Well, seeing as I just has my third anniversary on WordPress, I think I have some sage advice to share with new bloggers. So, gather ’round, kiddies, and let Auntie Goldfish tell you a tale.

Rule #1: Save early, save often. That’s a graphic design golden rule, because Adobe still can’t create a version of Photoshop that doesn’t crash every three minutes, but it applies to blogging, too.

Anyway, don’t compose your posts on WordPress, even though that’s exactly what I’m doing now. Do as I say, not as I do. Do you have any idea how many posts I’ve lost in three years? Neither do I, but it’s way more than one. I wrote about it in Ode To Sweet Black Joy, so I have proof that I’ve lost at least one. The reason I tell you not to compose on here is that, occasionally, WordPress will randomly decide that you have been logged in quite long enough, little miss/mister, and it’s about durn time you log back in, by jiminy, so they log you out… in the middle of whatever you were doing. I don’t know that the WP powers that be would actually say “by jiminy,” but that’s how it sounds in my brain when I decide to talk like WordPress. This random logging out nonsense always manages to occur when you are writing a post or a comment. Weee!

I’ve lost a lot of posts because I was stupid enough to compose them online. Don’t do that. I’m still just idiotic enough to do it myself, but now, before I save, I select all and copy to my paste flat, notebook, short-term memory… whatever the hell you call where things are stored on your computer when you copy them, so that if WP decides to obliterate another post, I can at least paste it in again. You’ll rue the day you destroy another one of my posts, WordPress! Oh yes, rue. (Why is an English word that means to bitterly regret the same as the French word for street?)

Rule#2: Don’t approve spam just because you’re lonely. I know some of you might be looking at your sad little statistics hoping for someone, anyone, to stop by besides spambots. You get so excited when you see the little orange comment notification and check it only to find that it’s someone trying to sell you dick cream. Don’t approve the dick cream just because you’re lonely. Don’t do it.  I know this because three years ago, that was me. I didn’t have any followers, I had zero page views and nobody cared at all. They still don’t care, but now I have followers, page views and a metric ass-ton of spam (which is slightly larger or smaller than the United States measurement of ass-ton).

Rule#3: Do some promotion. Don’t do like I did and sit here all alone with your spam waiting for someone to find you. Get on out there. Read other people’s blogs and leave comments. Do promotioney type things–I have no idea what promotioney things are because I still don’t do any promotion and that’s not even a word. Ask someone who isn’t a socially retarded introvert like me.

Rule#4: When in doubt, publish. Have you ever written something only to hover over the publish button debating whether to click it or not? Of course you have. You decide that maybe this post is too personal or it’s not perfect yet, so you’ll work on it later, and you pussy out and click Save Draft instead. Pussy.

You can always edit posts or even take them down later, but if you don’t hit publish now, odds are, you won’t at all. Posts don’t have to be perfect, but they do have to be there if you want someone to read them.

Rule#5: Add a picture to your posts. Two reasons: 1) pictures break up your boring-ass text and add interest to your posts. 2) if you stick around, you will get bored with every theme available on WP and change themes constantly. If, for example, you don’t have pictures on every post and you decide to use a theme like this one that has featured images, you will have to go back through all of your 500+ posts and add one, if you are as OCD as I am. A lot of you probably aren’t as OCD as I am, but do it anyway. Pictures add visual interest.

Rule#6: Don’t use ass as a modifier as much as I did with ass-ton and boring-ass. The English language is full of killer words you can use without resorting to lowbrow terms like ass, e.g. asstacular or asstastic.

If you need more advice, read my post Top 10 Ways To Blog Success. It has pirates and kitties.