Kevin Muldoon

The number of email addresses I have used over the years has changed many times, mostly depending on how many websites I had at the time. At the moment I have 12 emails I check – 1 personal email address for friends etc (hotmail) and 11 work related emails (eg. my websites). Centralising my email is something I have been meaning to do for years but I’ve just never got round to it. I have really travelled since last Summer so there was no immediate need for me to do it and the last time I travelled I was away for 8 months so I just migrated all my emails to my ultraportable laptop (ie. I didn’t have to copy emails from my main pc to my laptop every other week).

Darren Rowse wrote a post yesterday about he is now managing all his emails through Gmail so I decided to follow suit and do the same.

I used the ‘Send mail as’ function in Gmail to add all 11 work emails. I then went through the cpanel for each of my sites and forwarded the corresponding email address to my gmail email address. Next all I had to do was add filters so that the emails are more organised.

I’ve been using this setup for less than a day so it’s still a little strange to me – I’m so used to using Windows Mail (previously outlook express) to check my emails that I still think I’m going to hear the new mail beep from it!! I’ve installed google talk so that I get new email notifcations quickly however it will be a while til I’m used to it. I know that long term this is a much better system for me, whenever I go on holiday or go travelling I can login with ease. I can also check my work email in net cafes and friends houses etc – put simply, I can work anywhere now (I guess I always could but it’s much easier now).

Now all I need is a good excuse for a holiday so that I can put my new email system to the test haha

If you have read this blog before then you will quickly realise that I changed the blog’s theme last night. I liked the last theme but it was kinda basic and I wanted to present a more professional image for myself and the blog. The new BloggingTips design will be live in a few days and I will also be releasing a unique wordpress theme through BloggingTips next week.

I definately think it’s important to improve a blog’s design when you have the time/money. Even if the blog you are using is top notch a new image could get you as lot of extra traffic and keep your site fresh.

1. System0 Redesign
   I looked around at various themes however I decided to go with the premium theme from Elite by Design. It’s a good theme and didn’t take much customisation to get it looking the way I wanted. That being said, I’m not too keen on the header so I may get a logo designed for it soon. I’ll probably tweak the design a little over the next few months so if you see any problems with the design or have any suggestions as to how to improve it please let me know. Other than that I’m pleased with the blog’s new look. I’ve also decided not to display the feedburner count for a while to see if it has any affect on the number of subscribers here.
2. BloggingTips Redesign
   The redesign of BloggingTips is almost complete and should be live in the next few days. It has been designed Ptah Dunbar, a designer who currently works at Georgia State University as a web developer. He has been discussing the redesign on his blog (funnily enough, Ptah is releasing a new theme for his blog this week too!). You can check out part 1 here and part 2 here. Part 3 will be released this week around the time the new design goes live so remember to check it out

   Regular readers of BloggingTips should feel right at home with the redesign, mainly because rather than developing a brand new theme, Ptah has improved upon the current theme. He’s removed the clutter I had added to it, made it more professional looking and put more emphasis on content.

   Here’s a preview of some areas of the new design :

   The subscribtion box has been vastly improved and is now much more presentable.

   

   Currently the site displays the last 7 posts in full on the home page with exerpts on archive pages. The new design will highlight the last 3 articles using excerpts and will link to the next 5 with smaller previews.

   

   At the bottom of the home page readers can now browse the posts of their favourite blogger more easily.

   

   One of the main things Ptah is reduce the amount of information on the home page and in my opinion this presents a much more professional image of the site. With the site about to break the 2,000 subscribers count any day now I really think this design will push the blog to the next level.

3. Release of new theme through BloggingTips
   Rajat Bhadani contacted me this morning offering his services. He runs the blog Review Saurus however his design services are through Design Saurus. He has designed for many top bloggers including Daniel Scocco’s Daily Blog Tips, infact, Rajat designed Daily Blog Tips Daily 32 WordPress Theme. The theme will probably be ready in a week so I will give you all an update on it when it has been released

With 3 new designs in a week you would think that I’m swamped but since I am not coding any of them all I need to do is tweak them to get them the way I want it.

Again, I hope you like the new theme here. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve it please let me know.

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Last week a 43 year old man from Maryland called Chris Clark sold Pizza.com for 2.6 million dollars.

This was a unique story as Mr Clark was not a domain trader, he isn’t someone who has thousands of domains in his collection, he simply bought the domain in 1994 and kept renewing it every year. Apparently, it was only when he read that Vodka.com was sold for $3m in 2006 that he thought about selling it.

I was really surprised that no one had contacted him over the years and tried to purchase the domain directly. Web developers find it frustrating not being able to get a good domain name these days without paying over the odds so domain traders are rarely popular however I don’t think anyone can grudge Mr Clark his winfall. Good luck to him I say

You can read the full story here.

A few days ago Susan Gunelius from Women On Business wrote a post on BloggingTips called ‘Paying for Diggs and Stumbles‘ The post talked about a new site called Subvert & Profit, a new site where you can pay for diggs and stumbles, and spoke about whether this kind of thing was good for bloggers.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of social networking. Digg has been gamed as long as I can remember and I’ve never found it to be a useful site. On the other hand StumbleUpon is a service I do use from time to time, not on a regular basis but when I’ve struggled for ideas for a blog post in the past I’ve found it really good at finding articles on a given subject.

Manipulating social networks is not a new phenonemom however I’ve certainly read a lot of articles about it recently. For example, today Aaron Stannard wrote a post on his blog entitled ‘Is Shameless Self-Promotion Using Social Networks Acceptable?‘. Regular Blogging Tips author Andy MacDonald had sent Aaron about 5 stumble requests via StumbleUpon and Aaron wasn’t sure if requesting stumbles for your own posts was ok ie. is it right to ask people your own posts?

Is it wrong to vote for your own blog posts?

From my own point of view, I’ve yet to ask anyone to stumble or vote for a post of mine however I have stumbled 2 or 3 other bloggers posts because they asked me too via msn messenger. I don’t have a particularly strong opinion of this if I’m honest. I do believe that when a social network is gamed, even if the gaming is as small as voting for a friends website, the value of the social network is reduced.

However, ultimately, every social network is gamed and there is no way round it. Website owners will always look at ways to gain traffic to their site and taking advantage of the traffic social networks have makes a lot of sense, even to myself and I don’t really use them. Whilst I don’t ask for votes myself, it would be very hypocritical of me to criticize anyone who has done so since I happily stumbled posts for friends when requested (one particular blogger only seems to message me to ask for a stumble!).

Was Andy wrong to request a stumble?

Back to Aaron’s post about shameless promotion via social networks, I came across this post tonight via the incoming links section of the BloggingTips dashboard (he had linked to Susan’s post) and took an interest in it because of the subject, the fact he linked to my blog and because the main focus of the post was in response to Andy’s request of Stumble’s (as I mentioned before Andy is a regular writer for my blog).

Andy’s a top bloke though I probably side more with Aaron on this subject in that I don’t ask for stumbles and agree that this is a problem which will reduce the usefulness of StumbleUpon. That being said, I don’t think that I would go as far as calling it shameless. At the end of the day bloggers with new blogs are in a poor position with regards to promoting their site. A blog with 50 subscribers could spend 10 hours writing an in depth post and get next to no traffic to it because their blog is relatively new : who can blame someone in that position for trying to get some extra traffic to their blog. This blog currently has between 10 and 20 subscribers on average so most posts I write are not even being read so I can fully appreciate the urge to ask friends to vote on a post.

I have to admit I did have a giggle when I read Aaron’s disclosure at the end of his post, particularly after he wrote so strongly about requesting stumble’s being wrong.

*Disclosure: I’ve sent Stumble requests to some of my friends before when I thought that they would be legitimately interested in what I had to say, but I don’t do it often.I haven’t even used the service much in 2008.

* For the record, both Andy and Aaron have been writing some great posts on their blog recently. You should check them out :

Aarons site : Marketing Ninja
Andy’s site : Swift Media UK

So is it wrong to ask for a stumble?

As I said before, whilst I don’t do it myself I have no major problems with those who do.

What do you think, Is it wrong to ask friends to vote for your blog posts?