Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

DeviantART has been extremely busy these past few months. Today they rolled out a new feature and launched another to the public from beta mode.

Oh, and I there were some noticed a few design tweaks to the color of the message inbox system too!

The one huge feature that was rolled out was “Stacks.” Because of groups, some of them had thousands of members. This would flood the inbox of anyone watching the group. In fact, this was a big peeve that turned up and I even had to grumble. With the new stacks system, if a group or person has submitted several art pieces or writings, it will be stacked instead of individually listed. The user can choose to delete the the whole stack all at once, or click on the stack to view all of the submissions. This is a huge relief, especially for even users like myself who watch a lot of artists.

DeviantART Groups was launched to the public. Now anyone can make a group. The only feature I am really rooting for is the ability to have a forum within the group. It is possible with regular profiles, so I am not sure why it has not been added to groups yet. Right now, members can only comment in the community blog posts and the comment section on the front page. For larger groups, this could prove problematic if there are a lot of messages. A forum would help with the organization.

It is great to see DeviantART adding more features. By the way, they are the place to get some really great emoticons and were the inspiration of why I started making my own smilies here at Blondish.net so others can download and use.

Do you use DeviantART? Have you noticed their new features? What do you think of them? Any suggestions for other features they should consider?

Lately I have been falling into a wealth of discovering or being told about new websites that help bloggers. I am usually not one to blog back-to-back about websites, but hey… it is a useful site and could prove to be helpful. SeededBuzz.com is a site that allows people to submit their post and allow others to carry on the conversation on their own blog. Let me clarify – people who are dying to find out what you think about certain topics, but might not normally comment.

This allows a couple great things to happen.

1. You have a new quality article you can post.

2. The topic you wrote about includes a link to the original article, allowing people to either visit if they so choose and above all, a link back.

3. You have another good blog to visit regularly.

Topics that people can post under are: Automotive, Charity, Creative, Entertainment, Green, Living, Marketing, Money, Politics, Sport, Science, and Technology.

To use, all you have to do is post one of your articles for others to see and possible write articles in response on their own blogs. Also, you can choose someone else’s ‘seed’ topic and write your own response. It is really easy! I actually have already tried it out on one of the previous blog postings.

I believe this is a great idea. I know SeededBuzz would like to try offering packages in their product, BUT I also know they have been offering some beta accounts for free. I am not sure if those are still being accepted, but I have been given a code to give to anyone who wants to check it out. Just use the code ‘blondishnet’ when you sign up.

I think there are not enough sites with this in mind. Of course, over the past few years I have tried different things: banner ad exchanges, blog community link exchanges, and more. However, this one encourages more action, rather than just doing one thing and not having to do anything else.

Are there any other sites you know of similar to this? Does this sound like something you might want to try out?

Oh goodness… please let this not be true. If Yahoo! can kill great sites efficiently without a reason, AOL can do it just as well. I was reading an article on Inventorspot called Is “Mashable” Cashable? and I was angry – like angry I wanted to beat someone.

I do not care if Pete Cashmore is the “Brad Pitt of the Blogosphere”… selling Mashable to AOL is just insane. And yes, I am that passionate about saying that it is insane.

Pete, please keep Mashable longer until you can find someone that will not drive the site into the ground. When Mashable goes from its own writers and is bought by a bigger company like AOL, here are things that will eventually happen:

1. They try to open up writing positions to their own staff, who may have limited knowledge or interested in what the current writers of Mashable have done.
2. AOL buys Mashable and the current writers of Mashable slowly lose interest because AOL, a big company will take them for granted, and not even offer compensation. AOL has stocks, and Mashable could actually boost it.
3. AOL might enforce their own requirements on contributions.
4. AOL removed current Mashable writers, replaced them with their own employees, and then the site slowly dies out.
5. AOL gets an idea to combine Mashable with another site and it fails, and the site slowly dies out.
6. AOL fires everyone because their stocks drop, and well – their product SUCKS! (I was an AOL user YEARS ago, and it was just the worst choice in an ISP.)

The only way Mashable could survive from going from a startup that has become successful to being a successful section of a larger company is that AOL actually decides to pay any Mashable writers. The site is solely driven by people who volunteer there time. I am sure there are people getting paid.

AND… why is this even be consider, especially when even Mashable published AOL: We Need To Fire 2,500 Employees. Any Volunteers?

Does that make any sense?

According to TechCrunch’s recent article Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman International, it is a prime example that your username is not totally yours. Lucky for the guy Harman Bajwa, that with TechCrunch’s help and enough responses, they released the vanity URL back to him. This is just one incident out of many others. Your username, if it holds anything of interest to a bigger company, could be pulled out from under you.

Now, just because Harman was able to, we all cannot get TechCrunch to stand in the corner. Kind of sucks for the regular people, huh?

Unfortunately, even though the usernames are a first come first serve, they are still subject to the social network’s policies. For example:

Facebook:

From Facebook’s Username: General Information
Question: Can Facebook take back a username that has already been claimed?

Answer: Facebook reserves the right to remove and/or reclaim any username at any time for any reason.

Of course, Facebook has other policies like for impersonations or trademark issues – however, they still can remove it. It is kind of like some states allowing businesses to employ and fire ‘at will.’

If you have not chosen a vanity URL, you should choose carefully and not use something that is trademarked. Be unique when creating your own, and if so, you might want to just use your full name to be safe. For those trying to brand themselves, and their ideal username is taken, use one closest to how you are branding yourself. For those using based on a website, you might try putting your extension. Example, I use ‘blondishnet’ for my Facebook and Twitter usernames, instead of just ‘blondish.’

As long as you are not impersonating another, not infringing on trademark, not username squatting, and staying within the general user policies of the social network, you should be fine.

What are your thoughts on the username policy for Facebook? for Twitter? for other social network sites?

I saw through my Twitter stream someone using Gowalla, and was curious to what it was all about. Gowalla (@gowalla on Twitter) is a site made for people to share where they are in the world. Might sound a bit like telling too much or a way for people to become a bit stalker-ish, but those on the go and use to being social, this is a way to allow people who are interested to know more about you.

You can share if you had a beer or shopped at places like the Navy Pier in Chicago, Illinois. Or if you have been to a place that has not been covered, you can create a place, or as they say at Gowalla, ‘pin’ a place.

The site is really user-friendly and allows you the option of connecting your Gowalla account with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. The systems is even courteous enough to check through your followers to see if anyone is using the system, so you can friend them at Gowalla too!

Gowalla even has a couple phone apps for users to be able to check-in and automatically update on their profile.

Have you tried Gowalla? What do you think of it?

So Google seems to be seriously looking into reasons why they should stay in or pull out of China. Whether it is the right thing for Google to pull out of China for business reasons as mentioned in TechCrunch, or for the greater good – the fact is that Google can do what they like.

Hacking happens all the time. Ten years ago, we were raving about Yahoo! getting hacked on New Year’s Eve. I remember that because I was online as it was happening and was in shock like the rest of the users on. I have nothing really against China. Their economy is growing and yeah, I wish the United States could be in the same situation, but for any of our home grown companies to venture to another country, it is not my problem to judge Google if they pull out of China.

While some would say that Google is not profiting well in China, and others argue it is stupid to pull out because the country has 1/6 of the world’s population – who cares. If Google pulls out, what can the common techy online do – NOTHING (but grouch about it.)

Perhaps as mentioned in the TechCrunch link above (and I will put a quote from it):

This may be the most shocking part: In retrospect Yahoo has played China far better than Google. It pulled out of the country years ago, knowing it wouldn’t win and owns nearly 40% of the Alibaba, a company that very definitely knows how to grow in China. Entrepreneur and angel investor in China Bill Bishop —who hasn’t always agreed with my China coverage in the past—pointed this out, adding “Not often Yahoo looks smarter than Google.”

Perhaps Google could learn from this and invest smartly in Chinese web companies as Yahoo! has.

What do you think?

Recently I read an article on TechCrunch called The 100 Millionth Deviation on DeviantART Is A Gay Sex Story, But I’m Going To Show You This Arctic Unicorn Instead. I would not tell them to retract their article, but I will say it was the dumbest thing next up to the other sites they have bagged on without looking at it from more perspectives. In fact, the last major act of idiocy was publishing that they had been privy to information that had been hacked from Twitter.

I do want to note that TechCrunch is not a site that is known to not be bias, so when you read what their writers have to say, you only get that one-sided feel. However, TechCrunch is a very informative site that tries to reveal the ins and outs of the tech world.

This time, TC decided to set its sights on DeviantART, a site for all types of artists can congregate. Yes – all walks, from barely novice, to artists so advanced, you see their work when you watch movies, peruse the game aisles for that perfect game, and much more. Yes, there are a lot of work done by amateurs, and there are art pieces that may push the link of taboo, but it is a community – a VERY successful community that has been around for almost 10 years.

I am not saying this because I have a premium membership, I am a beta tester, and have been a DeviantART member for over 5 years. I am saying this from experiencing communities that have strived and failed to produce what DeviantART has done. On a social media level, they have effectively branded themselves as a top art community. The staff interacts and there are many smaller communities within that are quite active. Recently, DeviantART opened a new section called Groups. In fact, I run a few myself. There are professional artists lending their spare time to help novices. Some people I have seen improve so drastically that they have become successful professionals themselves. I have seen some amazing concept art that has been used for past and upcoming movies, as well as for gaming. There are even manga artists too!

Are you a member of DeviantART? What are your thoughts about this?

I thought after I was reading a few websites that I would address some common mistakes I see in web design layouts. I am not too much of a stickler about being valid, but more on the design issues as those are what people catch.

1. Margins. I cannot express the times I have been to websites and the margins between images, the browser itself, or other elements within the layout are either too far apart, over lapping, or way too close. Whitespacing is obviously an art in itself.

2. Bulky site. Too many graphics or too many large graphics.

3. Colors. Some sites, the colors are absolutely atrocious. For those who are unsure of what looks great together, try Colourlovers.com for some great palettes.

4. Too Simple of a design. Sometimes simplicity is great, but too simple and it can detract from the reader’s experience. Remember, a website is like a business card. Sometimes having an interesting one will stick in your reader’s mind more than others that they have gone to.

5. Inability to navigate easily. Some type of navigation should be clearly placed. With WordPress users, WP-PageNavi and Yoast Breadcrumbs are great tools to incorporate into layouts. They allow people to always know where they are on the site and can find a way back.

6. Too many scripts. Like images, too many scripts operating at the same time can be a real drag on load time. Make sure to choose ones you believe are really necessary. This goes for plugins as well.

7. Too many advertisements. Monetizing a site is a great way to make some cash, but too many ads, and your visitors might feel spammed. Your visitors are on your site for the content, not to be blasted by your advertisements.

8. Inconsistent fonts. While making different sections have different fonts, too many can detract from the layout. Keep it consistent and to no more than a couple choices.

9. Header tags are wonky. There are times when I have gone to websites and h1 tags are huge as well as h2, h3, and so on. Keep these varied and tasteful. Also, try not to vary the, no text tranform, uppercase and lowercase on text transforming in your CSS. Plan to choose one.

10. Not a memorable main graphic. Whether it is a logo or a special image, if it is too small, too plain, or sub par on design, you might not be putting your best foot forward. You do not want your logo too small or where next to it is a huge banner. Your visitors may get the idea that your banner is more important than you trying to brand yourself properly.

What mistakes do you often see when you visit websites?