Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

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?

There are people who I talk to a lot from my local area that ask me this question…. well a variation. I have seen some blog posts out there that blog about this, but issue their affiliate links to webhosts and such. Of course, I webhost at Host Solutions and I believe even as a small business, I have a great product that runs people $25/year for 5GB diskspace and 25GB bandwidth.

However, I would like to emphasize a few ways you can either have a type of website at little or no cost.

First off, for the people html-challenged and who are not familiar with putting together a page, there are many places you can get free templates for your site – for free. Just search for them. For example, you can use ‘free website templates’ to search and there are many sites that will come up in your search on Google.

1. Of course, actually purchasing a webhost. I have been a small business webhost with Host Solutions since 2004. I recommend mine as my servers are with Host Gator (by the way, that is a direct link and not an affiliate link) and even I would recommend them if someone is looking to host with a bigger business. The are professional and have made hosting easy for both myself and clients.]

2. Free sites like WordPress.com. The only thing is that there are limitations and you cannot do to many things on a free WordPress.com account. I really recommend this as a beginning for those who have heard of WordPress and are interested on how it works. It is not really that hard to go from a free host with WordPress.com to being a self-hosted WordPress.org site

3. Etsy or Ebay – these sites are auction based sites. Etsy is really cheap, but everything has to be DIY (do-it-yourself / totally handmade.) All you need to do is put your shop description, logo (optional), and your products. Other than that, this is not a really flexible way.

4. Subdomain Hosting: So-Pink is small, but they offer subdomain hosting. I would not recommend domain hosting with So-Pink in case you want to take your domain elsewhere.

I even offer free subdomain hosting on my domain Pixelled.com as long as people link back to my site. You can use my contact form here to inquire. However, I do not host commercial sites for free.

Please note that these places do not usually have anything but FTP access, but you can host a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Making a website is not difficult, nor finding a good place. This is just for those who need an easy and low cost way to do it.

What other places do you suggest?

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Sponsored Tweets. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have blogged about get paid to tweet programs and my recommendations, but I probably should blog about the one I like the best: Sponsored Tweets. Yes, this is a sponsored post, but out of all the paid to tweet sites I have tried out, I can comfortably say this is the best one. It is fair and full disclosure is required on every tweet. Full disclosure can be as simple as putting #ad at the end or within your sponsored tweet. Sponsored Tweets also allows users the option of writing their own tweets based on their sponsors.

You can sign up for sponsored tweets. It is really easy. Just put in your twitter username and basically they (Sponsored Tweets) gather your Twitter stats with their API. Although Sponsored Twitters allows you to set your own price, they have a suggested price which is based on your involvement on Twitter. You can also set the keywords to topics you like to tweet about which will help advertisers find Sponsored Tweeters that will best suit their product.

Sponsored Tweets does payout when you reach $50. I can vouch for this as I have a Sponsored Tweets account and have reached payout several times in the past two months.

Have you tried Sponsored Tweets? What do you think about it? If you have not used Sponsored Tweets before, do you have any questions that I might be able to answer from my own experience with them?

For a while I wanted to make a WordPress related website dedicated some to helping, but mostly the fans. There are quite a few sites out there that are WordPress related, but nothing to say there were not already enough. (lol)

I created WP Addict. Of course, I will still blog about WordPress, but leave them on WP Addict. I am even moving my tutorials that I have currently here over to the site. Never fear…those will be redirected. I am making room for my other tutorials (like html) that I use to have on my site before it became Blondish.net. This is just another refocus. By the way, anyone who likes to help out WordPress users are welcome to post and cross-post their articles at WP Addict. Just use the contact form there and send me a note that you are interested in contributing articles from time to time.

I am actually making fan-ish (WordPress fan stuff) like Wallpapers and such, are free to all who are fans.

National Blog Posting Month or affectionally known as NaBloPoMo is an event that happens during November each year – the same time as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) No, you do not have to write 50,000 words in one blog post or throughout the month. However, this is something bloggers can sign up and take the challenge of at least blogging once a day for the whole month of November.

For some, blogging once a day is actually a challenge. For others, it may be encouragement to get more content out on their blogs. I learned about this last moment and joined. It is pretty easy for me since I already blog once, and sometimes more than once in a day.

NaBloPoMo is a way for bloggers to be able to meet other bloggers as they also have communities arranged by interest rather than a regular forum. It is also a way you can post your articles and share them with other NaBloPoMo users too and possibly a way to attract new readers to your blog. I recommend giving the site a look and joining even if you are late in the game to take up the challenge.

National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo is around once again. This is the third year I have participated. Every November thousands of people take up a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel before the end of the month. Insane? Cool?

I am really excited about it and although I missed the first meetup of my area, I can say that there are regional NaNoWriMo meetups, so if you like to meet people who are writing fiends, then it is definitely something to join and participate in. There is no shame if you cannot meet the challenge, but it is fun to at least try. Last year I beat the quota, and this year I am sure I can do the same this year.

NaNoWriMo might be a time you could write a tutorial book, something about social networking, or even blogging, or just write for fun. If you are already a member of NaNoWriMo, my ID there is taiyoukai.nile and you can add me as a writing buddy if you want.

Have you participated in National Novel Writing Month? How did you fare – did you meet the challenge?

October 26, 2009 signifies the official closing of Geocities. All sites will be gone. In the past few months several online places have tried hard to gather and preserve sites that have been abandoned by their site owners or whether the site has been moved elsewhere, but retain great information. Whether by documenting the general information of the site, screencapping, or hosting the entire site, obviously this was an important project to tackle since the site dates back to 1994.

Some of the places online that have worked hard to try to document as many sites are:

FanHistory – Fanhistory.com:Geocities preservation project
ArchiveTeam – Geocities Project
Internet Archive – Saving a Historical Record of GeoCities

Of course I believe there are other projects out there, but as for significant contributions, these sites have done their best to reach out to the community as a lot of webmasters today may have used GeoCities as some point in time. A lot of people might laugh, but even though there was a lot of bad design, there were some pretty nifty websites out there that were tastefully and simply created, but also provided great information. Things that became of great interest were fan sites, and some of todays bloggers that have moved onto self-hosting. Geocities was undoubtedly a great stepping block.

So, I guess, this is my own personal eulogy. Your thoughts about GeoCities final rest?