I visit a lot of blogs as a part of my day-to-day life, and my number one pet peeve with finding information within the blogosphere is the inability to print efficiently. Anyone who’s tried to print a recipe from a blog post can attest to the fact that in order to get one page of cooking instructions, you also end up with sheet after sheet of paper wasted on the superfluous printing of ads, sidebars, and empty tables. Even if you fish through your print preview to look for the meat of the printing job, you’ll often find that the post itself is splayed across several pages, interspersed with the aforementioned bloggage. This is no good if you’re trying to conserve paper and printer cartridges.

This isn’t just a problem with cooking blogs, either. I read through a vast number of interesting blog posts everyday on an array of subjects, and occasionally I want to print out something to hang on my wall or pass on to someone else. Again, I find myself wading though a ton of blog chaff to get to the wheat of the post.

To sum it up, printing from a blog can be a complete and utter headache.

Thankfully, the developer community is a great source of additional functionality for those of us running WordPress. There are countless plugins available that allow us to customize our little slice of the web in whatever way we see fit. WP-Print, a plugin created by Lester Chan, allows you to add tidy printing functionality to your WordPress blog by automatically adding a link to every post that will lead to a clean, printable version of your content. Here’s an example of what the output looks like:

• Original post
• Printable post created by WP-Print

Installation instructions are located here, but I’ll summarize the steps below.

First, go here to dowload the zip file. Once you’ve decompressed the file, you should have a folder titled ‘wp-print.’ Upload this entire directory to the server where you host your WordPress blog, and put it in the wp-content/plugins folder inside of your blog’s master directory.

Next, go to your WordPress control panel and navigate to the plugin management screen by clicking the ‘plugins’ link in the upper right-hand corner of your control panel, next to ‘settings’ and ‘users.’ Scroll down until you see the WP-Print listing, and click the ‘activate’ link to the right.

After you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll want to edit its preferences. Click the ‘settings’ menu in the upper right corner of the control panel, and you should see a listing of installed plugins under the main control panel navigation bar. To get to WP-Print’s settings, click the link that says ‘print.’ Here you can edit a multitude of setting, such as if you want images or comments to print with the post (I don’t recommend you turn on comment printing, as often your readers will just want the information in your post and not necessarily extraneous information).

That’s all there is to it! WP-Print should automatically insert a link to every post you make, offering your readers a tidy way to print the entry. If you have trouble installing or configuring WP-Print, the support forum can be found here.

Stephanie Stiavetti is a feature writer, copywriter, and all around technical savant. Having spent the last decade ensconced in both the editorial and computer industries, she’s comfortable in either world and often combines the two. Her areas of expertise are food, cooking, nutrition, health/wellness, technology, and the writing lifestyle, though if she had her druthers, she would spend 100% of her time writing about her culinary exploits. Read more about her and her work at Wasabimon.

Dustin covers all those techy things which you should know as a writer, but were too scared to explore, like MS Word styles and Master Documents.

Check out Angela’s site — there’s a ton of great advice for writers, including lots of good information to help you make money writing.

I’m not a huge fan of the “fuzzier”, writing-as-spiritual-quest sites, so you won’t find much of that here. Instead, I look for sites that offer real information writers can use about the craft of writing — or about the business of writing, which can be a sticky point for a lot of writers who fear sullying their creative mind with the dirty work of day-to-day business matters.

Here, in alphabetical order, are 21 22 blogs about writing that I consider good enough to read regularly — I’ve subscribed to all of them so I don’t miss a single post.

1. All Freelance Writing: Like the name says, AFW offers just about all the freelance writing info you could use.
2. Becoming a Writer Seriously: Tom Colvin is the very picture of the working writer — he’s written features, taught English and history, worked in the corporate world, and is working on a non-fiction book. His site covers tools and insider secrets for writers.
3. Blogging Bits: Written by Pakistani blogger Mohsin, Blogging Bits offers advice on blog writing and promotion.
4. Create Value or Die: Aimed at marketers, CVoD offers good advice for commercial writers whose work has to entertain, inform — and sell something.
5. Creative Freelancing: Covers news and advice for freelancers of all kinds, but particularly copywriters.
6. Freelance Folder: A multi-author blog with tips, advice, interviews, and more aimed at helping freelancers work and live better.
7. Freelance Swtich: Essential reading for freelancers from this multi-author blog. They also run a job board and a great podcast, Freelance Radio.
8. Get Paid to Write Online: Inside information from freelance writer and ghostwriter Sharon Hurley Hall.
9. How Not to Write: If you’re not writing, you might as well check out HNTW for great information on writing, blogging, and keeping creative.
10. How to Promote Your Self-Published Ebook (or Print!): With a title like that, you pretty much know what this one’s about Good advice on getting the word out about your self-published work.
11. Paperback Writer: Lynn Viehl has published 38 novels (and counting), so you can bet she knows a thing or two about novel-writing!
12. PODdy Mouth: A no-hold-barred look at the world of print-on-demand (POD) publishing.
13. Renegade Writer: Companion site to the Renegade Writer books on writing, RW has great advice on writing, especially the business end of writing.
14. Successful (and Outstanding) Blog(gers): Liz Strauss is all about connection. Her blog offers daily inspiration, tips, and things to think on, all directed towards increasing the way we use our blogs to relate to our audiences, other bloggers, and the world.
15. Time to Write: Jurgen Wolff has written for television (including “Family Ties”, “Benson”, and “The Love Boat”), movies, print, and the web. In addition to writing, he’s a writing coach, creativity expert, and hypnotherapist who shares his thoughts on brainstorming, maintaining focus, and the writing process on his blog. (PS I interviewed him on Lifehack Live in January 2008 — check it out for lots of great tips!)
16. Wordpreneur: With the tagline “How to make money writing”, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Wordpreneur’s Eldon Sarte does it better than most, presenting tons of information for writers looking to get paid.
17. Write Now is Good: Freelance writer and editor Kristin Gorski shares her thoughts on creativity, inspiration, and, of course, writing.
18. Write to Done: Leo Babauta of Zen Habits is an amazing writer. Write to Done shares some of his thoughts on unlocking our creativity and writing more effectively — and efficiently.
19. A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye: Lot’s of practical advice from freelance writer Lillie Amman.
20. Writer Unboxed: A group blog dedicated to exploring genre writing. Features lots of great information, especially the frequent interviews with authors.
21. Writing Power: English professor Loren Blinde offers stacks of advice on improving your writing, from conception to revision.
22. Writing Tips and Tricks: A freelance writer describes her experiences, and offers up the lessons she’s gleaned from them.

Know of anything I’ve left out? Let me (and your fellow readers) know about them in the comments!