Okay, some of you (yeah, people are coming even though I have failed to publish a post in months. Love you too.) have seen the “Pink for October” button in the sidebar. Most of you have seen them on other, more noteable, reputable, decent, updated blogs. And I’m sure you either know, or can guess, what it’s all about.

For the dummies

For those of you with the deductive skills of a 2 year old, Pink for October is a wonderful idea conceived by Matthew Oliphant of Usability Works. The goal, is to create awareness within the blogging community and beyond for Breast Cancer.

It’s not just pretty colors

So, obviously, this isn’t just about making lots of sites pretty and pink. Breast cancer is very real, affecting one in 9-13 (depending on who you ask) breast cancer is the leading form of cancer in females worldwide. We should take this month to learn about breast cancer, spread the information, and do what we can to help.

Try to educate yourself and others. And visit the Pink for October website to find more going pinkers and stories contributed by people with first-hand accounts of how Breast Cancer can affect a life.

Just Do It!

Sure it’s already October, but it’s not too late to go pink yourself. I myself still need to work on the comments section and do some clean up. Why not? Pink it up, maybe you’ll save a few boobies.

Now I really hate to meta-blog about blogging, but I do it anyways. You love it. I know. But a thought ran across my mind when I was drafting up a different post, how important is post formatting exactly?

Normally, I format my posts all very similarly. Each post is split up into sections with main ideas. Each section is labeled with a header title. I think it harkens back to print media. Chapters, sections, etc. This is not unique however, a lot of us do it. But is it important? Do people care?

Train(wreck) of thought

Thats right. These help me keep my train of thought. I don’t know about you, but a lot of times I write posts on the seat of my pants. Between the rare drafts, something pops up (much like this) and I just have to write about it. Writing like this is not advised. I mean, you screw up. I do too. Things end up repetitive, boring, and they don’t tend to keep a solid flow.

But, aside from the fact that they look cool, these headers really help me keep my train of thought. Instead of trying to figure out “what to write next”, I can look up and see what this section is supposed to be about. “Oh, right, trainwrecks”.

Presentation is everything

This is something my mommy taught me from birth. Granted, we were talking about food, but it applies to pretty much everything in life. (As an aside, I attribute my “metrosexual” tendencies to this constant drilling. Presentation is everything. And dammit I want to look and smell good. ;)) And as such, presentation applies to blogs.

It is not easy to read long blog posts. No matter how captivating. I don’t even take a second glance at a post that doesn’t use paragraphs so naturally I take it a step further. Posts need to be broken up. Headers provide a way to break up posts cleanly.

Aside from the readability formatting provides, it goes a long way to making a post look better. Having clean constant formatting not only gives readers something to identify with your blog (which I will touch on later) but it also makes them step back and go “damn, I should actually read this).

Variation varies invariably

As I mentioned above somewhere, formatting offers you a chance to make your blog identifiable. Take for example Living With Music, every post is formatted the same unique way.

Every post is accompanied by a unique, topical, image chopped into three and elegantly framed to the left of the content. Most people who read his blog would be able to spot it solely by the three images. It’s a brilliant idea that adds personality to the post.

To reference the “header” for this section; formatting can be entirely variable. You can format your post any way you want. And if you try, you can be entirely unique (clearly I am too lazy). And it doesn’t have to be aesthetic. It can be as simple as heavily commenting your posts or using plenty of bold and italics. Both of these are things I try to do. Often you’ll see me stick something stupid in parenthesis or bold and italic a word. It adds personality to a post that readers do pick up on, whether they realize it or not.

I often read what I write to myself so I can be sure I am writing exactly as I would speak it. “I would put more emphasis on this word, I would add a witty dumbass comment here, I would be sure to slow down here”. Just a stupid trick I suppose.

But regardless..

Formatting is important. For me at least. I can’t speak for everyone and there are a lot of blogs that use no formatting at all that are very successful. But I know, as a reader that likes to connect with the writer rather than just absorb the content and run away, that adding that personality aides greatly when reading.

So do with this what you will. In regular fashion, I am finishing out the post with a closing section that I ramble on in for a while. It allows me to add things that didn’t go anywhere else, and often times things that I just now think of. If you format, let me know. Frankly, a writer that puts that extra bit of time in to format is a writer worth reading. Remember, you are authors, don’t be boring. By the way, Buzzword of the day: Formatting. But that’s a given.

The blood that courses through the blogosphere is debate. We, as bloggers, need to debate. We need to have differing opinions. Although we do a lot of back patting and ass kissing that probably doesn’t need to be done, we are cold hard badasses. Blogs have given us a soapbox to stand on and god damnit we are going to stand.

Most good blog entries are entries that challenge something controversial. Something that begs for debate. Why? Because it gets people thinking. And when they think they write. And people comment. And more people comment. And when they think they can’t comment any more, they post about the same things on their blogs. And then people comment there.

It is just another one of the virus-like aspects of the blogosphere that make it an organic networking machine. One debate can spread like wildfire through every blog possible in a matter of days. Everyone gets a say. Everyone gets to argue their side. And it is wonderful. I don’t mean to say that we do not have the ability to agree, I am saying that we cannot, for the sake of blogging. We have a wonderful medium for discussion with blogging.

Blogs are where people are speaking their minds. Debate is the soul reason blogs have been catapulted into the media spotlight. Such a wide array of data. Of knowledge. Personality and perspective. We have pundits, comedians, politicians, journalists, designers, programmers, chefs, waiters, taxi drivers, fast food employees, and everything in between. Such a wide spectrum of humanity. All networking. All tapping out their thoughts on keyboards to share with the world.

I think we forget that sometimes. Blogging isn’t all about pretty designs, traffic, ad revenue, and link backs. At it’s core it is our electronic voice. Even if all you do is jot down your grocery list, don’t forget to use it. Don’t forget to be brash. And outlandish. And arrogant. And obnoxious. Because that is what feeds us. That is what makes our world go ’round. Discussion is what matters. Sharing.

I know it sort of derails the post, but it wouldn’t be a koray post if I didn’t add my ramblings to the end. I just wanted to mention that 700 people submitted their blogs to 9rules yesterday. A record. Hopefully, besides traffic and notoriety, to extend their voice even further. Because that’s what 9rules is for me, an amplifier. A chance, given to me, to share. And I’m just happy I have it. Damn I need to go to bed. This post was way less snarky than it was intended to be. Oh well. I think I made a point.

Now I have been in very few situations where I have had to work with a designer. But, as we all know, I hired Derek at 5thirtyone to do the reboot for koray.ws.

I have a project, which is all I can say at the moment, coming up that required a solid reliable designer. I’m working the administrative end, so I have no time for design. Not that I am much of a designer anyways. I think too many of us call ourselves designers these days. But, thats another post.

So, immediately I thought of Derek. We communicate very well, he understands what I like already, he is receptive but not afraid to put his creative input where it belongs. So, I went back to him. We are already throwing around ideas. But this post isn’t supposed to be an “I love 5thirtyone” post, so I’ll get to the point, how many of you stick to a designer?

If it works, stick with it

Seriously, there are lots of “designers” in the world. And so many of them suck, so when you find one that you work with well, don’t you want to keep working with them? I see so many subcontracting companies bounce from one designer or developer to another. And I just don’t understand it. What I do understand, is that designers have strengths and weaknesses. But as someone who works with designers, don’t you want to stick to one?

I think it is important. I think once you develop that repertoire you should stick to it. In the end, you get a better product. Right?

Toe in the water

But Koray, shouldn’t we test the waters before we stick to a designer? Uh, no? I mean, I suppose you should. But why mess with something that just works? You may find something better? Maybe. But you have to develop that relation, understanding, and trust. So if you have a designer who you just.. don’t like, by all means move on. What I am trying to say is that you shouldn’t piss on a good thing.

Why new is awkward

Okay, you contact a designer for a quote. You give him or her a ballpark budget and what you want, and hope for the best. You don’t know how busy they are, you don’t know if they only take certain types of work, and you don’t know if they are way over or under your price range.

It’s always an awkward situation. Especially when you choose a snobby designer. Sorry but, most designers are snobby. They all know they are the best and they conduct business as such. Which is fine. But it’s something you need to work past in the design process. This may sound weird, but doing business is not conducive to productivity. When you treat every little email like a meeting, and every little change like a major business relation change, you don’t get anything done.

There are those great designers who just love to design and honestly want you to get what you want (Much like Derek), even when the person they are working for insists upon a not so fabulous product. But they are rare, and you still need to develop a friendship to really get things done.

So what I’m saying is..

that you should think twice before moving on. Because even though you can most likely go back to your designer, why risk hurting that relationship? At this point, I have already said the word designer too many times. I know I must of reached some sort of internet limit. So I’m going to start winding this down.

Question time. If you work with designers or developers, is it important to you to develop relationships and, more to the point, do you stick with one or two main designers?

If you are a designer, do you prefer that a customer come back to you time and again? Or would you rather they pay and move on. Does it become stale? Or do you enjoy the fact that you don’t have to worrying about breaking the ice?

In a side note, the gent’ that knicked my theme found out I found out. He doesn’t have comments open, so I’d like to say that I really don’t care. ;) I’m glad someone liked it enough to knick.

you didn’t design it? I don’t know. In any case, I in fact, did not design this. This was the wonderful work of Mister Derek Punsalan of 5thirtyone fame. Just look.. isn’t it pretty. Yeah.

Update!: Vote for this reboot at CSSReboot here.

Koray! You’re lazy!

Yeah I am. I can’t help it. I recently got a promotion at work. Although I now get more money (ladies, I’m single) I don’t have the time I once had to dedicate to this blog. So I contacted Derek and asked what we could work out. And in only a couple weeks (at an amazing price) he had this ready to go for Spring Reboot.

We all let work and life get ahead of us sometimes. But I worked a way around it. I cheated life. Life, not death. I still haven’t seen Final Destination 3, and I don’t plan on it. So now that the new design is rolled out, after I smooth out all the bugs, I’m going to make it a goal to post at least twice a week. I just have obligations to readers and friends, and myself (although I went over this a few posts back ;)).

So whats new?

Uh.. not much is new. I mean, everything is new. But as far as whats under the hood, it’s the same. I’m still ironing out this live deployment, but that should be done soon. And after that, I have a few ideas. But everything is still how you like it. Baby. And through it all, Derek is still offering help getting things together.

I plan on live search. More feed integration. And a few other usability type things. Basically if it screams “Overdone Web 2.0 junk” I’m adding it. You know how I do. If you have ideas for spiffy things, let me know. I like spiffy, don’t you?

Before I move on, I will talk about whats old. Namely, the asides portion. I stopped writing asides long before I paused (like how I chose paused?) writing posts. And I think the main reason is because they weren’t in a featured position. So now that my asides are prominently displayed, I will start to write more of them. Good asides. I promise. So ignore the asides until those good asides start rolling out.

Reboot thoughts

Now since I didn’t design this, I can’t break the process down for you and all that jazz. But hey, there are so many other rebooters doing that. You don’t want to read it again here. So instead, I’m going to let you know why rebooting is so important.

It’s simple. It’s not boring. After a while, blogging gets stale. Stale for everyone. I don’t care how diehard you are, blogging loses it’s charm. Especially when you stop, look around, and notice everyone with a computer has a blog. But rebooting, it does just that, it reboots. You get that luster back. Ideas start forming. You start looking for ways to improve. I mean, I didn’t even design my reboot and already I am stoked. Imagine (because we know I have to) what it’s like for people who actually decided to go through it all themselves.

It’s just a good event. It’s something that tightens the community. Gives exposure to designers who aren’t the most recognized designers in the world. And gives smaller blogs a chance to soak up some limelight.

Anything else?

If you were wondering, I am going to release the last theme I used to the public. It wasn’t the greatest by any means. But I figured hey, I know some people liked it so why not? Especially since Some People have already knicked it.

I don’t think I have anything else to talk about. I mean, I totally have lots to write about. But if I intend to keep my twice a week promise I should probably talk about said things in a later post. So yeah, I’ll leave you with this little bit of wisdom: “Don’t blow your load in one spot.” Pretty good right? Yeah I thought so. Wisdom. Heh. I can’t believe you people read me sometimes.

Unless you listen to Leftöver Crack you probably don’t get the title. But that doesn’t matter. It’s an article about traffic. Good and bad. Does it matter what kind of traffic you get? How can you differentiate between good and bad traffic? Should you differentiate between good and bad traffic. I’ll try to answer all these questions. And perhaps a bit more. Depends upon how boisterous I’m feeling.

The Good

Good traffic is of course, different to everyone. For a link farm, all traffic is good. As long as you exit the site from one of their links you did your job. But some of us are more discriminating, and for good reason.

Lets take a blog. Why a blog? We all love them. You know you do. Don’t lie.

Good traffic for a blog is probably as discriminating as you can get. We want people who want to interact. We want commenters, good commenters. Commenters who will really add to the conversation. But thats not all we want out of them.

We want them to come back. We want those great comments to start popping up for all of our posts. And as the demanding bunch that we bloggers are, we want them to subscribe to our feeds. When you get traffic that does all this, you have good blog traffic.

But what about something more static. Something run on ads. Like, a static information site. What is good traffic for them?

Usually someone who will visit the site, use the information, and click an ad. Not the most picky bunch of webmasters but what they don’t want is someone who just rolls on through on a whim. Or someone whos going to take information and not click an ad.

This is where the line gets blurred. What role does the webmaster play in shaping good or bad traffic? Quite a bit.

The bad

Bad traffic. Can we create it for ourselves? Yep.

If you have bad content you aren’t going to get that great blog traffic. Were they willing to comment, bookmark, and subscribe to your feed? Yeah they were. But you just had to go and write crap for content. So they leave. Can you blame them? No. No you cant.

And say you are one of those static ad driven sites. If your “information site” has nothing real to offer, and if those ads are so horribly placed that they can’t be seen. Or so incredibly intrusive that no one want’s to see them, your traffic goes bad.

And then sometimes, we get bad traffic from other places. Take for example Digg. If you get frontpaged you are going to get lots of traffic. Now at this point most of us say “20,000 unique hits, I don’t care whether its good or not” but a few of us really care about their blogs enough to stand up and call it bad traffic.

Take Nathan over at Sonspring. After being front paged a couple times he was so dissatisfied with the traffic he even started to temporarily deflect Digg traffic. Digg traffic is usually traffic that won’t take the time to comment. And when they do most of the time the comments they make aren’t nice ones. This is the price you pay for the unwashed masses as it were.

The leftover

And then you have the leftover. The random click throughs from another site. Does this tend to be good traffic? Will it get you what you want? Again, it’s a relative thing.

Some people like traffic no matter what. Can’t blame them I suppose. But some people long for those few great return customers. Leftover traffic can go two ways almost 50/50.

There is the chance they take a quick look and then hit the back button. And at the same time there is the chance they stop, read, and really like what they see. I happen to have a few return viewers who stumbled across my site much like this.

So what does it all boil down to? The work you put into making your site traffic worthy, the source the traffic is coming from, and the person him or herself. I guess all we can do is pump out good content, try to make things pretty, and hope for the best.

So Web 2.0 is in full effect isn’t it? We all know what it is. We have all seen it. Even the lightest internet users have seen the trademark design traits, whether they know it or not. But are we moving full steam ahead with 2.0 before we fix 1.0? Are we the architects of a Web built on a failing foundation?

To some extent, I think so. We are so concerned with the cool new JS effects and the fresh design that we forget that 1.0 had some serious problems that we are not correcting. Basic usability issues are still there. We still forget the little things.

Forms

Forms bug me a lot. Not just the “too many things” argument. A lot of sites are cutting the fat when it comes to the length and complexity of forms. But what about validation? Too many sites still validate AFTER the information has been submitted.

I have always advocated server side sanitization of input when it comes to forms. But please god don’t tell me “password mismatch” and then after I fix it, don’t spit another problem out at me. And after I fix the next one, god another one?

We can fix a lot if not all of the input problems with on the fly validation. If my passwords don’t match, let me know with some JS. Take the Invision Power Board Register Form for example. I know exactly what I did wrong right when I did it.

Is that overkill for something simpler? Like perhaps a contact form? Yeah sure, but take a look at what Marco did with his contact form (click the contact tab ;)). Its attractive and it tells me whats wrong before it lets me submit. Nice eh?

Images

Oh god images. I know that an aspect of Web 2.0 is the prettyness (hah) but we really should cut back on the images. There is something to be said for a pleasing to the eye design but we still use far too many images when we design. We use images for things that can easily be done imageless in css. Lazy? Maybe a bit. But we have to remember that this age of broadband is no excuse for huge page size.

This is something I expect the most debate on. I know that designers love to have the end product be fresh and appealing. And sometimes yeah, more images are needed. But we do need to be conscious of load times for our less fortunate 56k friends. It’s not like resolutions where we can say “800×600? Pfah. No reason to still be using 800×600.”, some people have to use dialup.

I know the subtitle says images but this applies to a lot of things. Javascript? Please don’t include prototype.js in its entirety to do one little thing. Thats not needed. Cut the fat.

Navigation

Even now we forget that web browsing isn’t that native to some people. We need to start making the way we structure sites more intuitive. We need to remember that getting from page to page should be the simplest thing to do. Something that people shouldn’t even have to think about.

I cry every time I reach a site where the contact link is buried 3 pages deep on some obscure page in a footer with the smallest font possible. And I cry just as much when people neglect to include anything more than the basics when they link.

Maybe its a part of your design, maybe you are trying to keep things very.. “uncluttered”. But we should link to as many things as possible right off the bat. Take a blog for example. What do you get? Like mine, normally, you get Home, Archives, About, Contact, and maybe a personal page. But that shouldn’t be it. We should link to our categories. Perhaps someone stumbled across your site looking for one specific thing. Have 50 categories? Me too. Just do what I did and list your main categories. The all encompassing categories.

More?

Yeah there is more. There are more problems that we haven’t addressed or are on an everlasting “back burner” stage. Some only apply to a few people, and some to us all. But we really should be making a conscious effort when we design and code to fix the little things.

This was a short post but I hope that in some small way I can get a few designers to go “hey, that would be helpful”. Or something to that effect.

We live in an age of stimulation. Where interaction is key to success. The internet has traditionally been a fairly passive experience. In most cases it’s a read-only deal. But now with the advent of Web 2.0, we can observe how much more interactivity plays a role in how we browse.

Take a look at television, another traditionally one sided activity. So many game shows now include a way for the viewer to add input. Be it American Idle’s voting or the new short-show sponsered by Pontiac Torrent where you try to guess what happens next who’s name escapes me. Television is becoming a two way deal because network’s realize that people like doing things. ABC takes the whole thing a step further with their new show, evidence. A show where you get the evidence you need to solve the murder before the detectives in the show do. You get to play an active role, not just be a silent observer.

Back the the web though. Interactivity and viewer stimulation does wonders for a site’s success. Using techniques and technology (like AJAX) to make the user feel involved really does make the difference. Take something as simple as commenting on a blog, this provides an aspect of interactivity. The viewer feels he has the chance to give feedback and opinion and therefore he will come back, given you have comment-worthy content. Blogs with commenting always do better than blogs without, unless the blog without is already well established before it makes the switch.

Bottom line is that people love to do things. So give them things to do.

Overclocking. A lot of us cringe when we hear the word. Most of us look at the word longingly, as if it were a mountain we know we could never climb. A mountain that if climbed, would surely end in disaster. A mountain only a few crazy swedes had summited. But overclocking is more like a hill. Now more than ever. And with some knowledge and a little bit of luck, you too can be well on your way to overclocking.

Believe it or not, we can do some pretty drastic overclocking without ever opening our PCs. A little BIOS trickery and you’re set. But a lot of people have no idea how to overclock, or even what it really is. CPU clock speed is determined by a lot of things, but the easiest to change is the Front Side Bus. It’s accessible right from the BIOS and can be altered successfully without much risk.

So lets get started. Reboot your computer and enter your BIOS. How you do this varies from computer to computer, but it is usually done by pressing F1 F2 or even delete during the bootup process. Once in your BIOS you are going to want to find the menu that allows you to edit your CPU settings. I’ll take the time now to let you know that most pre-built name brand computers (I’m looking at you Dell boy) won’t let you access this menu. That or they go out of their way to make it very hard. Try anyways, my gateway laptop allowed me to without much trouble, though I hear thats rare.

Now that you are in your CPU setting, find the FSB setting. This is where we get cautious. Don’t be a hero, increase your FSB by only 2MHz at a time. Save your settings, reboot, and see if it works. If it does, feel free to try two more MHz. And two more after that. Don’t get too over zealous, pushing it too far will result in a PC that won’t past POST.

If this happens, all is not lost. You are going to have to clear your CMOS. Check your motherboard manual on how to do this, it’s a really simple process.

There you go. You have overclocked your PC. You may not have increased your speed by leaps and bounds, but hey, it’s a bit more zippy and now you can tell your friends you’re an overclocker. If you have hit a wall with your FSB and want to push it further, there are ways. Tinkering with your vcore, RAM speeds, and cooling all help. But for now this should help you squeeze the extra 10% of preformance out that you know you deserve.

I’ll try to write some more detailed tutorials later, but until then, read some of the excellent ones at the Overclock.net forums.

I was showering up for work today and opened my new bottle of Paul Mitchell Shampoo. It smelled like Lemon Pine sole. Now I was in a rush so I put some in my hand and lathered up. My hair. Lathered my hair.

But what is important is that just the subtle (not so subtle really) scent of lemon and rubbing alcohol made me think “Is this stuff going to ruin my hair, and more importantly, am I going to work smelling like Pine sole?”. Now I know that Paul Mitchell wouldn’t put a shampoo out that would ruin my hair. But the first impression, smell, just made me think “Hey, I wash with Pine sole”.

I know I’m beating a dead (wounded maybe) horse here, but this just drives home the fact that first impressions mean everything. Granted there are the exceptions but unless you have a few million readers, ugly does nothing for you. Neither does unoriginality.

How many times have you come across a blog using, say, Kubrick? Lots, I know. And how many times have you, without even glancing at the content, thought to yourself “Oh boy, another kid with an out of the box wordpress install. Color me unimpressed.”? A lot.

Not that Kubrick is a bad theme, I think it was a marvelous choice for the stock WP theme. But it is unoriginal. I understand that not all people who are capable of great content can design, but it helps. Especially when the medium with which you choose to write is a blog. Your design is your face to the world. It is the first thing people see, and what they remember you by.

So should you give up blogging if you can’t design? By all means no. But I think it goes without saying that you should try to at least produce something design-wise you are proud of, trust me you will love yourself for it. And if you just can’t, which I understand, try saving some money to hire a designer. By the way, if you want to help new bloggers with good design, try submitting a theme to Cowboy’s 500 Dollar Wordpress Theme contest.

So ends another post. Another idea that I just had to share. What did I learn? I’m switching back to Redkin for Men.