Finding words can be hard. Finding the just perfect words even harder. But given enough space and time, experience has taught me that I can find them. But what about when the space is extremely limited? That's the situation I currently find myself in. I'm working on the marketing site for a new personal project. Marketing sites are tricky. First, I personally have to feel really good about the product or service … I have no desire to shill needless items on people in order to earn an income. B…
All posts in web
A lot of folks I admire have posted content on Medium in recent months. Medium [https://medium.com/] is a nice looking tool, another creation of the wonder pairing of Ev Williams and Biz Stone. The focus of this service is on sharing ideas, a publishing tool that houses your content and enables better interaction. Mr Williams describes [https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48] it this way: > More concretely, Medium is a system for reading and writing. Sounds nice. It also sounds a lot like the I…
Imagine someone using a headline or statement like that? As if a hammer, or any other tool used by a craftsmen of wood products, would be given so much credit that it greatly affected the usefulness and quality of the end product. Let’s use an example that’s closer to home. Copywriting is taking the life out of web design! Right. As if well written, carefully crafted words that evoke the right tone and cleverly communicate the nature of the business or service contained within a web site will r…
Once upon a lifetime, I enjoyed conducting interviews with people I followed online. Over time, those interviews have sat in the corner of an abandoned SQL database. No longer! They've been taken outside, beaten with a stick, and are ready for a fresh set of eyes. If you enjoy a long conversation with various internet celebrities, give this a look: * Dan Benjamin [https://chrisbowler.com/journal/probing-the-hive-mind] * Dezene Huber [https://chrisbowler.com/journal/interview-dezene-huber] *…
Front end web development gives me a lot of joy, but it's not without its frustrations. And so I'm always looking out for any tool that improves my processes and reduces friction. Espresso is a good example of a tool that does just enough without offering too much, and it's a permanent fixture in my tool belt. Another tool I've come to love is Hammer [http://hammerformac.com]. The slogan for the app says it all: > Build out static HTML sites quickly and easily. No fuss, no mess, no PHP. No…
This latest iteration of my site is powered by Kirby [http://getkirby.com], a lovely CMS created by Bastian Allgeier. Kirby has no database and is folder based, so its simplicity is felt in managing the site and, more importantly, in publishing your content. EE can be set up to work with MarsEdit [http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/], a great tool. This would have made it much more palatable, but with my complex set up of multiple channels for different post types, it never worked correctly.EE…
If one waits long enough, time will prove your routine. This has proven true for me and my writing and my personal website. A daily morning routine has given place for my writing, but on a larger scale, I tend to evaluate the entire site on a yearly basis. Looking back to my first blog in 2008, I can see that I have two routines for the site. It gets a visual refresh once a year. And the CMS changes just less than every second year. I started with WordPress, moved to Tumblr, made the leap to Ex…
What else is there to say about the latest essay [http://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/] from Craig Mod? Everyone I follow seems to have read it, loved it and linked to it. If you haven't yet read it yourself, do so at your first available time slot. All I'll add to this conversation is this: the solution Craig believes is coming is something I need. I've been working on a new project, one that requires a way to do two things — deliver content and charge for access. Sadly, there ar…