Sure fire secret tips to drive up traffic

Traffic – websites live and breathe with it – without, well we might as well all pack up and go home. I’ve increased traffic to studiowhiz.com by .. well a ton recently. The past week has seen this site having over 70,000 unique visitors stop by.

How do you do it? Well traditionally it’s hard to build up traffic and maintain it, however you can get spikes in traffic reasonably easily. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but here are my “Sure fire ways to drive up traffic to your site”.

1) Talk about Social Networks

Talk about social networking, typically talk about how to get more friends on Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon. These posts are big hitters as people love to brag “I have XXX number of friends”.

2) Tear apart a gadget

This one is a bit expensive – but will drive HUGE traffic to your site, that will stick around, at least long enough to view your pics. Tear apart a gadget. This of course is time sensitive, but if you are one of the first to have exploded views of the next iPhone on your website – you are guaranteed a traffic increase.

3) Top/Ultimate lists

The internet loves lists! Many of the top ranking posts on popurls.com are lists. Pick popular (related to your site) topics and write some lists. Of course having some meat on your site is going to help in the long run – otherwise lists are useless. NOTE be original, find your OWN content to fill your lists. No one likes seeing the SAME fonts, the SAME Photoshop tutorials!

Oh and you want to make big lists, top 5, top 10 are okay but lists with 20+ really pull in the traffic. Lists in the 100’s – are pure GOLD in the sense of traffic. Think 101 ways to make you a sex guru or 103+ Photoshop Tutorials, maybe 99 ways to build your Twitter brand – all gold!

4) (nsfw) – Not Safe for Work

Any hot blooded male will tell you the (nsfw) tag on any link is like a bright red button – just begging to be clicked. At work or not, (nsfw) is a 99.9% sure fire way to get people to visit your site. Of course you need to balance this up against your site’s purpose and target audience. But hey, there is no denying it brings traffic.

5) Rising/Falling stars

Facebook’s young CEO Mark Zuckerburg, Twitter’s Ev Williams, Robert Scobble, Allen Stern (who?), Diddy, Bruce Willis – talk about people, talk about trends. It works for the tabloids, gossip rags. Heck Perez Hilton does nothing but talk about famous people – usually falling, ungracefully from fame. Many of the web2.0 stars have alerts set up to spot articles with their name/brand in them & many will link to these. These posts can bring in huge hits in short term traffic, but links from these folks to your article bring in LONG TAIL traffic (think $$ gold mine!!)

6) Secrets of …

Every one loves a secret – if I know something you don’t you want to know it! It’s like forbidden fruit, and it’s how many of these online “get rich quick” schemes work. I know how to make more money in a day than you do in a year – pay me $9.99 now and I’ll tell you. Okay so we are not doing that but you are reading my secret traffic tips right now. How about “102 Secret tips of Photoshop Legends” or maybe “100 Secret Fonts you never knew existed?”

7) Digg, Delicious & StumbleUpon

“Build it and they will come” – well maybe, but certainly not “write it and they will visit”. Sorry you are going to have to do SOME work to spread the love of your link a little. Learn about link sharing through StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious (not forgetting Reddit and others – go find them my pretties). These tools can be huge in helping you to drive up traffic to your site. Foster that by including easy links (buttons), and encourage link building, pinging and trackbacks. (Note: check out our bonus video to learn how to leverage DIGG for your site)

8) Sensationalize – hype, extend

Another tip from the gossip rags – sensationalize. “I had Mark Zuckerburg’s Baby” – is going to probably grab some attention. Tabolids have been over hyping and preying on our nature to believe the extraordinary – so leverage that. Don’t do it all the time, and don’t over do it – but write carefully thought out titles. This is also known as Link Baiting – but hey, it works. Again what you do with the traffic is up to you & sometimes this isn’t traffic you want. But in the end the numbers don’t lie – if you need to make a splash, sensationalize: Instead of “Unaltered Britney Spears Photos” how about ” Britney Spears nude photos” – you then go on to explain the photos are nude, as they have no photoshop work done to them, not the … well you get the idea.

Summary

I could go on and on, but that wouldn’t leave room for me to share one last secret – “REVISITS” eg: “Secret Traffic Generation Tips – Revisited”.

Feel free to share your tips in the comments – remember this is a DO FOLLOW site, so feel free to link to your OWN list of Traffic Generating Secrets as part of your comment (just don’t spam)!

Here’s a great video showing how to leverage DIGG for your site:

Best Practices in Social Media Integration for Web Publishers and Content Providers (Web 2.0 Expo – Bob Buch, Digg) from Steffan Antonas on Vimeo.

DoFollow – SEO?

A while back I read a post one some random blog about “DoFollow” which in a nut shell means that links in your blog comments have the <pre>rel=”nofollow”</pre> attribute removed from links.

I thought it was a good idea but promptly forgot about it until my good mate at WebHelp blogged this morning about adding a plugin to remove these.

So, 10 mins over lunch I thought I’d give it a shot.

From now on Studiowhiz.com & italkmagazine.com will both support the “You Comment; I Follow” movement. If you post a comment on either of these sites, we’ll share some link love with you. This applies to both the default link on your name along with any link you post in the comment.

Be warned however: Akismet is still our friend and spamming our comments is FROWNED upon (will get your comment deleted).

So, comment away, knowing we are helping your site gain in page popularity.

Links

• WebHelp.co.nz blog post about DoFollow
• Do Follow Bloggers
• DoFollow wordpress plugin for removing rel=”nofollow”

NZ Internet Blackout – links & more

Okay, okay .. so let me get this straight. There is some hoo haa about some law in some little country called New Zealand, that might stop some people from what now? .. Oh wait, maybe I should pay a bit more attention.

Sections 92A and C of the amended Copyright Act establish a guilt upon accusation principle that can see anyone accused of “copyright infringement” getting his or her Internet connection severed.

[ via geekzone ]

So err, okay what now?

I don’t fully get this bit of law but it goes something like this: If you download or upload copyright material, the law means you can have your internet disconnected, no questions asked. Okay, well that’s kinda okay right? But no, it gets better: If you are ACCUSED of downloading or uploading copyright material (no evidence needed, guilty first) you can have your internet disconnected, site removed or …. – what??

Okay, so this is pretty bad – from what I read, you could accuse a popular newspaper (for example) of having copyright material on their site and “poof” no more number 1 news website.

Alright, that’s enough from me … here are a bunch of links for you to read

• The Techsploder @ Geekzone explains the law
• Rich @ Webhelp shares his thoughts
• Coffee.Geek take a look at the Section 92a law
• Now Public
• Creative Freedom – the official site
• Creative Freedom – the petition
• NeoWin
• Facebook group
• Check out Eventfinder’s Twitter followers – how many are blacked out??
• #blackout trending on Twitter
• #s92a trending on Twitter

I”m sure there are HEAPS more out there, feel free to add them in the comments & I’ll link them up.

2009 a year of change

Yeah I know, you don’t have to tell me, it’s been very quiet around here. Very.

It’s not that I don’t have things to say, it’s tricky finding time to balance things & Studiowhiz has suffered because of it. I thought I’d give you a heads up as to what’s going on.

Recently I took over a site called iPhone Source and started to overhaul it, working on creating new media relationships, reaching out to PR companies and such like. The site had a growing traffic, and was attracting more and more interest – however it had no relationships at all with Apple related companies. 

I embarked on this journey & late in Jan we had a rug pulled out from under us. Apple kicked us out of their affiliate program – an important source of our income. So we embarked on a name & url change to become iTalk Magazine (www.italkmagazine.com). We have a great group of supporting companies along side us now and we are racing into a fantastic year.

In fact right now, we have over $1000 worth of iPhone accessories you could win – check it out now.

This site is taking a lot of my spare time, continuing to develop relationships with accessory companies, expanding the content on the site, editing the content from our team and doing all the advertising.

On top of this I’m trying a couple of new things this year. My personal Twitter account is (as many of you know) @oo00_Mr_K_00oo which is just me rambling, however I’ve started a new account called @bible_in_a_year – this is a place where every day I’ll have approx. 100 chars worth of comment for a given bible passage (usually just a verse).  Why? I guess it’s about time I started to wear my faith on my sleeve a little more. We’ll see where that goes …. I do have a couple of other projects based around faith that I’m hoping to build up this year.

Of course I have a normal day job – so all of my online projects have to be done out of work hours – which of course when you’re a Dad & husband you don’t really have a lot of time ey!

Oh, did I mention I’m putting myself through a few languages this year?

• French – need to brush up on my French so will soon be taking some courses at a local high school
• Mandarin/Hakka – we are teaching our daughter Hakka, so I’m trying to pick up these too, after 9 years of marriage it’s probably about time ey!
• C, Objective C & Coca Touch – I’m embarking on a journey (you’ll be able to follow it on iTalk Magazine) to go from a web developer to iPhone developer

So, how often will Studiowhiz be updated – at least once a month, fingers crossed more often.

See ya around the blogs folks

Get cheap international flights

Have I got a tip for you today. This article is going to tell you how YOU can get really cheap (think 50% off retail) international flights. Locations like San Fran, LA, London, Vancouver, Beijing and many more.

Air New Zealand’s Grab A Seat has teamed up with the guys I work for and for today only (actually that’s not really true, it’s the next 24 hours starting every Thursday from now till Christmas) to have fantastic international long haul flights up for sale starting at $1 – yes $1.

$1 International Flight Auctions

As I write this there are 3 auctions listed but I know there will be many more added during the day today, so head over now (click to visit the grab a seat $1 auctions) and start planning where you could go. There is one flight on there, buy today and you could be in San Fran on Saturday!!

Links:

• Grab A Seat $1 Auctions on Sella.co.nz
• Follow Sella on Twitter to keep up to date

Get more Twitter followers

Twitter, the complete and utter waste of time – or is it? Initially when Twitter first came on the scene I avoided it like the plague, it was nothing if not a way to stroke your ego and let everyone know what you are doing.

Today however, I’m addicted. It lives on my phone, it lives on my desktop. I don’t post all the time, and I don’t read all the tweets – but it’s there. I’ve met new people, reconnected with old friends and learned heaps from having Twitter in my online life.

I frequently ready about news events before they hit the media, I get updates from my favorite blogs faster than the RSS Feeds can update. I interact with some of the “names” of the industry and I explore opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist (like having the opportunity to help beta test Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check (buy it on Amazon) well before it was hitting the publishers – great book btw).

This morning Guy published an article about getting more twitter followers, which is interesting. See you can measure your Twitter success by the number of followers you have, or as Scobleizer suggests, you can measure yourself by who you follow (which is the school of thought I subscribe too).

Guy does give some good pointers but I’m not sure I fully follow him. Following the “smores” is one thing I do (mainly because they usually have good stuff to say) & yes I often interact with them – but I don’t think it’s bought me anymore Twitter Cred. It is fun however to get a response from an “industry legend” when you are a no body (hey, I’m someone too!)

His point about being a Subject Expert really goes beyond Twitter. All authors and writers will tell you “Write about what you know about” – want to blog? Write about what you know, you are an expert in something, even if it’s just walking to the bus.  One point I do like (and will have to try more) is use Twitter Search to find topics & tweets you can add to. This also applies to blogging. Find something someone else has said, Link to it & then add your own comments.

One thing I don’t agree with is the use of a face based avatar – Guy says make your avatar stand out, and you shouldn’t use a pic of your car. Well, my Twitter list is full of faces, so my car Avatar stands our 100 Miles away.

The other comment I don’t agree with, repeating your tweets & using tools to auto post feeds. I do enjoy Guy’s posts but I’ve unsubscribed almost all others who do this, and I’ve come close to unfollowing Guy. It’s annoying to see the same Tweet 3 times in a 24 hour period. Sure I can (and do) ignore these but it basically turns your twitter feed in to a whore for links, and not something innately useful. I find I have to filter through Guy’s posts to find ones he’s actually written – rather than a Bot automatically posting something from Alltop. Use these tools carefully.

Still, I’m going to give some things a shot, and I think I will try the Repeating my tweets, more likely though I’ll have more than a 24hr break in these – kinda like reposting old blog links.

Anyway, I do need more followers, so go on, follow me: http://twitter.com/oo00_Mr_K_00oo

Links you need to follow

Here are all the links you need to follow from this post:

• Follow Mr K on Twitter
• Follow Guy Kawasaki on Twitter
• Follow Robert Scoble on Twitter
• Twitter home page
• Guy’s post “Get more followers on Twitter”

BTW: follow me, and I’ll follow you – what goes around, comes around :)

The Challenge – Day 9

So it’s day 9 of my challenge to get myself fit and ready to swim the Auckland Harbour and I have to say I’m not sure how I’m doing. 

It’s one thing to say I’m going to do the swim, it’s another thing to get yourself up early in the morning, to try and get a body that hasn’t really been fit in over 20+ years (I’ve not really been fit since late teens) into shape for a 2.8k swim.

The first week was horrific, not for the exercise but that I got sick, real sick, real fast. I had eaten something that .. well caused me to have massive stomach cramps, to spend way to long in the “small room” – so wasn’t strong enough to really do what I wanted.

Now I’m pushing harder to get myself in shape and am happy to report the 100PushUp challenge is going okay, and on Monday I managed to swim further, faster than I had before.

Still with only 4 weeks to go I’m pushing to get myself ready.

Blog Action Day – just do something

So many many blogs (over 9,000) are now participating in Blog Action Day, a day of writing about and discussing Poverty in the world. We often think when you mention the word Poverty of … well of some far flung country that someone like Galdof or Bono talk about – it’s out of site, out of mind.

I’m lucky enough (dpnding on how you look at it) in Auckland, New Zealand – a beautiful city with great harbours, sailing and on a day like today – it’s a great sunny place. But even here in this city we have a huge gap between those that have and those that don’t. From those who have a house to live in and those on the street.

See when poverty is thought about in the sense of a 3rd world country, it’s kinda nice and easy to package it up, donate to Kiva.org or World Vision or …. but when you remember it’s in your back yard, now you can do something about it.  We don’t hear much in New Zealand about those on the street – it’s easy to think that homeless is simply something for some large US or EU city. 

Auckland does have a large (and growing) homeless sector. Manukau City (part of greater Auckland) is full of kids (yes KIDS) living on the street, hungry for life, for food … for love.

A handful of weeks back the church I attend took their youth group out on a Wednesday night (a school night, Oh the Horror), to down town. The kids challenged us in the congregation to help – it was our job to gather some clothing, sleeping bags etc for them to then pass out. What a fantastic opportunity!! One night in these young peoples lives, gives them a glimpse and an opportunity to reach out. Sure they all went home to their showers and beds, but who knows what impact these type of evenings might have on them.

I remember one time visiting in Malaysia we were heading into Burger King for lunch and I felt a tap on my elbow. This young street kid looked up at me, big eyes – hunger written on his face. He was begging for money – and one thing we were told is you DO NOT give them money.  Sadly (and I’m not proud of this) I shook my head and continued into Burger King. The child left.

Racked with guilt I ran outside to look for him, I wanted to buy him lunch. It hadn’t been 2 minutes but he was gone. His face in my mind however is not. It haunts me to this day to think I was so stupid that I didn’t take his hand and bring him in for lunch – who cares what the “system says”. I want to cry as I write this – I felt and still feel like CRAP – because I let someone else tell me how to treat this precious child.

I’ve been back to Malaysia a few times since – I’ll be back again for christmas this year. I will be watching, looking for opportunities again & I am now exploring opportunities for the future (nearish I hope) to start a mission in Malaysia working with local government specifically focused at educating and helping these kids.

What about you?

It’s Blog Action Day, you (like me) may not be able to take action today, but you can take action. Next time your local church or group is working with your community to help those less fortunate - do something. next time you see someone on the street needing help - do something. Next time you …. just do something, anything – “a fire starts with a spark,  a waterfall with a single drop”

“Take action – just do something!“

Blog Action Day Part II

So yesterday someone wrote a comment saying it would be better if we actually did something about poverty. I guess in a way after re-reading my post that it sounded like I wasn’t encouraging this. Yesterday was a post written from experience a post written to challenge the way we currently look at our own lives.

I grew up as a mission kid, which means, I grew up living with parents on the mission field in other countries. We spent many years living in different parts of Papua New Guinea, from reasonably well off areas, to the poorest of the poor. Some of the happiest times of my youth were spent in the street with the local kids, just playing. Toys consisted of recycled rubbish from someone else. One of the best toys we had was made up from two sticks and a used tire. We’d run around the neighbor hood pushing the tire in front of us having races.

But see, I’d always go home at the end of the day to food (albeit it food on a very tight budget) a warm bath and bed. My friends often went home, but not always to a happy, healthy place.

Today I still have a heart for helping, and I have my dreams to work with those less fortunate – but for now I’m looking at ways I can help from my life right now. One thing people always say when writing is “write something that you know about, something you are passionate about”.  Well I think it’s the same when it comes to helping others. If you are the sort of person who enjoys working in a soup kitchen – then go and do it. For me, right now my passion is business. I really enjoy working with people to help their business grow.

So I’m going to focus on my passion by working with the likes of www.kiva.org and www.endpoverty.org who specialise in loans to help equip small business. Blog Action Day is one day, it’s one day to put some extra effort into continuing to raise awareness, raise funds and to do something about poverty.

It’s one day – but what about the 364 other days in the year? What are you going to do? 

Tell you what, rather than moan about how “writing a blog” doesn’t help reduce poverty, why not write about what YOU are doing? Look at the others involved in Blog Action Day (over 8,000 now) and see what they are doing – get in behind SOMEONE who is trying to make a difference, and lets see what YOU can do.

For those of you reading this post who are involved in Blog Action Day – feel free to leave a short comment saying what you are doing and a link to your site so others can find & read your story.

Blog Action Day

So this year I’ve decided (along with over 7,700 other blogs) to join the Blog Action Day on the 15th of October. This is an opportunity for bloggers around the world to discuss and explore options for reducing or dare I say eradicating poverty from our world.

Now I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to write about yet for this day, but I’ll certainly write something. While I may now live in New Zealand, I did spend part of my childhood living in Papua New Guinea and I’ve seen first hand what poverty can be like. I’ve seen a country with wealth be ripped apart by war, and I’ve seen people living with nothing.

The thing is, the people of poverty are not like you and I, they are different. Some of the most caring, most generous people I’ve known have been what the world would class as poor. These people who have little or nothing, give. Not only do they give, but they do it with a smile and a genuine love. 

Maybe there is something in this, maybe we in the rich nations have something to learn here. We bitch and moan when we can’t pay for our Subscriber TV, or when the power company puts the price up, or when gas prices go up – and yet we still drive to the supermarket to get pizza and beer to eat in front of our tv’s. We are bitter, upset and yet we still have what we wanted.

The friends I made who have nothing, are hurting – there is no replacing that. But they don’t moan about it, they don’t complain – they simple get on with living, with eeking out an existence from whatever they can. Yes they would love to have more food, more warmth, more security – but they also realise something we forget. Life is for the living.

So I challenge you with this:

rich or poor, are you doing the best you can do with what you have today? Are you living life thankful for each new day? Are you working to better yourself, to get through today with a smile?

If you want to get involved with Blog Action Day – go here. If you want to donate then go here to learn more now.

Web Awards – Mashable?

So I saw this morning that the guys over at Mashable are running their Open Web Awards again this year – which is great. It’s a wonderful thing for the web community & I think they did a fantastic job last year.

This year they are opening up & allowing more blog partners to come on board with them, and I’d LOVE to be there. It wouldn’t have been that long ago that Studiowhiz.com could have waltzed in there and been a partner, but given this site fell away last year I’m having to rebuild.

So, I need your help – yes you. I want you to add this link ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/StudiowhizFeeds ) to your RSS feed reader. It’s that simple, just add that link – as a bonus you are going to get some of the GREAT content from Studiowhiz.com in your reader too.

I ONLY need 500 subscribers, just 500, if I can get 1 out of every 3 people that visit today I’ll be there. Go on, you know you want too. Why not subscribe via email? Subscribe to studiowhiz by Email

I’ll update this with a feed count shortly!!

alltop.com – behind the logic

So yesterday I had an interesting day. It started out with a Tweet and email from Guy Kawasaki introducing his new www.alltop.com website. Now strictly speaking alltop.com is not new, it has existed as a collection of topics like mac.alltop.com for a while now.

So what was Guy on about? Well the team behind alltop.com had created a new frontend that unites the seperate collections together into one easy place to find data.

Simple enough right? Well … no, I in my usual fashion I mentioned something about how I felt the site was flawed. It wasn’t as user friendly and certainly wasn’t giving the results expected. So low and behold I got into a little of a … shall we say ‘discussion’ with Guy via Twitter, Techcrunch and finally via email (which is probably where it should have started and stopped).

Lesson One: pick the right medium to discuss with someone (doesn’t matter who it is) their website

So, what is alltop?

In Guy’s own words:

“Alltop is a directory to source news not a search engine of source news“

Okay that makes perfect sense right? I can stop writing now? Hmm no. See this is still not really what the average punter is going to understand – can you explain that to your mum?

So I tried to do a search on alltop, I wanted to find Mac news (or feeds, as alltop.com is at it’s base a feed aggregator). I performed this search and my results were not what I expected.

Example of alltop.com search results for "mac"

Scanning through this I saw nothing that screamed out “Mac stuff .. in here“. I wasn’t looking for iPhone stuff, nor Mobile, Tech or Podcasts and certainly not Windows. I’m not sure what MacIntosh (Steve) is. I’m looking for Apple Mac items.

So I talked to Guy about this, and he explained it this way (NOTE: I wanted to sketch this cartoon style, but 1) I can’t draw and 2) I can’t draw – well okay I can but I’m lazy this morning – sorry Guy).

Explaining Alltop – Borders style

You walk into your local Borders (or other book store). The clerk says “Hi”, you grunt and say, “I’m looking for Magazines all about Mac’s”.

I'm looking for Mac magazines

Now at this point IF the clerk was Google, he (or she) would reply “Well MacWorld has an article on the new iPod Nano and Byte has an article on programming for OS X Carbon while MacUser has some tips for getting more out of photoshop on the Mac”.

alltop.com doesn’t do this, instead the clerk provides you with the racks of magazines, showing you where the Mac type magazines live.

Information is stored in racks - like magazine racks

(Note: the pic above is from the matrix if you hadn’t guessed, with racks of stuff flying in to surround you and the store clerk)

You are told this rack has Mac stuff in it. And the clerk wanders off to help someone else. It’s up to you to scan the results and find what it is you are looking for.

Does this work?

Here is where I am torn. On one hand sure the metaphor works … in a bookstore, but I’m not sure it works online. Or should I say, here is where the naming of your “racks” needs to be clear.

For example: alltop.com have a rack of magazines called Windows, where you find various magazines with a Windows theme. Likewise you have a rack called Linux with as you’d expect Linux magazines. Sadly the Mac/Apple rack is called MacIntosh (Steve) and yes this is a joke (try searching for jobs).

Categories need to reflect the general understanding of what a topic is called. Guy mentioned last night “For those who don’t get the joke, we are willing to loose them” – which he might well be, but if you are building something – make sure you name your categories, or racks, or sections, to something that has relevance to your target audience.

Summary

Once I get past the search not being a real search – in that it doesn’t search it simply tells you where to look, and once I get past the MacIntosh (Steve) thing, I do think that alltop.com is onto something. I do think it’s the sort of site my Mother (who is a school teacher) would go to and say, “Hmm I need science stuff” and alltop.com is going to say “Great, here is a collection of science related feeds for you to browse and select from”.

Will it miss things out? Yes, as Guy admited, if you are looking for Mac magazines and Byte (which is in Programming) has an article on OS X Carbon development, you are not going to find it in the Mac section – but then, you probably where looking for Programming anyway.

studiowhiz.com behind the scenes

I’ve now owned the www.studiowhiz.com domain since 16 Jan 2001, that’s coming up almost 8 years already and the site has been through a number of ups & downs since then.  I actually started the site as go.to/studioworks.com before I could afford the real domain. Of course you’ll have noticed I couldn’t get StudioWorks, and so studiowhiz it became. (funny story, go.to/studioworks.com still sends about 3 people a day to the site – not sure where from).

Originally slated as my place to share my knowledge, studiowhiz.com eventually grew into a fully fledged web & multimedia community, it even became my part-time job for 3 years while I ran Kiwi Interactive alongside. The internet archive (wayback machine) gives some snapshots at times throughout the life of this site, take a look at 2001, 2002, 2003 (complete with 3D animated character) and 2005 for some of the design over the years. (full history here).

I’ll admit once I wrapped up Kiwi Interactive, I no longer had the time to continue daily hands on involvement with Studiowhiz that the community needed. A series of hacks on the forums gave me headaches I didn’t want. I struggled to monetize the site (too wide spread focus), and it burnt a hole in my pocket (was costing over US$600 a month in bandwidth and brining in US$120 in advertising – ouch). So … I shot it in the head – much to the disapointment of many of my dear studiowhiz friends.

In the past few years the site has wandered around, and as some of you will be aware I recently toyed with brining back other authors and trying to rebuild a community here – but again, I don’t and the authors I talked too, don’t have the time and effort to dedicate to it that it needs.

So what about now?

If you hadn’t guessed I’ve done a full reskin (and yes there is still some work needing done – like searcch), and created a site I’d be happy to visit & read. I’ll post on here things from life, web, marketing, business, life, technology, life and well…. life.  Things I’m interested in – that you maybe as well.

So what have I done & why?

When I set about to create this skin I wanted to make the site funky. I wanted to try some new things and I wanted to bring into the site some of the social media stuff I tinker with (hence Twitter & Flickr on the home page). I no longer do html, css and design as part of my job, however I work along some some people that I can safely say are at the top of their game in NZ (Darren131 -  design, html & css guru, WebHelp – leading SEO and User Experience fella, and others). I guess I kinda wanted to see if I could still play at that level.

Fonts:
You might know I’m doing some Presentation Design at the moment where I’m learning to play more with typography. I wanted to trial some of this in the site header and so I went looking for fonts.

I decided to explore using the Vista Fonts and get away with using typography to add visual elements to the site header.

Example of Vista Fonts in header

For those of you who don’t have the Vista Fonts – this is what the header SHOULD look like – and NO I’m not (yet) allowing for other fonts in the CSS. This currently has a reflection in the header too, if I change the fonts this gets harder to do.

For body font I explored bigger than normal letters with decent whitespace around to make the site easier on my aging eyes – someone said “Your site is BIG” – my response is my eyes hurt, I wanted it to be easier for me!

Colours:
I have always loved colours, but struggled when it comes to picking ones to work together. I loved the freshness of this blue and so ran with it right through the site. Darren131 suggested I look at additional colours and so with his help introduced the Orange – I’ll continue to explore opportunities to have colour highlights throughout the site. (Thanks man! I value the input!)

Platform:
In a word – wordpress. It has it’s negatives, but after playing with it for a while you can pretty much bend it to your will easily and if you can’t no doubt there is a plugin to do it. The other reason I picked it, there is a GREAT tool for the iPhone to allow me to write and publish from the phone. The current version is SO much stronger than previous – and the admin is hugely improved (IF you can find everything!)

Integration:
Expect soon to see an iPhone optimized version – just because I can (or will be able too soon), and expect to see more rich content here as I’ve now got better flickr, YouTube and various other platforms integrated.

Marketing, Sharing & RSS:
In a nutshell – no. I know it wasn’t a question but I’ll answer it if it was. I’m not going to do any marketing or pushing of this site. If you want to Stumble something or Digg it, or whatever – go for it. It’s on a cloud based server so it’ll handle without a hitch – but I’m not going to encourage you to do it – that’s cheating. Sharing, RSS – meh, I’ve played with most RSS readers and personally I still love to visit the website. I’ll read Autoblog everyday – ON their site, I just find it a better user experience!  The RSS is still here if you really want it, and sure I will look at adding the link in the footer – but meh!

Future?

Who knows, in the past 12 months (almost to the day) I became a Dad and that changes lifes priorities. I also want to try new things (cake decorating probably be a full time option though). I’m working on my first novel (I’ve published technical books before), I’m starting to speak again (on christian subjects rather than technical) and I’m exploring life for what it can offer – rather than chasing the dollars for the sake of dollars.

I’ll write here what interests me. I have some future ideas for blogs such as reviewing Alpha & Beta apps, comments on tech gadgets, Mac’s & their software, web trends, blogging tips, web tips, business tips, marketing etc – things that interest me. If you want to come along for the journey, you are more than welcome.

Studiowhiz.com - a blog by Mr K, where you are welcome to read, comment and .. well what ever else you do with a weblog.

redesign goes live

Well after a few hours, some time in photoshop, html and css, I’m setting the new look live today. I can’t promise it’s 100% done yet, but it’s certainly a lot better than the default Word Press theme.

I’ve taken styling cues from a handful of my favourite blogs & sites and have come up with what I feel looks like, well a half decent design. I’ve gone for big readable fonts, lots of white space and a sprinkling of icons here and there for flavour.

I hope you like it, with this new design I am again trying to blog more – won’t promise anything every day but hopefully something once a week.

I’ll leave it here for now, drop me a comment let me know what you think :)

Why email on the iphone sucks

The iPhone is a solid device, with many standout features that in my mind place ot above that of my old iMage windows mobile.

However some things are well kist annoying. Take the email for example.

I quite like the email although I can not use the exchange feature becuase we use a Zimbra server. iPhone mail and zimbra have a conflict which causes a loop when syncing contacts. This nearly crashed our mail server!

So I use gmail only on the iPhone. This is great when on wifi … Although this morning I checked email ok the phone then at work on the laptop. Now I notice 2 emails that I read and deleted are still on the phone even after cjeking mail again on it.

Now one last comment … I have a mate who travels a lot. He uses roaming to stay connected. He checks his email and because there is no way to say “only download 3kb” his iPhone will download the entire inbox … Which has cost him hugely in the past. Now be travels with two phones.

If the iPhone really is for the busines or truely mobile user it has a little more growing up to do.