Your new theme is finished and live. You’ve squashed some remaining bugs. Maybe even added your favicon that was forgotten. Your blog is ready for the flood of traffic that is about to pour in, except for one thing. It’s time to optimize your WordPress theme so that visitors get a snappy load time when they visit, and so that your host doesn’t come to it’s knees if you get a flood of traffic from something like Digg or SlashDot. This post will show how I optimized this blog and reducing its size by over 1MB and shaving over 3 seconds from its load time, with a step-by-step guide with screenshots of what I did. Finish Reading »

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer the last few days for an upcoming post and I wanted to give a quick write-up about it.

What is Windows Live Writer?

Live Writer is a free desktop blog editor. It can write and publish posts without having to log into WordPress admin. Finish Reading »

The blogosphere is ripe with list and collection style posts. Some days it feels like every 3rd post in my feed reader starts with a number. I'm posting one of those tomorrow and can't help but feel a little crummy about it. Update: it's tomorrow and here's the post. Finish Reading »

Would you rather have 1000 people that regularly visit your blog, yet never interact with it and share it with others, or only 100 people that love it, comment on every post, give you ideas and tell others of your blog? It's a simple quantity vs. quality dilemma. It's easy to focus on the quantity because it's easily measured. You can see if your RSS subscribers are going up or down, but you can't quantify whether your visitors like your blog more this week than last week. Finish Reading »

Note: I am shameless stealing the Moral of the Story titling for this post from Naomi's post titles of the same format because it just fits.

Who are you writing your posts to?

I know you may say the obvious, "My readers, of course." But what if that post you just hit the publish button for were to be read by 26,638 more people than you expected. And that those people have no idea of who you are other than what you just wrote in that post. That might change a few things wouldn't it. You might want to double check some grammar or clarify some things so that your ideas and thoughts don't get misconstrued. Maybe you would position yourself differently. Place yourself as an expert or show your vulnerabilities. Or maybe you wouldn't even hit publish.

I would just like to reflect on how having my What I Hate About Design post getting dugg to the front page has influenced me and hopefully help you consider some things to improve your post writing in case the Digg monster comes knocking.
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I just got finished reading this How to Grow Your Blog post and found the poem at the end very inspirational.

If for some strange reason you read this blog and not problogger, here's the poem.

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1. Your Homepage is Your Magazine Cover

The goal of every magazine is to get me to purchase it, but the problem is that it only has a few seconds to entice me as my eyes glance around the magazine stand. Your homepage should strive for the same goals. Show the best of yourself in a few seconds. If it doesn't look nice or if I can't see what I'll find inside, I'll bounce right out.

Helpful Reading:

First Impressions Matter

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A Blog is a Blog is a Blog. Right?

Wrong. Each blog can have different goals and can cater to a different audience. Each blog needs to focus on different things to be optimized for success. Let's look at the two broadest types of blogs and explain their differences.

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I <3 Blogging.

I know my love isn't seen here too much, but I am just enamored with entire realm of the blogosphere. I have been reading any free eBook I can get about it. Adding more and more feeds to my Google Reader. Making a custom WordPress Theme for a niche blog I started. And starting preliminary work on another blog I hope to become my flagship blog. I've also gotten two of my friends to start their own blogging based off my zeal for it.

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Recently I've been following the comments for a David Airey Blogging Transparency post. I noticed that many commentors had sidenotes relating to David's blog no longer using gravatars in the comments. I just have a couple things on my mind relating to the use of gravatars in blog comments.

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