Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

This is a guest post.

While Blondish.net helps more with people using WordPress on self-hosted, WordPress also offers a place for bloggers to start. If you are unsure of starting a website for blogging or to add a blog to your current site, try using the free WordPress.com services first.

Note from Nile about Guest Blogger.
Please welcome Amy Ravit Korin (@interactiveAmy on Twitter) as a guest. I met her at WordCamp Chicago. She came to find out more about WordPress and became a new blogger. I have asked her to blog as a new blogger that has used WordPress.com as their startup spot for blogging. Her WordPress.com blog is also interactiveAmy.

Congratulations, you’ve decided to start a blog! Now what?

That was me, less than a week ago. I had the good fortune of attending WordCamp Chicago, a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. Well, everything except for getting started, that is. In a room of 200, I was one of a handful that wasn’t already a blogger. Intimidating? It could have been, rather I seized the opportunity to learn from my peers and decided right then and there that on day two I was coming back with a blog!

I had a website, interactiveAmy.com, but it wasn’t on WordPress and it didn’t have the capabilities to support the type of blog I wanted. So I issued a tweet for help.

Jason Pelker (@jpelker on Twitter) was the first to respond, and we met up during a break. Jason listened to my dilemma, how to switch my static domain to WordPress, and assured me I could do it! He also told me that he didn’t think I was ready to start a self hosted blog, so he directed me to WordPress.com to get started with a free WordPress hosted account.

Jason could tell that I was a smart cookie, so he pointed me in the direction of the WordPress.com support page, and then said to figure it out on my own. So there I sat, the last one to leave the WordCamp conference room – busy logging in and setting up my interactiveAmy.wordpress.com account.

And that was that! With additional hand holding from Dan Schulz (@danschulz on Twitter), I was determined to go home and figure it out. And I did! Day two of WordCamp I came back with a blog!

Wow, sometimes when I have good ideas, I find out it takes a lot more effort. For example, this new layout… I want the pages to have different templates depending on what it is.

For right now, I have excluded the Literary section and Movie Reviews. Those will go to different sites as they no longer are part of the focus I have been trying to make with this site.

Here is a list of some of the changes:
- Exclusion of Literature and Movie Review Pages
- Site Map was moved to domain section
- Graphics section is now named Resources
- Scripts (for my php scripts I developed) are under Resources
- Tutorials were moved to Resources
- Website Reviews were moved to Articles

This is a big revamp. Be excuse the mess as I am literally revamping over 200 static pages. Yes, I have a LOT of material. I would though appreciate your feedback on the layout at least. Thank you!

I just had to say it. I already said it on Twitter, but this whole big deal with Facebook coming out with usernames was really dumb. There was so much hype into it that I felt like people would be seriously worried about their username being taken. It kind of sounds like when you hear those Black Friday stories from Walmart goers that stand all over the store and when it hits 7AM, everyone goes bonkers. Or, the one analogy where you (that is, if you are a woman) end up fighting over a bra at the Victoria’s Secret Semi-Annual sale.

Well, there were those who acted like it, and I laughed when people were counting down the minutes and seconds until Facebook allowed users in as if they pushed a button to let people through their virtual turnstyles. Once they got their usernames, they were said “I got my username that I wanted.” I could just hear the thrill…well read it. Yeah, I know… I am not enthusiastic.

My response – Well, good for you. I did get my username over 20 minutes after because I was not in a rush, and did not care. It was easy to pick my username, but I kept thinking on why in the world Facebook did not think of it sooner. I feel special that I am no longer a number, but I that have a username. It was the worst hype ever since the recent KFC grilled chicken (which my local store cannot cook the chicken to what I need it to be. It was a whole debacle that was tramatizing for me…physcially. Enough said on that before it goes over that WTMFI line.)

Frankly, Facebook is becoming too much like MySpace. All the applications that you can use for it are similar and with MySpace trying to keep up, your real-time activity stream now appears. All the ads are annoying too. I have ads that have nothing to do with me as a person.

Did you get your username? What did you think of the whole ordeal?

If you look up the term ‘#1 douchebag‘ in Google, you will find that Micah Baldwin (@micah on Twitter) holds that spot. This is because he asked people to link to him using that term as an anchor link. Some people would probably shake their head, but after hearing his presentation at WordCamp Chicago 2009, I did not think he was a douchebag. He is very funny and really does have a lot of knowledge in his field. A little extra tidbit about Micah is that he is the #FollowFriday founder. The original intention was allow people to list who they recommended and why… not the long lists that look like spammage.

Anyway, it was his ability to influence his followers into helping him achieve his goal. How did he do this… well, he put it all into the following points:

- became involved in several social media sites
- he was active on those social media sites
- he found content to share and shared it with others
- he remained true to himself

Now, he points are a bit different, but the points mentioned above reflect his own points.

Since hearing Micah’s story, I have been thinking of my own. It is not anything flambouyant, but I would like to rank higher in the key term ‘Nile’. I see all of these other things and when I searched to see if I was even listed… I was not. It is not shocking, but if you put the anchor link as ‘Nile’ on your site when linking Blondish.net, or even blog about it (which is awesome and I will be very happy), I will put your link on a page to thank those who supported the site. Yeah, it is not much, but it is a reciprocal link at least.

If you already link Blondish.net as ‘Blondish’ or ‘Blondish.net’, please change it to Nile.

Note: Thank you to Lisa Sabin-Wilson for the photo.

Technically Blondish.net turned 3 years old during May. With the layout to be unveiled, it will be the 8th version. If all goes well with this version, I will be retiring the others (Premium Blondish and Mustang), and giving them out as free WordPress layouts. I have already been asked about the Premium Blondish layout and I will strip it of the ‘blondish’ information for the layout. If anyone wants customizations of it, I charge $50 and I allow you to do anything you like, plus you get support for your layouts. (Yeah, sorry, had to slip that in, but I have already done a few customs using this template.)

I am a bit late on a layout change, but the one previewed (It is just the top part), should be up and unveiled by Sunday evening! Some of the things on the site are getting moved to their more comfortable places, like another domain of mine. This is all tied in with the re-focus of the blog that I had mentioned months ago. Some of the pages will have their own templates. I am hoping with WP-PageNavi and Yoast Breadcrumbs to do away with the older navigation to come up with something more clean. From the preview, you can see that it will retain the black, white, pink and golden tones. The guitar is a vector I made. In fact, I will have a vector tutorial on it ready as a wonderful addition.

I have also asked a few people to please write some guest posts. I would not mind if anyone else wanted to. Just give me a shout out at Twitter or here in my comments.

So, what do you think? Does the preview image look promising?

As announced by Matt Mullenweg, WordPress 2.8 became available June 10th. The version is named “Baker” after the jazz trumpeteer and vocalist, Chet Baker. As explained by Matt during WordCamp Chicago, each of the versions of WordPress that have come forth are named after jazz musicians because of his love of music, as well as background in music. Of course, this information had not been just released to those at the convention, but a week before in San Francisco. Nevertheless, most WordPress users I am sure are happy to hear this news as it brings WordPress another step higher since its birth over 6 years ago.

Some of the key features that are noticeable in this version, according to the the WordPress development blog are:

- 2.8 runs faster than its previous versions
- one click installs from the theme repository to your blog, straight from your WP admin panel
- CodePress editor: provides a syntax editor for those who like to edit plugins from the admin panel side
- Redesigned widget interface
- and more than 180 more features added

This is a huge step! There is a great video on the WordPress.org blog on all of the features mentioned above and a little bit more.

What kind of things are you wanting for future WordPress versions?

I had the awesome opportunity to listen to a presentation from Erin Blaskie (@erinblaskie on Twitter) at WordCamp Chicago 2009. Erin ran an interesting social experiment just by doing something she loved, gaming. She made videos and blogs, and even twittered her activities… and became a success in a few months.

Having a successful blog is not easy. It DOES take work. Sometimes it takes a lot longer for some people, than it does for others, but if you are true to yourself and your following, as well as determined to succeed, you will. The tools for bloggers to use are easy and the great thing, easy to find. It is a matter of taking the time and using them. According to Erin, here are some tools that you can use in your methods of blogging and being social:

1. Video : This is great for those really comfortable and if your topic could easily be conveyed with this particular media. I just wanted to mentioned that Erin said that when she put her videos to Youtube, people just watched her play games. Yes, just watched her click the mouse and look at her computer screen while playing!

2. Social Networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc…): Connect with people other than the mundane things in life. Re-tweet information, have meaningful conversations. Hey, this is something I covered months ago in another article!

3. “Blog from different mediums” : If you are on a bunch of different networks, you do know there are blog tools with some of them. Use them and get your message out to the people.

4. “Interweave Your Efforts” : If you blog, then tweet about it or put it in your Friendfeed or Facebook. Post a bulletin in MySpace… just do something. No one will know about what you want to say if you do not share it with them first.

5. “Live streaming video” : You can do webcam sessions and allow your visitors to ask your things. Sometimes a face and voice is a great addition to those words you have been writing for months.

6. Guest Bloggers : These people are great in helping to convey your message. They are not you, but they are experts in their own right because you chose them to write on your site.

7. “Interaction & Interactivity” : Activities are great. Freebies and giveaways are awesome too. In the case of web design sites, freebies are awesome attractions.

8. “Get out of your bubble.” : It is pretty self-explanatory. As I already said, you cannot attract people to your site if you do nothing. It is awesome that you have written content, but if you have no drive to work at convincing others why they should read what you have written, then why bother? Go out there and mingle!

Sound simple? What tools to you for your blog?

Sometimes simple can be good, especially if it is a nifty site like a short URL site or perhaps a site that searches domain names, or even favicon manipulation sites. SingleFunction contains articles on different sits to whet your need to see simplicity at its finest. The site is a clever creation of Webmasterish.

The site is one big showcase. I had to say that I was pretty impressed with the smorgabord of sites covered and the information gathered about each. You can even suggest a site, but it has to be a site based on a singular type of function. Also, you can vote on the sites showcased. Even Re-Url.me is showcased there. Re-Url.me is a single function site for shortening URLs and I give the script away here at the site – free to use. Feel free to leave a comment there or send some vote love… well, I would hope you might. *bats eyelashes*

This is a great site to surf around and pick up a few tools. I saw some sites showcased that are simply dedicated to helping webmasters chose the right color palette. This site is truly a showcase to resourceful sites.