Stewart Design Doodles » Blogging

Wordpress-based websites: what I’ve been doing lately

Amy — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:08:24 +0000

Hello everyone, and sorry for the long absence! I’ve been up to my ears for the past few months in website work, catalog work and family visits. (It’s still raining babies in our family. I’ve now got a new baby nephew, and a grandson on the way, bringing the baby total to 8 in just under 3 years. More on that later.)

I’m really excited about all the Wordpress-based websites we’ve been building lately, and I and wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about our process and show you some of the latest sites we’ve done.

All our sites are now built on Wordpress using Thesis. Wordpress is a powerful opensource blogging platform, and Thesis is a brilliantly flexible and SEO-friendly framework that helps you to customize your Wordpress-based site. I do all the design work, and the multi-talented Doyle Calvert does all the programming and behind-the-scenes magic. Between us, we have spent the past 8 months getting Wordppress/Thesis to do some pretty amazing things. Here’s a sampling:

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Musicians who Blog: Free Promotion for Musicians

Amy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:36:09 +0000

To all you musicians out there looking for some additional free exposure… check out Musicians who Blog, a project started by Upstart Blogger.

Musicians submit their blogs along with a press photo and some information about their blogging, what they use their blog for, how successful they have been because of their blog, and anything else that they would like to share. In addition to providing increased exposure for musicians, it will also be an interesting set of case studies to show how much blogging can help your career.

Their mission:

The aim of this blog is to highlight, perhaps unsurprisingly, musicians who blog. That might seem easy to the uninitiated but, in reality, it’s a little harder. Musicians Who Blog will seek to help promote real musicians, the ones who get their hands dirty online and write their own blogs, whilst at the same time pointing the finger at all the fake bloggers, the ones who hide behind faceless corporations and let the men in the grey suits do the talking for them.

Furthermore, Musicians Who Blog will seek to promote, by way of example and case study, positive use of blogs and online marketing in the music industry. It is hoped that this blog will become a useful resource for both musicians and music lovers alike.

As introductory explanations go this one has been pretty simple. Hopefully the whole concept of a blog like this is perfectly self explanatory. All that remains is for me to open the email gates and invite blog submissions from any musicians who maintain a blog. To submit your blog simply email me on ashley@ashleymorgan.com. Please include a high resolution photograph if possible.

If you are a musician who doesn’t already have a blog, you really should start. It’s one of the least expensive and most far-reaching ways you can get noticed.

Side note: I see that Musicians who Blog is hosted by AN Hosting, our top choice for blog hosting. You can get 3 months free by using the code UPSTARTBLOGGER.

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How to customize Google Search on your website

Amy — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:13:46 +0000

A very simple way to make your website more user-friendly is to add a search feature. Google Search makes that easy: just Create a Custom Search Engine by filling out a form, and then paste the resulting code wherever you want into your web page. (If you want it to search only on your website, then enter your URL only under the "Select some sites" portion of the form.)

After you have completed the form, it will take you to a page that has a link to the Control Panel for your new custom search. Click that, and then click "code." This is what you will copy and paste into your home page.

Here’s what that code looks like when it’s pasted into your HTML page:

But what if you don’t like the default look? No problem: there are several ways to change the look and feel of the search bar, and also the search results page that comes up afterwards. Just click the "look and feel" link and you will be presented with several options, including the option to choose your own text colors, and add your own logo to the custom search results page. (Note: you can also choose where that search results page is hosted: either on your own site, or on google. That option is under the "code" link.)

And that’s it– your own custom search in minutes!

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7 reasons you should have a blog in addition to (or instead of) a regular website

Amy — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:46:04 +0000

This post is especially for all the musicians and store owners who attended my session at NAMM last weekend. I briefly touched on the idea of having a blog, but there wasn’t time to get into much detail about why it is so important for your business. So I’m going to tell you some of the reasons why I think nearly all businesses like yours need one.

Some of you were unfamiliar with what a blog is. A blog is essentially a ready-made, highly customizable website which includes lots of interactive features. Wordpress is the most popular blogging software and the one I recommend. Even better, the Wordpress software is free!

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Hilarious observations from a recovering diabetic

Amy — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 06:28:30 +0000

Ever wonder what it would be like to see Jack Handy in a Leave-it-to-Beaver episode directed by David Lynch?

A month ago when I started this blog, I encouraged my dad, who is retired and has too much time on his hands, to start writing one too. Dad loves to read and write (he has a Ph.D. in English literature) but most of all, he loves to tell funny stories, and to force other people to parrot back things he finds funny, ad nauseam. I have often retold my Dad’s humorisms to other people, and thought it would be a really cool idea to get him to write everything down in his own words. So I set him up a free wordpress.com account, showed him how to use Windows Live Writer, and let him go. Bigdaddytype2 is the remarkable result.

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My first month in the Blogosphere – What I have learned as a designer

Amy — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:15:56 +0000

Today marks the end of our first month blogging! I have been so busy with work lately, including putting together 2 new corporate blogs for other clients, that I haven’t been able to post as much as I’d like, but it’s been a very interesting month of intense learning. During this month, I have installed 5 blogs from scratch, moved a blog 3 times to a different host, upgraded the blogs to the latest Wordpress 2.6, downloaded and experimented with dozens of themes, read thousands of articles and tips on blogging, and learned to customize themes by editing PHP. I’ve discovered the hard way that installing Wordpress on the root directory of your site breaks access to your WebDAV folders, required for comment-sharing on Acrobat. (Sorry, Music in Motion’s catalog department!) I have figured out where all the various components reside on Wordpress and how the structure works so it’s not quite as mysterious. Here are just some of the things I’ve learned about blogging and Wordpress so far:

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Twitter: How can I use it for my business?

Amy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:49:35 +0000

Twitter. It’s all over the news lately and has millions of subscribers. I signed up for an account when I first read about it last year, got confused, then bored, and never did even a single “tweet.”

Twitter is a “microblogging” tool that lets you post very short messages, or “tweets” (140 characters or less) about what you’re doing. You can let your friends know what you’re up to, or let anyone else “follow” you. And you can post and receive messages via email, IM and cell phone.

But the problem is that most of these short posts are meaningless, time-wasting drivel, which would be fine with me if they weren’t also so crushingly boring. Who on earth wants to read their friend’s dullest moment-by-moment details, never mind the details of dozens of strangers they may be following?

I figured I am probably missing something, in the same way that for years I didn’t get the point of text messaging, and I still don’t get the point of Facebook, Plurk, Pownce and Myspace in the business world. Also, just because boring people write boring things on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s the medium’s fault. So I spent a bit of time googling and thinking about it.

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Windows Live Writer: the best way to create your blog posts

Amy — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:00:56 +0000

You can log onto your Wordpress admin screen in your browser to create a blog post, but by far the slickest and easiest way for a Windows user to create and edit their blog posts is with Microsoft’s free and amazingly awesome Windows Live Writer.

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What is an RSS feed?

Amy — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:19:58 +0000

Think of an RSS feed as a well-trained dog fetching your morning newspaper.

Whenever you see this orange icon: that means there is an RSS feed available. I’d Rather Be Writing offers this simple and useful definition:

RSS stands for really simple syndication. It’s a way to automatically pull the latest posts from blogs into a news reader, such as Google Reader (my favorite) or Bloglines. That way you don’t have to visit each site individually to see what’s new.

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"What if I threw a blog and nobody came?"

Amy — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:12:13 +0000

One of my clients who sends out quarterly HTML newsletters to their customers recently asked me this question. They don’t have a blog yet. My response:

I wouldn’t worry about people not coming to your blog party. If you’ve got customers, then you’ve already got an audience for your blog.

In your next newsletter, let all your customers know about your new blog, and encourage them to visit your blog and subscribe to it via an RSS feed. That way, they will hear from you each time you post, rather than only once a quarter when they get your newsletter. You’ll always be fresh in their minds.

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