1. What’s the goal of your blog? Does your design serve that goal?
2. Consider a thin header.
3. Make your About page useful.
4. Keep your sidebar functional.
5. If you have ads, keep them tasteful and unobtrusive.
6. Consider how blogrolls affect your design.
7. Do your fonts and their color help your readers?
8. Should you add rich media like photos and video to your blog?

The first things that I plan to look at are to reduce the size of the header (right now it is very tall), revamp my about page, remove some clutter from the sidebar (I can think of at least two things right now to remove) and check out the general look and feel of the site.

You can read more about making your blog design work for you over at chrisbrogan.com. ]]> http://web.techontour.com/blogging/8-steps-to-a-blog-design-that-works-for-you/feed/ http://web.techontour.com/general/plan-your-special-event-web-sites-for-long-term-gain/ http://web.techontour.com/general/plan-your-special-event-web-sites-for-long-term-gain/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:34:25 +0000 bill.hutchison http://web.techontour.com/general/plan-you-special-event-web-sites-for-long-term-gain/ Three weeks after creating the Voice for the Voiceless web-site I am regretting not putting more forward planning into the web-site development process (you can read about the creation of the site at Using Wordpress for a Basic Web Site).

Although the web-site performed well in the lead up to the Voice in the Dark concert here at Reef to Outback, and we were able to raise over $500 for the Tamar Centre in Thailand, because I had virtually not forward planning, I now have to ask myself “Now what?“.

In the last few weeks the web-site attracted 216 unique visitors, and 635 page views. Over half of those visitors were direct local visitors, and most likely came from the local radio advertising.

On the night the live concert streaming went amazing. We still need to do some work on mixing the audio for live streaming, but overall it went great. On the night there was at least 20 people active in the live chat room, plus close to 200 people watching the video at some point (we were featured on the front page of Y! Live for some of the night).

Because I didn’t really think it through we have not way of connecting with those people again.

Many of the people who watched the concert live indicated that they wanted to see highlights. Well, we have the video highlights of the Voice in the Dark concert on the web-site now, but no way to tell those people about it.

Three steps that I wish I had done with the site prior to launch:

1. Created a way to capture peoples e-mail addresses
2. Added a way for people to donate on-line to the Tamar Centre
3. Made the Prayer Booklets available to be purchased for Digital Download

I am going to look at adding the first two of those features to the web-site for future events, but we lost a huge opportunity with this web-site because of my lack of experience and forward planning.

Technorati Tags: vocie in the dark, voice for the voiceless, web design, web planning

The web-site’s launch was scheduled to correspond with the launch of an Australian nation wide radio advertisement campaign. You can actually listen to some of the stories on the web-site, Voice for the Voiceless Audio Stories.

Since I am somewhat familiar with Wordpress, and I was only given two weeks to build it, I chose that as the platform to build the site on.

All the content was already written, which usually is the longest process in developing a new web-site, so we loaded Wordpress on our web-host and started to build the site.

Although Wordpress is primarily a blogging engine, Wordpress works very well as a content management system (CMS) for a basic web-site. I deleted the sample blog post and comments on the site and then started to create “static” pages.

For the template I used was a free one called Spiritual Journal by Church Communications Pro. My only real complaint about the template is that it isn’t very widget friendly, which makes it a bit harder to modify the sidebar.

Wordpress has all sorts of plugins available for it. Here is a list of the plugins that I used for the Voice for the Voiceless web-site.

• All in One SEO Pack - for Search Engine Optimization
• Audio player - to embed .mp3 files to play on the site
• cforms II - Enhanced contact form for Wordpress
• Click Tracking - View the click patterns for people on the site
• Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - Automates and streamlines the upgrade process for Wordpress
• Wordpress Database Backup - On-demand and scheduled backup for the Wordpress database
• WPAdMentor - Banner and Text Ad management
• WP YouTube - Makes embedding YouTube videos easy

I followed the How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with Wordpress guide to create the site. Although the site is not designed to make money in the way that is covered in the guide, most of the steps in the guide were extremely helpful.

Please check out the site and leave any comments below about your thoughts on the site.

Also if you want to link to the site from you own web-site it would help us to spread awareness of gender based injustice issues.

I was getting a bit overwhelmed at the thought of having to come up with a privacy policy for each of the web-sites that I run, but Eric Giguere has made it easy for us by creating a Wordpress Privacy Policy Plugin.

You will slowly see this plugin installed on all of our network sites that run AdSense, which is pretty much all of them…

Technorati Tags: adsense, wordpress

This could be an extremely short sighted decision. Hasbro has been trying since 1999 to establish an online gaming presence (see this story, Hasbro, Go2Net Team Up for Games.com) and still nothing has been developed for Scrabble.

A better business decision would be partner with the developers to continue to develop the application, or buy them out. Even Wired asks the question:

Even though the Mattel and Hasbro would probably do well in court (against both Facebook and the app’s developers), one can’t help but wonder why buying the application hasn’t been explored. After all, they’ve previously occupied a minimal footprint in the social networking world and the application nets about half a million users a day.

There could be an underlying issue here with their newish partnership with EA to develop games, and that could be the crux of the situation. Hasbro may not have had a choice but to pursue the lawsuit.

For the over 2 million registered users of Scrabulous, and the 594,924 active users this will be a very disappointing development, but lets hope Hasbro and Mattel get their act together and replace Scrabulous with something just as good, if not better.

Links:

• Scrabulous Facebook Application

Technorati Tags: facebook, scrabulous, hasbro, mattel, scrabble

I only set-up the site last week, and already it is ranked at number 8 if you do a search on Google for Townsville Builder.

Although our builder is already booked up nearly a year in advanced, hopefully the profile that we set-up for him will help keep him with steady work.

I’ll write a bit more about using Squidoo for search engine marketing, as it is a quality site that can be used to help profile products or people.

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Here’s the current list of countries that censor the Internet:

Countries with Heavy Internet Censorship

• Cuba
• Iran
• Maldives
• Myanmar
• North Korea
• Peoples Republic of China
• Syria
• Tunisia
• Uzbekistan
• Vietnam

Countries with Moderate Internet Censorship

• South Korea
• Saudi Arabia
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

Countries Minimal Internet Censorship

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• Denmark
• European Union
• Fiji
• Finland
• France
• India
• Isreal
• Italy
• Morocco
• Norway
• Pakistan
• Russia
• Singapore
• Sweden
• Thailand
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States of America

It surprised me how many countries were on the list of countries that censor the Internet. What the countries choose to censor on the Internet vary, but they include:

• Child pornography
• Political views that counter the government
• Limiting access to International News
• Prevent news what happening in the country getting out
• Drug Use
• Gambling
• Religious
• Illegal Downloads (MP3, warez)
• Racism
• Hate Propaganda

Things are always changing and Australia has yet to implement their new Internet censorship regime.

When my son gets old enough to go on-line without direct, over the shoulder supervision I will most likely be implementing my own Internet content filtering software. My preference is to do it myself though, not let the government to it for me.

Source: Wikipedia - Internet Censorship

Technorati Tags: internet censorship

Money for Nothing and Your Clicks for Free by Seth Godin

Seth has put out some very good free and paid books about marketing and the web. I think that I have read and enjoyed most of the free books and I have tried to implement some of what he has written.

Seth Godin in also the brain behind Squidoo, which allows people to set-up individual “lenses” about various topics. I have set-up a few different lenses on there and am continuing to develop them, albeit slowly…

You can find out more about Seth Godin’s latest e-book, Money for Nothing (and your clicks for free), at his web-site:

• Seth Godin’s Blog - …and your clicks for free

You can download the ebook for free from his web-site as well.

Technorati Tags: seth godin, seo, money for nothing and your clicks for free

I have seen some pretty dubious stuff on people’s Facebook and MySpace pages. With sites like this you don’t even have full control about what is put up about you. Your “friends” could put up pictures of you that you would rather not see made public. They can also make comments about you or that could put you in an awkward position if you don’t remove them fast enough.

So what is written about you online?

If you do a search for yourself online, what results come up?

• Google Search: Bill Hutchison
• Live Search: Bill Hutchison
• Yahoo Search: Bill Hutchison

To be honest I am a bit disappointed that I don’t show up so well in the search results. Not so long ago I remember ranking quite well at number 2 for my own name on Google, but somehow my personal blog got slapped back to page 5. There are quite a few other sites about me or that I contribute on before my personal blog, but my personal blog doesn’t have much favour with Google at the moment.

If a potential employer looked you up on-line what would they find?

This can’t be limited to just the search engines any more either. You also need to look out for what is on MySpace, Facebook and any other social networking site out there. I know some of the pictures and comments that I have seen on there of people would almost instantly make me hesitant to hire them.

Below are a few good articles that I have been reading about how to manage your on-line reputation:

• Protecting Your Space in the Google Results
• 10 Ways to Protect Your Online Reputation | RISMedia
• Protect Your Reputation
  

The number one suggestion that I would have is to use common sense.

Think before you write and before you post photos. If you have any concerns or hesitations then just don’t post it. E-mail it to your close friends if you really want to, but having something public and on the web is not always your best option.

Technorati Tags: online reputation, facebook, myspace