This Fall, I celebrate five years of blogging. I have written tons of web development stuff at Perishable Press, lots of helpful WordPress stuff at Digging into WordPress, some philosophical stuff at mindfeed.org, creative/artistic stuff at Dead Letter Art, jQuery stuff at jQuery Mix, and some business-related web-design stuff at Monzilla Media. Plus a bunch of interviews, guest posts, and other blogging projects. So yeah, lots of blogging and writing during the past five years. And they just flew by.
Despite what the haters may say, there are some tangible benefits to blogging. As I write, I continue to learn a great deal – not just about the fine art of writing, but also about the nature of the audience, social media, and the Web in general. There’s a lot to it, more than you may realize. Looking back during my recent hiatus, I enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on the past and contemplate lessons learned, future goals, and what it all means. Here are some of my thoughts, strategies, and lessons learned after five years of blogging..
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I have been doing some non-design-related work recently and have not been saturated with anything even computer-related for the past several weeks. Mostly I have been just enjoying life, but also drawing quite a bit and going around taking photos of old, decrepit homesteads and factories. Needless to say, it’s been a much-needed respite from the usual crunch and grind.
Taking a few steps back like this from the Web — even for such a short period of time — is remarkably refreshing, and has given me time to contemplate all this web-stuff that keeps us all so busy. When you’re right down in it, focused like a laser and cranking the days away, time sort of loses meaning, as every moment is purely an opportunity to get something done.
Looking more at the overall shape of things gives you a better perspective of how all the little pieces fit into place. When we’re focused strongly on a particular set of goals, it’s necessary to filter out as much extraneous information as possible. This helps in the short term, but it’s good to step back once in awhile and “let in” as much depth and perspective as possible.
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Consider the Google home page — arguably the most popular, highly visited web page in the entire world. Such a simple page, right? You would think that such a simple design would fully embrace Web Standards. I mean, think about it for a moment.. How would you or I throw down a few lists, a search field, and a logo image? Something like this, maybe:
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This unfeatured post provides information for (re)establishing wireless Internet access from AT&T/Cingular Data Service (via WAP or MEdia Net) for the HTC/AT&T 8525 mobile device. Or something. This information is useful if you are unable to connect to the Internet and receiving error messages similar to the following:
Error: Your Internet connection is not configured properly. Please verify your settings in Data Connections.
Note: Use of the following settings enables the AT&T 8525 to access MEdia Net (WAP) pages using the MEdia Net connection profile. Additional features such as Wi-Fi and device based e-mail along with other 3rd party applications may not be compatible with the proxy settings associated with the MEdia Net profile. If there are connection issues with e-mail and/or Wi-Fi, configure and use the My ISP profile to resolve connectivity issues. Please note that, configuring the AT&T 8525 to use My ISP will disable MEdia Net (WAP) web pages when My ISP is used for connectivity. However, regular Internet (HTML) web page browsing will function as normal.
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Sure, I’ll admit it, I am addicted to the Internet. I am connected at work, at play, and at home. When access is unavailable, I go through withdrawals — headaches, nervousness, hallucinations — the whole bit. Over the years, I have learned how to take advantage of periods of Web inaccessibility, however, in general, my schedule pretty much revolves around the Internet. Thus, in the name of “everyone else is doing it,” here is an inside look at my hectic weekly schedule:
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The über-trendy “Web-2.0” paradigm seems to be floating quite comfortably throughout the blogosphere these days. In fact, with it’s current mainstream popularity, the Web-2.0 mentality enjoys de facto status as the dominating influence behind modern website development and design. Not too long ago, however, Web-2.0 hovered quietly amidst the thinking of cutting-edge entrepreneurs and developers, as they strove toward freshness, simplicity, and usability.
Before it’s rise to media fame, Web 2.0 was merely a loosely defined set of concepts and ideals. As the concept materialized, representative sites emerged, and the Web-2.0 design aesthetic evolved into an easily recognizable collection of stylistic elements, minimalistic interfaces, and dynamically interactive functionality. Indeed, now that Web 2.0 has hit it’s stride, its characteristics are well defined and apparent to even the most casual observations.
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Coming soon to the World Wide Web: Everything. The perpetually evolving sum of human knowledge available online. Anywhere. Anytime. So, what are you looking for? Information concerning something, somewhere, about somebody.. You know it’s there somewhere. Sure, you could waste time by digging through that immense labyrinth of browser bookmarks, maybe eventually finding that one link that may or may not lead you to the page that you remember.. No thanks. The Web is far too rich in information to limit it with a few bookmarks. Ah yes, tags — that’s it! Social bookmarking to the rescue. Okay now, let’s see, under which tag will I find those two great links on "postmodern existentialism"? Maybe check three or four tags before realizing that several months have passed and that newer, more relevant information is probably available elsewhere on the internet. Hmm..
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Compared to some of the big players out there on the internet, we here at Perishable Press run a relatively small website. We began this project in September of 2005 with nothing but a domain name and a pocketful of inspiration. During the first several months of development, our traffic statistics looked something like: one unique visitor and 10,000 hits (i.e., nobody but us).
Well, that went on for the first few months of 2006, and then something miraculous happened — we were linked to by another site and subsequently indexed by Google, and then Yahoo, and soon thereafter MSN. Within several weeks after being picked up by the search engines, our page rank was like 1 or 2 and our traffic was something like: 30 unique visitors and 1,000 hits (i.e., we were finishing up site development as more people began visiting).
Well, the next several months into 2006 — like, say, from around April to July — Perishable Press continued to produce content, articles, themes, scripts, and all sorts of links everywhere. We were making more noise and several more sites linked to us. Traffic began to increase into the 100’s, 200’s, and eventually leveled off around 300 unique visitors per day (with like 3000 hits due to continued site development, etc.). Things were officially up and running..
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LiTha-Paint Quality web-based vector drawing in effect. Check out LiTha-Paint, a promising new online vector drawing tool. The software is currently in alpha, yet is already full-featured and easy to use. LiTha-Paint steps beyond the paltry selection of Flash/VML/SVG online drawing tools, providing versatility and universality via HTML and JavaScript. Perhaps all this Web 2.0 business is worthwhile after all..
Update: Unfortunately, LiTha-Paint crashed due to lack of funds (welcome to the club). However, this particular post has now served its purpose by providing insight (via the comments section) into the wonderful world of mikons.com, a very inspiring online vector graphic site that enables users to create visual symbols and share them with a growing network of other vector artists. In their own words:
Welcome to Mikons.com, a new form of self-expression that connects people through visual symbols (personal tags). Our mission is to give you a fun and easy way to create these symbols that tell your story, let you decide how you want to share them, and use them to connect with people anywhere in the world.
Update [ January 10th, 2007 ]: Well, apparently LiTha-Paint is back in action and looking better than ever. Apparently, they found a way to make it happen — good for them! With any luck, this will be the last time I have to edit this post ;)