Category Archives: Bloggers

Top 50 Most Viewed Essays

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If you are a new visitor to my blog, you may want to take a few minutes to browse through some of my top essays. These are ranked by page views over the past two years. I have a different list of some of my favorites but these are the most viewed. I hope this gives you a flavor for the kind of material I like to cover in my essays - current LDS topics.

1. General Authority Training – Advanced Subjects
2. How Americans View Mormonism
3. About Tim
4. There is no middle ground
5. It Came From Behind the Sun
6. Elder Packer Was Right about Bearing Testimony
7. My Interview with Mormon.org
8. What they don’t tell you about Bishopric Meetings
9. The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith
10. The Mormon Corporate Empire
11. Getting past prejudices with Rent – the Musical
12. An Evening with Richard Bushman
13. The Endowment is more than the ordinances
14. When Prophets need to know
15. Divine Manifestations must have a purpose
16. Come Unto Christ – my Christmas talk
17. A different kind of knowledge
18. Rachel Esplin video continues to be a hit
19. Shades of grey and relative truth
20. Walt Whitman – the great American poet
21. Mormon visitors from outer space
22. A website for the average Mormon
23. Thoughtful discussion of controversial topics
24. 2012 the movie
25. Revelation and emotional response
26. Add your profile to Mormon.org
27. The attitude of mocking
28. Objections to the Book of Abraham
29. A letter to a reader – burning of the bosom
30. The ambush – a fictional background story
31. Spiritual experiences as a foundation for faith
32. Seer stone in a hat – book of Mormon translation
33. When a prophet gets Alzheimer’s disease
34. The personal power of Hester Prynne
35. Red Sky – an early version of my novel
36. Unique Religion of Benjamin Franklin
37. God even loves computer geeks like me
38. Moving toward gospel promises
39. Sandinistas - missionaries in Nicaragua
 40. Mormon mommy blogs are the traffic queens
41. Multiple versions of the first vision
42. And the stars shall fall from heaven
43. Miracles and angels – a car wreck in Oklahoma
44. The government of the United States will collapse
45. Just where exactly are the lost ten tribes?
46. Mormon Church is not the fastest growing
47. Just what was Portnoy’s Complaint?
48. Changes to the Book of Mormon
49. Changing requirements of perfection
50. Public rebuke from an apostle

 

Mormon Mommy blogs are the traffic queens

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LDS Blog Aggregators

LDS Blog Aggregators

OK, so this is real geeky, but I’m just seriously into web analytics.  If you’re a blogger like me, maybe you also think your blog is underexposed.  You’ve probably thought to yourself, “If only more people knew about my blog, they would come and read my well-researched essays and add their thoughtful comments.”  I think every blogger wants more favorable exposure.  I know I do.

A long time ago, I compiled a list of the LDS blog aggregators and made sure that I got listed on as many of them as I possibly could.  The effort paid off.  Although Google searches are still my number one source for bringing in new readers, being listed with the LDS blog aggregators has brought in a respectable number.  In fact, I get roughly eighteen percent of my traffic in this way.

Meta-list for Mormon Mommy blogs

My fellow blogger Megan from Hall Pass announced on Facebook a couple of days ago that she was a guest poster on Mormon Mommy blogs.  It got me to thinking about all the MM blogs I’ve seen spring up over the past few years.  I wondered just how much traffic they were bringing in.  I also wondered if there was a blog aggregator especially for Mormon Mommy bloggers.  Yep!

So I ran some Alexa comparison numbers and was shocked to discover just where all the LDS blogging traffic was really going.  The aggregator site called Mormon Mommy blogs was ranked higher in Alexa than any of the other LDS blog aggregators out there.  Now you may argue with me that it is not a real aggregator, but you might want to take a second look.  They are indeed!

LDS blog aggregators

Take a look at the chart I compiled of LDS blog aggregators sorted by Alexa rankings.  There are two MM blog aggregators on the list, one right at the top of the list.   You are probably familiar with all the others.  If not, you ought to be and you should make every effort to get your blog listed in them.  They can do wonders for driving traffic to your blog and getting you new readers.

Except for the two MM link-lists, I get referrals from almost all of them except the two from the More Good Foundation.  My blog is fed to Mormon Bloggers while LDS Blogs is really more of a hosting site.  I suppose they probably don’t really qualify as an aggregator but I do get some traffic from blogs found there.  I am pleased to see that Nothing Wavering ranks high on the list.

An amazing contribution

So congratulations to Mormon Mommy blogs, both the aggregator site and to all the MM blogs that are listed in there.  You are the queens of LDS blog traffic, at least according to Alexa.  If you have never visited their site, go take a look at all the blogs in the different categories.  You will be amazed at the diversity and thoughtfulness there as well as many that are just plain fun.

You’ll find book blogs, hair blogs, beauty and fashion blogs, adoption blogs and even some blogs about crunchy moms!  There are blogs about homeschooling, infertility, blended families, military life, singles, parenting, spirituality, photography, music, art, self-help, special needs and just about every other helpful topic.  What an amazing contribution these women have made!

New home for Latter-day Commentary

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wordpressI’ve been writing on Blogger for quite some time and have long wished for greater control of the blog.  I like the ease of use of Blogger but it does not offer customization features that I have read are available with WordPress.  All the old Blogger essays transferred to WordPress without any problems.  The links still point back to Blogger but that’s OK.

I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get all the same widgets in WordPress that I had in Blogger but I probably needed to get rid of some of them as it was beginning to look cluttered.  I wish there was a way to transfer my blogroll but it looks like that may be a manual process.  I also changed the theme to one that promotes the writing and not the design.  I like the simple header.  It speeds up mobile loading.

Update: three days later

The move is complete.  I may still add some widgets but overall, I like the look and functionality of the new site.  The biggest hurdle was transferring all my subscribers without having to ask them to subscribe to a new feed.  I simply had to break the old feed from Blogger and redirect it from here.  Easy, I know, but it took me hours to get it right.

Now I know why I waited until the three-day weekend to attempt this.  The learning curve for WordPress was not too steep, but there still were some gotchas.  The whole process was rather time-consuming but fun.  I’m ready now to do some serious SEO and to get back to writing new essays.  Oh, and respond to some of the recent comments.

No blogroll on LDC

I decided not to add a detailed blogroll but will maintain several in separate web pages.  The links are at the top left: A new LDS blog aggregators list, the top LDS group blogs, the top LDS solo blogs and a large list of LDS Message boards or forums.  These were all previously posted but have recently proven to be very popular reference pages.

Thanks to all the aggregators and fellow bloggers who have linked to the old site over the years.  I know some have already changed to the new site.  Thanks for your links.  A blog is fairly boring without readers and comments.  Your links bring me new readers every day.  I look forward to the continued dialog and hope my essays are worth reading.

Why LDS blogging just works

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I don’t know this blogger and I normally don’t do this, but one of the joys of blogging is reading what others have felt important to share. I feel particularly impressed with this essay shared by Memoirs of a Married Mormon Man and felt it deserved additional readership. He writes that it will be his only blog post this month but it is worth it. Here is the heart of the essay:

A Missionary in Germany

“I recognized a smartly dressed elderly gentleman as he strode toward us. He looked as if he had somewhere to be. Someplace important. As he stopped in front of us, a wide smile on his face, he said hello to me. I smiled back, astonished at the happy coincidence, and introduced my companion to him as my father.

“He then turned to my father, and in fluent, though accented English, greeted him with, ‘I am so happy to meet you. I want you to know that your son stopped me on the street one day. Before we met, I had lost God. Because he talked to me, I have found God again. Thank you for sending him here. Thank you.’

“My father was speechless. I felt like I was in a dream. This man was obviously ecstatic to see us. At that moment, I don’t know who was happier: me, my father, or this newly converted gentleman. But I have a suspicion that our happiness pales in comparison to the joy the Savior must have felt knowing that a few more of his children had found their way to Him.”

LDS Bloggers have stories to tell

That’s why I love LDS blogging. You can find jewels like this all over the place with just a little patience and digging. By the way, I found MMM through a comment he left of one of the blogs I regularly read: Rough Stone Rolling. I wish there was some place where we could nominate great stories to the LDS bloggers hall of fame. Anybody? Now go read the rest of the story.