Things are looking up (they weren’t too bad to begin with.)

1. The traffic for this blog is doing very well (thanks, everybody!) In April, the traffic doubled over the March stats. Then in May, the traffic doubled again. It’s nice to see my hard work pay off with so many visitors.

Traffic for February 23 through June 2, 2009

2. I had a second interview with the local Art Institute today, and it looks like they really want me. The only thing that might prevent this is my lack of a Masters degree. They asked me to write a Letter of Justification which they could show accrediting officials to justify my teaching position. I would be teaching two Web design classes starting in July. Here’s the letter I wrote, in case you’re curious (or find yourself needing to write one some day yourself).

Dawn Pedersen
Letter of Justification

Degree: B. A.—Fine art with Drawing and Painting Emphasis (California State College, Sacramento)

Teaching Credentials, State of California: Single Subject—Art; Single Subject—Biology;
Teaching Credentials, County of Sacramento: Career and Technical Education—Information Technology; Career and Technical Education—Arts, Media and Entertainment

Courses Taught, College: Intermediate Web Page Design, Beginning Photoshop (Sacramento City College)
Courses Taught, High School: Web Design, Graphic Design I, Graphic Design II, Life Science (Natomas High School); Art I, Art II, Drama (Esparto High School)

Justification: Mrs. Pedersen was selected to teach design courses because she has extensive industry experience and expertise. Mrs. Pedersen has been a Web and graphic designer for over nine years, working not only for employers, but directly for clients through her own design companies.

Mrs. Pedersen worked as a professional Web Designer at Connectix, a Silicon Valley software company, where her expertise in design, marketing and web usability were a valuable asset in a fast paced, demanding environment. Responsible for both the company’s public website as well as its internal intranet, she developed a passion for best coding practices and project management. As owner of Dawn’s Brain Design, Pedersen designed web sites and printed pieces for client companies in New York, Georgia, Colorado, and Australia, as well as locally. She gained further experience in web and graphic design while working for a printing press company and a small design studio.

Mrs. Pedersen discovered a love for teaching when she was hired by Sacramento City College to teach intermediate Web and beginning Photoshop classes. While teaching Web and graphic design for two years at the high school level, she built a comprehensive Web site for her students which was devoted to the curriculum of her three courses (nhsdesigns.com). It included all class materials, schedules, a forum, and a student gallery.

Mrs. Pedersen is currently the owner of Blue Lobster Art and Design, and a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Returning to freelance design after a three-year hiatus, she has found that her previous clients are enthusiastic to have her back on their team, and have recommended her to their colleagues. She creates popular tutorials on Web and graphic design for her blog at BluLob.com. To keep on top of all the latest innovations in design and technology, she is a constant reader of industry magazines, books, and instructional Web sites. She is currently working toward a Masters in Fine Art.

I’ve seen a number of blog articles lately which list which WordPress plugins the author is using. These are very useful articles. But I thought I’d share with you what I’ve tried and ditched. And why.

All of these plugins have their place. Unfortunately, it’s not at BluLob.com.

WP-PostRatings

This one functioned very well. It allows you to add a five-star rating widget into each post. You can also plop the 10 highest rated posts into your sidebar navigation panels.

However, visitors rarely used it. Any visitor likely to use it would either rate it 5 stars because they liked the post, or not at all because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings (or think, why bother?). Besides, ratings are best for sites that have competing products or authors. I’m not competing against myself.

This is similar to why I removed the tag cloud widget from the sidebar. It is a feature that works really well somewhere like Twitter with many people posting. You can get an idea of the latest topic trends. It makes little sense on a one-author blog with a narrow focus.

WP-Sticky

Also a well-functioning plugin, WP-Sticky allows you to identify one or more posts to stay at the top of your home page. This is fantastic for a site like problogger.net (which again has multiple authors). If you have a home page with a big main panel like theirs for the sticky article, then areas for other articles, this works well.

My blog outline is more linear. One post appears below another in the same column. It could confuse readers who see the same post on top and think I haven’t added anything new.

On the other hand, I just had a brainstorm. I could have a “latest tutorial” panel, then a block for excepts for all the latest posts. It would require a major layout change, but I might do that. Then I’ll unditch WP-Sticky.

Twitter Widget from Widgetbox

This was code I added directly into the sidebar rather than needing to install a plugin (I had one for Flickr as well). It was a great novelty at first, but after a couple of weeks I got bored with it. It took up a lot of real estate, and probably weighed the page down in terms of download speed and bandwidth.

I have prominent connections with Twitter elsewhere. I have a “follow me” button in the sidebar, which is a nice compromise between too much information and too little. I also have a “Tweet This” button with each post, thanks to TweetMeme. Readers also have the option to Tweet a post from the Add To Any bar at the bottom of each post.

Do you use WordPress? Are there any plugins you’ve tried and ditched? Please share with us in the Comments section below.

I am ever vigilant for ways to improve this blog. I have just made three upgrades to the BluLob Blog’s usability. If you have a WordPress blog, I recommend these plugins to super-charge your blog.

1. I added a “Print This” button at the top of each page and article/post, at the request of a reader. WP-Print automatically serves a version of the page with a simplified CSS, stripping out sidebars, headers and footer but leaving your copyright intact. It even includes all pages at once for a multi-page tutorial. You can get this too with WP-Print.
2. I added a “Tweet This” button at the top of each article/post. It has the added advantage of informing us how many tweets a post has received on Twitter. You can get this too, thanks to TweetMeme.
3. I already had an Add to Any button at the bottom of each post, but the default images provided were not informative enough. I found this out when a friend tried to Digg an article but couldn’t find a Digg icon. It was hidden in a popup menu, and now it’s more obvious. You can steal my image below if you use Add to Any. Upload it somewhere and then put the image URL in the appropriate field under Admin > Settings > Share/Save Buttons.

(Please do me a favor and upload this to your own space instead of using my image address.)

Here are the coolest, most interesting links I checked out this week.

Design

50 Best Sites To Get Design Inspiration

25 Sites to Download Royalty-Free Stock Photos and Textures

55 Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers

Top 37 Design Blogs to Follow

Web Design and Development

How to Spot Quality within Web Design: Examples & Tips

25 Important Web Design Tools

8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs

30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners

9 Signs You Shouldn’t Hire THAT Web Guy

Blogging

5 Ways To Stop Your Blog From Going Viral

How To Write Headlines For Google Vs Twitter Vs Digg

13 blogging lessons learned from Stephen King’s On Writing

How to Write Magnetic Headlines

Internet Marketing

5 Effective Linkbait And Link Generation Strategies

Freelancing

101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

I’m starting a new feature today called Saturday Round-Up. On Saturdays, I will showcase all the cool stuff I have found throughout the week that relates to Web and graphic design. Enjoy!

Networking

“How Social Networks Are Changing Everything”
from Business Week, May 7 2009

Facebook and its ilk offer platforms to explore all the Web with one’s relevant data in tow, and they’re set to overtake the big portals Read more »

“Twitter Search to Become Real Search”
from Mashable.com, May 7 2009

The fact that Twitter (Twitter reviews)’s search is now often faster and more relevant than any other search engine out there is not a secret anymore. It is, however, a very limited search engine: it merely indexes a bunch of tweets. In its current state, it’s great for tracking conversations, but it will never be a competitor to Google (Google reviews). This is about to change. Read more »

BackTweets

Search links in Twitter Try this tool »

Scoopler

Real-time search. Try this tool »

Web Design

“101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress”
from Noupe.com, May 5 2009

Throughout this article, we’ll be focus on many WordPress Theme hacks, ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready in hand when developing WordPress websites. Let’s take a look at useful, yet rather unknown techniques for a powerful CMS using WordPress. Each section of the article presents a suggestion and provides you with an explanation of the solution for each suggestion. Read more »

Website Grader

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. Try this tool »

“Worldwide Conferences for Web Designers”
from Web Designer Depot, May 8 2009

We’ve arranged a massive list of events of interest to graphic design professionals. Read more »

“73 Best Free Design Resource Website Help You To Use In Your Designs ”
from VisionWidget, May 9 2009

As a designer its always handy to have a collection of Photoshop brushes & vector & Free Quality PSD objects to use in your designs, but finding a best/perfect piece is not an easy task, even though there are quite a few resources around the web, some of the websites are best and others are not worth checking, here I’ve collected best 73 websites of them where you can download free files, all these sites are worth bookmarking. Read more »

“Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?”
from Smashing Magazine, May 9 2009

With the release of Silverlight 1.0 and its subsequent versions, a debate started among designers and developers regarding choosing between Flash and Silverlight. Silverlight faces difficulties in capturing the market because of the maturity of Flash. However, Silverlight has managed to keep up by including certain features that designers and developers have always wanted to see in Flash, such as search engine optimization. In this article, we will discuss some of the technical differences between Flash and Silverlight to help you choose the technology that best suits your needs. Read more »

“The ‘Semantic Video Web’ is Essential, Pluggd’s Alex Castro”
from Beet.TV, May 20 2008

Video search is key to discovery and consumption of video. Also essential is the organization of metadata. Pluggd, a Seattle-based start up, does both. The company provides its enterprise solution to CNET Networks and others. View video »

Blogging

“How to Create a Highly Viral Blog”
from Write to Done, May 6 2009

Despite all the buzz about creating “viral content” and a “viral blog,” not many people really understand how this is done. I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure I’ve got it all figured out. There aren’t really any secrets. But, there are a lot of little tactics that can add up to creating something contagious. Read more »

Did I miss anything cool and groovy? Tell me in the comments below!

Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett have created a fantastic resource for bloggers with their 2008 book, “Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income”. The title promises a lot, but the text reminds us that you need certain habits, discipline, and inclination to make a living off of blogging (and chances are, having more than one blog running at a time.)

I have a great deal of interest in the topic of blogging (and making money from it). I have had a blog in one form or another since about 2004, and they were always ad-free until this year. Since I began the BluLob.com blog this February, I decided to include ad space because I have been working very hard on creating good and useful content.

The “Problogger” book is the result of Rowse’s and Garrett’s many years experience in blogging and earning a living at it, and it is titled after Rowse’s Web site ProBlogger.net. They begin the book with compelling personal stories. Each of them began a blog many years ago. And then two. Or more. Each eventually discovered that the money coming in was enough to quit his regular job.

The book contains very valuable information about all kinds of aspects related to blogging. I’ll briefly outline them below.

Niche Blogging
Garrett (who seems to do most of the writing) and Rowse recommend that you pick a narrow topic to blog about rather than posting everything under the sun. This gives you the opportunity to acquire a focused and loyal audience. When you blog about too many disparate topics, readers are less likely to come back, and write comments, time and time again. This chapter includes suggestions about finding a good niche that will attract a large, loyal following.

Setting up Your Blog
Here you will find advice on choosing a blog platform and a domain name, and installing and enhancing your blog. I use WordPress hosted on my own Web site, but there are many other options. This chapter provides thorough and solid information that jibes with my own experience.

Blog Writing
This chapter is about drawing an audience. Even an old pro like me (ha ha) can learn something about writing for blogs. This chapter helps you identify what information in your niche might be useful and unique for readers. Included are tips for formatting your posts, writing a title that draws readers in, and writing your opening line. I have bookmarked and highlighted the topics called “How to Use Titles Successfully” and “20 Types of Blog Posts”. Also included is advice on how much and how often to write, and writing a series.

Blog Income and Earning Strategies
Ah, yes. The money. Here we learn about the business side of blogging. There are many factors to consider: whether to run ads from day one, or wait until you have an audience. Whether to run a service like Google Adsense or to find your own advertisers (and how to do each). Many other income sources are detailed here as well, including writing freelance for other blogs. Good stuff.

Buying and Selling Blogs
I can’t imagine ever selling my baby, but the buying and selling of blogs apparently happens frequently. This chapter deals with the business aspects of it, as well as how to win over an audience when you take over someone else’s blog.

Blog Networks
The idea of a blog network was new to me. B5media.com is given as an example of one. This chapter addresses the pros and cons of writing for a blog network. I chose not to, because I don’t want any question of who owns the copyrights to my writing. This section is also very informative about how to get a job with a blog network, and how to start one of your very own.

Blog Promotion and Marketing
“Build it and they will come” is a little too passive if you want to make money. I learned a great deal from this chapter about how build readership by contributing to – and engaging with – social networks like Facebook and Twitter. I have become more confident about plugging my blog articles in an informal and compelling way.

Secrets of Successful Blogging
Hmm. Many I shouldn’t spill the beans. These are secrets, after all. Okay, okay. Here’s a summary: Garrett reviews a number of highly successful blogs that are making a great deal of money. He and Darren did a lot of research into what makes them work so well. This chapter shares the highlights of their findings. Garrett explains tips like, “Define your blog’s mission and articulate it in a benefits-led way.”

Creating Something Worthwhile
Finally, Garret and Rowse give pointers on how to learn about your audience, being remarkable, and making your blog useful. I hope I am doing all of that here at BluLob, but I plan refer back to this book many, many times to keep me on track.

Overall, this book was very timely in my life, when I am leaving teaching and going back into freelance design and blogging for a living. I am now a big fan of Garrett, Rowse and ProBlogger.net.

Your Feedback
Have you read this book and have something to say about it? Do you have any questions? Please leave me a comment below!

I am not being compensated by this book’s authors or publisher for this review. It reflects my honest opinion of, and experiences with, this book.

This article is fantastic.

Eliminating spam is good SEO from Askimet.com

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, the process of building and tweaking your Web site so it gets high rankings in search engines like Google.

If you are unfamiliar with Askimet, it is a software add-on for WordPress (the blogging software) that catches spam comments for you. Without Askimet, this blog would be inundated with spam comments. Askimet caught 88 spam comments on this blog since its inception in February 2009. It caught 267,375 spam comments on my other blog since February 2007.