Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

When you go to a site and it reads ‘HIATUS’, is it annoying? For me it is and I have heard from quite a few other bloggers that it can be irksome for them too.

Usually the reason a person has a hiatus can vary, but usually boils down to the fact that the blogger does not have enough time and blogging is put on the backburner.

There are a couple ways bloggers alert their visitors to when they are having a hiatus.

1. The blogger shuts the site down completely and posts a short note that they are on hiatus and when they will be back.
2. Leave their blog up but do not update for some time.

Both are annoying. Of course, I know that anyone understands that life can get hectic and perhaps blogging is either a chore or just not important. However, from experience, several things can happen during a hiatus.

• 1. Your Page Rank in Google or Alexa could become worse due to not updating.
• 2. Your traffic will decrease.
• 3. You may lose visitors temporarily or permanently. If you are on hiatus often or for extended periods of time, it could be a total turn-off.

To prevent this, totally shutting the site down or lack of inactivity is not a solution. Instead, you should reduce your number of bloggings to at least once or twice a month. Four times a month is great, but twice should adequately suffice. This will keep your site updated enough to keep your visitors coming back.

When you do blog, you do not have to make the blog long and go over every single thing you did. Just highlight some of it.

Anyone who knows me, or regularly visits knows that I support causes like Breast Cancer Awareness, and Relay for Life. These are important causes to me because I know so many women around me that have suffered from breast cancer and various others suffer from other types of cancer. For those of you that know people with cancer, or are survivors of cancer should really read the rest of this post. It is a way to support the cause just by walking.

I came across a great cause called BeeWell Miles . From April 1st until October 31st of this year (2009), Bumble Bee Foods will donate 15 cents per mile walked towards Breast Cancer.

The great thing is that anyone can do it and all you have to do is walk and log the miles at their website, BeeWellMiles.com. It is a win-win situation as you can lose weight and also support a cause at the same time. Since I have been exercising, and now that the weather is warmer, I will most likely be joining this cause. Besides logging miles on the website, you can enter your meals in and get the tabulations on calories and have access to health experts to help you along the way.

This is a great opportunity especially for mothers who are wanting to get out and about.

Been busy at making graphics once again. In fact, 11 new emoticon smilies! After making the rounded smilies, I needed to make extras that matched all of the colors. Also, I added more colors to the bubble saying emoticon (ex: smilies that said ‘whoa!’ or ‘lol’.)

Here are examples of these:

This makes the total of different emoticons offered at 37! That is quite a bit, especially a variety of new characters that will be introduced soon too!

As internet users are finding rss feeds very convenient to catch the latest news of their favorite sites, I thought that making some creative RSS icons would be great to add to the site. Here are but a few examples:

There are 59 total rss icons available. Please, if you do use any, please remember to not direct link the images and to save them to your own computer before using.

Of course, If you have any ideas for more, feel free to leave a comment on this blog post and I will see if I can get more done soon. Since I am blogging from the library (phone is down due to someone running into the poll and taking down the line), I have had plenty of time offline to get a few fun things finished.

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.

This year marks 10 years since I graduated high school. Can you believe it? Just thinking about it, I cannot. It makes me feel a bit old. Since then, I have dedicated myself to developing my passion in writing and even art in general, like web and graphic design. I never profess myself some guru in the fields, but I have a lot of experience.

The reading, the practice, the schooling, it has all been worth it. Although I am still in college for another degree, I hope it brings me closer to what I want to do, which is to be a business owner. Right now, I am making it by myself barely as a entrepreneur. It has not been easy. And considering most web designers take an average of 10 years to make it, I believe I am doing fine.

My one thing that I fear is high school reunions. So far, I have heard nothing, and I remember that even my father had one when he was younger. I came from a huge high school, and I have moved around quite a bit in the past 10 years. I often think about those I use to be acquainted with and what they are doing. Of course, I hope they are doing well.

If you have graduated high school, what have you done since?

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.

Most people when they see my site, it is filled with a lot of things to do. From my literature and webmaster article, and even my graphics, there are literally a lot of things. However, I tend to forget when I am posting new stuff to write about it on my blog. One type of graphic I offer is one I have not talked about much, which is my pixel patterns.

The patterns are a collection I have added to since 2003. Some of them I used on my first domain that I ever had! I am really proud of them and I am always working to make more. I will be working on this section and adding a download monitor to each of them and putting each of the backgrounds in a zip file. I think it is better to do that too. I recently found out through Twitter that some of my work had been redistributed on another pixel pattern site and was irate, especially since there was no credit given. As a note, with the pixel patterns, the colors are allowed to be altered, but please do not claim as your own.

I already have a dozen new ones to add and some older patterns too. When I add them, I will update you. I suggest subscribing to my RSS feed to keep updated. *Hint* There may be more WordPress layouts available for download too!