General
RepeatGeek Theme Update
This weekend I updated the framework of this blog to Sufffusion.
I wanted a theme framework that was:
- Easily Customizable
- Clean Looking
- Cross-browser compatible (XHTML Compliant)
- FREE
Hello Suffusion
Suffusion had all of these things and more that I have yet to take advantage of. Out of the box it supports the following:
- 17 Pre-defined Skins
- Pre-defined widgets and widget areas
- Magazine style blog template
- WordPress Architecture Customization: Navigation Menus, Pagination, Excerpts, Comments
- Multiple Browser Support
If you are unfamiliar with Suffusion, it is a relatively new theme (Just over 1 year old in development).
Suffusion is advertised as just a WordPress theme, but it truly is a Framework that allows for rapid web development. Almost every feature can be customized in an easy-to-use graphical interface. After you make your changes you can export your customization to a file for version control, importing into production, etc.
Suffusion has some defined action and filter hooks that I am going to experiment with next to add some social media widgets to my posts.
Check out the Showcase to see websites built with Suffusion.
Goodbye Thematic
Previously I was using the Thematic Framework with a customized child theme. For a while, the theme suited me well and was very robust. However, with every update of WordPress, I would seem to lose some functionality – plugins would stop working, navigation links would disappear, search box would disappear, etc.
Thematic is a framework for those who like to get your hands dirty – all your customizations are made through a child theme and requires extensive troubleshooting if you are trying to retrofit a non-thematic theme to the Thematic framework.
So far I am very happy with Suffusion. I guess we’ll see how well the theme holds up to upgrades. Until then, Goodbye Thematic!
How Do You Decide Which Books to Buy?
Being a member of Border Rewards, I tend to use the %-off coupons for books that will end up being discounted more than Amazon’s prices.
For the past few weeks I had $10 in Borders Bucks that I needed to use by the end of the month. I had been sitting on it because I could not decide on a book to buy.
My question for you is, how do you decide which books to buy?
Are there any particular web sites that you use for book reviews? Do you use a queue like an Amazon wish list to keep track of the books that you plan to buy?
5 Blogging Mistakes
Perhaps it’s just the Thanksgiving holiday, but recently I have been so distracted that has made it hard for me to blog. If blogging is something that you are looking to pursue, I want to make you aware of what I like to call the 5 blogging mistakes.
5 Blogging Mistakes
1. Money Cannot Be Your Only Motivation
If you are creating a blog for the sole intention that you are going to become rich by advertising income, stop right now. You first couple blog postings will be probably pretty thought provoking, then as you notice your Adsense account still says $0.00 after just 1 week, you will become so frustrated that you will start posting links to the most trendy, popular topics, contributing little value to your blog postings, after 2 weeks you will still have $0.00 in Adsense revenue and a worthless blog.
2. Don’t Blog About Something That Does Not Interest You
If you care very little about something, how can you possibly write about it day after day. This is very similar to your day job. Someone once said, “discover what you enjoy doing, then find a way to make money doing it.” This is very similar to blogging, if you enjoy a particular topic you will have no trouble coming up with ideas to write about.
3. Don’t Get Distracted
Like everything else, other things going on in your life: holidays, vacations, work, family, etc. can get in the way of your blogging habits. If at one point you have a momentum going and you are able to write many blog posts, save a couple of these for the days that your mind is not in the right place.
4. Don’t Give Up So Quickly
If money isn’t your motivator, but readership is, you need to learn to have a little patience. Especially with a new blog, it takes time for your content to propagate the search engines and for people to find you. Unless you are a celebrity, odds are nobody is going to be looking for your blog, but they just might stumble across your content. Also, the more time you give it, the more content you should have. When somebody does find your blog, they will have a reason to stay there instead of reading one post and moving on.
5. Don’t Try To Sound Like Someone Else
If I wanted to read a blog that sounded like someone else, why would I not just read the blog from that someone else? There is nothing wrong with having a blog topic or niche that is already covered by someone else, but the writing style has to be your own. You are more likely to connect with your readers if your thoughts are coming from you instead of trying to sound like someone you are not.
Since I’ve started blogging, I fallen victim to each one of these and those blogs have ended up in a black hole on the web.
If you’ve made a blogging mistake, please feel free to share.
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How I Went From 4 Failed Blogs to RepeatGeek
A couple of years ago, I saw an article titled (Adsense Case Study: PVRBlog). I thought that it would be a good idea to start my own blog and make some money with Adsense.
If you think you can quit your job, start a blog and make money via Adsense … you may want to rethink the idea.
Blog Fail #1: Consumerist Rip-Off
The first blog that I started was to focus on the niche of Consumer Electronics stores. The plan was to post interesting things about Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA etc. Visitors to the site would most likely be interested in the stores and thus would click the Adsense ads. After a couple of months of posting a few blog-worthy stories, I got frustrated because my site traffic was low and was running out of ideas to blog about. I resorted to posting my own blogs to Digg, hoping they would reach the front page. Generating only minimal traffic, a few cents of Adsense revenue, and unknowingly realizing I was trying to re-create the Consumerist.com, I abandoned the blog.
Blog Fail #2: Mac Switcher Rip-Off
I’ve been a Mac user for almost 2 years. For the first couple months I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog for those switching from Windows to Mac. Because I didn’t do my research first – I didn’t realize that there are dozens of sites that provide tips and tricks for Windows users switching to Mac, including Apple. The problem I ended up facing was a lack of original content and a lack of motivation to continue the blog.
Blog Fail #3: App Store Rip-Off
After I bought a Wii, I stumbled upon this great website Virtual Console Mondays that listed the latest releases for the Virtual Console. What I liked about this site was it allowed me to see what was released without having to turn on the Wii and navigate to the Wii Shop Channel. The concept for the website seemed like a good idea and from a maintenance standpoint, the author would only need to post once a week and wouldn’t need produce that much original content. I thought I could capitalize on this concept with the release of the Apple App Store. It seemed like a good idea to start a blog where people could search and browse the latest Apps without needing iTunes. I started started copying/pasting App descriptions from the iTunes App Store into my blog (at the time the App Store was about 1000 apps). It took me about a week to enter about 100 Apps into my blog, then Apple released approx. 500 more apps into the App Store, I gave up shortly after realizing that I would never be able to maintain such a site.
Blog Fail #4: Featured Question of the Week
About 3 months ago I thought it would be a good idea to start an online training business. To drive traffic to my site I thought that I would have a blog where I offered a daily computer tip. Again, I should’ve researched my idea a little bit more because there are many sites that provide daily computer tips and I would be contributing very little original content. I wanted to get on the Twitter bandwagon and try to promote a “Featured Question of the Week†by allowing the winner to receive Adsense revenue, but I haven’t had any takers. I am currently reevaluating my business (Silverfish Technologies) to see what direction that I want to go.
Why another blog?
I’ve already failed at creating 4 blogs previous, why would this one be any different? I am realizing now that my posts need original content and a voice. All of my previous attempts were in posting known information. Well, it is my intention to share original thought and experiences in software development, provide insight into different technologies, and everything else.