In such a fast evolving, and still relatively new industry, standard curricula simply can’t keep up. Web designers teaching in educational institutions begin to loose touch with the latest trends and technologies, and by the time a curriculum has been created, amended and passed it’s already well out of date, and often innacurate. This leads to many students and those starting their web design education setting off in the wrong direction because ‘the breadth and depth of our medium can be daunting’.

However, WaSP (The Web Standards Project) have been working collaboratively with designers, developers and standardistas in the industry to craft a concise corriculum that delves into all the aspects of the minefield that is web design. WaSP Interact is a fantastic new community-driven initiative that provides a essential, up-to-date framework of reference materials including books, online reading, podcasts, videos and resources to stimulate and educate. To support this great selection of resources are guides as to how work should be assigned, monitored and tested in a school environment.

In their own words:

“WaSP InterAct is a living, open curriculum based upon web standards and best practices, designed to teach students the skills of the web professional. Adapt and reuse our resources. Contribute your own content and ideas.”

The breadth of the framework covers 6 core topics including Foundations, Front-End Development, Design, User Science, Server-side Development and Professional Practice. Within each of these areas it delves into sub-topics that really pad out almost every aspect, not just of basic web design, but every facet of what’s required to work in this fast-paced, demanding industry. But what really sets is apart is how open it is. Industry experts, ‘veterans’ and anyone with an knowledge to share on the matter can contribute resources, suggest new modules and how to improve and update what’s already there. This will ensure that the curriculum remains up-to-date, fresh, accurate and versatile.

This is a dynamic, real-time curriculum. This is exactly what our industry needs. This is important.

The potential of Interact is not just important to those in education, but to anyone working in web design and development. The resource database will only grow, will only get better. There is something here for everyone. So I strongly suggest you check it out.

A few of my posts from the Flame blog archives from last year. Possibly worth a gander:

Books or online tutorials

A discussion on the benefits of books or online learning, the clue’s in the title!

There has been mild debate in the office recently over whether we prefer online tutorials or the traditional printed word. This has been sparked by a recent subscription to Lynda.com, an online resource of video tutorials.

It seems that Lynda hasn’t been used as much as hoped or expected. But alas, this is not because we’re all too lazy to learn, on the contrary we’ve all been too busy to participate in 8 hour tutorials on designing fonts, modeling gorillas in 3DS Max or building a spaceship using only PHP and a dashing of AJAX (yeh I have no idea how you’d do that either)…

Read more…

Does anybody care what you have to say?

A muse about the value of blogging today and just how important is your voice?

Blogging has evolved, transformed and broadened massively over the years. I wouldn’t like to say ’since it was invented’ because, well it was never ‘invented’, it has just ‘become’, biologically… like a living entity. Anyway, enough semantics.

The origins of blogging have long since been lost in the mists of time, it is maintained that only scholars know the true reasoning behind the now extremely popular web activity and in some cases – business. I personally have only been blogging since January this year, and am constantly learning new tricks, styles and trends…

Read more…

Navigating large blogs

Some advice for designers on how to make large blogs more usable and easy-to-navigate.

With the exception of news-exclusive blogs, pretty much the entirety of blogs on the net feature topical or thematic content that can be useful and informative not only at the time it’s written, but for many months or even years down the line.

So when a blog grows and expands, it’s easy for older posts to get lost and unseen. Sure they’re still there, archived or categorized, but once your post count starts to rise above the lofty heights of 100 posts… chances are your old work, regardless of how well-written or useful, is going to attract less traffic from either external or internal sources.

The importance of internal blog navigation cannot be underestimated. It may seem obvious but a lack of categorization, clear navigation and tidy layout can have massive negative implications on a site’s usability, and therefore readership.

Read more…

The little things that matter

Considering how essential to the overall design even the smallest elements are, and how they should never be overlooked.

Sometimes it seems all too easy to simply throw up a contact form or a standard menu layout because at the end of the day – everyone knows how these things work, as long as they do their job, they don’t require much attention.

Oh how wrong that is. A recent string of articles from Smashing Magazine regarding Web Form Design Patterns emphasises the importance of the smallest design aspects, such as the placement of labels next to input boxes, wording, use of colour, shape, size and position and much more.

Read more…

10 Awesome Free Wordpress Magazine Themes

Wordpress has risen to become the online publishing tool of choice that enables anyone to create a blog or multi-page content website with relative ease. Fully customisable, this open source platform is now powering some huge online properties, including many online magazines. Of course, there are thousands of free-to-use Wordpress themes which you can use to create your own magazine with minimal programming knowledge. Here are 10 of the best free Wordpress magazine themes to try out.

1. Branford Magazine

A simple but stylish layout, this theme enables you to display content in a format similar to that of an online newspaper. With a lead article dominating the top of the home page, glimpses of further articles within the subsequent categories are displayed below to entice the reader to click the links to read further. This easy to navigate theme is customisable and even has dedicated advertising spaces within the layout.

2. Mimbo

The Mimbo theme is very similar to Branford and in fact the author of the Branford Magazine theme attributes his inspiration to Mimbo. It provides a grid layout with a great white space balance which ensures that each section is clearly demarcated so that the page does not appear too busy. Mimbo is highly customisable and it is possible to upload thumbnails, both large and small, against posts.

3. The Morning After

This unique Wordpress magazine theme will ensure that your blog stands out from the rest. This widget-ready theme is fully customisable as even the header image can be changed. As it is a true magazine format, readers are also able to print a printer friendly version of posts. With an abundance of features, The Morning After is the ultimate professional magazine theme.

4. Guzel Magazine

For publications consisting of many different categories which extensive content, the Guzel Magazine Wordpress theme offers the perfect solution. The feature article is prominent, occupying the top of the home page and there is even space provided for sponsor adverts. It also possible to upload thumbnails against stories and has space for video content.

5. Arthemia

This contemporary theme offers a professional magazine layout unlike most themes as the category listing and description is inserted beneath the main feature article, providing the reader with insight as to what they can expect within each category. The home page is clearly divided into separate sections, making the content easy read and user friendly.

6. Jello-Wala-Mello

If you are looking for a completely different magazine theme, then the Jello-Wala-Mello Wordpress theme may be just the one for you. Its bold colour usage is consistent throughout and its grid layout on the home page ensures that the content is easy to view and navigate. There is a standard advertisement space on the home page and it even includes a sub page design for viewing single posts.

7. Zinmag Remedy

A sleek Wordpress theme, Zinmag gives the impression of a glossy magazine. A brilliant feature not seen on many other free Wordpress themes is the sliding carousel of feature post images, which is great for capturing the reader’s attention. A highlighted feature section is standard on the home page and thumbnails can be posted against subsequent stories.

8. Linoluna

This theme gives the look and feel of a glossy magazine, while still being easy to navigate. The multiple sections on the home page are clearly defined and even though a substantial amount of content can be displayed, the well-balance white spacing ensures that the reader isn’t bombarded with information on a relatively busy page.

9. Ikarus

One of the most versatile magazine themes, Ikarus comes with over 2,000 user variations and options which is rare amongst free Wordpress themes. There are many features included with the Ikarus theme including video support, slideshow support, social bookmark tools and much more. All user settings are easily maintained in the admin area.

10. Revolution Lifestyle

Marketed as suitable for a women’s interest magazine, the Revolution Lifestyle Wordpress magazine theme has a softer, more feminine look and feel while still presenting the content in a highly professional manner. As expected from a magazine site, it enables multiple categories and subsections to be maintained. The homepage even has space for sponsor advertisements and a well placed subscription invite where the reader can sign up for email alerts for site content changes.

My first real speaking engagement, how exciting!

Next Thursday I’ll be talking about Wordpress Custom Fields (in light of the popularity of this article) at the MDDA offices in Manchester. The evening solely focuses on Wordpress (because it’s so darn cool) and will also feature a talk from Simon Wheatley on the structure of Wordpress plugins.

For more information about the group you can join the MWUG Google Group or give me or Alan Holding a shout on Twitter.

If you wish to come along it’s at the MDDA offices on Portland Street, starting at 6.20-6.30ish. Be there or be square!

Initially, the concept of ’selling’ or spending large quantities of money on a virtual database-powered 2D on-screen entity may seem absurd. But let’s face it – blogs make money, therefore they have value and in turn become a commodity that can be sold or used to make more money!

Although the blog marketplace may seem like a far off notion to most bloggers, there is a surprising amount of currency to be made by building up high profile, high traffic blogs and trading them off for a tasty sum. Take this story from Problogger for example. And there are similar stories of bloggers selling off their hard work for up to millions of dollars.

Before you get carried away, creating a worthy blog that draws in mass traffic becomes a full-time occupation and can even require several writers. It takes time and hard work, but the pay-off can be huge. Here I’ll discuss some of the pros and cons of buying and selling blogs, whilst examining the market in more detail.

Selling up

For many of us, especially part-time and one-man (no sexual discrimination intended) writers – the concept of selling sounds far more appetising than buying. This could be down to the vision of a huge paycheck, and also based upon a love of blogging – why buy someone else’s work when you can create? The flip side is why sell a blog that you’ve put so much love into and that’s probably already making a consistent profit through advertising and whatever other means?

Often, the idea of selling their blog may never even cross people’s mind – until someone pops up with an offer, then everything changes…

…Sell your blog, buy a new car and take a break on a cruise then come back with some extra pocket money and start again. New blog, build it up and maybe sell that?…

…and thus it practically becomes a business.

Sometimes the primary objective from the start is to develop a blog and sell it, yet sometimes the blogging process just becomes too time-consuming, tedious or difficult and instead of letting their blog go to waste – it can be worth trying to reap some reward for the time and energy put into it. At some point hosting fees, domain renewal and advertising fees will creep up, and if your blog is losing traffic or making less revenue then the practical option is to try and sell up.

Buying blogs

Selling your blog seems straightforward enough – it’s about making money. But at the other end of the spectrum, someone has to buy what you’re selling, so why buy?

The target is still to make money. So expelling intial capital sounds like a step backwards? But there are indeed many great reasons for buying up blogs:

• Fast-track ahead. No matter how diligently you work and how good your SEO skills may be – building up blog traffic and recognition takes time. Buying a blog that already has a consistent reader base and high regular traffic gives you a head start.
• If a blog is already making money, this assures a cashflow from day one. You then have the ability to work and improve the blog to increase traffic and income. A lot of the initial hard work has already been done for you.
• Obtaining another advertising platform. If you already have other blogs or products making money, buying into a popular blog provides you with a means to reach far more people for free to advertise and promote your other products.
• Buying security. Aside from just obtaining an asset, you’re also getting the knowledge and security that it works. It’s not always as simple as creating a new blog and it will develop in time – some things don’t work out. By buying into a proven concept you’re negating that risk.

Well, that’s all dandy. But it can’t all be great? Of course plenty of downsides and risks to buying a blog:

• Obviously – the cost element. Spending a lot of money doesn’t always guarantee a continuously successful blog with a promising future. At least starting a blog from scratch can be almost free and allows more control over it’s image, direction and target audience.
• Typical online sales risks. Selling a virtual creation can always be a daunting task. A very secure and agreed transaction should take place, yet it’s still so easy for someone to run off with the details for a site after being paid, or misrepresenting a blog’s true value. It’s essential to research both the blog and the seller well before parting with any money.
• Keeping loyal readers happy. Regulars are regulars for a reason. They like the style of certain blogs – perhaps it’s the design, the tone of voice, the quality or quantity of the articles or the community it promotes. If you storm in and change everything – you may loose lots of valued visitors and regular traffic which can undo all the hard work of the previous owner, and potentially destroy your investment.

So, when buying – research well, respect the theme and readership of the blog you’re buying into and be prepared to work hard to keep it running at the same, or a better pace.

How do you value your blog?

If you’ve decided to sell, or have been made an offer – that’s great. But how on Earth do you value a blog? You can’t exactly take it down to the local jewellers or do an Ebay search. You can however glimse the competition at sites such as Performancing.com and the Sitepoint Marketplace.

Valuing your blog is not something to rush. And as blog sales aren’t feverishly common – there’s no set RRP or rules that dictate exactly what’s worth what. Valuation is subjective and so the selling process lends itself to auctions and even bartering. However, there are still plenty of factors to be taken into account to help reach realistic values.

• Traffic. One of the best measures of a blog’s success is it’s traffic. The 2 key aspects to consider are consistency and rate of growth. If traffic is still on the up then it’s most likely a good time to pitch it to a potential buyer. Use an accurate, unbias analytics package. I’d recommend Google Analytics because as well as being a fantastic piece of free kit – it’s a reliable name that should ensure a level of confidence.
• Readership and Subscribers. The other respectable method to analyse a blog’s popularity is it’s audience. Not just random traffic, but regular, repeat traffic that have a purpose in visiting your blog. The best way to assess this is through RSS subscribers, registered users and email subscribers.
• Inbound links. The more high quality inbound links – the more alternate entry paths to your blog. Don’t just aim for the homepage but try and obtain recognition for deeper level pages and important traffic sources that will aid your search engine rankings.
• Current earnings. If your blog is already making profit through whatever means, this will be a huge selling point and seriously help to assess your blog’s value in it’s rawest format – money.
• The full package – design and content. Aside from all the statistics – when you’re selling your blog, you’re also selling all the design work, code and developement that’s gone into it. If you were to build a website for a client and charged a £1,000 – a similar sized blog should effectively hold such a value. Don’t forget this when valuing your blog or website, it’s not just about traffic and popularity. The chances are a better design and more considerate, functional blog will fetch more money.
• Domain name. A single string that may have cost no more than £5 originally can become extremely valuable when paired with a recognisable brand or website. Domain names alone have been known to go for millions. An easy-to-remember, snappy and recognisable domain name can contribute immensely to a site’s success and it’s worth.

Adding it all up

The way I look at it, the way to calculate a blog’s value is to estimate how much it would cost to create everything again from scratch – if every element had a value. Without trying to get too mathematical, my personal formula works out something like so:

But, before you rely on the above diagram it’s worth noting that I’ve yet to sell a blog and will most certainly not be selling Redswish any time soon – so experts on the subject may use different techniques.

My key advice would be research, research, research. Don’t rush into anything.

Considerations when changing hands

When selling, the main concern is receiving the money before full control is handed over. When buying, it’s more complicated. Transferring a sum of money can be a simple procedure, but transferring the keys to a blog requires several considerations:

• Domain and hosting will need to be transferred.
• Whois information requires changing.
• Site information will need amending, such as about and contact page and any mailto links.
• CMS access, database and possibly server details may need to be changed or transferred.
• Any external accounts that directly tie in with the blog will need to change hands. Eg – Feedburner, Technorati, BlogCatalog etc.
• Google Analytics or tracking scripts may need to be changed to the new owner’s details.
• Advertising accounts, adwords etc need to transfer to the new owner’s bank details.

So – before buying or selling, bear in mind the many other factors in the transaction. Could you imagine spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on a blog, only to forget to change the affiliate account bank details over and the revenues continue to go to the previous owner?

Keeping in touch

Selling your blog isn’t always the end of the line. You may be kept on as a writer, or have to teach the new owner’s how to use the CMS or blogging platform. However don’t forget to charge for this. Bigger blogs with regular visitors may miss your blogging style or presence and may not care much for a direct changeover.

Blogs represent a lot of different things to different people. Some are purely to present information make money, whereas some are an outlet of personal expression and opinions that contribute and help others. Think before selling – is it really worth it? Think before buying – can you continue to make this work and recoup your intial investment?

Play safe, have fun! Discuss…

I’m never happy with my current skill level, I never quite feel like I’ve reached a particular stage that I’m aiming for. Maybe it’s just me; maybe I’ll never quite be happy with myself. Maybe that’s a good thing… maybe not.

But one things for sure – I’m constantly improving and bettering myself as a designer and much more, which is a good feeling. To be able to look back over the past 6 months and observe what new skills I’ve learnt, bad habits I’ve dropped, speed, accuracy and imagination I’ve gained and generally concede that I have improved in more ways than one is pleasing.

So, I’d like to offer some tips and ideas that may help others help themselves more, hopefully provide some inspiration and educate. And I’d sure like to hear what you think, if you’ve got anything to add please comment.

When learning: Read, Meet, Talk, Listen, Teach

And further verbs. Although it sounds cliche and quite extreme, if you want to get ahead in your game (and this doesn’t particularly relate to web design), you have to eat, sleep and breath design. Make contacts wherever possible, let people know what you do – you never know when it might come around and help you.

Reading

Resources for web designers are hardly scarce. Get subscribing to RSS feeds, get a good selection of favourite sites with regular news and tutorials and visit them regularly. I make an effort to spend a good 30-40 minutes (more if I get to the office early) every morning checking my feeds and bookmarking new sites full of inspiration.

Then don’t forget the print world, there are still a fantastic number of great quality web design, development, graphic design, copywriting and project management books popping up all the time. Hit up Amazon and see what tickles your fancy. Then don’t let them gather dust on a shelf – have them open on your desk, read on the train, in bed, wherever… you’ll be surprised how much information you can pull out a book if you take the time to actually absorb it.

Don’t forget magazines and journals, although we’re rather deprived in the UK of any decent regular publications.

A few sites I’d recommend:

• Smashing Magazine
• CSS Drive
• A List Apart
• Web Designer Wall
• Design Float
• DesignM.ag

And a few books to check out:

• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Jason Beaird)
• Designing with Web Standards (Jeffrey Zeldman)
• Web Design Index by Content
• Bulletproof Web Design (Dan Cederholm)
• Web Standards Solutions (Dan Cederholm)

They should keep you busy for a while. And that’s before we even consider the various branches off web design itself. So get yourself an RSS reader like Bloglines and get into the routine of checking decent sites regularly and sourcing as much valuable information, resources and tools and inspiration as possible.

Meeting / making contact with people

Making contacts within the industry can only benefit you. It may lead to job opportunities and work but also creates new avenues through which to learn from others.

You can meet new people through all sorts of mediums, such as:

• Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter (follow me!) and Digg
• Contacting other designers through their contact pages on their sites
• Attending web conferences and meet-ups. In Manchester 2 popular regular meet-ups at the moment are GeekUp and Northern Digitals.
• Bringing other people in on jobs can teach you a lot – sometimes it’s better than struggling to work out how to do something when you can pay someone to teach you or help out.

I talk – you listen

I know, it sounds ridiculously obvious but get talking. To mates, to people you know in the industry, to colleagues or fellow students. Ask questions, try to help each other out and share intersting new finds with others. Share the wealth!

Teach

Doesn’t agree with the idea of ‘improving yourself‘? On the contrary, teaching is one of the best forms of learning. Whether you’re teaching a friend how to use Wordpress, writing an informative blog article (as I am now), lecturing a class or giving advice in a forum; the processes you have to go through to gather the information in the first place, then absorbing the feedback and further questions that develop, creates a perfect environment to learn so much more, almost subconsciously.

Blogging

Blogging helps to improve yourself not just as a designer but in so many various ways. Redswish has forced me to learn new things to create interesting articles, my writing style has improved and my understanding of the ‘blogosphere’ and social web has improved.

What to blog about

It depends on what you wish to achieve from your blog, whether it be commercial or personal gain. If you want to make money from your blog, prepare to work hard writing regularly and building your site to pull in traffic. But if you just want to ‘express yourself’, promote yourself or just want to write and pass on knowledge to others – then do it as when you feel like it. Don’t feel pressured to blog.

Blogging isn’t for everyone. It takes a lot of time, energy, focus and dedication. Sometimes it doesn’t pay off, but it’s always worth giving a shot.

Taking criticism

This doesn’t just refer to blogging but all forms of criticism. However if you go out on a limb and broadcast your views and writing to the world – you can rest assured that some people are compelled to spite you, whether it be justified or not. Prepare for a few off-colour comments.

Criticism isn’t always constructive, but try to imagine why the comments have been made and consider how you can improve on this and try to avoid it happening again. Do not react harshly – angry retorts can drive visitors away and do nothing for your profile. Words can easily be misinterpreted on the web so be careful.

Useful input from commenters

The main benefit of comment areas on blogs is the opportunity for readers to contribute and provide their own expertise and insight. Take full advantage of this, promote it and try to generate conversation with your commenters. Doing so will help to increase the chance of more input in future.

Pushing yourself when working

All the above are examples of ways to learn new tricks and skills, expand the imagination and develop a better understanding of the industry. However, improvement can be established constantly while working in your existing environment. A few tips:

• Working for an agency. Working in an environment with other professionals is a perfect environment for absorbing new tricks and ideas, as well as sharing. Since I started working at Flame Digital 4 months ago I’ve progressed in leaps and bounds and can honestly say I’m loving it!
• It’s never too late to go back to school. More and more web design and development related courses are popping up – you’re never too old to mooch along and check out the benefits.
• Find ways to measure progress. Set targets, aim to reach them in 1 month/6 months. This will help to push you to develop, and acts as a measure to observe how much you’ve improved.
• Money is a motivator. Let’s not lie, we can design for the love of design but if you do it for a living – money is essential. Loosely speaking, the better a designer you are – the more money you’re likely to earn. It’s not always as simple as that but money is certainly a powerful motivator – perhaps the thought of that salary raise will entice you to push that little bit harder.

Explore other avenues of creativity. Design doesn’t have to remain in Photoshop on your monitor. Grab a camera and go for a walk to capture some photography, or grab a sketch pad and relax in the garden and swap the mouse for a pencil! Try to seek creativity and inspiration in different forms.

Focusing on design

I’ll hand you over to a nice article on a new website, Web Design Ledger, written by Adelle Charles, that covers ‘10 easy steps to become a better web designer‘.

The article outlines ideas and techniques that should be considered constantly and should be second nature to designers:

• Build a toolbox. Create a tidy catalogue/toolbox or resources, scripts, background and stock images, bookmarked sites, tutorial files, plugins, .psds etc. You never know when they might come in handy.
• Think on paper. Always default back to paper before you start squiggling away with the mouse.
• Keep up to date with trends. The web is like the catwalks of Milan and Paris – new fashions are revealing themselves all the time. Keep on top of what’s cool, or even get a step ahead and set the trend!
• Know your audience.
• Ask other’s opinions.

Read the full article here.

Self-improvement

‘Improving yourself as a designer’ requires a lot more than reading books, toiling through tutorials and blogging around. There are so many contributing factors that make a good designer, and these vary from person to person.

Perhaps it’s a case of building confidence, or even suppressing an ego. You can never have too much inspiration and in such a fast paced industry – there’s never any way you can know everything.

Whether you’re a student doing a part-time course, an experienced industry veteran, an up-and-coming design superstar or a jack-of-all-trades; I hope there’s something in this article that may have proved useful to you.

Never settle for second best, and never assume you’ve covered all the bases – there’s always room for improvement.

The fundamental functionality of Custom Fields provides you with the ability to expand your posts and their content. They allow you to include extra information and features in your posts that the WYSIWYG editor doesn’t provide itself.

How it works.

When in your Write/Manage posts page, mooch down past Tags and Categories to the Advanced Options – ooh! Down here in these murky depths you’ll encounter the Custom Fields box. In here you’ll see 2 empty textareas labelled key and value.

The key is the name for your custom variable, and the value is, well, it’s value! When you create a custom field, you are creating new meta-data. You then insert a simple line of php into your Wordpress template where you want this extra data to appear in the theme and voila! You’re done.

So, the easiest way to show you is with a short example.

Adding Subtitles to your post

I feel subtitles serve more as a presentational feature than anything. And sure, you could always just insert a h2/h3 at the top of your post to act as a subtitle. But sometimes that doesn’t cut it, especially if your subtitle needs to stand out from the post content more than an standard inline header.

Step 1 – Theme files:

In your Wordpress theme, you need to enter a line of code to pull in your custom field. Make sure this is within the post loop, the most obvious place is of course directly under your post title. Here you go:

The only bit you may wish to change is the keyword within the parentheses. In this case ‘Subtitle‘. This ties in with the key you create in the post editor, so make sure they’re the same. And only use it again if you wish to display the subtitle somewhere else, for any other custom fields you’ll have to change this.

It would make sense to place this code within header tags:

That’s it for the code!

Step 2 – Post page:

When you’re writing or editing a post, go down to the Custom Fields area in the Advanced Options. Create a key which correspondes to your keyword you set in the code. The value will be the actual Subtitle content. So for example: Key – Subtitle Value – An inside look at Google’s new browser… Add your custom field and save your post.

Step 3 – Check it out:

Check out how it displays on the page. Then utilise the power of CSS to get it looking bob on!

Having more fun

Let’s face it, subtitles aren’t that interesting. But there’s a lot more you can do, a lot of which I’ve still yet to discover. Post Thumbnails

Add the following code to your theme:

" alt="" />

This will include an image, pulling it in from a specific folder. So if you upload all your thumbnail images to the directory /wp-content/post-images/ and then in your post editor set the key as ‘Image-Thumb’ and the value as your image name (eg. picture.png), this will pull in your thumbnail picture and place it in your post. You can control the appearance of the image with CSS.

To actually upload your images to the specified folder, you can use good old FTP or a plugin I’m particularly fond of, because it keeps you in the WP admin area without having to use any external programs: Filosofo Old-Style Upload.

Of course this doesn’t necessarily have to be a thumbnail, it can be a full size image, adding plenty of colour and interest to your blog articles.

For a more advanced alternative to this method, check out Justin Tadlock’s method.

Meta-Data

Some of the examples given on the Wordpress Codex page on Custom Fields are the simplest, and the best. What if you fancy adding information relating to your current mood or the weather at the time of writing your post? Try:

Current Mood:

Key: Mood
Value: Happy
Code:

Current Mood: 

Displays: Current Mood: Happy

Listening To:

Key: Listening-to
Value: Fly me to the moon – Frank Sinatra
Code:

Listening to: 

Displays: Listening to: Fly me to the moon – Frank Sinatra

Other ways to display meta-data

To pull in all the meta-data for a post in one fell swoop, go for:

Which will display all the meta-data in an unordered list and add’s classes that can be styled with CSS.

If you want to pull meta-data from a specific post, you can specify which post by the post ID, which data by it’s key and whether to display the data as a single item or pull in an array:

• $post_id is the ID of the post you want to select data from
• $key is the name of the meta-value you want
• $single can be either true of false. If true it will pull in a single string of meta-data, if false it will pull in an array of the custom fields.

Go Play…

Like most things, Custom Fields open doors which you have to walk through and explore. In essence they’re very simple but if used correctly can be pretty powerful, another extension of the basic functionality of Wordress. So go forth and experiment!

For more information on Custom Fields and all things Wordpress – visit the WP Codex.

Content is King

Without a doubt the most essential method of both bringing in and retaining high levels of traffic is through constant generation of high quality, unique content. Regardless of whatever search techniques are used to generate visitors to your site, if they’re not greeted by useful information and interesting articles they will leave and most probably not return.

It’s all too easy to take a step back and go to another site in a few mouse clicks, so it’s essential that you provide a service or a level of quality that keeps visitors at your site, and ensures their return. Blogs are one of the most dedicated methods of bringing in traffic, but the real aim is to retain visitors, obtain repeat custom, subscribers, recommendations, inbound links and build up a community where your site’s visitors are engaged and compelled to provide their own input.

Blog posts are unlike other forms of written literature. Web users scan pages, so it’s important that the useful points are easy to find. Keep paragraphs short, use bullet points and lists,  blockquotes, close-captioning and  other visual techniques to keep your copy interesting. Large blocks of boring copy will not get read.

Don’t forget to utilise the power of keywords within your posts. Consider what people will be searching for, what are the central points of an article and what words and phrases will stand out against other similar sites. Use visual keys to identify keywords. But don’t overdo it. Don’t sacrifice the quality of your copy for the sake keyword spamming.

Getting people to your site

• Promote articles through 3rd party sites. In the case of a sports blog this could be other sports blogs and websites, sports news aggregators, general news sites, directories, showcase sites etc.
• Ensure that the blog URL is on all print and stationary and in the signature of emails. It’s a basic, obvious point but essential nonetheless.
• Use comment sections on other blogs, forums and sites to promote your blog. DO NOT SPAM. Reply genuinely, but include your website URL in your signature. Most blog comment areas will also use your display name as a link to your site as well.
• Guest authoring. This works 2 ways. Writing guest posts for other blogs can sometimes be more effective then a post on your own blog. This is especially useful when trying to get your blog onto it’s feet and raise it’s profile. Similarly, other writers creating content for your site helps to maintain post frequency when ideas and news are in short supply, and serves to offer variety to the tone of your blog.
• Promote your site and blog through traditional SEO methods such as Google and MSN webmastering. Ensure that your site’s code is clean and easily searchable and acknowledge basic SEO standards such as including ‘title’ and ‘alt’ information.
• Use obvious post titles. Do not keyword spam your post titles but ensure that they accurately describe the article and will be easily searchable. Also make sure the post titles are displayed in the page title on each unique post page.
• Advertising and affiliates. Buy inbound links or swap reciprocal links with other high-ranking websites.
• Observe other high-traffic blogs in your niche. What methods are they applying to continue to attract and maintain this level of visitors? Take ideas and inspiration from similar blogs and websites.
• Use ping services like Pingomatic and Wordpress plugins to notify other sites when you’ve created new posts.

Keeping people interested

• RSS and ATOM feeds, newsletter subscriptions, even SMS updates. Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your site. Getting visitors to give your email address while signing up to your newsletter will help to build up a database of potential clients.
• Email campaigns. Build up databases of email addresses through subscribers to your blog newsletter, existing clients, purchase lists of email addresses, use email addresses from commenters on your blog etc. Then send out regular email newsletters with the latest articles and company news. Encourage people to subscribe, advertise competitions or products.
• Ensure that your site is usable. Regardless of whether your blog contains high quality content or not – if it’s difficult to read or find – it will be useless. Clean, usable and aesthetically pleasing sites will hold your visitors for longer and help to promote their return.
• Serial Content. Creating series’ of posts, daily/weekly/monthly features, strings of similar-style content, lists, interviews and unique ideas keep visitors coming back for more.
• Update regularly. Your subscribers and regular visitors will constantly be thirsty for new news and articles. If you can’t provide this – they will go elsewhere. However it’s also essential not to overpost as this can overwhelm your readers and scare them away. The ideal number of posts to make per day or week is entirely dependent on the niche and topic of a blog, the size of it’s readership, the length and value of the posts and the manpower behind the blog. Researching and discovering the ideal post publishing frequency takes time and constant monitoring.
• Post Publishing Consistency. Regular visitors will grow to expect and anticipate the frequency of your articles. It’s essential that once you’ve decided on an ideal publishing frequency that you stick to it.
• Blogs are social. Utilise the power of social networking to build your community and promote interaction. Use polls, allow users to submit their own ideas and news, pictures, even audio and video. Allow users to create accounts and profiles.
• Provide services and products that the competition doesn’t. Blogs aren’t just about content and posts. Use your interface to promote other products, provide free downloads, audio or video content, games and offer live feedback and real-time chat solutions.
• Consider mobile devices. With an increase of smart phones and in particular the iPhone – more users are accessing websites through their phones. Don’t block this percentage of your traffic – ensure your blog is usable on mobile devices.
• iPhone apps. If your blog is updated often or contains useful news that needs to be accessed on the fly – look at building an iPhone app that pull in your latest posts and site content. Sites like last.fm, ign.com, twitter.com and facebook are already taking advantage of this.
• Gimmicks. Free prize draws, competitions, monthly or weekly features both attract new traffic and entice current visitors to interact more.

To summarise

Your blog will succeed if it’s providing useful information to people. Good blogs generate traffic because they provide continuous new content all the time, they retain that traffic because visitors enjoy coming back for more and it’s given to them.

All blogs work differently; they attract different types and levels of visitors and are designed for different purposes, whether that be to make money, advertise products, raise profiles or just rant or express an opinion. However the principles behind all successful blogs are generally the same:

• Provide high quality, unique content.
• Ensure your site is easy to use and navigate.
• Employ traditional SEO techniques as well.
• Look after your readers – your current community is just, if not more important than new visitors.
• Research and analyse your market, ensure that your blog tailors to this market in every aspect: tone of voice, appearance, topic, usability and in SEO criteria.

Please let me stress that this categorisation is my personal perception and creation, and surely other bloggers will see this from an entirely different angle – please feel free to comment on how you would approach this yourselves.

After some research and a few pages of scrawled notes and diagrams, I’ve broken my obvious categories into about 17 sub categories or more accurate styles, which fall under 4 main themes:

• Instructional
• Reviews / Editorial
• Opinion
• References

I’ve then arranged these different post types into a rather messy diagram:

The majority of styles are self-explanatory, however for the benefit of the doubt I will outline what I mean by each blog post type:

• Tutorials
  • Tutorials form the bulk of posts on a lot of blogs. They are a fantastic source of inbound traffic because they directly supply the users need with a solution, people often search for answers to questions and tutorials – constantly supplying high quality tutorials will guarantee both new and repeat visitors.
• Research
  • Research can actually be broken down further into research and result. These type of posts are generally when a question is asked and either a poll, survey, email request or visitors comments are used to answer the question. For example if a post asks ‘Which blogging platform do you prefer… 1) Wordpress, 2) Movable Type, 3) Expression Engine, 4) Typepad, 5) Blogger? The results are collected from the site’s visitors and displayed – research and result.
• Problem Solving
  • As opposed to writing tutorials and presenting information of your own back, replying to visitors emails, comments and even your own problems can be a good way to boost the content on your site whilst helping others out. Plenty of well-known bloggers take time out once a week or month to sum up answers to visitors questions, for example on David Airey’s site. Some blogs are built entirely on supplying answers.
• Comparisons
  • Posts contrasting 2 or more products, services, beliefs… anything. Debating the positives and negatives of something can show that you’re open minded. It also serves well for people wishing to make a decision on something. For example a comparison article on Photoshop vs Illustrator may help someone decide which program to splash out on.
• Information
  • Informational blog posts are extremely common, they’re often easy to write as usually just state hard facts but also form a major use of the internet. The term may seem vague and can often be grouped with tutorials or news but is essentially unbiased, time-independent information.
• Interviews
  • Interviews on blogs give a range of benefits. They provide a different tone of voice, provide new insight and a different angle of thought. They’re a great idea for when you can’t think of anything to write and will also help to raise the profile of your blog if you get the opportunity to interview someone with some gravitas and expertise.
• Case Studies
  • Case Studies help to get points across and are great for demonstrating how techniques can be applied to a real-life scenario or project. If you’re struggling to think of a tutorial subject, try taking something you’ve already created and walk your readers through how you did it.
• Reviews
  • Reviews are another massively used blog post style. Although sometimes non-biased, the benefit of the internet and blogging is that people’s opinions can easily sneak their way into articles. Reviews can be found in all sorts of styles – products, films, services, art, music etc. You will also find that they continue to survive for years, because usually someone will always find your review useful at some point.
• Previews & Predictions
  • These are similar to reviews but are forward-thinking. Predicting how the new version of Internet Explorer will work, what the new James Bond film will be like or how the economy will fares are examples of preview/prediction posts.
• Critique
  • Critiques are extremely opinionated, even when people like to pretend they’re not. Be careful when writing critiques; make sure you know what you’re talking about or prepare for some serious retorts. It’s important that critique posts remain objective and constructive, and don’t break down to full-blown attacks.
• General Opinion
  • I apologise for the vagueness of this title. General opinion, in some ways, encompasses reviews, rants, critique, information, predictions and more. But the central concept is that it is the writers opinion towards something. Whether it be a product or service, some news, personal events or absolutely anything at all – the article is tailored in no way to the reader but purely as an output for the bloggers expressions. General opinion is predominantly found on personal blogs and is often humorous.
• Rants
  • A personal favourite of mine. The internet is a great medium to get things off your chest. So rant away – you’ll be surprised how many people enjoy reading angry posts, and giving their own opinion on the matter.
• Debates
  • Although similar to Comparisons, Debates pit one opinion or paradigm against another, as opposed to a neutral comparison of 2 or more items. Debates do well on blogs, they are a good way of getting readers involved and building up comments. You can debate against yourself, another blogger or your readers – but be prepared for heated it can get!
• Musings & Ideas
  • Generally found on personal blogs, these are usually small posts where you simply wish to express an idea, meme or thought. It’s surprising how thought-provoking these posts can be and how much response you can receive. I often find that Jeffrey Zeldman comes up with some quaint musings.
• Links
  • Great for when ideas run dry, great for helping to promote something you like. Link posts are simply, as the name suggests, links to other articles/websites. Ensure that you don’t get into a habit of doing this for risk of your site becoming a portal and loosing it’s independence. Also include a description of where you’re linking to and why. These are also a good idea for building up relationships with other bloggers.
• Lists
  • I’m seeing more and more list posts all over the net. They’re easy to write and, providing they’re full of high quality links, act as fantastic resources. They help to build up relationships with other websites and can help to get your site noticed. It’s also nice to see what your commenters will contribute towards the lists as well.
• Collation
  • Collation posts are when you basically gather up other people’s opinions and comments on a subject and tie them all together with your own. These often require a lot of research but the benefits can be huge. You’re discussing a topic by taking views from different sources, therefore often providing quiet a deep, varied view of a topic. Readers find these posts resourceful, and will help you to build up ties with other people from whom you’ve collated your information.

Which style is for me?

There are no written rules for which blog post styles are better than others, whether you should stick to only one style or try and incorporate everything or what styles lean more towards different themes and topics. In fact, everyone you ask will have a different opinion on what works best, what they like and what they hate.

So my advice to you is to experiment, try different blog post styles. Perhaps the information above may have inspired you or presented you with options you didn’t take seriously or even consider. And see what works best for you, because every blog, every blogger and every reader is different.

Every blogger gets it, indeed every writer gets it at some point. Writers/Bloggers cramp. (Can I coin the term ‘bloggers cramp’?)

I get it all the time. In fact it’s often the reason when Redswish hasn’t been updated for a week. Sometimes ideas run dry. For mainstream blogs that attract a lot of visitors, and especially blogs designed as a source of income – this can be crippling. So, there’s 2 main ways to avoid, or solve it.

1. Make the most of the times when the creative juice flows. Build a catalogue of drafts ready to be unleashed whenever you’re away, busy or just can’t think of anything to write about.

2. Get some god darn inspiration. Thanks to a handful of articles and tutorials out there on the net, there are plenty of methods of conjouring up ideas and copy. The most prominent article to have struck me recently is Darren Rowse’s post 24 things to do when stuck for a topic to blog about. Quite a handful of a title I know.

The article covers, well as the name suggests, 24 things to do when you have ‘bloggers cramp’. I would appreciate if you actually diverted from this site to read the article in full because not only is it full of useful tips, but the entire ProBlogger site is an invaluable resource.

However, some of the ideas it covers include:

• Change your writing environment
• Answer a question proposed to you through a comment, email or that you ask yourself
• Take a break
• Remove any distractions
• Revisit or expand on a previous post
• Try free writing or writing on paper first – about anything whatsoever
• Speak your post out loud, either to yourself or others. It may help to keep a narrative flow
• Change voices or styles
• Go searching for ideas online, or offline
• Ask your readers a question
• Do what I’m doing now and summarise other people’s work. Do not plagiarise but use it to build upon your own views and ideas.

One will often say ‘this only covers the basics’ or something similar. However, I feel Darren’s post pretty much covers all bases and is a fantastic reference for whenever you just can’t think of something to write.

I think it’s important to note that sometimes it’s better to post nothing at all than for the sake of it. When I cruise back through the past 6 months of posts on this blog, I realise how many useless, irrelevant and mildly annoying posts I’ve made, simply to fill a gap. Even though this is my blog and I can do what I want, visitors don’t want to read crap, they simply won’t come back.

Therefore it’s essential to keep your post styles, quality and if possible quantity as consistent as possible. Your readers will know what to expect and will stay interested.

If you’re lacking inspiration or any drafts to pull out when you need to get new posts up, try some of the techniques above. But if you’ve still got bloggers cramp, just leave it. Come back tomorrow.