I have just recently finished creating a blog as a bit of an ongoing project. It's pretty plain as I just wanted to build the thing and start posting things asap!

 

I plan to post tutorials and advice for design, development and marketing, but also cover some of the topics that website owners and DIYers may be interested in. Partly to try and help some people understand what is actually our job/fault and what isn't.

 

I started with an email post as I tend to get a lot of phone calls and emails about that problem from clients and I am hoping that the more people that read about these sorts of problems, the less designers, developers and hosts will get the blame.

 

Have a look and feel free to be my first followers!

 

www.deanblog.co.uk

Edited May 18, 201115 yr by Blofeld

Nice one man. Hopefully give me few ideas for mine haha

looks fine.

 

Sadly reading why you put the post about eMail I think your logic is flawed. People will rarely or never go looking for an answer if they know they can call or email you. Just look at how many, and some of the, questions that get asked on this forum by people who you'd hope have a bit if gumption about them and could use a search engine. Why have a dog and bark yourself

looks fine.

 

Sadly reading why you put the post about eMail I think your logic is flawed. People will rarely or never go looking for an answer if they know they can call or email you. Just look at how many, and some of the, questions that get asked on this forum by people who you'd hope have a bit if gumption about them and could use a search engine. Why have a dog and bark yourself

 

At least now, if he gets a question about emails, then instead of writing a full on answer each time, he can just direct them to his blog post

 

Looking good so far Blofeld, will look a lot better once you beef it up with more posts. Keep it up!

I have also created a blog under a free domain. Now could you suggest me how can i get more traffic to my blog. thank you.

Finally, a blog that actually takes my interest. Sadly I have to agree with zed that people won't just go looking for an answer themselves. They will always just come onto a forum/blog/etc and ask straight away. Having the blog that you can send them to is useful, though. And hey, you'll get a lot of traffic to the blog with all the people that ask.

Thanks for looking guys (apart from Steve the thread hijacker!). I am thinking about categorising my posts as 'design', 'development', 'marketing' and the last thing I can't think of a name! This being the things like the email explanation, the cookies article, and general advice-type articles in layman's terms for non-designers and non-developers such as 'jargon explained', 'how hosting works', 'ways to promote your site' etc...

 

I didn't want to have a category titled 'idiot's guide' so anyone got any ideas for a catchy category name (or 2 if I need to split it even more)?

Edited May 20, 201115 yr by Blofeld

What's wrong with 'Idiots Guide'? '...for Dummies' has done well enough

RTFB ?

What's wrong with 'Idiots Guide'? '...for Dummies' has done well enough

 

My sense of humour is very dry in person, and it certainly doesn't work well over t'internet! Probably best I don't call my customers idiots.

 

I have a horrible feeling I am gonna be stuck with something like 'miscellaneous'

Forgive me if i'm being stupid here (it's happened before) but could you not use the email explanation as an arm of marketing? And the cookies as an arm of development?

 

If i'm missing the point entirely here how about:

 

'Web Explained'

'Web Wisdom'

'Web Defined'

'Tutorials'

'Jargon Buster'

'Jargon Corner'

'Guru Guides'

'Jargonosaurus'

'The place were you learn things'

 

Sorry i trailed off a bit there toward the end, the hamster in my head took over. Nice site by the way, is that developed by yourself or a template of some sort?

Thanks Steppio! I like the first 3 - I think I will wait until I have done a few more posts though before I start thinking about category names too much in case I end up with just as many categories as posts.

 

Yes, I developed the site based on my main website. It's a bit of an ongoing project. I built it in its most basic form just to get it going i.e. I can add articles, people can comment and I can approve comments - I prefer to build everything myself just to have total control over things and to optimise for speed and keep it lightweight. No doubt my next job will be adding some sort of captcha to the comments form. I just thought I would tackle each thing as it comes. I haven't even added pagination yet! I'll add it when I have enough posts to warrant it.

Edited May 23, 201115 yr by Blofeld

Yes, I developed the site based on my main website. It's a bit of an ongoing project. I built it in its most basic form just to get it going i.e. I can add articles, people can comment and I can approve comments - I prefer to build everything myself just to have total control over things and to optimise for speed and keep it lightweight. No doubt my next job will be adding some sort of captcha to the comments form. I just thought I would tackle each thing as it comes. I haven't even added pagination yet! I'll add it when I have enough posts to warrant it.

 

That sounds like the perfect way to approach a project; too many times i've took on a site that simply MUST have advanced jQuery / SQL triggered Flash events / ranking system for extensive blog / user profiles / all other farts and whistles that in the end take me 4 months to plan and by that point i cant be bothered anymore (the thought of build time alone making me feel quite ill). Building from scratch may take a little longer, but what price can you put on knowing your own code / understanding how your site works?

 

However much it costs to get somebody else to do it is the answer to that, but if you can do it yourself its always better I wish you the best of luck with your project and i've bookmarked it so i'll keep checking back.

It looks pretty nice man, I like the design since it is so simple and you're obviously concentrating on content. As for design, only thing I would change is add something to the left or above the search bar since there is empty space. You can fill em up wih the social icons you have below the about.

Great site, although I'm finding myself trying to click the tagline at the top thinking it's navigation, is this the plan? because already I have proven that this would be a good place to make clickable

 

Keep up the good work and keep us posted on the sites progression, are you looking at featuring any projects at all ? I'm sure alot of the webdesigners at WDF would love to have their work featured on your site

 

Thanks

 

Luke

Thanks MOTIF. The blog is still very much in it's infancy so the need for any sort of navigation isn't happening yet, although I did consider splitting into categories and possibly colour coding them to match the tag line. I was really just going to see which direction my articles lead me and then re-arrange the format to suit.

 

As for featuring projects, my blog is always open to any suggestions so long as it fits the genre of the site and is useful/informative/helpful to people that read it. It's only recently gone live and gotten indexed in google but it's already getting some pretty reasonable traffic (and relevant traffic at that!) so I am definitely going to keep working at it!