The Blog Studio

For years, The Blog Studio has sat near the top of Google’s results for “blog design”. Not only was our home page keyword rich, but we had a ton of incoming links, and we’ve been doing this for longer than 95% of the rest of our little industry. Recently though, we’ve slipped off the first page.

I think the drop in position was timed with our redesign. One of my goals was to reduce the number of words on the home page. I wanted to let the video and the work speak for itself. In retrospect that might have been a bad decision. Looking at the folks who have taken over “our” position on the search results, the thing that is most obvious is that they have a LOT of written content on their home page. I’ve made some adjustments to the home page to lengthen the post excerpts, and rejigged the layout slightly.

As of today, we’re the 13th result for “blog design” on google. I’m going to give Google a few days to see if this change has any effect. I will, of course, report my findings!

You want economic stimulus, we got it right here! For the remainder of the month of November 2008, all new design projects will receive an automatic $1000 discount. Please note: this only applies to new design projects with contracts signed by November 30 2008. So act quickly! Fill out the RFP form, or get in touch

Why on earth are we doing this, you ask? Well, it’s simple really. Adam, Mike, and Lucia are super busy with some top-secret development work, leaving me with a bit of time on my hands. I’m sitting here feeling all guilty while the rest of the team is slaving away, so I thought I’d try a little experiment to see if I can single-handedly book a couple of new projects between now and the end of the month.

To be clear: we’re talking full-on custom design here people. Check out our portfolio of work to see what I’m talking about. We’re also talking full service. Read a few testimonials from past clients to get a sense of the kind of service we’re known for.

This is very much a limited time promo though, as we have a couple of new projects starting up in the new year that will keep us all occupied. So if ever you’ve thought about having a completely customized blog or website built just for your needs, act now, and buy yourself a flat screen tv with your savings!

During the redesign and rebranding process we launched a few months ago, I made a bunch of screen shots of the work in progress. Reviewing them gives a really interesting look into how the site developed.

As you’ll see, I started with one clear idea: make use of watercolour to create a bit of a sophisticated feel. Through a gazillion revisions, you can see that idea develop. I went pretty far down one path, but the intent in the original use of the watercolour had been lost. I literally wiped the slate clear of all colour, and immediately felt like I had it.

In retrospect, I may have gone a bit too far on the dark colours in reaction to the visual direction of the earlier versions. Perhaps it’s time to tinker a bit!

As an aside, looking back at this slideshow posted below, it’s interesting to see how may versions the scan of the watercolour went through. I was determined to find a way to use it!

Ok people, what’s the etiquette for editing a post?

Let’s say you post something to a site. A couple of days later you re-read it, and cringe at some particularly clumsy turn of phrase. What do you do?  For the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re not changing the value or meaning of your post. You’re just making it read better. Do you:

A. Just go in and fix the section.
B. Leave it be if it’s an hour or so since hitting publish.
C. Edit the post, but include a note.
D. Somethin’ else.

I’m leaning towards A myself, but I’m sufficiently unsure as to write this post!

Here at The Blog Studio, we’re always looking for ways to help our clients get up and running quickly. Be it, Wordpress, Expression Engine, or even a custom built CMS. We thought that to help our clients out, and to also help anyone else looking to get started with blogging, we’d offer this handy WordPress guide on what to do with the Control Panel.

TBS-Wordpress_Walkthrough.pdf <-- Link to the guide

This guide was created by Mike Caputo our fabulous developer. The guide barely touches the surface of what this CMS is capable of doing, however, we think that we've covered the bare essentials for someone who is getting started with blogging. These things include basic tasks like:

1. Adding Categories to posts
2. Adding Tags to posts
3. Adding Pages
4. Adding links
5. Entering basic content
6. Entering custom field data

We will update the guide as feedback pours in - so please feel free to leave you questions or comments.