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Apr
12
Questions for Readers, and a 101 Day Round-Up
Filed Under Branding |
I'm here with you and the spirit of WordPress, writing away on a gorgeous Spring weekend, to sum up a little of what's gone on here over the last 101 days, and get reader feedback for some plans I'm cooking up for this site's theme.
My hope is to arrive at how the thing called Internet bisects my values and things I enjoy that I'd like to do more of in everyday life. If I don't find a destination, per se, that's OK. The goal is to explore, joyfully and with dedication.
100 days ago I committed to making 100 meaning-of life posts, and 101 days later I've added 60 posts to my tally. That comes out to anywhere from 1 to 7 posts a week, an average of about 4 a week. There were times when once a week was hard, moreso a few weeks ago than now. Four posts a week is a respectable clip for a one-person blog. Two or three is more reachable in the long run; at the same time, a little pressure is good for creativity.
I have projects coming up that may require me to cut back somewhat, but because my original commitment was to give it my all for 101 days of posts, I'll do whatever I can to make the next 40 posts at the 4 post a week rate. One of my missions for the next 40 posts is to widen and deepen the blogging topic list I started the end of March.
This coming week I'm going to write about web strategy and content development for small brick and mortar businesses - it's been an interest of mine just about forever. If I've worked on a site for you and in the next few articles you think I'm talking about you, it ain't necessarily so. You are not the only one. Consider yourself to be an archetype, a sign of the times.
Another topic I've enjoyed a lot of late is social media, though I'm a little less settled about how I feel about the web's current state of social media development. Community is good. Marketing is... sometimes tricky. Respect is almost everything.
This brings my joy of the Elizabeth-brand list of topics up to five. Pardon me while I give myself a big w00t and vava voom for adding to my me-brand.
- Identity - Branding beyond logo and colors
- Community - What sparks it and keeps it energized, online and locally, through social media and other kinds of venues, and any supportive roles that marketing can play
- Culture - Specifically how the Internet can be a positive force of understanding and respect in this era of terrorism and military activism
- Web content - strategies for small businesses, especially those that are new to the web or dissatisfied with their current site
But wait! There's more! Read on, and please tell me what you think!
AbleReach will get a custom WordPress theme
If there is interest, I'm up for starting with the WP default and documenting what I change, tutorial-style, one step at a time. This is not something I'd normally advise for a blog with a large following, because ongoing change can confuse readers, and doing it this way will take longer, prolonging the metamorphosis. It might not be too terrible - after coming to my site, the most common next clicks are from Recent Posts or Top Ten Posts. If those two are both in an anticipated place we may not be too lost. Are you game?
Sometime soon I'll decide if I'm going to make a new logo, maybe without the "Arts & Web Development" or "AbleReach helps you get online" lines. I have held onto this logo graphic for sentimental reasons, and I could easily keep holding on and layering on bylines. I like the bold, fat, scripty typeface, and all three taglines are a part of me, but so much has changed in a few short years! It may be time for a logo change, too.
Some day I'll have to share the story of how that logo and my domain name came to be. 
I Want More Feed Functionality
Is it my imagination, or are feeds getting cooler?
I like Ruud Hein's use of shared items in his sidebar. Very sweet, and interesting brain food, too. I am feeling all hero-worshipy and am seriously considering following his lead by replacing part of my blogroll area with a feed of recent post titles from some of my favorite places.
I spend a LOT of time on StumbleUpon. I like the idea of shared favorite things, and somewhere in my travels I'm sure I've seen a feed of recent SU reviews in a blog sidebar. Would adding that be interesting, or overkill? And, is there a way to pull in only reviews from relevant tags?
And, I haven't added a FeedBurner link for blog comments. If I added one, would you use it?
Blog Comments Will Soon Be Dofollow
I'll be installing Lucia's Linky Love, a nice little configurable dofollow plugin that I learned about from Donne Fontenot. Thanks, Donna!
No way am I going dofollow without a comments policy, but what do I want to say? I'm a hard case about some kinds of sites that are in reality perfectly legit. In all semi-snobby honesty, if a link leads to a blog where posts start off with several inches of ads, I'm likely to edit out the link entirely. Is that being a hard case? Would it get me hate mail? Hmmm...
Heidi-ho, SEO-ing Neighbors
Until now I haven't made a strong effort towards optimized Hx, or added any keyword or description metas, or even customized any titles. True, metas don't push up serps, but the description meta at least can help serps show a nicer snippet.
As for the titles, mia culpa, my mind was elsewhere. I was operating on the theory that nothing with power happens without a personal center. The moment I start adding SEO-ified bits I'll start spending more time watching my stats and less with that groovy got-to-be-me centering thang. LOL. I'm feeling... erm... riper now, in a good way, and may start to add a few SEO-ish bits here and there.
General Pandering
Do you want to see my Amazon wish list? I promise to choose only cool stuff, like solar powered jet cars, bunny slippers, nerd books, etc. Did I mention solar powered cars?
I also need to promote and custom-design the My Top Spots widget, and add an advertising policy. Pandering is nicer with ethics and personalization, eh?
Got opinions? Please comment and share.
Tags: 101 Posts
Comments
13 Comments so far
You can fetch any user feed pretty easily from the user’s public Stumbleupon page - the link is posted at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. Wordpress 2.5 offers an RSS Widget which allows you to import items from any RSS feed into a dynamic sidebar of your choice.
I don’t know of a way to restrict it to a specific tag, though.
Thanks, Joe. I haven’t
played withexperimented with the RSS import widget yet. For those of us who haven’t found the WP RSS import widget yet, go to Design > Widgets > RSS. Dang near everything has a feed these days, so you can point it just about everywhere.Therin lies another set of questions. Life being what it is, the day I have serious though fascinating web stuff to say will be the day I’ve shared a semi-intelligible SU 4am review of something like An Engineer’s Guide to Cats, or their more serious Cat Rescue video.
Your idea for documenting changes to the default WordPress theme along the way sounds interesting as long as it didn’t get too bogged down in CSS. I have to admit I like this theme though
Congratulations on seeing your 101 project through! And four posts per week - wow! I find it challenging to balance between the social media, blogging and my day job :).
I really like your idea of documenting the word press process. Once you’re done you could put it all together as a white paper or e-book so that people can download this valuable resource.
Looking forward to seeing what the next 101 days have in store!
Hi there! I just checked out your blog for the first time (I’ve seen your avatar on StumbleUpon quite a bit and I believe that you’ve give the “Thumbs Up” to a few of my posts.)
This is a general comment to say, wow, I really like your writing!
Tip of the hat, as well, for your 100 posts project.
@ Jenn - LOL re posting 4x and more a week. There is a fine line between burnout and breakthrough. I could not do this if I still had kids at home.
@ Jenn and Emory - I’m thinking that by starting with WP’s Default theme instead of a layout of my own I’d be using class and ID names that would help others who wanted to do the same sorts of things. If I kept posts simple and small, I could see it being an every day thing for a specific number of days, or every other post until done.
I like the idea of compiling it into an ebook. Writing from start to finish would let me write one thing to build on another, without needing to repeat too much.
Mark! I’ve seen your avatar around, too. I just now put the name together with the avatar, and because your sidebar has a handy list of your SM links I instantly tracked your SU page down and “friended” you.
Note to self - next theme has SM links in sidebar.
Thanks for the compliment about my writing. I’m enjoying myself. I feel like I’m coming home.
I would take the minimalist approach were I to start lordmatt.co.uk again. How little can I put onto the page in order to achieve all my goals?
I agree that some side bar things are fantastically interesting but sometimes they are more interesting than the blog content. I’ve been thinking a lot lately of how to put “that side bar stuff” so that it is “after the fact” or following on from the comments that follow from the post. that gives me a huge amount of space int he side bar(s) to make sure readers know what is important on site (and to push feeds etc).
It’s not been done yet but it would provide a “what to do next” of crafted carefully.
On the other hand making you blog into a “portal of you” was what the lordmatt.co.uk project was/is all about. For that you have a lot of competing demands for the first page real estate. “blog rolls” (links) and other related “this is cool too” I would consider making a small hand made directory of so that everything I read is indexed so I can find it and so Google can too…
You now have a picture of my thoughts for my site’s future. I hope they were interesting and not too far off at a tangent topically.
Theme generator: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/
There’s also a WordPress theme which is barebones and fully commented, including CSS so you know what can be done where and how.
As for myself, I can do a pretty nice layout, even come up with some elements to add — but overall I’m not a *designer* so it always looks squarish, lacks nice graphical elements etc.
Ruud, the Theme Generator sounds like a worthy project, as a quick way to generate commented css. Commented code of all sorts is are gooood.
When I visited the Theme Generator page with FireFox there was a missing left-right scrollbar until I played with the sidebar width, and then there were squished margin problems. Not a good sign. I looked at it today and saw fresh notes about fixes - nice to see it is a live work with live progress, not an “I built it and left it here.”
I have some ideas for how I’d move through the WP default theme’s structure and get it ready for some unique graphical touches. No promises, yet…
Hi Elizabeth - I love your plans for this blog. And I think your idea of customizing your blog and showing others how to do it as you go is a fabulous idea. Ditto for teaching web strategy and content development for brick and mortar businesses. I’m looking forward to reading it all.
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