Before I give you the suggestions, identify what you would like to achieve and what the problems are right now. This will determine what sort of action to take.

Do:

Number 1: Submit your blog to www.boagworld.com/forum

This will allow real web designers to give you help on design, content, and spelling mistakes!
When submitting it there, put it in the Website Critique section and read the posting notes before you post anything.

Number 2: Make a viral video and post on Youtube

If you make a viral video you can bring more potential customers to view your work and you may get all over the world!

Number 3: Email advertising

Once you have a blog set up you can send emails out to your readers/subscribers and tell them what they will expect each month. You can include your video viral in emails. It is great to look professional so make your email stand out from the crowd. HTML emails are great, but provide a plain text email option too.

Number 4: RSS and Apps

If you want to you can learn how to make an app for your iPhone/iPod. This will let your audience read the blog without being stuck infront of a PC to read it! Also you may make a page on Facebook or any other social network to help your blog grow. And when you have that page you must engage with your fans/followers and post often, relevant content. No spamming though.

Number 5: Blog Awards

If your blog is good enough it may get onto other sites and win awards.

Dont:

Number 1: Pirate Content

Copying other sources word for word to make it look like your own is illegal and will not look good, so may damage your reputation. If you are going to copy then put what you want in quote marks (those are those things that look like a single/double speech mark).

Number 2: Don’t Spam

Spamming other blogs with your links will not look cool, and it is not clever either and will also damage your reputation. By all means post a link, but only one and make sure it is relevant to the blog that you are commenting on. Also on social sites spam may not be tolerated by people.

Number 3: Don’t Neglect

Once you have a blog, do not neglect it! Post things that you want people to read, but dont post till you have something worth while that people want to read. Read other magazines and articles telling you how to get the most out of your blog and treat your users with respect!

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I’m sure there are things here I have forgotten to mention but if there is then I’m not perfect!
Please leave comments below and add any ideas that you wish!

In this post I want to give a rough guide to the blog environment. I’m using WordPress to do my blogging because it is known all around the world.
Although I am pretty good when it comes to technology I was scared to delve in at first as I didnt know the software, but I am glad I did because I now use it on 3 websites of my own.

WordPress is free and you can get your own URL for your blog. I recommend buying a domain to host it on but that is the easy part. WordPress can be accessed from anywhere as it is an online platform. Usually your website address for logging in to your blog will be:
http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/blogname/wp-login.php
From there you can do all your normal blogging and maintenance and start to build yourself a mini community.

Here is a lowdown to get you understanding WordPress:

Posting

Big topics can be split into groups and categories. WordPress lets you assign your own categories and tags.
Categories are different from tags. Categories are to do with what groups a certain number of posts together in a wider range and tags are to do with what sort of things are mentioned in the blog.
For example if I had a blog about celebrities, I would have each celebrity I wrote a post about as a category and in each post I’d have tags to give a quick brief single word ‘summary’ of what you would expect from that post.

Media uploading

You can upload media (pictures) to make your blog pretty and break up text on your blog. Media is a great way of helping your readers to understand what it is that you are blogging about.

Blog themes

You can use blog themes to ‘wallpaper’ your blog. When you are ready for a challenge you can mess around with these themes and change anything that you want. If you are even more clever you can write your own.
There is a big library of themes to choose from and explore, and you can buy themes later on when you cant see any free ones that you like.

Plugins

A Plugin is a mini program that sits inside your blog till you want to use it. You can use a Plugin to stop spam occurring when people comment. Spam is usually comments that are not related to the post or blog and must be deleted. You have complete control of this in WordPress. Remember to check back often to see if the Plugin that you have got has been updated. Sometimes there will be a complete WordPress update and that may give you new features.

Blogging with WordPress is the easiest that I have come across yet. There is so much out there to help you have the best blog on the web!

Simple Jargon
Blog(n): Where you write your valuable information
Blogging(v): A way to convey thoughts and feelings to the world
Blogger(n)/Bloggers(plural n): Someone who writes content
Post: A single article on a blog

In this first part I cover essential tips for blogging, with my simple 4 part strategy known as EAPI.
In the second part I talk about WordPress and special features to make your blogging life more stress free.
Finally, in the third part I sympathise with bloggers and share ways to keep your blog stable and how to market your blog.

My simple system should get you well on your way to starting and maintaining a great blog: Remember – Experience Audience Point Inform

Blog To Share Experience

Blog on a topic you know about, and be sensible about the information you write. Explore and experiment with your blog content as putting the barriers up will stop exploration onto similar subjects. Keeping an open mind is great for blogging. Also, if readers understand what you are talking about you will gain respect and praise and maybe people will comment on your work. Research is key!

The phrase KISS will come in handy: Keep It Simple Stupid/Silly

Consider Your Audience

Be yourself and be chatty to make people feel at ease. Writing with passion will help your readers relax. If you need to be serious then this is also nice occasionally to keep the balance. Blogging for a teen audience is different to blogging for the older generation.

If your blog is for young people you can make the blog look funky and let your creativity flow. Older people may find that a blog with a hundred different colours is confusing. Avoid colour clashes with older audiences, instead go for subtle colours.

Keep To The Point

Keep each post short and to the point. If needed you can split the topic that you write about into multiple posts so you can post the rest another day. This prevents confused readers getting overloaded with information and navigating away from your site. This is mainly why I am splitting this blogging topic into 3 posts. Highlight key areas in BOLD to illustrate really important things.

Keep Audience Informed

Deciding to blog is a great thing and once you know what sort of atmosphere you want to create you are well on your way to success. However, blogs get forgotten if you haven’t written anything for a long time. Keep people up to date with news items and you will be popular and you may even see other bloggers write or talk about your work.

Escaping Bloggers Block

Keep a notepad handy to write post ideas in for later. This way you can jot down what interests you which will help posting when you lack content.
Look on other forums/blogs (search on Google) for advice and think about the future of your blog. This will help you to decide on the direction of future posting.

Good Luck!

However I must say I love this new version.

I think that Mozilla have got the tabs in the correct place this time to allow for the new App Tabs, which are absolutely awesome must I say… I like it because you can have as many of these things as you like and you dont have to even install anything extra! What a great idea! App Tabs give you room for all your tabs so you dont have to close them to work on other sites which uses, yes you guessed it : more tabs! I think that this should have been in the 3rd version of Firefox because I am a very heavy Firefox user and working on a computer doing my daily routine of Twitter and Facebook and Email etc became IMPOSSIBLE when I also had several Youtubes and other interest sites up as well!!

All your bookmarks come in automatically which is great so you dont have to worry about importing them.

In this new version of Firefox you can group your tabs in relevance so you only see the items in that particular window at one time. For example if you had a load of Youtube videos that you wanted to watch and you had not got round to doing it you could group them and store them for later and continue working on other things without tab-clutter!
Managing them is easy: just drag the thumbnails in Panorama view to a free space in Firefox to make groups and then add more thumbnails to the groups by dragging thumbnails onto other thumbnails. Even make thumbnail space by drawing the box first! You can even name the groups so that you know what is in them.

However in this version there is no status bar and if like me you like to see how well the page is loading you can download add-ons for it. Firefox may change this in the future but until a proper 100% stable Firefox 4 comes I dont think we will see a change!

These are the some of the biggest and best changes to the browser to date with the option of it evolving into something even greater in later versions! Sadly it wont cook your dinner or sing to you yet, but I daresay Mozilla are working on that right now !

I am getting really annoyed at my hotmail friends accounts which keep on sending me spam emails…. so I urge now for people to use Google Mail (Gmail in the UK) for their Emails. Here’s why:

• Users can create documents online and share them with friends
• Users have a cleaner less hectic mail space (useful for businesses!)
• Users can easily see and add people to their buddy lists
• Users get less spam and more space (and counting.. (google says))
• Great mobile access
• Quick loading
• Threaded conversations in Emails
• Ability to have Youtube account linked to your mail
• Google Buzz (Video of GBuzz)
• Share photos and much more!
• Save chat history online instead of on your PC…Also download a desktop client for chat if you want to!
• Vacation responder – for people when they are away from a PC
• Forwarding for emails (POP and IMAP)
• and loads loads more!

So there is lots of different things to try out in GoogleMail so go and sign up, have a play and tell me I’m right!

I decided to go look at another free webs package from webs.com to see how free for all designing has changed and what you can expect from them. Will free website hosting completely disappear because of the lack of interest and wanting more options or will they continue to thrive into little online cities that govern themselves!?

When I made an account on Webs.com I was pleased at how easy it was to set up and get started adding things.

The things I like about it are:

• Easy quick photo albums… no code to worry about
• Ability to upgrade to a .com address if your site takes off well. (charges may incur straight away to your bank/building society)
• Stats for website which is hosted by a company called Clicky.com and it even allows for Twitter search. You can easily opt out of this. But I wont be going into detail about that as it isn’t what I am focussing on…
• Easy file uploader that can have multiple files sent in each upload… The files are shown in a nice clear way. In this website builder you can upload files by email which some free hosts will not allow… Even the free Geocities wouldnt let people connect using FTP!
• The format for a free site on Webs.com is http://yoursitename.webs.com/. Personally I think that is rather good as on Geocities free it would be your email address as the url which is a pain in the neck as people can spam your email and you can end up on a black list. so format for that is http://youremailaddress/index.htm
• Some Google account abilities from Google Webmaster.
• Email notification for numerous things including guestbook comments and new site members.
• WYSIWYG editing which is useful for people who can’t code in straight HTML.
• Community Forum where topics surrounding your site can be discussed and evaluated by others….
• Search Engine Optimisation for adding your site to Google and Yahoo etc which helps to be found easier. Site linking and sharing are part of the deal.
• Add social networks to your site so others can see what you are doing elsewhere: Twitter and Facebook integration. Members integration with Email Blasts so you can notify of new posts. Facebook Connect available.

Payments may incur when you decide the following:

• Google Adwords and custom display ads with iPromote.
• PayPal E-commerce (package details vary accordingly to what you have decided upon.)
• There are premium packages for more webspace and tools. Domain names only available on the Enhanced and Pro accounts. Multi email addresses also.

As a free website maker the free tools that are available are quite advanced to what other free makers are. If you want the site forever then I’d suggest you pay to get premium benefits and ways to enhance your site.

Main twitter is still GoldChoiceUK.

Hope you now have some fun in downloading and adding the videos you want for your convenience!

1. Open youtube.com in your browser and search for the video you want on your iPod (iPod Touch in my case)

2. Copy the URL of the video for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWzrVVZ02ok
(YOU MUST WAIT FOR THE VIDEO TO COMPLETELY DOWNLOAD INTO YOUR CACHE BEFORE DOWNLOADING IT !! Waiting for the video to fully play is a great idea to make sure you have completely downloaded the video!)

3. Open in another tab or window the website www.keepvid.com and paste the copied link into the box on the website and click download (When prompted enter the code)

4. Chose the .mp4 filetype and right click the download link and select Save Target As (or simillar)

5. Save in your computer to a movie folder

6. Plug in your iPod and ipen iTunes and locate the video you have downloaded and import it into your library

7. Sync your iPod with the video and you should now have a video on there!

(8) GO HAVE FUN

I think it is important to set out these ‘guidelines’ so no confusion is made.

1. The Proposal…

You need to spend time with your client in making sure you fully understand what each other requires and what your client wants in content. Take a notebook/pad or even a laptop to write the notesin digital format so you can print copies to give the client and to file for later.

2. Drawing up designs….

This is your job as designer as you need to show what you can sell to the customer and how you can change it to make it a clean site to navigate.

3. Getting photographs or images…

This can be done by either but usually the client will want specific pictures up and they need to find time to do that. If it is a simple site then you may consider using a free site that you dont neet to pay anyone to use images from. If you do use graphical content from other sources dont forget to state where they are from.

4. Timing…

It is your job to keep time on a task as you dont want to be wasting the clients money. Note down the times that you work on each individual project and work out your rates accordingly. The client should not pay for time that you, as designer, have not worked on
the project for. Keep a diary to space work out so you avoid working on one project for too long at a time. That also helps because you can stop falling behind with work.

5. Signing off…

You need to make sure that you have done everything in the proposal, and even made it better than that if you can. Talking to your client at the end of the project about extra things they may want is great and will earn you respect. They may want to pay you to keep the site updated on a regular basis.

6. After the sign off…

So basically much of the planning rests on your head to complete a project but you have to work well with your client to get exactly what you need to know to complete it all on time so they use your company or services again.

You may be wondering why I have decided to put this post up, and how I can relate it to web design… I thought about writing a post about Aspergers and Social Networking after 2 of my friends wanted posts about how an Aspergers sufferer deals with Twitter and what not to do. This is a follow up post I wanted to add.

Anyone can use a social network and I have developed myself online by making new friends and finding old ones. Being able to keep those friends is a massive step for me. I never before thought that social networking was going to be that easy for me. Infact I took to it like a duck to water.

I use Twitter and Facebook lots, but Twitter has the upper hand as I have been able to express what I like and talk to almost anyone I wanted to (including celebs!).

Twitter is a lovely way to share web design knowledge (see I told you I could link it to web design in some way!) and the freedom to reply to things I think are worthy of a comment. I enjoy reading blog links and the like but if it wasnt for Twitter I would never had known about it all.

Facebook is for closer friends and only select people can read your status when you approve them (just like Twitter I add) but it is a totally different ball game. I dont use Facebook as much but I like the fact that it provides an extra help source when requiring knowledge about something. You can reach out to an entirely different range.

When on Twitter I post about all sorts of things that interest me. I get replies based on them and now I have a seperate Twitter for a few of the interests in my life. Like one for web design related stuff, one for gaming and one for Aspergers. I like to use Twitter on those accounts in completely different ways. My main account that I established myself on the internet was through GoldChoiceUK Twitter. I liked how Twitter worked from the start and through that I was able to talk to people with the same feelings as me with the different subjects I like.

However all this social interaction on the internet made me mute in the real world and not able to talk to my parents in the right way. Not that I swore or anything – no – but I was rude to ignore things went downhill rather fast and rapidly. and I started to stay up till all hours of the night Tweeting and just messing about on my PC. I started to get really fed up of not being able to find a job too. I still cant find one and it is become really hard. There is simply nothing out there! That is when I set up a Twitter for my Aspergers friends/followers. I wanted to give back to them my experiences and how I felt and they could relate to it all.

As I have been on Twitter for over a year I have seen myself grow in a number of ways, which is great. I have been able to make funny comments and have a bit of a joke and make friends who actually care. I care for a great deal of them all too. I have special friendships with some of them and some of those I could not have ever done without. They have all made me feel really welcome and I have enjoyed having such a lovely relationship with them all. I wouldnt have done half of the things I have done this year without the aid of Twitter as it has helped me to communicate at a level that is acceptable by all. I have learnt how to Tweet and talk to others. I wouldn’t have spoken to Beverley Knight on the radio if I wasnt on Twitter. That made my confidence really high and I feel able to make conversation to a wider audience.

It is easy to forget I have Aspergers sometimes and my Tweets just make sense the way they are. I may Tweet some random things but that is what it is for. I enjoy exploiting myself with my disability and to prove what I can do and say and to show the whole world that Aspergers is really not the worst thing known to humankind if worked on well and having Twitter’s experience has made me realise how important it is to be real and alive.

Aspergers is not the end of the world and I know I can push myself to learn whatever I want and I will learn more as I continue to use the social online networks. It has increased my self confidence and I never thought I’d ever come in contact with such a lovely bunch of friends as I have now. Twitter has made me belong to society instead of feeling too odd. Aspergers is my way of living and I have made it work for me which is great.

If you have Aspergers or know someone who has please get them to read this and then get them onto Twitter (If they are old enough).

My post on Andy’s site… Contacting The Millions
My post on Clair’s site… Twitter with Aspergers