Personally I think Brain has achieved well with his Blog and it should be considered as a good source of inspiration for the future.

The unusual design appears to not use categories, but only tags as the organisational methods, with each and all other information hidden away at the bottom of the website. Inspiring?  I think so.  Unique?  Definitely.  What do you think?

On the 1st of January I announced that I would be launching a new big project this year.  This isn’t it.

I have been working on a new project with a good friend, Luke Barnes.  A few weeks ago we launched a new website, aimed at Mac users, focusing on increasing your productivity on your Mac.  The project is AppFlow.

To celebrate the launch of AppFlow we will be running a one week contest, a simple give-away of the GTD application, Things.

Image by Viernest

We all want to drive more traffic to our Wordpress Blogs.  In fact, the want for traffic doesn’t stop with Wordpress.  However you manage your website, your want traffic.  You don’t even have to be using a CMS.

So, as always the question is how can you get more traffic?  Now, getting traffic is one thing, but the real question is how you can get appropriate traffic.  If I had the choice between 20, 000 visitors that couldn’t give a damn about my content and one one visitor who would be interested in the content I would go with the single visitor anytime.  Why?  The single visitor would come back, and participate in discussion.  The 20, 000 would leave after a few seconds and never come back.

That is the difference between loyal visitors and other visitors.

Getting The Traffic

Getting traffic is all about links.  The more links back to your website you have the more likely one is to be seen by someone who will care.  The trick is to put them in the right place.  For example, posting links to this website on a cooking website might get me a few visitors, but surely posting a link to this site on a website that many Wordpress users use would be more appropriate.  Like Wordpress.org, for example.

If the cooking site got me more loyal visitors, I’d be shocked.

At the end of the day, we want people who care about our content, and those people tend to search for it.  Using search engines like Google, or Yahoo. But, this then brings a new question.  How to work up the ranks.  How do I get on the front page of result on a search engine.  That’s not so easy.

So, we want to up our ranks on the big Search Engines now.  That also comes back to links (you spotted the pattern yet?).  The more links back to your site you get, the more popular a Search Engine thinks your content is, and so it moves your content up the ranks, and eventually into the front page.  That the proper way of doing it anyway.

The other way is to advertise on a Search Engine.  That will put you on every page.  But it will cost.

Search Engine Optimisation also comes into play when people begin to search for content online.  But, links is just a small bit of it.  At the end of the day a Search Engine is just trying to serve to most relevant content to a customer (the person who searches) and allow them to proceed to view it.  SEO, at it’s roots is all about links and keywords.  And the more relevant keywords you have on your website, the better.  For example, in this case I need traffic who are interested in Wordpress, and so I use the word Wordpress a lot.

Some help to start you off

Here are some suggestions to help you get going with your own SEO project.

• Post links on forums
• Leave comment on other related Blogs, but don’t forget to fill out the URL field
• Advertise strategically
• Monitor the results (I would suggest a service like Google Analytics (I reviewed a Wordpress plugin to work with it a while ago)
• Use the All In One SEO plugin if you use Wordpress
• Use a Sitemap to help search engine robots (Wordpress plugin review)

Got any additional tips?  How do you promote and drive traffic to your website?

Image by Optical illusion

A year, well 6 months, since this website was launched on the 23rd of August 2009, and it is time to review the progress so far. As we all make out new years resolutions I will declare my plans for the next year here on Inspired By Wordpress.

The last 6 months

The last 6 months hasn’t been great by any means, but it’s been good.  This isn’t to say it has been awful either.  Lets take a look at the god and the bad from the last year.

Good

The first thing to happen with Inspired By Wordpress, was by far the best thing this year.  It was launched on the 23rd of August 2009, roughly 6 months ago.

Over the last 6 months a good base of posts has developed, filling a number of different categories.  The result?  This is post 30.  That may not sound like much, but lets face it.  It’s not bad for a first attempt by an amateur blogger.  Lets try for another 50 in the next six months.  Thats two posts a week for the next six months.

I launched the first dedicated theme for Inspired By Wordpress on the 3rd of November 2009.  This was aimed to give the website a much more personal feel, something which I feel is starting to come-on well.  It needs a few tweaks, for example I feel like the comments could be improved, but it will get there.

The first SceenCast was launched on the 5th November 2009.  This is only 6 minutes long, and shows the complete process for installing WordPress from scratch onto your own server.  Although there are many improvements that could be made, these will be worked on in the new year.

On November the 12th 2009 I hosted the very first Inspired By Wordpress contest, giving away a Code Collector Pro licence.  I do hope to be able to do more of these over the next year of so.

Bad

There are a few things over the last year that have let Inspired By Wordpress down.  For example, the lack of a posting schedule.  This means that posting has been a little too all over the place.  Over the next few weeks I will look at where I have the most time and proceed to create a posting schedule to bring a constant stream of posts.

Quality, this is the key to every website.  Quality, is also something that I feel could be improved here on Inspired By Wordpress.  From here forward I will develop a new style for posting.  I will write a post and then wait an minimum of 24 hours before publishing it, giving myself more time to go back and rewrite sections of it.  The result?  I hope this will bring Higher quality content to you over the next year.

I have made quite a big deal over the ScreenCasts on this site, only to get one published.  In six months.  Thats not too good going really, is it?  Thats why I need to get more rolling of the production line.  The problem has not been lack of ideas though, but more issues with my broadband.  It takes around four hours to upload a one hour PodCast.  That is why I have have been playing with various pieces of software over the last few months meaning that I now have a working solution to this problem.

2010

So, what does the next year hold for Inspired By Wordpress?  Well, I have already said that my posting schedule doesn’t exactly exist as it is now.  So, that first thing I shall do is trial a few solutions over the next two months and then post an official schedule in late february.

More ScreenCasts are on the way, currently I am planning time in the next few days to record and publish a few more.  These will cover various WordPress related topics.

The quality of the posts shall hopefully improve over the next six months as well, as I am putting new measures in place to help increase productivity and improve the work I do for Inspired By WordPress.

The final thing I plan to do in 2010 is to unveil my project.  This, will be kept behind closed doors, but if you follow me on twitter I will probably let something slip.  ;)

This should be  good year.  What are you new year resolutions and plans?  I look foreword to hearing your views on Inspired By Wordpress.  If there is anything you think I ought to do or would be good to see changed I will listen, so please leave me a comment below.

Happy new year!

So, how can things help you get more time to spend on your Blog? Simple really, it means that you are more organised. If you are more organised you can get things done quicker. If you can get things done quicker, you have more time left in the end for your Blog.

I can say this now, if it wasn’t for thins I would not be typing this Blog post now. So why is things so good? It is a well built application. It fits in nicely with the rest of Max OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard, and as a result it is easy to use, because it works how you would expect it to work. I admit, there are programs out there with more functionality, but I really do think that Things is one of the best because although it is basic what it does do, it does perfectly. Besides, sometimes, simpler is better.

So, back o the point of this post, how can things help you get more time to spend working on your wordpress blog? Well, the truth is is can’t. It can’t make you work any faster, but what it can do it help you work more efficiently and stop you from forgetting what needs to be done. And in the end, you will ind you have more time. It’s worth a try. Seriously.

Yesterday the latest version of Wordpress (2.8.5) was released, but whats new?  Anything?  On the visual level, nothing.  But behind the scenes the guys behind have made a few changes.  Rather than trying to explain all of these I figured it would be best if I took it straight from the Wordpress Blog.

The headline changes in this release are:

• A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
• Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
• Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
• Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

Wordpress recommend everybody to upgrade to this version of wordpress as soon as possible due to the new security fixes.

They are also including a note for everybody who who thinks that they have been hit by the recent exploit.  They are recommending that everybody in this situation uses the Wordpress Exploit Scanner immediately.

If you think your site may have been hit by one of the recent exploits and you would like to make sure that you have cleared out all traces of the exploit then we would recommend that you take a look at the WordPress Exploit Scanner.  This is a plugin which searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

I do hope that nobody reading this has suffered from the exploit, but if you have do follow their advice as they do know what they are talking about.  Follow their advice and keep wordpress up-to-date and you should be fine.

So, for Blog Action Day 2009 I decided to look at what us web designers and bloggers can do to help save the environment.

As a web design and blogger I spend the majority of my time on my laptop.  I use to to design websites from stage one, as well as to write blog updates and tweet.  As a result I am consuming a lot of energy just to do this.  So, I guess what I am looking at is how we can do out bit by using less resources to do what we do best.  I have spent the majority of the day compiling a list of things we can do to save energy.

1. Don’t leave your computer on. This may sound like a obvious way of saving energy, but you would be amazed at how many people leave their computer on all of the time.  Even if you cannot shut-down your computer put into hibernation or standby when it is not in use, as well as turning of the screen when it is not in use, although this may seem like a small thing it will go a long way.
2. Unplug your phone. When your phone is plugged in it is using energy, and a lot more than most people relies.  By unplugging your phone it will help to use less energy meaning that you are saving a little more of the planet.
3. Turn off your phone. Before you complain that you need your phone on, I do not mean in the day.  Once you have stopped working and begin to relax for the evening or you go to bed for the night you are not going to use it again until the morning, so even if it is on charge turn it off.  By turning off your phone you will not only make your phones battery last longer, but you saving another little bit of the planet.
4. Don’t leave your speakers on. We all do it.  Speakers can use a huge amount of energy powering fairly juicy amplifiers, so even when you are not using them you will be surprised at how much energy they use.  When you are not using them, turn them off.  That wasn’t so hard – was it?
5. Switch that light off! Even if you are only leaving the room for five minutes your light is using energy.  On your way out turn your light off, it not difficult to take a second to turn it back on on the way in, is it?
6. Turn off your desktop. Use Your Laptop.  What use is this?  Simple, your laptop, even paired with an external monitor uses way less energy than your desktop computer.
7. Switch off your second monitor. I know that I am contradicting what I just said above, but do you really need that extra monitor?  Turn it off, you know you’ll feel better for it.
8. Avoid your printer. Why?  We’re in the digital world now, do your really need to waste energy while you kill that tree?
9. Don’t draw that.  Photoshop it. Why waste a tree while your computer sits there killing the environment?  Instead of wasting paper why not just do it on photoshop with your shiny new graphics tablet?
10. Take Your Canvas Bags, Take You Canvas Bags, Take Your Canvas…..

Finally, to conclude this article on climate change, I would like to share a few energy-based statistics with you.  The following image is curtsey of  GOOD.

Please, please tweet, re-tweet, Facebook and email this post everywhere.  Please share it with the world to help make a difference today.

I have had many people ask me why I use Wordpress so much.  Many people say that using one content management system all of the time is surly a disadvantage, less flexible than using different content management systems for different uses, using each one for what it is best for.  According to these people I have a closed mind, I am not willing to try something new.

I wouldn’t say this is true at all.  We all favour a CMS, whether it is Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla.  It really doesn’t matter, the real question is can your CMS do what it needs to do.  If wordpress can, which in most situations it can, I will use wordpress.  Why?  Because it is so flexible.  With custom fields, custom page templates, the sheer number of plugins, and the Wordpress MU variation of Wordpress, I truly think it has got to be one of the most flexible content management systems out their.

On top of this, how many content management system have a sister project, running for another purpose that can integrate fully with Wordpress itself?  How many other content management systems have a forum, made by the same company that is also free, and easy to integrate so that it shares the same user database, and uses the same user settings?

It doesn’t matter weather you want to use it’s blogging function or not.  In fact, why not use it as a news feed, or a staff communication area instead?  Wordpress has infinite uses.  You can even use it as a user directory.

Wordpress, is a unique project and makes a simple yet powerful content management system.  How long will it take for other to realise this?  We don’t have a closed mind.  They do.

Instead, today I’m going to tell you a little about Inspired By Wordpress and why I created it.  Inspired By Wordpress was created as a place to share the large collection of knowledge and experience that I have collected about Wordpress – from making themes to managing a website and finding inspiration.

Inspiration.

That is the main topic of this website, I plan to regularly post inspiration from around the web, weather it be in the form of someone else’s website or a little part of a website.

Although is may seem a little contradictory, the inspiration will not only be from Wordpress themes and related, but from any website – as surely anything can inspire a Wordpress theme or plug-in?

Anyway, I hope someone sticks around a reads information from the site.  Happy Wordpressing!