Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

There are a ton of plugins dedicated to allowing webmasters place their IDs from their favorite social venues. However, from doing some plugging and chugging with plugins (more like install and un-install), I found that the DandyID Services plugin was the best one yet.

In fact, I am using the plugin here in the sidebar of Blondish.net. What I like best is that I can put my ID numbner or name and it is automatically saved. With the widget, it just puts all of my IDs up without me to have to struggle with putting up individual coding for each 16×16 pixel icon.

Also, when there is a place online that was not listed at DandyID, I have been able to suggest the new place. Actually, every place that I have suggested so far has been listed, including one for InuYasha-Fanfiction.com!

The plugin is XHTML valid and as you can tell on the sidebar on this site, that it looks great.

I have to hand it to those today who excel nationally (in the United States) and internationally within money, blogging, and social media. Over 6 years ago, I had faced the prospect of Yahoo! merging Clubs and eGroups in what is known today as Yahoo! Groups. For anyone who kept dibs on Yahoo when they had the Top 10 Clubs page, I held 3 of the top 10 Yahoo! Clubs. In fact, I was a founder of the #1 group, a dating club called Boyfriend and Girlfriend Alley.

Why were they lost? Yahoo told founders and co-founders, which are today now known as moderators and groups owners that larger clubs might be lost because their database pull might be too much. Most clubs over 10K in membership were lost, even Boyfriend and Girlfriend alley which had reached an overwhelming 50K in group membership. Well, when Yahoo! told their users of their move and created a moderators groups to hash out the differences, I joined, under my old ID, Nile1345, which if anyone remembers… in 1999, Yahoo! started to not allow new users to have capital letters in their user ID. I had acquired Boyfriend and Girlfriend alley from an actual Yahoo! employee at that time due to the fact I wanted to create a simple interactive webpage as a supplement to the dating group.

Then, blogging or social media was not a focus or even key to making money. It was about getting the number, keeping it, and implementing activities to retain interest. It is respectable today , but it is disturbing to see those today who are trying to “lead” are failing.

Why are they failing? Well, because they are no longer connecting. Despite making $25 TO $75K more than my own father (who is a Physician Assistant… medical field, family practice), they are not even trying to personally connect with the “little people” or the normal everyday personal that does not have over a ouple thousands followers anymore.

Remember when you went to that sucky doctor (no matter what field) and got that second opinion with an awesome one? Well, that awesome doc or even physcian assistant related to you in a way no one else could.

That connects with social media. How can you connect with a cocky doctor who debuts on Larry King and does not consort with other doctors or even Physician Assistants (and for those who do not know, Physician Assistants make great family practice technicians due to their ability to keep up with new treatments and such…just consort the AAPA Journal Magazine – Journal of American Academy of Physician Assistants)?

Though totally differencet subjects, it is all the ability to get information flowing an actually connect with others on a somewhat equal level. Before the big money and big boy in social media today, the game was ran similarly: Have a product and spread the word by ‘word of mouth.’ This has been a long time practice. Social media extends even before the internet. Before that it was television, and before even that was newspapers. Before newspapers, it was books or even pamphlets or even someone riding on horseback from town to town to spread the news.

The one thing is, even though the big boys in social media are making big dollars, do not forget those who made the effort before.

I was talking with a gal, whom I would probably call a colleague when it comes to art in general. She was having issues finding the right colors to inspire her to make her next website layout and not being inspired. Of course, for color issues I told her right away that she should try ColourLovers as a way to look at palettes others have put together. However I also went into explaining about inspiration works for writers and artists in the same way. It is all about experience. Inspiration can be in anything: the color of a dewdrop dripping from the petals of a flower, in the way a person walks, the shape and texture of an object, and much more. Life is an unending inspiration. Art is Life and life is art. I am not sure if there is a famous phrase similar, but if there is, I would have quoted it already. I am just writing from my experience.

If you want to write about something, but do not know anything about the subject, you research the matter. If you want to draw a picture of a rare object, you find pictures or the real thing. All of the senses are used in finding inspiration.

Web design is a form of art. Yes, it involves a process that may be difficult for some, but the design of a webpage is very much a part of expressing oneself. Often website design takes on trends from time to time and it can be seen. Webmasters learn and inspire each other to build the next layout that becomes eyecandy for others to enjoy. Some share how they accomplish their amazing work through tutorials.

So, if you want to build a website and you just cannot seem to find that exact inspiration, look around and read up on new ways to take your layout and of course, your website to the next level.

Yes, the title of this blog says what it says. You can track your comments with Backtype. When you sign up, you enter your information with websites you use when filling out forms and social services you use that you comment (like Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, MyBlogLog, and more.) Once you have set this up, the site will post the comments you have made at sites using the URLs that you included.

Truthfully I think they should just list a bunch of services and you just put your ID number or your username, and it would be better, but overall, I think it is a handy service. You can always fall back on it to see what you have done recently, or for bloggers, it could be great reference for quoting. The site also serves as a bit of a social media type site where it also recognizes others online who are members of the service that you have talked to before. It is also a great reference in case you made a comment before turning in for the night, wanting to visit, and forgot to either subscribe to a site’s RSS feed or even bookmark it.

As an example, you an view my Backtype profile to see the comments and what it is about.

I was checking my Google Webmaster Tools and found a few errors with my links. I have gone through opening and closing sites. The number of sites are more than a dozen.

However, with this site, I found 9 errors within my site dealing with dead links. So, if you have not used the Google Webmaster, Tools, perhaps you should really consider it. You can learn a lot. Dead links are important to take care of and depending if you blog quite a bit, this will save you the time. The tool tells you where the dead links were found.

Now, it is a no brainer that most know dead links should be removed, but how many really go through older posts to look for old sites that are dead? Even further, do you look for internal pages that you linked that you have either removed or in the case of WordPress, changed the permalink structure? Most of the time external dead links are removed while the internal ones collect dust. Even if you did not have much faith in Page Rank, this is definitely another reason why you should use Google Webmaster Tools.

The Listing has finally taken over as the final merge of the of Acid-Lemon.com directory and Pixelled Listings. Because of some 502 issue that originated from the account of Acid Lemon, I had to terminate the account. The site was running several out of date scripts like SimpleDir (a webdirectory script that was popular several years ago), and PHPFanbase (a fanlisting script). The scripts had been exploited and there were mass emails sent out from the account. I could not let it go on and it was hurting everyone on the shared server.

There are some things I still have on my to-do list for the site. I still have over 600 members to inform of the change. So far The Listing in less than a month has risen to 100. That is awesome as I have not went out and affiliated with other webdirectories, or listed the site with anyone. The site is using NinjaLinks and it is great, very simple and customizable. I am hoping that the site will continue to grow and one day be far better than both of the sites combined.

If you are not listed there, consider listing. It is free and the only requirement is at least linking back to the site.

For the past few years, I have been using Gravatar, which is a “globally recognized avatar.” A gravatar is something to give your blog comments a small, but nifty image. It is an attribute that WordPress and other blog content management have designed plugins to to display them within blogs both free-hosted, self-hosted, or even free-hosted comments like Haloscan.

Personally, for me, when I go through my site comments, the gravatars are the first thing I notice. That does not mean that I do not read the others, it is just that my eye is drawn to them, especially if they are well designed. This also does not just apply to my site, but when I visit and comment at other sites. Sometimes I will see an amazing avatar and will want to go see that person’s site.

Not long ago, gravatar was not accessible for new accounts. Members at that time could see their gravatar display whenever they commented, but they could not update. Since its move to Automattic, Gravatar has been accessible, so for those who might still be thinking the site does not work… well, it does now and has been for the past year.

For those who do use gravatar, how do you like it? Are you apt to visit people who have an interesting avatar (gravatar)?

I was looking through my old layouts to see if I forgot to put anything on my current blog. Lo and behold (yeah, I know kind of an overused phrase), I found BlogExplosion. BlogExplosion is a site that allows you to surf other sites for credits. In return, you can use the credits for advertising your own site.

When I first joined in 2005, BlogExplosion users could either acquire points through surfing or through referrals. Now, there are games and it has become a bit more of an interactive site. It is a great way to try to get more traffic for your site, and you could potentially meet more people.

I still had a lot of credits, so I thought I would give it a try. I sometimes lose things when transitioning from one theme to another and never thought much. However, as I do recall, I did receive some good traffic through the site.