Combining these buttons with the WordPress codex is pretty easy. Insert a couple snippets of code and you can easily add the URL and post/page title dynamically to the “Tweets” and “Likes”.

The codes from the WordPress codex that we’re going to use are:

<?php the_permalink() ?> and <?php the_title(); ?>

Two lines of code and you’re all set up. Copy and paste the code below, style as needed to position the buttons how you see fit. For the Twitter Tweet button, don’t forget to replace my username with yours.

Facebook Like Button

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:100px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Twitter Tweet Button

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-text="<?php the_title(); ?>" data-count="horizontal" data-via="robbclarke">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Did you find this useful? Wouldn’t hurt to share it with others would it?

Note: The following blog post, while being serious, is meant to be read with a sense of humour and is not intended to be arrogant in any way, shape or form. So, put on your Serious Hat and your Humour Pants and start reading.

Your Website Might Be Outdated

It’s true and chances are that it probably is, well, not entirely at least… but probably parts of it. The web is a constantly changing environment and what was relevant and current six months, a year, two years ago, just don’t make the grade today. If you want your site to be current, you need to not only look to the future but also be prepared for change. A good web designer and developer not only has a rough idea of the upcoming forecast but they also plan for future changes. They can see shifting trends in designs and technologies and plan to utilize them properly for you.

When Was the Last Time You Got a Redesign?

Better yet, when was the last time that your competitor got a redesign? Is their site design more recent than yours? Are they taking advantage of current trends in technology? Why aren’t you?

Has it been over a year or two since you’ve had a new design for your site? If not, chances are that you aren’t taking advantage of a lot of the great new technologies out there that have been released in the past few years. jQuery, Mootools, HTML5, and CSS3 (to name a few) have taken the web by storm in the past couple of years and are major players in where the web will be going.

Was your site designed 4 or 5 years ago? You’re in dire need of a site design. Look at your competitors, chances are that they’ve had theirs done in the last little while. Now think about the two sites from a consumer’s point of view, which one are you going to gravitate towards? Exactly, the more modern, stylish design. Why isn’t that you?

You’re Using Social Media, Right?

“Social what?!” you say? Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook, for example, are great ways for you and your business to interact with clients in real time. Prompting users to “Like” your Facebook Fan Page on your website will give them instant access to your Page and keep up to date with you and your business even if they aren’t looking on your website itself. The same goes for Twitter. Having a Twitter feed appear on your site or at least prompting users to follow you on Twitter will give you another means to connect with that user. Keep them up to date by Tweeting updates and prompting them to visit your site.

Look around my site. There are a million and one ways for you to get ahold of me and to interact with me. Why don’t you take advantage of that for yourself and use Social Media tools on your site?

Is Your Site Build Using Tables?

HTML Tables are a thing of the past. It’s not 1995 any more… and hasn’t been for about 15 years so why is your site coded using Tables? They don’t allow for easy changes done to the site. They’re clunky and messy and severely outdated. Your site should have been coded using a combination of HMTL and CSS that will allow for easier changes to be made to the layout and format of your site. View the source of your site (View > View Source [or similar] in your browser), if you see “table” “td” “th” and/or “thead”, you’re in trouble. Time to get an update!

Do You Have to Get Your Web Guy To Update Your Content?

If so, why? Why are you paying your web designer/developer each time you want to add a new news item to your site or change your contact information? Why wasn’t your website coded using a content management system which would let you update the website at your leisure without paying extra to do it? Content management systems like WordPress (for example) are becoming easier and easier to use and install. It shouldn’t have to cost you extra each time you need to change something on your site, which brings me to the next point.

How Often Are You Updating Your Website?

If you’re paying your web guy their hourly rate each time you need to update your site then chances are the answer to that is “not very often.” Taking advantage of a content management system will let you make changes whenever you want, on your own time and without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it too! Using a content management system will even let you easily install a blog onto your website where you can keep users up to date with new product arrivals, business changes, pretty much anything that you want. Hell, they can even subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed and be notified instantly of new news items or blog posts made on your site.

Flash Sucks

Not everyone is going to agree that Flash sucks, and really, it doesn’t. It’s extremely powerful and used in the right way, it’s absolutely perfect but its days of being the leading way that websites are built are in the past. As a web building tool its dying. Search engines can’t read content in a Flash file so if your website’s navigation is built in Flash then they have no way of visiting the pages on your website and therefore don’t know that they exist and therefore can’t index them which then means that they aren’t searchable to users using the search engines. See how that’s a bad thing for you? I’m not going to use any names for the following anecdote but rest assured that it’s true.

Recently we were approached because a website wasn’t showing up in search results, even when you searched the domain name itself. This was absolutely horrible for the site. What’s the point in having a website if it can’t be found, right? The problem was that the whole navigation was coded in Flash and like I said earlier, this means that the search engines can’t read it and therefore couldn’t find any of the other pages on the website. The content itself was also coded in Flash, again not readable. It was no wonder that this site wasn’t showing up anywhere. Combined with a number of glaring search engine optimization errors, the site was a disaster. After a couple hours rebuilding the framework and recoding the site it was good to go and was relaunched. Within a few days it was indexed by search engines and quickly skyrocketed to the top of search results. Its been holding steady at or near the top of the results ever since.

I ask again, why was your site coded in Flash? To do some fancy rollovers and your navigation that can be done using CSS and HTML and maybe a little Javascript? Combine that with the fact that Flash isn’t viewable on iPhones or iPads and you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem. That’s right, if I go to your website on my iPhone (which happens A LOT) and your navigation is in Flash then I hit a dead end and I can’t go any further and immediately start looking at competitors’ sites. I’m not the only one. How many people do you know that have an iPhone? Ask them to go to your site.

Maybe it’s time to re-examine why your site was built using Flash, eh?

I Can Help

I can. It’s true. I wouldn’t lie. What’s stopping you from sending me an email to get the ball rolling? Is it the lack of a contact form? I can help with that too. VOILA!

Dalby’s reflects his career as a DJ out west at The Peak in Smithers, BC. Jay’s showcases an image from his trip to Ireland.

Yeah, not an overly long blog post. Sorry. Easily the best 18 seconds of your life though, I’m sure.

@Dalby

@JayAClarke

I’ve become horribly addicted to Empire Avenue. I’m obsessed with networking and the stock prices on it. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s a brilliant way to make connections that I might have otherwise not have made. So what is Empire Avenue?

“Empire Avenue is a revolutionary online influence stock exchange combined with an advertising platform that allows individuals and organizations to convert their online influence and reach into revenue. To this end we will be connecting advertisers, consumers and influencers in a manner not as yet undertaken in the online space. Through the Empire Avenue influence stock exchange and its tracking features we will measure the influence value of individuals registered with Empire Avenue.

Influencers will be given control over the advertising they carry, and advertisers will be better able to reach their target consumer. We believe that this better targeted advertising approach will lead to better returns and leads for advertisers. Empire Avenue sets itself apart not only in its unique feature set, but also by paying influencers the majority of advertising revenue generated unlike other major advertising networks.”

In short, you or your business become a stock. As people invest in you your capital increases and you have the ability to spend more and invest in others, all the while networking with these people. The goal is to have the highest trading stock on the site and become the top influencer.

If you’re on there, check me out on Empire Avenue at e(ROBBCL).
EDIT: Seven days is what it took me to lose interest in Empire Avenue. The concept is phenomenal and the site is brilliant (I’m very jealous) but it turned into such a huge time vampire.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is, in its simplest form, making your web site easy to find via search engines with targeted keywords and key phrases. The main goal is to increase the volume and quality of organic search engine traffic to your web site.

Search engine optimization starts with the coding of your web pages (including meta tags, meta descriptions, browser titles, etc.), proper keyword placement within the content of your web site as well as other techniques used to increase the effectiveness of search engine indexing.

Many SEO companies focus on pushing as much traffic to your web site as possible. There are many methods used to achieve high rankings with search engines, and some of these methods (known as “black hat SEO” or Spamdexing”) are not considered relevant or proper by search engines and can have negative results such as lower ranking or even blacklisting from the search engines themselves. All of our SEO techniques conform to search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception.

When we work with our clients to search engine optimize their web site, we focus on one key metric, quality of traffic first, then quantity of (relevant) traffic. In the end, the main goal for many companies’ web sites is to sell more products or services, and/or provide valuable information to their current clients.

Pushing as much traffic to a web site for the sake of getting traffic does not benefit the web site owner in the least, and performing simple web site traffic analysis will quickly show you if the traffic to your site is relevant or not.

Essentially, a search engine optimization strategy should be no different than a basic business strategy – provide answers and solutions to people’s problems and needs. With this focus in mind, you will not only achieve higher rankings (as you will be addressing the needs that people are searching for) you will also increase the conversion of these leads into customers! This is really what search engine optimization is all about – connecting people with questions and needs to web sites that answer or fulfill those needs. Converting your web site traffic into relationships is much more successful with highly targeted and relevant traffic!

Search engine optimization is really just a piece of puzzle. The first step is to make sure you have a web site with focused goals and methods of tracking success. Understanding these goals will help you optimize your site to attain relevant traffic to reach your goals. Once this is achieved, your search engine optimization and marketing starts to pay off!

Now you are getting traffic on your web site. This is where the fun begins! With traffic analysis, you can determine how people are finding your web site, and how that traffic is interacting with your web site. Adjustments must be made on your web site to better service and fulfill your visitor’s needs. Analyzing the keywords they are currently using to find your web site will allow you to search out and find other keywords that your target audience may be using to find similar products and services you are offering.

The loop starts over. You optimize your web site for these new (and sometimes better) keywords and key phrases and analyze the traffic that comes in from them to determine if the conversion rate is improving.

You can probably see now that merely shoving non-relevant traffic to your web site will not help you convert traffic into client relationships, but only increase the number of people that leave your web site annoyed that they wasted time on your site looking for something you did not offer.

Source: http://www.connetik.com/website_seo_services.php

What does that $30 get you?

• One domain name.
• Installed WordPress content management system (letting you update and modify your website at your own leisure).
• 40+ themes for you to choose from to style your website, these themes are changeable at any time!
• The ability to upload your own themes and plugins to further customize your site!

Want to save even more money? Pay for a year up front and save $60 on the annual cost. That’s right, for only $300 a year you can get a domain name and a website up and running!

* A custom designed and built website is not included in this special.

Interested? Fire off an email now!

Last night I kicked started a Sodaless Summer campaign for what was originally going to be just Fredericton but the response has been huge so far and word has spread quickly via Twitter and Facebook and now its spread past Fredericton to much of Canada.

What’s a Sodaless Summer you ask? In short, it’s cutting out soda from your diet to start a healthier lifestyle. Myself, I drink far more soda than a normal person should so I’m cutting it out altogether and replacing it with water and juices. Why? To be healthier and to lose weight.

You can get involved by reading more about it on the website at http://www.sodalesssummer.com or on our Facebook Group.

This week I’m proud to announce the launch of the new River Valley Arts Alliance website. The website is build on the WordPress content management system, letting the client update the website at their leisure.

The site features:

• an events calendar
• photo slideshow
• photo gallery
• member application forms
• donation forms
• an artist database
• a microsite for their annual Dooryard Arts Festival

The website is going to be a great resources for keeping up to date with RiVA and the arts community in and around the Saint John River Valley. Be sure to check back frequently as we near the festival dates for Dooryard as more events and festivities are announced.

I’m proud today to announce the launch of the new York Street Dental website, the new online home for Drs. Andrew Smyth and Jim Roxborough. The York Street Dental website features information about the practice’s team members, services and includes online appointment request forms as well as patient education software and videos.

You can view the website at http://www.drsmyth.com

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking.

Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just adding a couple of keywords here and there and waiting for the Google Fairy to come along and rocket you to the moon. That being said, Search Engine Optimization isn’t complicated either. Whoa! Hold the phone! I just said that it wasn’t easy and then I turn around and say that it’s not complicated? What the deuce? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of Search Engine Optimization are pretty simple; use keywords wisely, focus on your target market and don’t be stupid. It’s not rocket surgery.

With all that said, I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization which for sanity’s sake we’ll refer to as its more common abbreviation; SEO.

Myth: Meta-tags carry the most weight in rankings

What is this, 1995? This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meta-tags are essentially one of the most useless things on your website as far as SEO is concerned. Google has even said it themselves, they don’t look at meta-tags like meta-keywords anymore. They have absolutely no weight in SEO and rankings anymore. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Who is to blame for that? Porn. Plain and simple. The porn industry used to, and still does for that matter, flood their websites with keywords not related to their content just to get you on their sites. Search engines saw through this ploy and opted to focus on other aspects for rankings.

Fast-forward from 1995 to today and you’ll find that search engines now use hundreds of variables to determine rankings including title tags, content and the freshness of said content, incoming and outgoing links, alt and title attributes as well as your header tags.

All that being said, not all meta-tags are bad. Meta-descriptions help users find out more about your site on their search results. You can also add in useful data like your geo-location, the author, copyright information and much more so don’t write off meta-tags altogether – just meta-keywords, toss those buggers to the curb.

Myth: Hidden text is a your key to success

Designers and developers used to think that they were clever when they hid content on a website by making it the same colour as the background (white text on a white background). These clever chaps flood their websites with keywords that may or may not (usually the case) be related to the content of their website. Their train of thought was that they were being clever hiding the content this way because you as a user couldn’t see it but the search engines could.

Well Hot Shot, guess what. It doesn’t work. It does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, it actually hurts you. That’s right, it hinders your ranking. Search engines aren’t dumb robots that troll through websites collecting data and throwing it in a database. Like the T-800s in Terminator, they’re “learning computahs”. They’re smart and they know what to look for and most importantly they know when someone is trying to trick them. When search engines find that someone has attempted to trick them by flooding their sites with hidden keywords red flags shoot up and you get classified as a jerk for your shenanigans.

Long story short; hidden text on your website is a no-no.

Myth: If you build it, they will come

So, you paid good money to have a website designed and coded by a world class designer and your site goes “live”. Days pass and no matter how much you search yourself on Google or Bing you just don’t show up. The first thing that shoots through your head is that you’ve been had! That SOB walked away with your hard earned money! Sue that sumbitch!

Ok don’t. Simmer.

This semester my students have been building their portfolio sites and a week after one of their sites went live one of them asked me why he couldn’t find himself on Google. The answer is simple – Google didn’t know that the was there yet. Their bots hadn’t stumbled across his corner of the Interweb. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl your website for the first time. Having incoming links to your site will help speed up the process so get on those social media sites and share your URL with people.

Before you run off to Twitter and Facebook and piss off all of your friends by flooding your status with “Check out my new website” and “I done got me one-a-dem-der websites” you also need to consider that there’s more to it than just patience and incoming links. According to Google, “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

A website not only needs to be built in a search engine friendly way but once it’s launched it will need an Internet marketing campaign or at least a reason for people to visit your site. Hopefully you’ve already taken this into consideration before you decided to get a website and paid someone to design and code it. If you haven’t then what the hell?

Competing websites are probably already using some sort of marketing campaign so a site without a campaign of its own will fall to by the wayside pretty quickly – and no one wants to be by the wayside, it smells there.

Remember that it will take days, if not weeks for search engines to find you in the first place and then even more time for you to climb your way up the rankings. Keep your content fresh with blog posts and changing content. Give the search engines and ultimately more importantly, the users, a reason to come back to your site more and more often.

Myth: Your website will be “number one on Google”

This is such a common request for designers and developers to come across. Mary Sue Internetexpert wants her website to be “number one on Google.” It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked website on Google is Google. Go ahead, try to get ahead of them. If you do it, I’ll give you a buck. The second reason being that I’m fully aware that when the client wants to be “number one on Google” that they don’t mean the first ranked site on Google itself but that they want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but they don’t know how to articulate that.

That being said, chances are that you won’t be the number one ranked site for your search term either unless your search term is something completely obscure like “The mating rituals of the Lower Shibobian Albino Alpaca”, in which case, it’s yours for the taking.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. Personally, I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top of the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest as well as your client’s to focus where and how you want your website to be found. A broader, more vague search term is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

Myth: Flooding your content with keywords helps

It’s a common misconception that flooding your website’s content with keywords over and over again will do wonders for your ranking and search results. The reality of it is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes and content with keywords is not going to help you. Like good old hidden text; it’s probably going to end up hurting you. Search engines will begin to avoid you like the plague if you start using the same keywords over and over again. Search engines see repetition of the same keywords as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read your content out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget; the content on a website isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people out there that will (hopefully) be reading that content as well. If you repeat “[your city]‘s number one night club” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when you’re writing your content and placing keywords.

What have we learned today class?
• Meta-tags like meta-keywords do absolutely jack for your rankings.
• Hidden text is for amateurs.
• SEO doesn’t happen overnight so stop assuming that it will.
• Vague search terms are like camouflage; you won’t be found.
• Read your content out loud, does it sound stupid? If so, change it.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. A lot of it is common sense. If you know when and where to place keywords as well as to use <title> tags, header tag and alt and title attributes you’re going to go a lot farther than Mary Sue Internetexpert.

It seems today that Twitter is being used by just about every corner of the economy and the restaurant industry is no exception. Twitter has become a fantastic tool for restaurants to not only promote their business but to also engage their clientele and monitor feedback and chatter. I’m going to look at a handful of restaurants, most local Fredericton based and non-chained, that are using Twitter as a means to grow.

The Garrison District Ale House // Fredericton, NB

@garrisonale
The Garrison District Ale House, a great restaurant in Fredericton, NB, has been taking advantage of Twitter for the past few months as a promotional tool. They’ve been announcing specials, new drinks, different events and celebrity appearances. They’ve also introduced Twitter Beer Tasting as a way to gain more followers and get more people into the restaurant. People can only attend and participate in the beer tasting if they register via Twitter. All in all these guys are doing a great job of promoting themselves – the only this that’s missing is a fancy looking Twitter page. **cough cough**

The Blue Door // Fredericton, NB

@theblue_door
Another Fredericton based restaurant, The Blue Door has been using Twitter to announce their daily specials. As someone that can never decide where to eat when we go out, being able to see the daily specials at a local restaurant really comes in handy when making decisions. They promote themselves as one of the most progressive and forward thinking restaurants in Fredericton, using Twitter definitely helps solidify that claim.

Marked5 // Los Angeles, CA

@Marked5
The Los Angeles based Marked5 uses Twitter to announce its location as it travels around Los Angeles. It serves little Japanese “burgers” on a bun composed of pressed rice. They also serve teriyaki salmon, katsu pork, you know, fancy Japanese stuff that they don’t serve in Fredericton. Now if only there were cool lunch trucks like this that traveled around Fredericton and Tweeted their locations. There’s dozens in LA that travel around and Tweet to their followers. They get hundreds of people waiting at their future locations just to get a bite to eat.

Racine’s // Fredericton, NB

@racineschef
Though not for the restaurant itself but for the Head Chef Thomas Gimblett, the Racine’s Twitter account has been great for posting lunch and dinner specials. More recently he’s been posting looking for a prep cook/chef. Like The Garrison and The Blue Door, Thomas has been promoting Racine’s and taking advantage of the massive number of people using Twitter. Also like The Garrison, he sure could use a fancy Twitter page **cough cough**.

Even with just a few examples it’s clear to see that Twitter is helping restaurants help engage their customers and promote their restaurants with upcoming events and specials. Remember though, it’s not enough to simply post about yourself. It’s all about engaging. For every one Tweet that you make about yourself you should have 4 or 5 engaging, re-Tweeting and promoting conversation.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking. I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You Will Not Be “Number One on Google”

You would not believe how often I receive requests from people that “want to be number one on Google”. It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked site on Google – is Google. Good luck getting ahead of them. The second being that I’m fully aware that you don’t mean that you want to be the first ranked site on Google, you want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but you don’t know how to articulate that.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top on the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest to focus where you want to be found. A broader, more vague search is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

In August when I launched my friend Nick Forret’s photographer site he wasn’t even registering under the most common search term for local photographers; “Fredericton Photographer” but now, 2 months later, Nick has sky rocketed up to the first page and is quickly overtaking established sites. What’s this doing for Nick? Well, it’s increasing his business for one. People are now able to find him.

This leads me to my next point…

Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Over Night

No, it doesn’t. It happens more often than not that people pay to have SEO applied to their site and then they call the next day or week and ask why they “aren’t the first result on Google.” Half of the answer to that is above, the other half is simply because it takes a while for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl your site. It takes time for these bots to travel around the internet and read sites. According to Google “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

Expect the time between crawls to be a week to a month for a low traffic website. Sites with much higher traffic with more incoming links get crawled more frequently and thus have their reports updated quicker.

Flooding Your Site With Keywords Does Not Help Your Ranking

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes, meta description and content with keywords is not going to help you, if anything it’s going to make search engines avoid you like the plague. Using the same keywords over and over again raises flags with search engines and they see it as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read what’s your writing out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget, that content isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people that will hopefully be reading the content on your site as well and if you repeat “Fredericton Web Design” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when writing your content and placing keywords.

Meta Keywords Do Not Do Anything Anymore

This doesn’t count as a full item so it only gets half a point. It’s been speculated for years that search engines don’t see much weight in Meta Keywords and just recently Google announce that they don’t even look at them. It’s true, Google said it themselves. Adding them to your site does absolutely jack. You can thank the porn industry and spam sites for that.

I hope this has helped clear up a few misconceptions about search engine optimization. So next time you’re going to talk to your web guy about being the “first on Google” just stop and think for a second and remember what you just learned.

Thoughts? Feedback? Hate mail?

Back in August I wrote an article about My Top 10 People to Follow on Twitter and I’ve decided to expand on that and narrow the field down my Top 10 people to follow in the design and web industry. This list includes designers, developers, social media folk and much more, it’s list of people that I draw inspiration and learn from on a daily basis.

I use Twitter not only as a social communications tool but also as a resource for learning more about the industry and with the amount of people posting on it, it’s very easy to keep up with the latest trends and learn new techniques. So, without much more rambling, here is my list (in no particular order).

Naldz Graphics / Ronald Bien

URL: http://www.twitter.com/naldzgraphics
Why: Naldz Graphics is a design blog for designers and design lovers. They showcase the best tutorials, freebies, inspirations and other useful and informative resources to help and give love to design community.

Smashing Magazine

URL: http://www.twitter.com/smashingmag
Why: Smashing Magazine is an amazing source for design techniques, inspiration and new lines of code. They’re always updating their Twitter with not only site updates but also useful posts from around the web. Following them has helped me improve my design skill and coding ability a lot.

Site Point

URL: http://www.twitter.com/sitepointdotcom
Why: The official Twitter for Site Point, they generally keep users updated with what’s going on on their own site, not that that’s a bad thing. Site Point is a fantastic resource for designers, developers and anyone in the industry.

Unmarketing / Scott Stratten

URL: http://www.twitter.com/unmarketing
Why: Unmarketing is the Twitter account for Toronto based marketing and social media guru Scott Stratten. Scott is always giving great advice on new social media trends.

Orange Sprocket / Bill McGrath

URL: http://www.twitter.com/orangesprocket
Why: Bill McGrath, the CEO of Orange Sprocket, is a social media addict. Being very into tech and web trends, Bill is always updating his Twitter account with industry news. Following him on Twitter has helped me keep up to date with a lot of new things in the industry.

Carter McLaughlin

URL: http://www.twitter.com/carter_vagrant
Why: The personal Twitter account of Vagrant Web Services owner/operator Carter McLaughlin. Like Bill McGrath, he’s always updating his Twitter with industry news. Following him has been a great way to improve my knowledge and skills.

LogoMotives / Jeff Fisher

URL: http://www.twitter.com/logomotives
Why: LogoMotives is the Twitter account for Portland, Oregon based designer and author Jeff Fisher. Jeff’s creations have been an inspiration for me since I started following him on Twitter and watching what he does has definitely helped me improve with my logo design.

Mashable / Pete Cashmore

URL: http://www.twitter.com/mashable
Why: Mashable’s CEO Pete Cashmore is a social media/networking guru. Following him as helped me improve my knowledge of the industry(?) ten fold. With over 1.3 million followers, the guy definitely knows what he’s talking about. If you want to learn anything about Twitter and/or social media, this is the guy to follow.

Colorburned / Grant Friedman

URL: http://www.twitter.com/colorburned
Why: Colorburned is the Twitter home of the website of the same name as well as owner/creator Grant Friedman. Colorburned is a great design resource featuring tips, tricks and tutorials. If you want to learn any of the new design techniques floating around the web, chances are that these guys can help. Check them out.

Radian6

URL: http://www.twitter.com/radian6
Why: Founded in 2006, Radian6 was created with the idea that companies need to be listening to the social web in order to effectively participate. Intelligence about online conversations is critical: companies need to know what’s being said about their brand, industry, and competitors online. So, they built a listening platform designed to help companies do just that.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow me @ http://www.twitter.com/robbclarke.

Did I miss anyone? Thoughts? Feedback?

On Tuesday of this past week I got a phone call at the office from a reporter from the local Fredericton newspaper, The Daily Gleaner. He was looking to speak to a graphic designer about what they do and to comment on the industry. I just so happened to answer the phone at the time and was more than happy to help him out.

On Wednesday, reporter Chris Fox came into the office and interviewed me and was followed a short time later by a photographer who took some pictures.

The end result was this article that ran on Saturday, August 22, 2009. For the most part everything was great in the article except for two minor things. The first being that I don’t “handle all the programming and coding for the entire operation.” He got that part mixed up with freelance (for friends and family). I worked with a great team of programmers at Red Cow, Oliver Dueck and Sean Dunphy who have the hardest jobs of them all, they have to make my coded sites actually work. Without them, Red Cow wouldn’t work nearly as well.

The second issue was a mix up of timelines. The article states that I work at Red Cow and teach in the evenings, which is true, but the next paragraph jumps back in time 4 years to when I was doing my Bachelor’s degree and decided that I didn’t want to get into teaching, which is about all you can do with a History Major. It’s a little awkwardly worded but past that, it was good.

I first read the article online when I woke up that morning because, of course, I was incredibly exicted. It wasn’t until later in the day when I grabbed an actual paper copy that I noticed I WAS THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE OF THE BUSINESS SECTION! It was pretty frickin’ cool.

Wait… why are you still reading this? Go read the article!

Good friend and photographer, Nick Forret, approached me in early July about relaunching his website and I was more than happy to help him out. Nick’s old website, while nice looking, wasn’t set up to be easily edited by Nick who has little coding background. Our solution was to set up his new site using WordPress which let him easily update his website and even keep a blog. The new site is set up to automatically add Lightbox to his uploaded images, thus creating a bit of a fancy gallery for his users to view his work.

We’ve also set up a blog with comments enabled to promote discussion about various topics.

Nick is still in the process of adding content to the site but you can view the active site here:
http://www.nickforret.com

Don’t forget, Nick is always available for work!

Unfiltered Smoke is the brain child of journalist, opinion writer, movie reviewer and good friend Jason Wilson. A while back Jason contacted me about working on this project and I jumped on the opportunity. He was looking for a site where he could showcase the works of the many talented people that he has known over the years. He was looking for a site that he could post articles, short stories, videos, photo series and music. The end result is a site that I’m really proud of.

The site features an integrated Lightbox gallery for displaying photo series and dynamic music players which are only activated when the user selects them.

Unfiltered Smoke has very quickly gone from a pet project into a largely popular website that is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

You can take a look at the site by clicking here.

Back in June, good friend Jason Wilson approached me about the creation of a website that would be a showcase “for the creatively gifted.” The website just officially launched this past Friday, August 14th and has already received some press.

The Bugle Observer in Woodstock, NB ran an article on Jason and Unfiltered Smoke on July 28th in which I get a mention.

He’s been meeting with Robb Clarke, a friend and webdesigner, concerning the look of the website.

You can read the full article here:
http://bugleobserver.canadaeast.com/rss/article/742262

If you want to check out Unfiltered Smoke you can do so by clicking here.