Redswish - carefully crafted banter

Different Blog Post Styles

It’s come to my attention just how many styles of blog posts there are. I normally categorise general blog articles into 3 or 4 obvious themes – Tutorials, Reviews, Rants and Lists. But if I think about it, there are far more different types of posts – most of which can actually be categorised within the aforementioned styles.

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.

• See full article »

The end of summer

Loosing touch

I sometimes must remind myself that redswish is my personal blog as well as a web design resource. Maybe that’s not the best idea, to combine both. But I wouldn’t post often enough on my personal life to maintain a solely self-centred blog alongside a contributing online design resource. Alas, this is the beauty of the internet in that I can balance both.

I feel like I’ve been lacking the personal touch recently in an order to obtain more traffic, striving to provide solely web-related information and tools in an attempt to coerce new visitors to the site, and indeed to keep current ones interested. But why? I earn no money from this blog, I have no intention to (yet!). I write because I enjoy it, I love getting comments back from readers, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative, and I love it when something I’ve wrote has directly affected someone else. That’s the buzz I get from blogging. So, kind readers, please indulge me while I sum up my summer with little regard for whether you care or not.

How time flies

Indeed. The past few months have indeed wizzed by, perhaps because I’ve been busy, or perhaps because I’ve not been paying attention. On June 9th I started my first real, real job at Flame Digital in Manchester. I stress ‘real’ because it’s my first occupation that involves a career, a future. And it’s been great, not a bad move for a self-taught 18 year old. Things are flowing at Flame, while I’ve slowly been trying to whittle down my freelance work for there are only so many hours in the day and days in the week. And that’s enough about web design!

An explosion of cash from obtaining a sturdy full-time job has sent me dizzy spending money. In less than 2 months I’ve bought a 24″ iMac (and don’t regret a single penny), an iPhone and a new car. And new shoes, clothes, dvds and lots and lots of drunken nights out. I’m not bragging, a still have the constraining ‘luxury’ of living with my parents so I’m making the most of it while I can.

To cut to the end of summer, because I have to admit that the previous 3 months have been as ‘un-summerly’ as they come in Manchester, the highlight of August has been Leeds Festival, to which I attended last weekend. It did not dissapoint.

I’ve, rather dirtily, kept last years wristband on my wrist for a full 365 days. The are several reasons I did this, regardless of which by last November I’d forgot it was even there. However with this years golden edition, 2 strips dangling of my arm seemed like enough, and I felt it was time to cut them off, thus they are not tied around my bedpost.

I struggle to remember all the acts I actually saw at the festival, surely this is due to the large quantities of alcohol consumed over a 4-day period. But immediately springing to mind are the incredible Rage Against the Machine, whose performance rivaled pretty much any other band I’ve ever seen. A close second was Justice, rocking out the Radio 1 stage with their grungy electro. I also had the great delight of checking out Tenacious D, Digitalism, Feeder, Queens of the Stone Age, The Mystery Jets, Biffy Clyro, Taking Back Sunday and was passively entertained by Serj Tankian, Dizzee Rascal and Avenged Sevenfold. Looking back, as many bands as I saw, I’m a bit miffed I missed The Killers, Editors, We Are Scientists, Vampire Weekend, Crystal Castles and CSS. Oh well, I still had a top time.

So, not the most eventful summer

And that brings us to this week. I’m saving my holidaying for a decent trip around Europe in November, for which I can’t wait. I’ve not been skydiving again, or bungee jumping or hovercrafting or travelled to South Africa or done many things which I hoped I would, which is slightly depressing. But there’s still plenty of time. Plans change, you just have roll with what life gives you at times.

Speak to you again soon. More boring web-related articles coming this week, so stay tuned.

• See full article »

A selection of top CSS showcase sites

A fantastic method of getting your name out and enticing people to your site(s) is to submit them to CSS/website galleries and showcase sites. I’ve done it myself and know several designers who do it religiously every time they redesign or feel that traffic is dropping. Your site won’t get everywhere, some sites are far more strict than others – but providing your design is pretty and well-built, chances are you’ll get some free coverage!

Filling tons of forms in over and over get’s extremely repetitive, so to speed up the process get hold of auto-complete software like Roboform. Enter all your details once and it will fill in the majority of fields for you at the click of a button. Trust me, it’s a godsend.

So, mouse finger twitching, get your tabs ready, set and go!

• Best Web Gallery
• CSS Remix
• CSS Beauty
• CSS Bloom
• CSS Collection
• CSS Heaven
• CSS Import
• CSS Princess
• CSS smooth operator
• CSS Vault
• CSSElite CSS Gallery
• Design Snack
• FullSingle
• InspirationKing
• Light on dark
• Liquid Designs
• Lovely Blogs
• Most Inspired
• plasticpilots.com
• Refresh
• Screenalicio.us
• Submit CSS
• The Daily Slurp
• Unmatched Style
• W3C Sites
• Web Design Archive
• Web Creme
• Styleboost
• CSS Artillery
• CSS Based
• CSS clip
• CSS Container
• CSS Cool
• CSS coosite
• CSS Flavor
• CSS Hazard
• CSS Impress
• CSS Love
• CSS Mess
• CSS Reboot
• CSS Showcase
• CSS Top Sites
• CSS-Galleries.com
• Cssspot
• Design Meltdown
• I get by with a little help from my friends:
• CSS Fights
• FantastiCSS
• 101 Best websites

Phew… well that will surely do you for now. Don’t forget these sites aren’t just for getting inbound links and representation – there’s some awesome inspiration and design ideas so hang around to see what sort of sites they’re featuring and get and idea of the competition you’re up against.

• See full article »

I'm a web 2.0 guy in a web 2.0 world!

Being a cool kinda guy, I was sat at home last night and decided to listen back to some of the recordings from last year’s Future of Web Design conference in New York. I know you’re jealous.

Elliot Jay Stocks, a designer I respect (possibly more due to his hair than his skills…) decided to rant about web 2.0 design. How could he commit such a heinous act? Well someone has to, and it may as well come from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.

His ‘beef’ was not regarding the web 2.0 culture and technologies, but the design mindset; that accompanying this explosion of social web interaction and development is a sidelining assumption that to be ‘web 2.0′ you have to show off a glossy navigation bar, reflected logos, banners and badges, beveled edges etc. You all know what I’m talking about. And many of us are guilty – myself included.

Elliot’s point was that we should all stop being sheep, get trying new ideas, styles and approaches – push boundaries, get out of the web 2.0 mindset and keep evolving. And he’s right, hit the nail on the head.

My problem is (drumroll excuse), I’m a web 2.0 guy in a web 2.0 world! I’ve been designing for just over 2 years, I’m born into the web 2.0 explosion and have adopted a lot of my design styles from current trends. I’m not naturally a designer, I don’t have sketchbooks full of doodles and drawings and I never studied any form of natural or fine art. My experience is all purely web based.

So, just when I get to a point where I’m beginning to get comfortable with my design ability – Mr Stocks comes along and shakes it all up. And that’s exactly what I need, it’s exactly what all designers need. A slap in the face to say “Whoah, hold on matey – you ain’t there yet. Get setting trends instead of following them. What makes you so special if you’re just doing what everyone else is doing, you sheep?”

Well, all I have to say is that I’m sorry. I will double my efforts from now on and never settle for second best, I’ll even make sure to take a step back from the gloss mania every now and again. I’ll break web 2.0, you’ll see!

• See full article »

What to do when you get Bloggers Cramp

image courtesy of fountainphoto.com

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.

• See full article »

Which do you prefer – online or offline learning?

My latest post on the Flame blog covers the topic of offline learning (ie books and magazines) vs online tutorials, blogs and sites.

I personally probably prefer offline. Having debated with co-workers, print media seems to take the glory. This is down to a number of factors including a lack of distracting menus, images and adverts, the easier readability, the option to have a book open in front of you while keeping your monitor free, and because your are almost always guaranteed more high quality content from a book.

Check the post out here. And comment where you like!

• See full article »

Sitepoint books for web designers

I would like to make a toast to the fantastic selection of web design/development oriented books delivered from Sitepoint. I own only a couple myself, the best of which is ‘The Principles of Beautiful Web Design‘, which I must say is a awesome book and reference.

Whether you’re a designer, client-side or server-side developer, project manager, freelancer, hacker, CSS Guru or jack-of-all-trades – you can be assured there’s something for you (how cheesy does that sound.)

My only advice would be to actually buy the books from Amazon – far cheaper. But check out the Sitepoint website anyway – it’s crammed with tutorials, articles and resources and is well worth bookmarking.

• See full article »

CS4 Ashore!

That’s right folks… if you haven’t heard already, Adobe Photoshop CS4, working name Stonehenge, is in progress. I actually discovered this through a very similar route as others.

I, I mean ‘my friend’, whilst looking on ‘generic torrent site’, accidently searching for Photoshop CS3, stumbled upon CS4. I thought, I mean ‘my friend’ thought, you come across this all the time on torrent sites… false file names to entice people. But it was worth a little research detour.

So apparantly CS4 is in production, which of course makes sense. So far all that’s really known, or has been seen, is a beta loading screen:

Rumours suppose we should be looking towards the end of the year for this release, I think the end of next year is more likely. Things have been quiet on Adobe’s end, which could mean anything.

Personally, I doubt CS4 will be released under the name ‘Stonehenge’, and will most definitely not feature this title screen.

In fact, I’d even go as far to believe this is an entire hoax, either at some witty developer at Adobe’s doing, or some by some smart little computer wizard somewhere looking to cause a little mayhem.

Whatever the case, I’m both excited and couldn’t care less for CS4. Because I’m more than happy with CS3!

You know the old saying – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

• See full article »

Haggling on the web

I’ll give you £20, £30, £25, Deal

The web is great for virtually everything (and I mean ‘virtually’). In a post I wrote a long, long time ago (in relation to the age of this blog), I proposed the age-old question of ‘What can’t you do on the web?‘. Well I’ve thought of something – Haggling.

In the West, Haggling doesn’t play much of a part in every-day shopping, eg:

Checkout Clerk: That’s £38
Customer: Oh no, that’s far too expensive
Checkout Clerk: Well you’ll have to put some back then, hurry up there’s a queue forming…
Customer: Well, how about I’ll give you £25 for it all?
Checkout Clerk: What? No… you can’t do that!
Customer: Come on! OK, £30 – that’s as high as I’ll go…
Checkout: Fine… Security!

… there’s nothing wrong with exaggerating a situation to make a point. It doesn’t really work. Sometimes it’s possible to get a free piano stool or cheese grater thrown in with the deal but generally, down to the forces of commercialism and capitalism – a price is a price is a price.

However, in Eastern, Arabic and to be honest, the majority of non-English speaking countries I’ve visited; haggling is a part of everyday life. And it’s fun, it livens up the shopping experience!

Now what about online?

Imagine going to Amazon, looking at the latest Katie Price autobiography (not that I’ve ever…) then clicking on a button entitled ‘I only want to pay…‘. How could that work? Perhaps Amazon in their infinite wisdom could create an algorithm that takes your proposition and finds a midway point between that, the buy-in price and selling price of the product, so as to still make a profit while making you feel that you’ve cheated the system? Yes I know it sounds absurd but I’m open to suggestions here.

I’ve read about (having never encountered) websites that flash a javascript box up when you try to leave the site claiming ‘If you’re not happy with the prices here, please ring us on this number and we can offer you a special price, just for you..’ or something along those lines. Personally that would annoy the hell out of me, but does strike me as a very close comparison to the Thai stall owner chasing you down the street to buy one of his mystical flutes… that has happened.

So, perhaps that is one thing that, up to now, hasn’t been achieved on the net. A price, is a price, is a price. Not that I’m complaining, if you look well enough, everything you could desire can be found at an excellent price, normally at Amazon!

• See full article »

The ALA Survey 2008

I took it! The 2008 A List Apart survey. Jeffrey’s been ranting on about it on Twitter and his blog so as I generally get some benefit out of the result of these things – it seemed only fair to take part.

I don’t like filling out forms, but the Survey was actually quite enjoyable. The questions (all 18 pages – it sounds daunting but it’s really quite easy) were well-formed, understandable and to-the-point. The kind of questions where you know how the information could be used before you’ve even answered.

So – go and take the survey, and thanks to all the guys at ALA for putting it together. Hopefully the results will be enlightening and possibly provide useful benefits to us designers.

• See full article »