Ok so I ' ve been blogging for about a year now, and while I haven ' t been as successful ( or as faithful ) as I would have liked to be, I do believe that I ' ve learned a thing or 2 about blogging, and I ' ve certainly identified some thing that I would do differently... If you ' re planning on starting a blog of your own, you ' re in for quite a ride... but the feeling of starting something like a blog is definitely one that I won ' t forget ( kinda like the same feeling one gets from building something really cool out of Lego, for me anyway )... I don ' t think it ' s easy to get it perfect the first time around, in fact, this blog was the fifth blog that I ever created, and even though it is a marked improvement from the other 4, it ' s still far from perfect... So don ' t worry too much, just start and everything else will fall into place... Having said that, read the rest of this post, and maybe you ' ll pick up a few pointers that could make your blogging life easier... What I would do differently if I were to start over: Have a clear plan for my blog ' s theme - This is critical... If you ' re starting a personal blog, then this point isn ' t so important, but if you plan on turning some sort of profit from your blog, either from monetization or selling later on, then this point is absolutely vital... I ' m always kicking myself for having neglected this in the beginning... SEO doesn ' t have to be such a huge deal either, I know it can seem daunting, but basically all you ' re doing is deciding on a key - phrase ( or several ) and then just adding it anywhere you can... As it stands, I don ' t even have a key - phrase that I ' m targeting ( if you have any ideas for key - phrases that suit this blog, please let me know )... Curb the over - enthusiasm - I know the feeling, you start your blog with at least 10 posts in mind that the world needs to read today... The reality is that nobody is going to even see them, EVER... I don ' t think that many people have read those early posts, and as a result I quickly ran out of things to write about... Pace yourself, that burst of information overload that you experience in the beginning is good, but save those posts and publish them over time... It is much better to publish 3 posts a week, then it is to publish 15 a week for the first month, and 1 a month ( if that ) thereafter... Beware of monetization overkill - For a lot of us, we get attracted to blogging because of the prospect of doing something fun and making money in the process... Nobody likes a blog that is full of ads, so you much rather sacrifice the few potential cents that could be earned, and concentrate on content, and building a loyal reader base... That might seem a little silly, but think of it as handing out your business card... So get active, blogging is about community... … View Post »

In my quest to create a perfect environment for my blogging activities, I decided to look for a text editor that allows me to write posts away from my browser and save them onto my PC ' s hard drive... I believe the correct term is ' desktop blogging client ', or something in that vein... After all, if I really don ' t want to use the wordpress editor, I can always use ScribeFire ( awesome firefox plugin )... You see, this morning I started my day by checking out ProBlogger.net, and I happened across a video where Darren explains how he goes about taking a post from an idea to a published post... The video was very insightful, and I definitely suggest that you check it out... After I saw that, I kinda got into thinking how cool it would be to have a desktop editor ( like word ) where I could start writing posts, and save them onto the desktop till they were ready to be published... That way I could do what Darren talks about, which is have a folder full of post ideas, except that when I refine the idea to the point that it can be published, all I have to do is hit the publish button and magic happens... And to save you some time, I ' m going to be a pal and list the three editors that appealed the most to me ( so far ) Windows Live Writer - This one looks real nice, and I ' m actually writing this post with this editor... The one thing that stood out for me, and that I don ' t like about it, is that you can ' t specify which directory you want to save your drafts into, they automatically go into ' my documents\my weblog posts\drafts '... The reason why I like it, is cause it ' s easy to use and looks so cool... If you want a better review for ' windows live writer ' check out this post... It ' s a very ugly looking editor, and not very user friendly, judging by my very limited user experience... BlogDesk - BlogDesk will probably become my editor of choice, it is very simple, user friendly, and I can choose the directory to save my drafts into, and it even looks goodish ( not as good as option number 1 though )... That ' s it, I know it isn ' t a very detailed review of either of them, but that ' s because you have to test them out for yourself... Oh, and in case you ' re wondering why it ' s so important for me to specify where I save my stuff, it ' s not cause I ' m organized or anything, cause I ' m not, but it ' s actually because I have like a phobia of ' my documents ' I ' ve never saved anything there in my life, and I only go in there when it ' s an emergency, true story;... … View Post »

Hi guys, in the last video I mentioned a bit about paddings and margins in css, but I fear that I may have left things a little more confusing... … View Post »

Hi guys, here ' s the second part of my blogger template tutorial... In the first tutorial I showed you how to resize your template, and in this one I ' m basically going to show you how you can add a header image, and also how you can get rid of some of the unnecessary borders... Cool, hope you guys liked it, and don ' t forget to give me some feedback, even if the tutorial wasn ' t helpful to you, I ' d still like to know what you think of my style, and what I can improve for future videos... … View Post »

This is my first video tutorial, and it ' s the first in a series of tutorials where I will go through making your generic blogger template look kickass... … View Post »

I know I ' ll be using this tool... I just realized that I should probably check how my blog looks in explorer, and as always, they never fail to disappoint ( partly cause I only checked it on IE6, it looks ok on IE7 )... If you ' re using firefox, please stay that way, and if you aren ' t maybe now is a good time to start... Basically, with this tool you can take screen shots of what your site will look like in different browsers, that should save me some time having to always load it up in explorer ( the less I see of that browser the better )... … View Post »

Both those terms basically mean leveraging your mistakes and using them as a springboard for greater success... I first heard about this concept from Dawud Miracle over at dmiracle.com, and it ' s actually something that most of us know subconsciously but we sometimes find it hard to implement... For a lot of people, the thing that holds them back from any sort significant success, is all the insignificant projects that they hold on to... Typically 80% of what we do only contributes toward 20% of our success, so by quitting some of those projects that fall in the 80% category, we can actually focus more on the 20% that giving us the results... … View Post »

I stumbled across this page of ' Calvin and Hobbes ' today, and I just had to share it... You can check out the rest of them here... … View Post »

Block Posters is a very very cool tool... Some people might think its a bit useless, but I have a friend that would have been very pleased to find out about it a few days ago... Basically you can upload a photo, then you slice it up in as many parts as you want, then you download the slices in A4 size, after that you can do what you like... One of the coolest things about this little tool is that there is absolutely nothing else to it, you don ' t have to register an account or anything like that, everything is pretty painless and straightforward... … View Post »