For literally months I have been toying with the idea of creating a personal blog - and I’ve posted several times asking opinions on keeping it separate from this site. Overwhelmingly, the response was indeed, to keep it separate.

Now understand that I’m still in the process of completing some pages (yeah I know, “coming soon” pages are lame), so I ask that you please extend some grace while I finish those up. Since I had a little blogger’s cramp today, I thought it I’d make a post and let you into my cafe.

So to speak.

Being a coffee/latte lover, I thought it would be fun to use that as the focal point of my personal blog, so without further adieu, you can check out (bookmark or subscribe to) my new blog which is called Daily Java.

Rumor has it that if you spend countless hours implementing tons of SEO WordPress plugins your traffic will explode.

I disagree.

Now, I am not saying that SEO isn’t important, and that guys like Aaron Wall don’t know what they are talking about - because I know they do. Otherwise they wouldn’t charge $500/hour, which by the way, I’m guessing is still worth it.

However, I just wanted to state something which I feel is still worthy of sharing. Because I haven’t spent any time installing any SEO WordPress plugin, yet still am getting great results in Google Search, I feel that I can say this:

Content is king.

You may hear this time and time again, but the fact of the matter is this - if you have zero SEO plugins, but write good content, you will see better results that SEOing the heck out of your blog, and using duplicate content. But one more thing I’ve noticed…

Post titles and permalinks matter.

If you are targeting specific search terms, try using them in your post title and permalinks. This will most certainly help you get good rankings. Here’s how I know - my blog is obviously focused on design, and topics that include WordPress, themes, and a degree of blog consulting.

But go search Google for Rachel McAdams Pink Hair and check out the first page of the results and you’ll see my site listed among the many entertainment sites that you’d expect to find for that search. Case in point.

Well, I warned you that I’d be tweaking my theme, and quite honestly ended up doing it a little more than I had thought. Although I really liked the blues I had chosen, I decided I wanted my design to show a little more of my capabilities.

I found that the theme I had done was a too basic for my taste, so the bad news is that I went a whole new direction. The good news is that I will probably release that version for my visitors to download.

I’ll be making a few changes here and there to this theme, so pardon the dust. Included will be a totally customized home page, as well as a better theme/portfolio page.

Anyway, stay tuned for some yummy posts - the first of which will be entitled “How to Get Search Engine Traffic With Your Blog.”

Tweaking is a design term that is defined as making changes to the overall appearance of a design. However, I found myself randomly looking it up on Urban Dictionary and this is how the urbanites define it:

tweaking:
Frantic, compulsive behavior often associated with methamphetamine abuse (crank). People who regularly abuse crank may find themselves unable to stop a particular random activity like searching drawers, having sex, or putting things apart. This is called tweaking.

Now, being a Christian, I sincerely urge you to use my definition when I refer to tweaking my theme - although late last night (and probably for days into the foreseeable future) I might find myself wrapped up in compulsive behavior and the inability to stop while making changes to my current design.

As I told one of my great friends Cory, my biggest downfall as a designer is never being happy with designs for my own site.

I am my own worst client.

Sometimes I find myself late at night getting frustrated while designing my own themes, and see the design grass much greener on the other side of the fence most of the time. I swear one day I’m going to shell out the money to hire Chris Pearson or Theron Parlin (two of my favorite designers) to do a theme for me.

But seriously, I doubt that would be good marketing for myself. So once I get back from my weekend trip to Indianapolis, I forewarn you, the design tweaking will begin!

Well the past few weeks I’ve been really busy, both with freelance design as well as family plans. It’s been pretty hectic, but winding down. So today I had the day off, and found myself having a few extra hours with nothing to do.

And when idle minds have time, a blog redesign can occur.

I really enjoyed the last theme that I had, which I called Tapestry. (As an aside, that theme will be publicly released in the near future.) I realized that my previous themes were really on the dark side, using blacks and dark grays a little too much. So, I decided to lighten things up around here, and make my site a little bluesy.

I’ve also had a really hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to blog about - it really was a deep down gut check, and I was trying to satisfy both the urge to share personally, as well as offer helpful design tips, etc to those who read my site.

I have decided to focus my blogging on this site, where I will be adding a lot more content, tips and other design resources. (You’ll be able to access this through the navigation/sub-navigation menus when I get to it.) I’ll also be blogging about things that I feel worthy aside from design, but it won’t be the focus of the site.

So here goes, the summer redesign of my site, and a new beginning!