
Do you feel like that? Do you feel lonely on your blog? If you do, what have you tried to clean away the cobwebs?