Astrology, Copyright and Plagiarism

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Beth Turnage

Astroblogging)–By Tony Vowles

Blogging is a personal and very rewarding pursuit. Technically it is easy for someone with basic IT skills to produce a website that appears very slick – beautifully designed templates can be slotted in at the click of a few buttons with no need for design or programming skills. All you need to do is author content. This is where the joy of writing comes in – the imagination, the literary skill and the hours poring over content. Personally, I hardly ever read what other astrology bloggers have written on a topic until I’ve written my own – I don’t want to be sidetracked by something mentioned. I also don’t want to subconsciously take it in and end up repeating it. My work is my life blood – my soul is in there and I know it is the same for many others.

So it should come as no surprise that the idea of your work being plagiarised feels almost the same as someone breaking into your house! The question is, what can/do you do about it? I think it’s important to try and distinguish between what is a simple mistake – a lack of understanding of copyright, wanting to share your material (but doing it badly), and outright copying for personal gain. Both happen, perhaps more frequently than we realise. I’ve worked in IT long enough to know that sometimes people do and think the most ridiculous things – believing that a wireless mouse and flat screen monitor speeds up a PC for instance! It’s easy to see how copyright might be a completely alien concept to someone like that – in these cases a gentle reminder should be enough. You never know, the exchange could turn into a friendship – after all, it is nice to know that someone values what you’ve written and want to share it with their network.

So, what of the other type? You’ve no doubt seen them – an exploitation of the ease of creating websites by producing something that has no heart and soul – no personal investment – that investment is being taken from you! There seems to be a great many of these around and from what I can discern their interest is in receiving revenue from ad clicks and bundled offerings. With such a lack of investment from the owners I suspect many wouldn’t last too long. However, it isn’t difficult to create lots of them, exploit keywords for Google placement, and let the pennies roll in – like a cash cow.

We all have to consider how we’d like our content represented – external links provide clickthroughs to our site (which is good) but does it portray our brand in the way we intention? If it doesn’t, then it’s worth considering that our product could be weakened in some way, despite the extra traffic.

Copyright violation is against the law and we do have the ability to close down sites if push comes to shove. Check out this Wikipedia article on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google Analytics helps – we can see an amazing amount of detail about traffic to our site – if you’re not using it then you should be! There are also varying levels of copyright services available to aid us. Copyscape offers a free service where you can input the URL of your page and it scours the internet looking for duplicated content. They also provide a paid premium service for more sophisticated protection.

So, there’s much to consider with copyright and plagiarism. It is complicated; the law is tricky and differs across boundaries. It isn’t always black and white but there are free tools at our disposal to help fight it. If you know of other tools and utilities then fill up the comments section here with your ideas!

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Hailing from the UK, Tony calls himself an amateur astrologer and social networker. He has been studying Astrology for about 20 years on and off and also has a background and interest in Martial Arts and Zen Buddhism. His astrology blog is aptly named The Astrology Blog
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Posted in Copyright Law, Editorial, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

How to Respond to Requests for Free Advice

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Jeffrey Kishner

As a professional astrologer who – by virtue of having a blog – is perceived as available, you’re likely to receive requests for free advice. After all, you’re an expert. You might get hit up in your comments section, via email (if you make that available on your Contact page), or even on Facebook.

Many readers do not seem to understand that many astrologers want to make a living as astrologers. These readers feel entitled to free advice or information. I would attribute this attitude to a misunderstanding of the vast amount of resources an aspiring student must spend on becoming adept in this field. Perhaps you just know this stuff, because you were “born with it.” (I think Julie Demboski articulated this hypothesis.) Not that you spend hundreds of dollars and countless hours on books, classes, teachers, conferences and software.

Another reason a reader may feel entitled to free advice is that our culture does not respect the divination arts. It may seem paradoxical that someone would want help from a professional whose art is devalued, but I think there’s truth to it. As a matter of fact, anything that reeks of feminine is devalued. Doctors and lawyers (masculine or Logos fields) are paid well, whereas social workers and teachers are not.

Be that as it may, some readers just have a sense of entitlement, or they just don’t know where your line in the sand is – partly because every astrologer has different boundaries. Some will be happy to answer detailed questions because they think it will get them paying clients, or because they just want to help, or because they think more activity in the comments section will make their blog more popular. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re feeling used or burned out or taken advantage of by your readers, you need to find ways to say, “No.”

I cannot provide a script, because everyone will set their boundaries differently. But if someone writes you with their birth information or their planetary vitals and wants to know when X will happen or why Z always occurs, it helps to have a response at the ready.

Some possible responses:

  • Unfortunately, I cannot make the time to answer specific chart-related questions in the comments section (or via email), because I want to devote my energies towards writing an excellent blog and serving my paying clients. If you are interested in scheduling a consultation, please see my Services page.
  • That’s a great question. I feel confident that you can learn more about it at [this link].
  • I’m sorry to hear about that. I’d love to be able to help you find some perspective – please see my Services page to learn about consultations. But if you’re strapped right now, [these computerized reports] might be able to help, or you can find some comforting words about Saturn transits [here].

The key is to not come across as angry or defensive. Just communicate that your time is at a premium, and that you are not available for freebies. You may still want to rant about it, but honestly, I don’t know how much it serves anyone to take it out on your readers. You don’t need to justify your answer, you just need to set a boundary that you’re comfortable with, and stick to it.

If you’re feeling guilty about saying, “No,” do some soul-searching to figure out why. Are you afraid that you won’t be liked, or that you’ll lose a reader, or that you’re being unspiritual by not helping a soul in need? Do some writing exercises or talk to a trusted friend to process these emotions, because codependence is a recipe for burnout and resentment.

Comment below: How do you respond to requests for free astrological advice?

About the Author
Jeffrey Kishner is publisher of Sasstrology. He is also a blog consultant.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

How I Moved My WordPress Blogroll From My Sidebar to a Page

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Jeffrey Kishner

If you link to lots of other astrology blogs, that long list in your sidebar could make your pages much longer than you want them to be. In addition, I’ve heard tell that a link loses its power when it is duplicated on every single page of your site. If you’re somewhat technically proficient with WordPress, there is an easy way to remove the blogroll from your sidebar and feature it only on one page. (These instructions are heavily lifted from Atma Explorer. I’ve added nothing really new, but I’m so excited that I was able to do this that I wanted to share it with you.)

First, go into your WP Dashboard > Appearance > Editor. Find the page.php file and copy its contents. Paste the contents into a text editor, and replace

<?php the_content(…); ?>

with

<?php wp_list_bookmarks(”); ?>

Then, at the very top of the file, add the following:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Links
*/
?>

If you want to change the default output of the wp_list_bookmarks(”) function, you can refer to the codex. Because I have more than one category of bookmarks, I decided to list my astrology blogroll on a page, and leave links to blog directories in the sidebar widget. I changed mine to wp_list_bookmarks(‘categorize=0&category=84&title_li=0’). Here, I’m basically saying I don’t want the category title to show, and I only want to display the links in category 84 – my astrology blogroll. (To find out the category number, go to Link Categories in the dashboard. Click on the edit link for the category you want to feature, and you will see the number at the very end of the URL.)

Finally, save the file as “links.php”

The next step: upload links.php via FTP to …/wp-content/themes/[name of theme you are using]/. Once it is uploaded, you will be able to edit it within the dashboard.

The last step: Go to the dashboard and create a New Page. Give it a title. (I called mine Friends.) Leave the body of the page blank. To the far right, look for the “Attributes” box. Under “Template,” you will see a drop-down list. Choose “Links.” Then hit Publish.

That’s it! Now, any time you add a link to your blogroll (at least for the category you’ve specified) it will automatically update to your new links page.

About the Author
Jeffrey Kishner is publisher of Sasstrology. He offers blog customization services.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Social Networking and Astrology Blogger Boundaries

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Jeffrey Kishner

People in the astrology world just seem to friend each other left and right on Facebook, if only because, well, they believe in astrology. As if that is enough to justify a “friendship.” This is all well and good – for who else is going to care about your “Transiting Mars just quincunxed my Vertex!” status update? However, there are a lot of crazies out there. And leeches. And Jove knows who else.

As business owners, we want to attract clients. Yet as participants in the world of social media, we also just want to hang out with our friends and not have to deal with (a) stalkers; (b) folks who just want free readings; (c) fans who are just a little too “big fan” for our tastes [see (a)].

So how do you set some boundaries on Facebook without feeling like you’re losing potential business? One solution that only creates more work is to create two separate Facebook profiles – one for your personal life and one as a professional astrologer. The problem with this strategy is the headache involved in having to sign into two different accounts. This is a little easier if you reserve, say, Firefox for “Facebook Friends and Family” and Safari or Chrome for “Facebook Astrology Business.”

Set up a Fan page

The first step in setting up a fan page

But there is a better way – a solution in which you only need one Facebook account, while still being able to set some parameters: the Fan page. All you have to do is set it up and you’re good to go. (I’ll blog about Fan page tips at a later date.)

If someone friends you and you don’t know who they are, it’s possible they’re a fan of your blog. One way to check is to view their profile and search for key words like “astrology”; look at their tabs for horoscope widgets; or check out their pages to see if they’ve “fanned” other astrology pages. (Or you could just message them and ask how they know you.) If they have friends in common with you and they’re all people in your astrology network, then at least they’re a known quantity, but there’s no guarantee they’re not a stalker or a leech. It’s up to you to use your judgment. If you don’t want to be their friend, politely message them and say, “I keep my personal network small, just for friends and family. However, I invite you to become a fan of my page, where I will post status updates and links related to astrology, and I’d be happy to interact with you there.” That way, you can feel comfortable sharing your personal life with only those people whom you generally consider buddies.

Posted in Social Media | 6 Comments

The Quick and Easy Way to Display Mundane Charts on Your Blog

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Jeffrey Kishner

Although the addition of images to your blog posts significantly increases a reader’s sense of engagement, it requires more work on behalf of the blogger. This is especially the case when it comes to chart wheels. Let’s say you want to show a chart for the Aries Ingress on March 20. Typically, you would have to do the following:

  1. Either open your astrology software or visit a site like astro.com
  2. Enter date, time and location
  3. Save the chart as a jpg, gif or png (basically, a file that you can display in a web broswer)
  4. Upload the image file to a web server
  5. Link to it from within your blog post

    6. This process is time-intensive, but fortunately there’s a shortcut. Kirk Kahn of Planet Watcher has programmed his site so that all you have to do is plop some code into your blog post and just change a few variables:

    <img src=”http://planetwatcher.com/chartwheel.php?size=400&asc=0&date=Mar 20 2010 1:32 pm EST”>

    As you can observe above, I displayed the chart for the Aries Ingress by entering the date of the ingress after “date=”. I specified a width and height of 400 pixels for the chart image by putting “400” after “size=”.

    If I want to “turn” the chart, I change the value after “asc=”. So, if I want Libra rising, “asc=180″.

    <img src=”http://planetwatcher.com/chartwheel.php?size=400&asc=180&date=Mar 20 2010 1:32 pm EST”>

    If you just want a noon chart at Universal Time, use UTC instead of EST:

    <img src=”http://planetwatcher.com/chartwheel.php?size=400&asc=0&date=Mar 20 2010 12:00 pm UTC”>

    There is a full list of date formats that you can use if you want to play around. And it appears that you are limited to using the equal houses system. However, if all you want to do is display the chart for an ingress or exact aspect and don’t care about location, then just plopping this code into your blog post will save you a few minutes.

Posted in Images | 2 Comments

Blogging vs. Website–The Importance of Social Interaction in Promoting Astrology

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Beth Turnage

I'm blogging thisBy Jamie Darkstar

This topic came up recently in a Facebook discussion, which arose from a post on the astrology of the Google Buzz launch. I said that “the leading internet astrologers” are jumping onboard. Defining “leading Internet astrologers” was the next step. This is distinct from the leading astrologers who author books, lecture at conferences or have websites with educational information, but who do not actively engage with others on the internet. To clarify I’ll give a few examples. From the popular culture style of astrology, Elsa Panizzon and Jeffrey Kishner are leading internet astrologers who engage with their user base at their blogs and forums. From the more traditional side of astrology, Noel Tyl and Deborah Houlding would be considered leading Internet astrologers because they engage with their forum members.

Blogs and forums have not been around so long, maybe a decade. Some astrologers are into it and some are not, that’s OK. Books, lectures and websites are an essential source of information for people learning about astrology, but these days the Internet is all about two-way interaction, making new contacts and sharing our ideas. It is making the world a smaller place and lets us form relationship, which would have otherwise been impossible. So the astrological community is part of this process. New people drawn to astrology are more likely to stay with it if they can interact with astrologers at all levels and share their ideas and get feedback.

The Internet is great for astrology in general. It makes so much information freely available but we need to be able to discuss it, debate what is being posted. I have read a fair few articles that I think are misleading at the very least but there is nowhere to leave comments. Time will tell, but I think lecturing style of astrology on the Internet will become less relevant. Ideas need to be challenged for any philosophy to evolve, and the Internet is the perfect medium for this evolution to occur quickly.

Astrology itself has now become a medium for social interaction on the Internet. I’m sure Marina and I are not the first couple to have met in this way. Friendships are started everyday all over the world in astrology forums and networking sites like Facebook. This is promoting astrology more into the mainstream than classes or conferences could ever have done. The language of this social interactions is astrology, whether it’s comparing sun signs for beginners, or sharing thoughts on the secondary progressions of a composite chart for full on astro nerds like me.

What it really comes down to is that people are going to be more drawn to astrology and end up promoting it themselves, if they can interact with others more experienced. Forums seem to be a bit limited in this. Just my personal intuition, but I think the explosion in the number of astrology bloggers is a sign that this community is moving toward a new level of social interaction. The comments on blog article are life forum threads, just like comments on personal pages or fan pages on Facebook. The advantage of blogs articles is that they are not lost in the ocean of babble on forums, and they are indexed on blogs and on the search engines. These are becoming the new reference material for astrologers, more so than books even. It does promote astrology in the best fashion I believe, and most importantly it is available to anyone in the world who has access to a computer, regardless of his or her socio-economic status.

Photo published under a Creative Commons License from Flickr

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Jamie DarkstarAbout the Author


Jamie Funk hangs his blogging hat at “Darkstar Astrology which he shares with his fiance Marina.

Posted in Editorial, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Social Media: AOL Almost Hits a Homerun with Lifestream

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Beth Turnage

lifestreamAOL hasn’t made any major buzz since making their services free to everyone. The fact is, they seemed to flounder after that move. As the SocialMediaSphere evolved at lightning pace, and Google bent over backward trying to develop apps that people would like and use, AOL fumbled the ball with trying to make themselves more like MySpace. The aborted attempt was hindered by the slow pace of development of their social pages, the limited features, and the difficulty in setting up a decent looking page. If they hadn’t such a hold on the email traffic of the world, their company might have died a slow death.

For a while AOL stuck with what they knew, email services. While they did this they developed firm advertising support wrapped around some pretty good news services. Now AOL is stepping out into the SocialMediaSphere again with a new app, Life Stream and it looks like they made it to third base with this one.

Integrated into their chat app, AIM, Lifestream allows you to consolidate many of the popular social media feeds, like Facebook and Twitter in one rolling real time feed. You can also share photos, YouTube videos and Del-icio-us bookmarks. Not only can you read your feeds gathered into one place, you can post to all of them at the same time and comment on your friends’ posts. Since it is combined with AIM, you can switch back and forth from private to public and conversations in the same place.

Where AOL runs short of a home run is the lack of an easy interface like a button to gather new buddies into your AIM account for private chats. While you can import your email contacts into your buddy lists, you can’t do the same for your Facebook Friends or Twitter followers. Nor do they offer a way to invite people to do so. Without an easy incentive to invite people to reach across the social media streams people just won’t, leaving AOL all dressed up and nowhere to go. Sounds like someone needs to get cracking on creating a code that would create a button that sends an email to your AOL account. Are you listening AOL?

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Slide Into the Future: Add Slides to Your Astrology Site

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Beth Turnage

by Jamie Funk

Adding pictures apart from horoscopes to your blog is good for many reasons. It pretties up the page and breaks up the text, making your blog more readable. It also brings in more visitors because of Google images. As an example, if you upload an image of Virgo, name it as such and when people click on that pic at Google images it will link to your site. There may be many images exactly the same listed with different links, but it does add to your hit count.

A great widget to add to your blog is slide. You upload your pics and there are heaps of options avaibale to make it integrate well with your theme. Once you have the code, you can play around with it to alter the height and width to make it fit snugly in the sidebar. Marina illustrates her blog articles and we use the slide widget to display them on the sidebar of our blog. Colour and movement animates the page making it more attractive to visitors.

Beth’s Note: You can insert a slide into a post rather than a widget space by playing around with the html. Copy and past the slide code into your post. Add this piece of code–align=”whatever alignment you want” into the body of the slide code after the html code “width=”numbers for width”.
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About the Author


Jamie Funk hangs his blogging hat at “Funkastrology–Cutting Edge Astrology for Uranian Times which he shares with his fiance Marina. Funkastrology has been listed in The Mountain Astrologer as a hot blog to watch. Of course it is!

Posted in Images, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Astrology Blogging Workshop This Saturday!

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Beth Turnage

The box on the side isn’t just for looks folks. If you live in the Connecticut area and you haven’t signed up yet we just may be able to squeeze you in but you do have to register.

Come, get to meet some great Connecticut astrologers and other like minded souls. Get to brag to your friends that you took a class at Wesleyan University. They don’t have to know that the class was held at Wesleyan, but not part of the WU’s curriculum.

Hope to see you there!

Beth

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Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
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How to Find Astrology Widgets for Your Blog

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Jeffrey Kishner

What is an astrology blog without bling? Although content is king, the widgets in your sidebar are often what give your blog its personality. (Or at the very least, toys with which your readers can twiddle if they’re bored by your articles.)

Fortunately, there’s doodads galore on the web. And to save you the time of looking for them yourself, I’ve provided a handy resource below:

  • Astro.com has two handy widgets. The first one features the current position of all the planets, plus Chiron and the North Node. The second one features birthdays for VIPs featured in Astro-DataBank.
  • WidgetBox has 200+ astrology widgets. More often than not, you’ll find Sun sign horoscopes, identity badges (“I’m an Aquarius!”), or blidgets, which list the most recent posts from a blog. Sites like FreeHoroscopesAstrology, iFate, and (if I may be self-serving) Sasstrology use Widgetbox widgets.
  • SpringWidgets also serves about 20+ astrology widgets. AstroDispatch, the popular astrology blog aggregator curated by Elsa, uses this platform to feature the latest posts in the astroblogosphere. If you go to the AstroDispatch sidebar, you can grab the code to feature the widget on your own blog.
  • Widgipedia has a paltry 7 astrology widgets, few of which seem to offer any value.
  • Widgia features a horoscopes widget and a Chinese Horoscope clock.
  • Google has tons of gadgets, which are mostly intended for the personalized iGoogle home page. However, if you scroll down to “For webmasters” on the right, you can click on “Embed this gadget” and grab code to add to your blog sidebar. You can change the dimensions to make it fit just right.

Although this list is pretty exhaustive, I’m sure I’m missing a few sites. Please share what you’ve found in the comments section. And remember: don’t go crazy with the bling! One or two widgets is tasteful, more than that and you’ll slow down your site – and your blog will start looking like a MySpace page.

And you don’t want that.

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kishnerpixAbout the Author

Jeffrey Kishner is editor/publisher of Sasstrology. He is also a regular contributor at AOL Horoscopes. Jeffrey is available for professional consultations regarding WordPress blogs and social media optimization. You can contact him at jeffreykishner@gmail.com.
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Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments