Platformate is another theme by Michael Hutagalung and it was recently released. If you don?t remember or just don?t know, he released Arthemia Premium in August. Just like Arthemia Premium, Platformate has a theme admin panel that lets you easily modify and customize your theme.
Here are Platformate?s features:
- Theme administration panel
- Automatic thumbnail generation
- 5+ theme colors included
- Popular post listing
- Navigation drop-down menu
- Widget-ready sidebar
- Cross-browser compatible
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Technorati Tags: arthemia, premium wordpress themes, WordPress, wordpress themes
It’s rare that I participate in a contest or point my readers to one, but since I love the prizes being offered – some of the best premium WordPress themes on the market, it’s definitely worth the plug – fellow bloggers, you should definitely join in (unless you’d rather increase my chances)…
Mega Contest – Win 10 Premium Themes worth $700 | Blog Oh Blog.
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Technorati Tags: blogohblog, contests, premium wordpress themes, wordpress themes
This is the second time this week I’ve passed along a page from Caroline Middlebrook – an awesome blogger! This is a tremendous idea about how to submit your site to various CSS galleries to get traffic, but your site must look GOOD!
101 CSS Galleries for Backlinks and Traffic | Caroline Middlebrook.
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Technorati Tags: backlinks, css, Design, galleries, traffic
This is a tough issue for every blogger – how often should I post? What about vacation? What about days when I just don’t feel like blogging? Darren Rowse, a blogger’s blogger, offers 2 great posts about this issue…
Finding Your Blogging Rhythm (Part 1)
Finding Your Blogging Rhythm (Part 2)
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Technorati Tags: blogger, Blogging, copywriting, post frequency, posting, problogger
Branding is not a logo! Branding is telling a story about a product, person, or organization, and it’s one of the major keys of success in any business, even blogging. This is the age of the cookie-cutter, template blog, which isn’t all bad, but there are some tweaks you can make to “make it yours.” No matter what platform you’re using, no matter what design or theme you’re utilizing, here are some questions you can ask to help in the branding process…
- Who are you? What are you all about?
- What makes you unique?
- What is the unique personality of your business?
- How can people learn to recognize you?
- How can you shape the perceptions about you that others will form in the first ten seconds they spend looking at your site.
Never underestimate the power of branding and of design. Here’s a great post by Build A Better Blog on the issue of branding your business blog.
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Technorati Tags: blog design, Branding, Design
Many bloggers use WordPress and the Automattic team has discovered a tiny little loophole. This is a small update and doesn’t even require a full upgrade process…
WordPress ? Blog ? WordPress 2.6.3.
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Blogging Tips has posted this: 100 Great Blog Logos : Volume 2. What’s great about their post is how it reminds us that every blog needs a brand (if it isn’t already representing a brand). Your logo tells the story of what your blog will feel like. It sets your blog apart. Take it seriously, hire a good designer if you aren’t one.
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Technorati Tags: blog design, Branding, identity, logos
Caroline Middlebrook shares an excellent list of do-follow social bookmarking sites. Half the battle of getting a blog recognized is promoting it to the public through bookmarking and submission. It takes time, but this post helps by pointing bloggers to a couple of nice, quick tools for accomplishing the goal.
20 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites That Actually Work (and how to bookmark QUICKLY) | Caroline Middlebrook.
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From Wikipedia: “Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1398 ? February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer who is credited with being the first European to use movable type printing, in around 1439, and the global inventor of the mechanical printing press. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible), has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.”
There are moments in history that define an age. Gutenberg experienced one when he produced his Bible. Gutenberg represented a progressive change in society and culture. He brought about a shift, if you will, that has had a lasting impact on all that we do. I like to visit Borders frequently – daily if possible, but usually once a week or so. I like to stand on the top step going up to the coffee shop and look out across the aisles and aisles of books. Millions of volumes of knowledge have been produce in the last four centuries, and thousands of new books are published each year. Gutenberg defined ours as a “print society” by his work.
Fast forward to 1990 and see the first web site. Yes, that’s right, 1990 – eighteen years ago. If that does not shock you with the reality of the rapidity with which the modern world advances, you’re stuck in the 80′s. This is a new age. The “information age” was a premature underestimation of the power of the world wide web. I don’t know that there’s a word to describe it, but I think we could hint at it by calling this the “connected age.”
I’ve often said that the internet began as a web to which we could connect, get information, then disconnect. What was that old thing called? Dial up? Today, it’s a cloud. Touch the weather icon on the screen of a GPS-enabled iPhone and you’ve got the seven day forecast for the exact spot where you’re standing.
It’s not surprising that the web has developed an economy within itself. We speak of the economy on local, national, and global levels. But we fail to realize how much the online world is an economy unto itself. This has produced an atmosphere of anonymity where one can work from home by staying connected to the cloud that is the world wide web. You can blog, consult, design, sell, and market online in your PJ’s and earn an honest living. There’s nothing wrong with that. But within this new online economy is a severe poverty as well.
This online poverty can’t really be measured in monetary terms, as the internet is one place a web site can exist that has no financial purpose at all. For zero dollars, you can have an online home somewhere on the web – and that’s a good thing. Poverty online, in my estimation, is not so much a poverty of finance, but a poverty of purpose.
Yesterday, I stopped at a gas station that contained some slot machines. I watched a dozen or so people feed dollars into machines and mindlessly press a button over and over and over. Their faces were expressionless – they were cold and dead on the inside and sacrificed their purpose and hope on the altar of the possibility of that one big hit that may or may not ever come. And even if it came, even if they walked away rich for a day, they would have produced nothing of lasting value for themselves or anyone else.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of people send spam, post affiliate links, write on message boards, buy another domain in hopes that they’ll hit and walk away rich for the day. This reduces the value of blogging. I get “followed” on Twitter by people who don’t know me and don’t care about what I do – they just have something I should click on. Just as Gutenberg inadvertently invented the possibility of the publishing of trashy magazines, the internet has afforded us the perfect environment for self-absorption, for financial leeching, and for pointless banter in the name of dollars.
What does Gutenberg have to do with the open media revolution and the purpose of blogging? Everything, in my opinion. Gutenberg decided that the first thing published with 42 characters of movable type would be the Bible – the most meaningful piece of literature ever penned. It inspires hope and purpose in all who trust its message. I’m not writing this blog to debate the value or validity of the Bible (as that’s settled firmly for me). Rather, I hope to call us back to purposeful web engineering. In our content, our design, even in our economizing of the web, let us instill purpose.
Poverty exists in the real world where hope dies and purpose is extinguished. We live at the beginning of a new age – a brave new web wide world – a globally connected culture. Let’s build it with purpose. I can’t decide what you will create, design, or write about. But I can issue a challenge to do it with meaning. You can’t take wealth with you to the grave. If it comes, wonderful, but don’t live for it. Blog with purpose.
photo credit: wilhei55
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Technorati Tags: blog, Blogging, connectedness, gutenberg, printing, purpose, web
WordPress is essential to the success of millions of blogs. There are some decent free or premium themes out there, but at the end of the day, a custom theme is still the way to go for professionals and businesses who really want to brand a site to match the personality and vision of their business. Vandelay Design has offered the following great link…
Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes | Vandelay Website Design.
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Technorati Tags: Design, vandelay, WordPress, wordpress themes
I like Chrome, but Firefox is still, by far, my browser of choice simply because of the add-ons available for development and bookmarking. As far as Twitter is cocnerned, it took me a long time to warm up to it, but now I use it multiple times per day, especially to update others on my blog posts.
25+ Incredibly Useful Twitter Tools and Firefox Plugins | Noupe.
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Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox addons, twitter, twitter tools
Blogging requires a routine. Successful blogging means being faithful and consistent about posting, commenting, responding to comments, perusing news, connecting stories, and tweaking design. Without a routine… sanity ensues!
I don’t actually spend much time blogging. It isn’t my career, so I do it somewhat leisurely. But even in leisure, there are certain patterns that can be quite helpful. Here are some aspects of my own blogging routine. Sometimes I do this once or twice per day, sometimes it’s once a week, but all of these steps can prove quite helpful.
- I check my stats. One two sites, I use Mint. On all sites, I use Google Analytics and on two or three, I use the WP Stats plugin. Seeing my statistics enables me to weed out unproductive or useless content and focus on content that has proven meaningful.
- I respond to comments, tweets, and friend requests. This is not only good blog etiquette, but it’s also one of the purposes of blogging – to connect.
- I check my advertising and affiliate revenue for the day… you know, just for fun!
- I begin reading feeds. Personally, I use Google Reader for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is that it moves fast.
- I comment on articles from my feeds that I find beneficial or to which I have something to add. My site and email information depend on the nature of the article and which of my sites is most relevant to the topic.
- I tag some really good posts in delicious for reference.
- I use the WordPress bookmarklet to begin articles based on web content. Sometimes I post immediately, sometimes I save it for later. Often I open the full editor for greater control over categories and images.? Sometimes I will include several great links and sometimes I’ll just make a comment or two about a great link and then pass it along.
- I write original stories that aren’t based on anything out there that I’ve read – that is – I don’t link to any particular source of inspiration, I just write about what interests me.
- I peruse some social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, adding friends, posting links, and having fun.
- I examine my blog’s design, making tweaks and adding things as necessary to make it a better blog.
This is my little routine, which has helped me quite a bit along the way. This particular blog (the one you’re reading) is less than three weeks old at this writing and today broke 100 unique visitors with no advertising anywhere – just networking, sharing, linking, and doing what bloggers love to do.
What’s your routine? I’d love to hear about it in the comments…
photo credit: Menage a Moi
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Technorati Tags: bookmarking, commenting, feeds, inspiration, news, routine, Social Networking, statistics, web content
If anybody has “been there, done that,” it’s John Chow. He posts here an article by Jim from TheNetFool.com about how to make a career out of blogging. The one thing I would add (as I mention in the post’s comments) is that sometimes you need your own blog as a workshop to increase the skills you can offer to clients who hire you to blog, rather than narrowing things down to only one avenue of blogging. It’s a cool article…
How You Can Make a Career Out of Blogging | John Chow dot Com.
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Technorati Tags: Blogging, career blogging, copywriting, freelancing, john chow, paid blogging
As a web designer, I’m asked all the time about shopping cart solutions for smaller sites. Since most developers charge thousands for a fully custom solution (which is sometimes the better way to go), often people need links to various free or inexpensive shopping cart solutions. Mashable has put such a list together. I’d recommend clicking through most or all before launching a smaller shopping cart site. Compare, make notes, test out the demos and see what matches your needs the best…
35+ Online Shopping Cart Solutions for Your Business – Mashable.
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Technorati Tags: eCommerce, mashable, online shopping, shopping carts, web design, web development
Search engine optimization is an ellusive art. Almost no one on the planet actually knows how Google ranks sites. “Experts” are able to test, observe, and read whatever hints Google gives, and offer to the rest of the world some tips and advice for climbing the search ladder. Even though authority is more important than SEO, that doesn’t mean that search engine optimization isn’t important – it’s just a close second to authority.
Below are links to 20 sites, mostly well-known, that I listen to for advice about optimizing for search…
Obviously this is not an extensive list, as there are hundreds of thousands of blogs and sites out there related to search engine optimization. In an upcoming post, I’m going to talk about some of the basic rules of SEO that I’ve gathered after tweaking dozens of web sites into higher rankings, but here are some reminders…
- Title things well, both the article and the page’s <title> tag.
- Use appropriate keywords, but don’t overdo it – write as you normally would.
- Offer relevant links with good anchor text.
- Use one <h1> tag per page, and only one, and think the content of it through – it’s highly important.
- Think like a searcher. If you were searching for you, how do you think you’d want to find you?
- Share the web with others and links to your site will naturally build over time.
- Don’t rush it.
- Avoid duplicate content at all cost.
- Just create good content consistently – Google will find you!
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Technorati Tags: google, Marketing, rankings, search engines, sem, seo
