Q: Many bloggers discover that selling banners and links is not the best way to generate revenue. What type of blogger is the best fit to cash in on the MediaPass business model?

A: This may sound odd but the answer is most. Yes, some blogs (e.g. finance, parenting, cooking, medical, science, health, fitness etc…) convert better than others but even the lower converting blog’s subscription pages still far out monetize purely ad-based sites. Take for instance a blog that converts 0.5% of their users that arrive on one of their subscription pages. Our average subscriber spends about $60 with renewals. That means that the effective CPM on those pages is $300, many fold over the ad rates any blog is getting.

Q: Is there any self-evaluation a blogger should perform before signing up?

A: They should simply use their intuition in determining what sections and pieces of content make sense to charge for. Some only charge for their legacy/archived content, some pick entire sections and some pick maybe one in three of their articles (or whatever ratio they would like). Our account managers are trained and can also help them pick.

Q: Are subscriber pages blocked from being crawled by search engines?

A: No

Q: How do bloggers get paid?

A: Via check or ACH twice a month. We are updating our platform to pay more often. Will be ready next month.

Q: Will MediaPass work with all blogging platforms?

A: Currently all but blogs hosted by WordPress. I want to be clear about this. MediaPass works perfectly on a blogs that use WordPress as their CMS (as most do) but if they are hosted by WordPress (i.e. their domain name ends in .wordpress.com), we currently don’t support that.

Q: What is your dream plan for Mediapass?

A: Even the smartest blogs and publishers are not experts in online subscription practices as we are. We have created a product that automates much of that expertise. Which is why if a blogger wants our system to do something MediaPass currently doesn’t it’s either b/c A) We will be developing that functionality in the future or b) it’s not a good subscription practice so we don’t let them fall into a trap. B is the most common reason. We think every almost every blog should have some paid element to their site. Blogs that are 100% free don’t make enough money for their efforts. And we want to help power the subscription platform for all of them.

Q: What do you say to bloggers who feel the introductory 35% cut MediaPass keeps is steep?

A: Three things: 1) it costs hundreds of thousands and most often millions of dollars to start a sophisticated in-house subscription platform and is equally expensive in upkeep. We handle everything so it is essentially riskless. 2) What many bloggers may not realize is that other ways in which they monetize their site (i.e. ad networks and AdSense) charge them usually between 50-60% and sometimes more. Those companies have fixed but no variable costs to deliver their service. We have both and still charge less. 3) We believe our subscription expertise pays for itself. Meaning in most cases a blog’s subscriptions will be at least 35% higher for having used us. Additionally, if a blog uses us and it doesn’t outyield their current monetization, the solution is pretty simple; stop using MediaPass.

Q: Any success stories you can share?

A: We have multiple. Our publisher terms and conditions don’t give us the right to tell the world who has decided to add subscription elements to their publication. We are close with a site called GameClassroom that has let us mention them on a few occasions. They have increased their eCPM on those pages by over 10X, which appears to be about our average.

Q: Do you offer a solution for a blogger to sell access to one-time content (i.e. – a Web-based ebook)?

A: Yep. We have a pay-per-view (PPV) and they have access to that content forever. We don’t turn it on as an option in their publisher console unless they are doing something like video or an ebook because PPV is usually not the best way for publishers/blogs to maximize revenue.

I’ve signed up for MediaPass but have not launched it yet. I plan on attempting to use it to make my eBook available in an online format. I’ll be sure to share the results. Anyone out there give it a try? Let us know in the comments section below.

Anyone looking to get started as a paid content provider, or publishers looking for content should consider Demand Studios, several authors who write for Splashpress Media also write for Demand Studios. But now I will let Yury answer some questions we asked.

What Is Demand Studios?

Demand Studios is the creative arm of Demand Media and is responsible for producing in-demand articles and videos for a large network of industry-leading websites and some of today’s most respected online publications. Comprised of thousands of talented freelance writers, editors and filmmakers, Demand Studios creates and delivers handcrafted content to an audience of over 80 million people yearning to be informed and entertained.

Why work for you? What sets you apart from other similar online services?

Demand Studios is unlike other online writing opportunities. By combining the editorial rigors of traditional media with the flexibility and agility of new media, Demand Studios provides aspiring and established writers an exciting new avenue to polish their skills and have their work published on popular sites like USAToday.com, LIVESTRONG.com and eHow.com.
With bylines and bios attached to each written article, Demand Studios writers are able to build their writing portfolios and enjoy a level of exposure not commonly found in other freelance writing positions.

I understand that writers get paid various amounts depending on topic. How difficult it is to get these higher-paying jobs, and what does it entail?

If accepted to write for Demand Studios, writers are able to browse through our large library of available assignments and choose the ones that are most appealing to them. Being able to choose assignments by topic, as you mentioned, is just one way our writers choose what they work on; our writers are also able to filter by the publisher, article format, length and article payment amount. Each assignment price is clearly displayed while claiming new work – so there are no surprises in the amount when payments arrive.
You are correct though, we do oftentimes have premium and special assignments available and reward them to our most prolific and highest rated writers. Getting these higher-paying assignments is entirely in the hands of our writers; when we see a consistent level of quality from a specific writer, we make them eligible for these special assignments.

Demand Studios often are criticized for the pay rates; can you shed a little more insight on the situation and on the payment structure? Do you also offer bonuses for well-performing authors or writers who contribute a lot? Can authors grow in their role for Demand Studios?

Demand Studios was established as a writing and filming studio that could offer a reliable source of work for thousands of talented freelance creators around the country. Employing a comprehensive formula that determines how certain topics, formats and publishing sites will monetize, we set the payment amounts to ensure both Demand Studios and our creators are compensated for their work and that there is plenty of work to go around on a daily basis.
It is also worthwhile to take a step back and take a holistic view of what Demand Studios offers its community. With a large library of ready-to-claim assignments, there is never a need to spend countless hours conjuring and pitching ideas to editors. As a telecommuting position, there is no need to commute to and from one’s home and workplace. And auto-payment removes the costly practice of tracking down clients, processing invoices, and waiting for paychecks–we provide twice a week upfront payment for each approved article, pure and simple.

What would you say are the three most important traits a blogger or writer needs to become successful in the business?

Inherently, freelancing takes organized, driven and inquisitive individuals to manage their own schedules and create well-researched, engaging pieces. Freelancing isn’t for everyone, but for those who yearn to be their own boss, set their own schedules and work on the projects they are truly passionate about, freelancing can be an incredibly rewarding experience.

Authors do have to submit their pieces for approval. Do you refuse lots of content? I can imagine that not many people want to work hard contributing content and then see their content being refused. How do you deal with this and does this have any backlash on the author’s status, contribution to Demand Studios?

My good friend Deb Ng had this to say on the very subject, and I could not agree more:

“In his book “On Writing” Stephen King talks of how he stuck a railroad spike in the wall of his bedroom and soon that spike was filled with rejection slips. King isn’t the only writer who has received numerous rejections. It’s all part of the job. Just because one person doesn’t think you’re a good fit, doesn’t mean you don’t fit another publication or website’s vision. I don’t know of a single writer who hasn’t received at least one rejection. Don’t let it get you down.”

The truth is with the editorial process we have in place at Demand Studios, a very small percentage of submitted articles are ever rejected. This is how it works: Once an article is written, it’s submitted for review by one of our experienced copy editors. The article is checked for plagiarism, facts, spelling, grammar and adherence to our style guides. If the article is great, it’s approved on the spot and payment is automatically processed. If some edits are needed, the article is sent back to the writer with suggestions and the writer has a chance to make those fixes. With the edits in place, the article is resubmitted and approved.

Plagiarism is not taken lightly at Demand Studios and is a surefire way to lose one’s writing privileges. Serial spelling, content and style offenders will see their writing scores dip; if a writing score falls low enough, as with any other company, we are forced to terminate our working relationship with the writer.
We take great pride in the editorial rigors of our system, and if an article or writer does not stand up to our standards, we are unable to continue working with them. In the end, however, this is beneficial to all of our other writers who can be sure their work is published alongside other qualified and able professionals.

What is single best piece of advice you can give to beginners looking to land blogging jobs?

Treat your application with the same care and attention to detail you would any offline job–provide an up-to-date résumé and your best writing sample. If you have expertise in a specific area, make sure to highlight it–special assignments come up all the time and you might be just the right person to share your experience on the subject. Simply put, put your best foot forward and prove to the employer that you’re the best person for the job.

For tips on how to apply to Demand Studios, visit our blog and read what our hiring folks have to say about what they look for in the ideal applicant.

You can also learn more about writing for Demand Studios and apply by visiting our website or check out our facebook page to hear from our community directly.

Thanks for the interview, and if anyone has additional questions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Yury Polnar
Marketing Acquisitions Manager
Demand Media

Thanks for your time, Yury. I wish Demand Studios continued success and hope that many more content providers will join the DS team and be able to make a living and more from the service you provide.

Today Bhavesh Radadiya from Templatic joins us and explains why they rebranded from PremiumThemes to Templatic, as well as shares his ideas on the future of WordPress. Templatic also gives some licenses for their recently launched, excellent WordPress ecommerce theme ‘Store’ for our readers.

Hello Bhavesh, thanks for taking time for our interview. You have been long involved in the WordPress and theme community but somehow are not one of the ‘brands’ out there. Could you quickly introduce yourself to our readers?

Hey everybody. This is R.Bhavesh. A 27 year young net entrepreneur from India. I love to design websites with a blend of usability and a perfect architecture, helping the end user achieve to their goal. Creating products at Templatic.com allows me to do exactly that and that’s why I am working full time at that.

Congratulations on the successful relaunch and rebranding of PremiumThemes/Templatic. Why did you decide to ditch a long standing name and a great URL? Does it mean that we can expect themes for other platforms from Templatic in the near future?

Thank you. After getting started with PremiumThemes.net, I realized that creating templates for the end user tho helps the create a professional, strategic site affordably is what I love doing most. For years to come, I’d be doing the same thing.

And doing something for long time needs a perfect branding. Premium Themes was actually a great URL but its a keyword that only works for WordPress. Over time, popularity of Wp may decrease but we will create templates for other platrorms as well.

Templatic is a keyword that gives an impression of templates/skins/themes – a perfect name for branding that what we are doing.

What do you think has lead to the huge popularity of WP? Was it ‘the right thing at the right time’ after the Movable Type change in license or is WordPress itself the best platform for what it does?

You can say that. But I also believe that WordPress the best platform for creating small websites and blogs is. Easy to use is the best feature of WP have and people love it for exactly that same reason.
At the same time, the actual users of a CMS / Blogging Platform are the people who are getting started / have a small business and they are looking for something cool and a cost-effective solution. WordPress all these uses and covers these needs. Being free, people tried it risk-free and loved it. Movable Type might have thad more potential at that time but charging for something that is available fore free as well does not appeal to me so much.
I’d also say it was a smart move by Matt Mullenweg. I wouldn’t point them out but over the time of last three years, I notice him making several moves at the right time and that keeps the popularity of WP going on.

Do you think WordPress has cornered the market now or is there still place for another platform, and if what would it be?

If we take wordpress as a blogging platform, Tumblr and Postereous are cornering the market. WordPress is now being used to create websites. For now, I don’t see an alternative to WordPress but you never know. Something extra ordinary comes once in a while and the trend changes.

Recently lots has happened in the CMS community: the demise of Postnuke, Joomla seems to be headed the same way as Mambo and some lead developers and users of Movable Type have created a fork of MT, Melody. It seems that the creation of a WordPress Foundation is nearing. Do you think this is a good move for the community or does it involve major risks, could it end in internal war like what we are currently seeing at Joomla? Most of all, are we running out of options?

We have a very good a solid option with WordPress. I always believed that WordPress has the “power of plugins”. The community is hugely involved this way and will continue to flourish. All plugin developer are contributing in their own way while keeping the core code untouched.

I have no opinion on the WordPress Foundation. WordPress is unique in its own way and I would prefer it as-is.

As a designer I suppose that you always lookout for the newest platform software, who do you think could make an impact next year and is there something that could make a new platform stand out being a viable alternative to WordPress?

Right now, Tumblr is leading on the blogging platform. If you consider WordPress as CMS , I don’t see an alternative at the moment because people are really comfortable using it.

But surely there will be a scope for another CMS that offers simplicity. WordPress is introducing more and more features with each version and I fear, it will become bloated one day. Automatically it will create room for others just like they did for the tumblr and others.

Thanks for your time and we wish you and Templatic a great 2010. We here at BloggingPro are looking forward to new releases from Templatic.

Year 2010 will be the biggest year for us as we definitely have great plans with revolutionary products that we will release in the first half of the year. Also our team is growing 3 fold at our headquarters in Surat, India that will add some great value at Templatic.

Thanks for the wishes. Have a good day.

How To Enter The 2009 BloggingPro End of Year Giveaway?

Until the end of 2009 BloggingPro will host every day a new giveaway and every day a new price can be won. Winners will be randomly chosen and announced here on January 3rd 2010.

Today we have 3 copies of the awesome ecommerce theme ‘Store’ by Templatic for our readers.

To participate to today’s competition and win one of the three licenses, follow follow BloggingPro on Twitter (we will check) and tweet about the BloggingPro giveaway and the Store theme (use this link to have both links included!).

Today’s competition will be closed on December 30th 2009 at 23:59PST.

Hello Jeff, thanks for taking time for our interview. You have become part of the select crew of ‘WordPress Rockstars’, how did you come to WordPress?

I actually began on the WordPress path with b2evolution, which was a precursor to WordPress. At some point, there was a mass exodus from b2 to WordPress and I decided to go with the flow. Working with WordPress 1.2, I began designing many different themes, each of them pushing my knowledge as a designer and WordPress’ capability as a blogging engine. Back then, there was much that was not possible using default WordPress functionality, and at the time, the number and variety of plugins were far less than what we currently enjoy. So, achieving design goals required LOTS of WordPress hacking — themes, plugins, and even the core itself. Fortunately, the many talented individuals working within the WordPress community have, over the course of the past five years, helped WordPress evolve into a much more powerful and robust piece of software. With all of the time and effort that I have spent working with WordPress, I am stoked to see how popular it has become. This is one case where going with the flow turned out to be the right decision.

‘Digging into WordPress’ is hot commodity and seems to be the WordPress Bible right at the moment. We recently interviewed Chris here at BP, how was it to work with Chris? Any interesting things we should know about Chris?

Working with Chris is awesome. He is 100% to the core into his work, and he really knows how to get things done. I have learned TONS of great design and development stuff from Chris and am truly thankful for the opportunity to work with him. Interesting things about Chris? Nothing that his fans don’t already know: he is serious about web design but doesn’t take himself too seriously. He has an incredible sense of humor and yet is very down to earth. He works constantly and is always moving forward, more so than most of the people I have worked with in the past. I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

We have seen WordPress used for pretty much everything in recent years: shops, directory, CRM, event calendar, voting platforms. Is there anything WordPress can’t do?

Well you have to remember that WordPress is only a tool for bloggers, designers, and developers to achieve their goals. To the average user/blogger, WordPress can indeed “do it all” because “all” consists of basic stuff like blogging, commenting, and advertising. For intermediate users/designers, WordPress can pretty much do it all as well. Many designers need a good dynamic platform for building new sites and themes, and WordPress does this perfectly. It is only when you begin to consider the needs of developers and advanced users that the limits of WordPress’ potential are reached. But even then, with the right knowledge, WordPress can be extended and customized to suit virtually any need. So I think it’s all relative and based on the ability of the user/developer to use WordPress in such a way as to achieve their design goals. The question isn’t so much “is there anything WordPress can’t do?” as much as it is “is there anything you can’t do with WordPress?” WordPress may always be a viable choice, but whether or not it is the most efficient and suitable choice is of greater importance.

Do you think WordPress has cornered the market now or is there still place for another platform, and if what would it be?

I don’t know if WordPress has “cornered the market” or not. As a WordPress author and developer, it’s certainly nice to think that WordPress is the most popular CMS/blogging platform in the world, but popularity alone doesn’t necessarily mean superiority. You have to keep in mind that the Web is a big place, and that there are many localized communities of bloggers, designers, and developers using a wide variety of different platforms, including everything from Habari and MODx to Expression Engine and Drupal. In these circles, WordPress may be entirely irrelevant, as time and effort is focused on whatever application the community happens to be using. There are many non-WordPress communities that are thriving and growing for many different types of CMS and blogging software. The Web is big enough for hundreds of thousands of different platforms, each with their own micro-community of supporters, developers and users. Remember, this is exactly how WordPress began, as a small, community-supported blogging platform. It’s only when you measure popularity on a global scale that WordPress may appear superior to other choices. But once you dig down and start looking closer at other communities, you will see that there is much life beyond WordPress.

As a designer I suppose that you are always on the lookout for the new platform software. Who do you think could make an impact next year and is there something that could make a new platform stand out being a viable alternative to WordPress?

I do like to experiment with other platforms, but there is rarely any reason to use anything other than WordPress. Usually I can get the job done with minimal effort, unless we start getting into complex user-management and role-based registration systems, for which something like Drupal or Joomla might be a better choice. As for viable alternatives, I think it all depends on the developer, project, and end-user. I have seen beautiful sites built with MODx, Habari, Textpattern, and even with hand-rolled platforms. If you find a good alternative to WordPress that will help you efficiently achieve your design goals, then by all means you should use it. People should not be mindlessly installing WordPress just because of its sheer popularity. It is interesting to ponder whether or not MODx, say, could ever be more popular than WordPress, but ultimately it’s more important that people are using the right tool for the job, regardless of how popular it is. This is one of the things that is so great about the Web — diversity is infinite and the possibilities are endless. We need to evolve beyond the sheep mentality.

I am one of those always on the lookout for the ‘next software’ and have eagerly been awaiting Expression Engine 2. What do you think of the new license structure for EE?

I like Expression Engine. I would like it even more if it were completely free. I think that not providing a free Core version is a bad move, but I suppose a 30-day demo will suffice to get a percentage of users on the hook. It also looks like they hiked up their licensing fees quite a bit, which is also not going to help attract new users. The new “Freelancer” option looks nice, but seems too restrictive for the price. In general, I think EE’s pricing structure is just a bit out of reach for mainstream users, who have no reason to pay for something that they can get for free with WordPress. I think this may be one of the reasons why WordPress is more popular than EE — because it’s free, and people like free stuff.

Thanks for your time and we wish you a great 2010. We here at BloggingPro are looking forward to many more great tips and tricks from Perishable Press. Please tell us, should we get excited already about another book?

Chris and I are already in the process of putting together the next update for Digging into WordPress, which will include new information and tricks for WordPress 2.9, plus some new theme-development techniques and maybe even a free theme or two. So lots of good stuff going there, and we have TONS of new ideas both for the book and the site. Along with producing high-quality web-design content at Perishable Press, Digging into WordPress is my primary focus. I have lots of ideas for books and other projects, but unfortunately I only get 24 hours a day like everybody else.

Thanks again for the interview! Much success to you and your readers in 2010!

How To Enter The 2009 BloggingPro End of Year Giveaway?

Until the end of 2009 BloggingPro will host every day a new giveaway and every day a new price can be won. Winners will be randomly chosen and announced here on January 3rd 2010.

We have 3 copies to give away for our readers. Winners will receive a free version of the Digging into WP PDF with free lifetime updates and a discount on the printed version.

To participate to today’s competition and win one of the three books by Jeff Starr and Chris Coyier, follow follow BloggingPro on Twitter (we will check) and leave a comment with your Twitter ID below or follow us and tweet about the BloggingPro giveaway.

Today’s competition will be closed on December 29th 2009 at 23:59PST.

Thord has been rather quiet in the international WordPress scene over the last months but now is ready to return to the front stage with his soon to be launched book Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog. We were lucky enough to interview Thord and are exclusively giving away a copy of his book for 3 of our readers!

Thord, thanks for taking time for this interview. You have been rocking the WP design community for years with your very own signature style but recently you disappeared. What happened?

It’s my pleasure. As to me disappearing from the scene, well, it’s a mix of work and personal life that switched my priorities. I’ve been doing a lot of writing the last year or so, the book as you well know, as well as doing freelance work for magazines like MacWorld. I’ve also worked with Swedish newspapers to roll out a local blog network, and projects like that. It has been nice to return to my own backyard so to speak, being Sweden of course, at least for a little change in work scenery. It was never a conscious decision to slide out of the WordPress community, and I’ll remedy that by giving the Notes Blog theme a boost early 2010.

You are the next of a very elusive group to publish a WordPress book. What motivated you to write a book about WP and what can the reader expect from your book and when will it be released?

My publisher, Wileys, approached me after having read my WordPress as a CMS post on Devlounge. They liked the basic concept, and since I’ve always felt that WordPress is a publishing tool foremost, and a blogging platform second, I found the prospect of writing a book where I could share my thoughts on this exciting. Luckily the good folks at Wileys liked my ideas, so things went pretty smooth from that.

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog will help anyone having played around a bit with HTML, PHP, or WordPress to build great sites. While it does indeed tell you how WordPress works and how you can build both kickass themes and plugins with it, the part I’m most excited about is the more conceptual one. There are a ton of things beyond the blogging that you can do with WordPress, and that is what I’m trying to convey in the book. WordPress is truly a great platform, and it gets even better when you understand all you can do with it.

You can pick up the book on January 22nd in the US, and a few weeks later in the UK as well as the rest of Europe.

One thing I always noticed about TDH was that TDH doesn’t really blog. Your brand is well-known but there is no such thing as a ‘TDH blog’. This seems against pretty much any rule of the game, how did you manage this?

It’s madness, I know! I did roll out a blog when I decided to start writing in English, and that landed me the Blog Herald gig under Matt Craven. Since then, I’ve been freelancing a lot, editing the Blog Herald (up until recently), Devlounge, Wisdump, and more, as well as launched a bunch of blogs and sites myself. Those opportunities, along with a great deal of word of mouth, have certainly made this possible.

But yeah, it is most certainly against every rule of the game not to blog. I haven’t had a serious portfolio either, and I’m almost ashamed to say that I’m not even struggling to make that happen either. Things seem to work out for me anyway. That being said, after leaving the Blog Herald I’ve decided that I should indeed blog for me for a while, so that’s why I’ve rolled out TDH.me.

Facebook status updates, Twitter, Status.net and many more. It seems that we are living the era of ‘blogging on speed’ right now. Popular blogs have more and more become high paced magazines. What is the future of blogging according to you?

That’s true, and I’m completely fine with it. Maybe now we can kill this weird idea of “blogging” that we all seem to be carrying around. Blogging is just another word for online publishing, with the difference that it is so easy that anyone can do that. Old media should be very, very, very afraid.

The future of blogging per se is better blog publishing software, social media integrations and whatnot. That’s all completely uninteresting. What is interesting is that this will bring better content from people not tied to the old media outlets, it already is, and that is both changing and shaping the media landscape. Quality content. That’s the future of blogging, online media, and the only way to success in the long run. Content is king.

bbPress will receive Matt’s exclusive attention over the next months. I am, and many more bloggers I know were, a former forum nut. Can we expect a return of the forums if Automattic and the community will focus on the forum plugin?

Perhaps not a return of the forums, because when you and me and all our friends hung around and yapped about this and that, those old school bulletin boards where one of a mere few ways to communicate online. Today we’ve got social networks that make every forum from the 90s look bland. The need just isn’t the same anymore. That being said, there is a place for forums as well, as a part of big sites and for small groups of likeminded individuals to talk freely. In that sense a better bbPress could mean a return of the forums, but it’ll be just one more feature on the magazine-like blogs we spoke of earlier. And that’s fine too.

WP continues to grow. Do you think there are any viable alternatives for the user? What are they and what makes them stand out as alternative?

There are alternatives, and two spring to mind, none of them being Movable Type, I’m afraid. The one thing that keeps WordPress from being used as a CMS on larger sites in Sweden is Drupal. One might say that WordPress and Drupal are entirely different beasts, and that’s true, but at the same time they can fill the same purpose. This is changing as we speak, but Drupal is the viable alternative for the media user, if not the small time blogger hoping to make some Adsense dollars.

The second alternative is Habari. Not that I’d say that Habari is a serious alternative or anything today, although I’m sure it is great, but because of what it stands for. WordPress is getting bigger and bigger, and some say it is in dire need of a complete rewrite. Habari is new and fresh and doesn’t have to cope with the old deadweight. I think we’ll see lightweight alternatives gain some ground, just because they are lightweight and WordPress is not.

Your book will also be released with Smashing Magazine, how was it to work with Sven & Vitaly.

I haven’t had anything to do with them directly yet, they are not involved in the book itself, but rather deal with the publisher on a book series sort of level. All in all, everything I’ve heard is that they are great to work with, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to do that in the near future, as the book nears the counters and whatnot.

Thanks for taking time for this BP interview, Thord. We wish you a successful book launch and a great 2010.

Thanks for having me! Always a pleasure.

How To Enter The 2009 BloggingPro End of Year Giveaway?

Until the end of 2009 BloggingPro will host every day a new giveaway and every day a new price can be won. Winners will be randomly chosen and announced here on January 3rd 2010.

Note

The book Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog will only be released in the second half of January 2010. Winners will be send their copy as soon as the book is released.

To participate to today’s competition and win one of three Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog books by Thord D. Hedengren, follow follow BloggingPro on Twitter (we will check) and leave a comment with your Twitter ID below or follow us and tweet about the BloggingPro giveaway.

Today’s competition will be closed on December 28th 2009 at 23:59PST.

Chris Coyier has been rocking the design scene since a while now with his very popular CSS-Tricks design community but recently Chris made a well noticed intro to the blogging scene with Digging into WordPress which he co-authors with Jeff Starr (Perishable Press).

Only 6 months after starting Digging into WordPress, the duo released the wonderful Digging into WordPress book, 400 pages of useful information for the most popular blog platform, WordPress. Check out the Table of Contents and a sample chapter here (PDF link). Time for an interview we thought.

Chris, thanks for taking time to participate to our interview here on BloggingPro. You are rather new to the design and development scene but are already one of the rockstars. Tell us a little why you decided on web development as a career.

I think this field is just a perfect match for me. It’s art, it’s problem solving, it’s technology, it’s all the stuff I find fascinating. As I kid I was way into computers. In high school I was really into my programming classes and then later into ceramics. When I went to college I ended up going with computer science, and gave up on it right before graduating and switched to ceramics. I always gone back and forth between art and technology. Now I can do design and development, and it’s like doing both at the same time!

You have been working around a year with Jeff Starr on ‘Digging into WordPress’. Congratulations on releasing the book. 400 Pages is no small feat!
Why did you guys decide on WordPress?

Thanks! Jeff actually approached me about doing a book. I had been wanting to do one for a while, and I thought it would be a great idea to co-author one, so we could share in all the responsibilities and hopefully that would be easier than going it alone. Turns out I was right, working with Jeff has been awesome, he’s a talented guy. We chose WordPress pretty quickly after deciding we were going to do a book, just because we both had worked with extensively and both had a lot to say on the subject. Also that we both needed an outlet for WordPress writing, since neither of our blogs is directly focused on that.

Ebooks are a great and practical resource to always have with you when working on a computer/laptop, but are there any plans to release a print version and when?

Yep absolutely, as I write this we are working on getting the final version together to send to the printer. Should be out to them this week and, all goes well, available around the new year. Anybody who has bought the PDF will be getting a fair discount on the print version. I think having both is the perfect scenario. Print is awesome, but the PDF is searchable, portable, and copy-and-pastable, so if you have both you have the best of both worlds!

How difficult has it been to write about a quickly moving platform like WordPress? The book was only just released and WP2.9 is already knocking on our doors with many new features. Did the fast update cycles make writing the book more difficult and will buyers receive updates about new features?

We were trying to be very aware of that when creating the book. The book, right now, is 100% up to date with version 2.8.6. We have been watching 2.9 and are just as excited about it as everyone else. When 2.9 comes out, nothing in this book will be “outdated”. There will be some cool stuff that won’t be covered in the book. But that’s the cool part about this book! When you buy it, you are getting a lifetime subscription. We will be updating the book to add that new stuff. All previous buyers will be delivered that new version (as PDF) for no additional cost.

You are very successful with your CSS-Tricks website. ‘Digging into WP’ and your success as designer makes me wonder: ‘Are you the new Chris Pearson’? Any plans for WordPress themes in the future?

I’ve created a ton of themes, but mostly for clients and myself. I have done an number of publicly released ones as well though. We have a “Theme Playground” on Digging Into WordPress where people can browse our themes and download them for free. I’ve actually been working on a new one that I (as of now) plan to package up and offer with new versions of the book. I don’t know Chris Pearson very well I’m afraid, so I’m not sure if I’m the new anybody =). Would that be good or bad?

Good of course, there can only be one Chris Coyier.

Do you think WP has cornered the market now or do other platforms such as MT and EE still stand a chance? As designer, is your life limited to WP now or do clients running other platforms still get in touch?
What do you think is the ‘best of the others’ nowadays?

I love WordPress but I’m not narrow-minded about it. I’ve actually never used Moveable Type but ExpressionEngine is awesome. One of the things I often tell people is that you should use tools that you can be instantly productive with. If you are a great EE developer, then by all means, reach for EE by default when doing a new project, no need to go through a new learning curve for every project you do. They are both pretty similar in capabilities. WordPress actually isn’t great at a few particular things. For example, I don’t think WordPress is particularly well suited for is restricted-access membership type sites. But in general, if someone is looking for a CMS to learn as their primary tool, I think WordPress is a great choice.

Last but not least, there has been quite some rap around lists recently (Smashing Magazine Killed The Community ). Some of your tutorials have been featured on tons of ‘lists’. How have lists helped CSS-Tricks and what is your take on lists?

I’ve done my part in expressing my disdain for list and roundup posts in the design blog community. In general, I think they are a soul-less attempt at trying to snag some short-lived attention on social media sites. Sites like Smashing Magazine and Vandelay Design have generally been the exception. They put a lot of time and effort into their lists and have a little voice to go along with them. Smashing Magazine lately has been vocally trying to move away from this and into more specialized content.

I don’t do lists/roundups at all on CSS-Tricks unless the context of the post makes perfect sense. For example, I was thinking about putting a post together about Christmas gifts for web designers. I’ll probably title it “Christmas Gifts for Web Designers”. I’m not going to name it “50+ Mouth Watering Gifts for Web Designers”, even though that would probably do better on StumbleUpon. If I ever name a post something like that, feel free to knee me in the nads.

Have list posts helped my site though? I’m sure it’s contributed to my overall traffic, so in that sense I guess it has helped. I don’t want to be ungrateful for that, but at the same time, if CSS-Tricks never appeared on another soul-less roundup post, I would be more than fine with that.

The point: use your voice and write original content.

Thanks for your answers and time, Chris. We look forward to many more great tips and wish you lots of success in the future.

You can stalk Chris at his personal site, keep up with his design tips at CSS-Tricks, become his fwend on the tweeter (emphasis Chris) and keep an eye on Digging into WP.

If this interview made you curious, go grab your copy of Digging into WordPress, at $27 it’s a steal (Big mean affiliate link!).

So, lets start with a little about the 449, and its history. Who is involved, and you mentioned somewhere that you had worked on this idea before?

I started the 449 originally as a spin-off of my main design business, Chris Garrett Media Ltd but about six months ago decided to stop doing it as I’d been doing much more involved work on large web applications. I noticed that a lot of people missed it and discontinuing the 449 had left a large hole in the market, so I reinvented it and bought in my good friends Chris Rowe, Indranil Dasupta and Dave Nichols to help tackle the work. I’m now acting as project manager and the work being rolled out is the excellent result of everyone working together.

Next question: Why £449? Why not more or less, and why in Great Britain Pounds?

I’m based in the UK, and I’ve always considered it professional to charge in your own currency, it also saves my accountant a lot of effort. When I started the 449 I was working at a rate of £150 a day, we worked out that to put together a high quality, bespoke WordPress theme would take about 3 days. We knocked a pound off because “the 450″ just didn’t sound that good.

What is special or different about 449? Couldn’t I get the same thing for $50 off SitePoint?

Harsh! We don’t just spend time pushing pixels in photoshop and hacking together some WordPress code. When you come to us, we take the time to dig deep into what it is your looking for and respond with a design concept that reflects that. We also take the time to get into the head of your user, my expertise lie in user experience design so you can be sure that your theme will be optimised to make life as easy as possible for your readers. By encouraging discovery by cross-pollenating content and defining calls-to-action for the parts of your site that really command attention, we can make sure that your visitors convert to customers, subscribers and lovers.

Our code is also highly optimised, accessible and includes use of cutting edge niceties such as microformats. This alone will get you a major boost in search engine results. We also don’t work off any standard templates, everything we do is unique to your project and we’re always on hand to offer the best support money can buy.

One client even mentioned that we should be charging more for our service, so I think that alone is reason enough to not just buy something cookie cutter off SitePoint.

You guys are the only people that I have heard of that do Microformats for WordPress themes. Can you tell me why that is interesting or even a basic bit on what Microformats are?

Microformats are basically a series of predefined standards for marking up specific pieces of information, such as contact information, events and even blog posts. By assigning specific classes to data, we’re able to add a deeper level of semantic richness to it which makes the data more machine readable (without impacting on human readers). They’re essentially bridging the gap between XML and HTML. Microformats are rapidly being adopted by emerging search engines and can even benefit users with disabilities such as visual impairments, so while the benefits right now aren’t that obvious, in a years time you’ll be glad you ordered a microformat rich blog from the449.com.

Wow that was a lot of buzz words, but it sounds like something serious companies and bloggers will want to invest in.

Why WordPress and is that the only blogging software your deal covers?

WordPress is a fantastic platform, our clients love it, we’re able to work very quickly on it and the community is unprecedented. Having said that, we’re established developers and can work with any platform you need, in the past we’ve worked with Textpattern, Expression Engine and Movable Type. I’m really looking forward to Habari reaching a stable release and hoping some clients will request we use it.

What else can you tell me about the 449 that bloggers en masse will be interested in? Can we expect any freebies from the 449?

Well the site only launched last week so it’s been a hectic few days, but we’re in talks with some very high profile bloggers who will be offering their readers discounts and we’ll also be running a few competitions with free blogs as the prize. But with Blogging Pro being such a cutting edge resource, I think it’s fitting that it’s readers be the first to take advantage of our early bird discounts The first 10 people to email the promo code “bloggingpro” to chris[at]cgmmail.com will receive a £50 discount. A 449 for just £399.

Lastly, if we want to find out more about 449, where do we go, and who do we contact?

http://the449.com is the place to go for more information, I recommend you also check out the blog as we’re in the process of preparing some really good content. To get in touch, you can email me at chris[at]cgmmail.com, give me a call on +44(0)1453890326 or use our contact form at http://the449.com/contact/.

Talking about PayPerPost and its features, he believes that they are the only worthwhile system in regards to companies paying for such content. He talked about the features in the system and their work at combating the issue with review quality, and blogger quality issues that have been plaguing the system. They have added a way for their users to have their reviews ranked by the purchaser, so others have a way of telling how good or bad a writer is.

It is understandable as currently, they are the biggest system that I know of. He brought up the number of features they have brought up over the course of nearly a year. PayPerPost’s one year anniversary is coming up soon.

He also let me know that there is a new release of features, or information coming out in the next week or two. He wouldn’t pin it down any more than that, but he said that it will get people talking again, more than even PayPerPost Direct, one of their newest services.

Overall, he wasn’t as evil as people believe. He really stands behind his product and compares it to paid search results. He believes that the industry of blogging was hurting for a better monetization system, and that is what PayPerPost and its counterparts have provided.

An interesting breakfast indeed.

Check out the interview at OpensourceCMS.

Matthew Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress is one of those young people that your parents like to point to when they ask you what the hell you’re doing with your life.

Last week PC World named him the 16th most-important person on the web (two slots above the of the founders of Yahoo!), which isn’t bad for a 23-year-old who gives it away for free.

But what we find most impressive is if you ever want to check in on his site all you have to do is type “Matt” into Google and he comes up at the #1 return, above Mr. Drudge.

Last night we got to spend a few minutes with him at the Ginger Man in Austin just as last call was being announced.

If you are new to WordPress, its definitely worth checking out.

Being a professional blogger that is trying to educate the masses, what’s the most common mistake you see bloggers doing out there?
The first thing that comes to mind is that I see many bloggers with incredibly potential who give up way too quickly. Building a blog with an income stream takes significant work over a substantial period of time.

While blogging can be quite lucrative, when you look at those that are doing well you generally find that they’ve been at it for at least two years and that they post numerous posts per day (some as many as 20 or so). While I don’t believe you need to post this many times a day to build a successful blog it does give you a hint at the level of commitment and work a successful blog needs.

Many bloggers don’t consider this up front and give up after just a few months.

Another great interview by the BloggerTalks folks, and one with some decent advice to those looking to become the next Darren Rowse.

David: Thanks Marco for talking with me today. Thankfully it seems I have caught you right in the middle of a writers block, but hopefully you’ll have some stuff to say on the questions I have for you.

First off, tell me a little bit about yourself. You aren’t in North America, the UK or Australia, better known as the “normal place” for probloggers right?

Marco: My name is Marco Jardim, although I’m more commonly known as Griffith on the Internet (Griffith, by the way, is the name of one of my favorite Manga characters, from Berserk, by Kentaro Miura). I’m 22 years old and currently I’m a college student and a professional blogger for ForeverGeek.

I have more than 2 years of experience in Web Design and Development for a local company called InforQuali, and I also had a short experience in computer tutoring in another local company called Arquimedes. After almost two years of working with InforQuali, and with my former employers’ support, I decided to take a Computer Engineering course in the only College that had it on my island.

My “passions” are my girlfriend (obviously), computer gadgets (I always seem to find another one that I need want), and web design and development, which were my areas of expertise in InforQuali. I also have a strong interest for oriental cultures, from their history and food to their music and art.

That’s correct about where I live. I am in one of the places of the world where you wouldn’t expect to find a problogger: Madeira Island. A very small island that you can drive around in less than 4 hours. It is situated southwest from Portugal (Europe) in the Atlantic Ocean.

David: Strange place to hail from. Must be hard sometimes as it can’t be known for getting technology first?

Marco: Actually, I get technology last, or on a similar date to some less developed countries. Not only because I live in Europe, but also because I live on an island, therefore I only get the newest gadgets 3, or more, weeks after they’re released in Europe. And sometimes there’s a really long delay between a Japan/American release and a European one.

I guess that that delay is due to the large number of different languages we speak.

Here’s a recent example. Nokia, which is a European-based company, announced that they would be releasing a new N Series phone, the N73, during July. Only recently did it start to be commercialized in my country, and not all cellphone providers have it yet.

In short, the delay is very long.

David: You have been a writer on Forever Geek for quite some time. Can you tell me how you got into that and how long have you been writing on there?

Marco: Ah… my history on ForeverGeek. It’s a very interesting one, or ironic, to say the least. Back in 2004 when Paul Scrivens, from the 9rules network, owned ForeverGeek, he made an article inviting people to join the site as editors. I, with no blogging experience whatsoever, decided to try my luck and sent him an e-mail. And, surprisingly, I got accepted.

At that time, I didn’t have a fixed number of articles I had to write, I was free to write as many as I liked. My payment would come from the revenue earned from those articles, however, since I didn’t consider myself on-par with the other editors’ posts, and I still had much to learn, I decided to let Paul keep my revenues (although, when he sold ForeverGeek, he asked me for my PayPal address so he could transfer my earnings, but I politely declined, for the same reasons as before).

I made a few articles which generated a lot of controversy, and that made a few of the former editors upset. Some of them wanted me out, but, for some reason, Paul decided to keep me on the team, and I learned as much as I could from him, and the rest of team, while he still owned it.

When ForeverGeek was finally sold, most of the former crew left, I was one of the few that stayed. And now, ironically, I’m the editor that writes the most posts-per-day on ForeverGeek. And I hope that I’ll continue to be a part of the team for many years to come.

David: You mentioned learning from Paul Scrivens, which leads to the question of how much of blogging is skill and talent and how much can be learned over time? Do you think you started with skill and talent, or did you learn what you needed to as you went along?

Marco: Good question. As much as some might refute with my opinion, I think that you can only evolve until a certain point without talent. Thankfully, my father was a journalist, and my mother also worked in journalism in advertisements and wrote poems. So I guess you can say I have a writer’s “vein” from both of them. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have always gotten good grades in my mother language classes.

As to how that was influential in my blogging career, I think that you can say that it helped me a lot. Perhaps Paul perceived that I had some talent, and therefore allowed me to stay, perhaps he was just feeling nice, as he usually is. I guess I’ll never know, but I’m glad that things happened the way they did.

Regarding skills, yes, you need a lot of skill in order to become a great writer, and if you’re not particularly great in writing, that is where you have to dedicate most of your time. My father always told me when I was younger to read as much as I could so I could learn how to write better. Regardless of how much talent (you think) you have, it’s not enough to become a good professional.

However, David, I’m afraid that there’s something else that you need to become a great blogger: you need experience. Sure, your skills will come as you gain experience, but if you don’t exercise your freedom of speech, as much as possible, before attempting a blogging career, you might make some dire mistakes.

I’ve been blogging for almost two years now and I still consider myself rather “novice” in some aspects. There are always new things you can learn, and more ways for you to improve yourself. You can apply that to everything you do in life, not just blogging.

David: Most bloggers trying to go “pro” try to spread themselves outwards onto dozens of sites, and though you work for a blog network, you haven’t gone ahead and spread yourself onto multiple blogs (at least as far as I know). Why is that and do you think that is something you would be interested in doing?

Marco: Jacob Gower, the current owner of BloggyNetwork and ForeverGeek, has given me the opportunity to write on other blogs of the network more than once. Every now and then he sends me an e-mail letting me know what he thinks of my work, and asking if I’d like to try writing on some other blogs.

Until now, I have always declined those invitations, because I don’t have much experience in some of the subjects of the other blogs, and therefore I prefer not to step in, before getting well acquainted with them. I am also a bit sympathetic for ForeverGeek, because it was the blog in which I was nurtured. If I started writing too early on other blogs I’d probably grow “home sick” from FG, starting my own blog was already enough of a challenge for me.

Lately I’ve been trying to write some articles about blogging on my personal blog, like “What Chess can teach Blogging” which was recently mentioned here on BP. Therefore I guess you can say that I am trying to spread myself a little, but not abruptly. But who knows, maybe soon enough I’ll start writing on other blogs, maybe it will even be on this one. That depends on how acquainted I become, and how well received my blogging articles are.

David: If you had to give a tip to all the bloggers out there looking to make a few bucks from blogging. What would that tip or those tips be?

Marco: If you are only in the blogging business in order to make money, you should realize that there are more profitable professions out there. Back when my father managed my island’s most popular newspaper, he didn’t earn a good enough payment for the amount of hours he worked for. Right now, blogging is the same.

Most professional bloggers work arduously, sometimes up to 12 hours a day, in order to make enough revenue just to make a living. There are only a select few that make a lot of money.

Some people are more business-oriented than others, others are just more popular, or better writers, or simply more fortunate. I guess that what I’m trying to say is, if you don’t have a love for this profession, a taste for writing and the yearn to discover new things every day, then this might not be the most appropriate profession for you, but if you do, I hope that you have enough perseverance, and luck, to make it.

“A glimpse into the subconscious mind of Justin Shattuck; developer, critic, designer, and successful entrepreneur. Consider the content more-or-less your daily mental diuretic of useless information and ramblings. Amazingly, on occasion, there is some pretty decent writings.”

Warning, this interview is long, but really interesting. We cover personal thoughts an opinions from WordPress to the guys at Hitch50.com.

David: Anyways, thanks for doing this Justin, I know you are busy with a variety of things.

Jumping right in though, you are an information services and technology specialist, what is that like? I am sure that does not define who you are, so what words describe Justin on a day to day basis?

Justin: It means I better know my stuff!

Honestly, individuals come to me and ask me questions related to technology; solutions and conflicts. I’m supposed to be the guy that sits back and gives them an answer or knows exactly where to find the answer. People trust my opinions and suggestions; I have to know what I’m talking about. Everyday brings a new challenge, a new idea and a brand new hurdle.

My career does not define who I am; personally. Who I am has defined my career. I always rationalize and analyze everything in my life. From choosing a girlfriend, purchasing a website or starting another project. I evaluate and pay equal attention to the smallest of variables. I’m a thinker — and a doer. Describing me.. its funny, my friend Molly described me best in an article on her personal website.

I’m no super hero..

David: You and I have been talking back and forth for quite some time now, and that is due in part to your interest in the WordPress community. You have created plug-ins and themes for WordPress. What got you started in Blogging and WordPress?

Justin: Man, looking back into when I started blogging is a blurry time line. If the term blogging meant what it does now, eight years ago.. I guess you would say I started in 1997. However, back then we were simply logging our thoughts online in our great ‘journals.’ Moving on over time I tried out every content management system available. In 2001 I started coding my own CMS.

Although it wasn’t meant for public release, I utilized it to power some of the websites I was developing over the years. Once I decided to sell off the code to another individual, I decided it was time to find something else. After toying with other systems, like Serendipity (s9y), Movabletype, Typepad, and expression engine — I somehow just got sucked into WordPress.

David: Good, another WordPress convert. Everyone knows how I feel about WordPress.

Justin:WordPress seems to be community driven, both on the development and support. Not that there aren’t a lot of projects out there in the GPL world that aren’t supported as such, WordPress is just different.

As far as plug-ins and themes, I can’t take all the credit. I get inspiration just like anyone else. If I run into an issue I think needs to be resolved I begin hammering out plans to fix it. I still have four other plug-ins that I utilize on my personal website, as well as seven themes that I want to release.. its all about the timing.

Its people like you who keep me doing what I do..

David: This brings me to your personal website domain. I recently decided to shift from one online alias to a domain that included my first name. You currently are using your first and last (JustinShattuck.com) as your domain. How have you found it for a domain (good traffic, good search engine results), and why did you choose your name?

Justin: I’m not sure that there is really a better option for me. I’m out there, I’m a crazy guy. I guess for me there isn’t a better place for someone to find me online — than my own name. I’ve thought about a few other domain names in the past but there hasn’t been one to really hit me and say, “USE ME USE ME!” Therefore, by default justinshattuck.com is used.

The traffic seems to be traffic. I get a lot of visits from people searching for other “Shattucks” in the world. The search engines seem to be nice to me and I can’t complain.

You have another domain name in mind for me? Maybe I could grab phoenixrealm from you?

David: Unfortunately not on both accounts. I think using your name is a great idea, despite the possible spelling issues that people might have. Your last name is not the most common in the world.

Justin: I’ve heard it all when it comes to mispronunciations, spellings and such. You can probably imagine the possibilities…

David: I can imagine. Try having Peralty as a last name. I get Puralte, Peralte, Perralty… It never ends.

Justin: Your last name is Peralty? Oh boy, I’m in the wrong interview…

David: HA! Anyways, enough making fun of my strange last name.

I am sure you have noticed that the blogosphere is always shifting quickly, where do you see it heading, and what do you hope your contribution will be? When they look back will they only remember you as the WordPress Bannage guy?

Justin: The WordPress Bannage guy, that has a nifty ring to it. I don’t want to be remembered. Its the guys that are remembered that have to keep up with an image. Always working harder, faster and smarter than everyone else. I don’t like to be number one at anything I do. I absolutely love being number two. It gives me the opportunity to see what the bigger guy is doing and find his mistakes.

The sphere doesn’t change, it evolves. Evolution happens with everything, its expected. The trends are all in funky places right now. A year ago, everyone was setting up niche and micro-niche blogs, specifically for a single subject. I can’t think of a single niche-blog I read any more. I definitely feel the quality is dropping.

I honestly don’t have a statement as to where it is going. I don’t pay attention to tomorrow. I do all I can today and make sure I have a feeling of accomplishment. As long as I am accomplishing something, everyday, that’s a day I’m happy. Tomorrow will worry about itself, no need to rush it.

I am very disappointed with the quality on the sphere in relation to WordPress. In my opinion, free themes are starting to lack character and plug-in development has really slowed in purpose.

David: Well, I want to thank you for something more than this interview. Recently, I got a chance to interview Scotty of Hitch50.com thanks to you. Can you tell me what the experience was like, and what made you jump in your car to go pick up two guys you never met?

Justin: Why not man. It isn’t everyday you have the opportunity to really get face to face with some of these goons doing crazy projects. For me, it was more than just jumping in my car. Being an entrepreneur, I immediately realized the ultimate goal of this project. I enjoyed the concepts and I was thrilled I could help out.

Scott and Matt (Scotty and Fiddy) weren’t strangers to me. They were simply friends I hadn’t had the opportunity to hang out with yet. I had been working out some details for a little while prior to their arriving in the area. I got a hold of my buddy Brian and asked him if he wanted to accompany me on the journey to Oklahoma City to pick the boys up. He was thrilled as well.

I’m all about meeting people on the Internet, I am a big guy, I don’t think someone is going to kidnap and harass a 6’3” 280lb guy that looks like a wholly mammoth! It was definitely an experience. Everyone seemed to want to ask questions, obviously, they were all over the press.

Unbelievably though, not many people knew who they were. I can’t recall a single time when were walking around somewhere, eating or drinking and someone go, “Holy mother! You’re those two guys.. oh.. uhh uhh Scotty and Fiddy right?!” It just didn’t happen. We sat in a local pub, Caz’s and discussed future plans, ways to boost traffic, all sorts of things.

They’re just two normal guys, right out of college trying to build their resume. I think they’re doing a great job. It isn’t just anyone who can say, “I came up with an idea and within two hours of execution gained national media coverage.”

Anything specific you’re curious about? I have endless amounts of stories about those guys; we trusted one another so we really told some funny stories. I recall visiting a convenience store outside of Topeka, Kansas, going inside to use the restroom and buy some smokes, keys in car and trusted them not to run off. It seemed natural for me.

David: Not that I can really think of… You mentioned future plans and ways to boost traffic. Does that mean you are continuing to work with the Hitch50 boys? What kind of stuff are you doing together? Anything you shouldn’t be telling me, but will because I am just such a great journalist?

Justin: Yes, I am still contributing to the project and keeping conversations going with the guys. I’m more working behind the scenes now, promoting them through various other projects and web resources. They have some great technology behind the website that should be shared. It isn’t anything new, it is something that isn’t utilized yet and I feel it should be.

Wow, in regards to something I shouldn’t share that I could — bit of a weird question. Let me say this, it won’t be the last time you hear of Scotty and Fiddy. There are tons of video feed being captured. I’ll leave it to your imagination, it will be bitter sweet.

Justin: Curious, am I allowed to ask a question myself? Why me? Why would you want to interview the black sheep of blogging? Am I really doing anything in weight to others in the community. I feel I am just another guy in the big scheme of things.

David: I will allow it…just this once though. No getting carried away.

The WordPress community is larger than just the people that post on the WordPress support forums, and the blogging community is even larger. Getting people from all walks of life, and point of views is very difficult, but I am blessed to have met some really great people over the last year of my life. People that I feel deserve to be featured in the limelight, even if it is only for a minute.

There are no black-sheep in blogging…there are thought leaders, and the echo-chamber. I believe that you are a thought leader

Justin: I’ll entertain that.

David: Thanks Justin for taking the time to talk to me. It definitely seems like you are taking a more active role online than you give yourself credit for, and I think there are many people that will be watching you and what you are involved with over the coming months and years.

1.) Wendy, first off I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it. I was wondering if you can tell my readers a bit about yourself, and how you got into blogging?

Sure! I’m pretty boring, actually – been married for almost fifteen years to my high school sweetheart, three kids, and we live in a wonderful small town in the Northwest that probably fulfills every small town cliche there is (and we still love it). I got into blogging about five years ago, mostly because I love to write and it was instant gratification for that itch.

2.) Marriage, children, and working towards a degree must all make it very difficult to concentrate on blogging. How do you find the time and energy to focus?

Focus? Energy? Time? You’re joking, right? Actually, it seems to work out pretty well with the help of something called 5 AM and lots of coffee. Plus, I dropped the school this year, but I plan on finishing before 2008 (knock on wood) since I only have 20 credits left. I also tend to work extremely fast and produce a lot in a short amount of time; I know that’s a blessing and I’m thankful. It also helps that I’m absolutely determined not to let my work overtake my home life – which means that I work around the kids’ schedules and I try my darndest not to work on the weekends. It works out pretty well.

3.) Can you describe to me the differences you have to deal with in say your activities on a site like LifeHacker, which is well known in the blogosphere, and starting out on a brand new blog like you have for b5media?

The biggest difference is probably finding your audience, finding your niche. With Lifehacker, there’s a built-in demographic that you’re writing for – you’re already out there, so to speak, so half your job is done for you. At b5, the complete opposite is true and that’s my biggest obstacle; however, the perk is I get to talk about David Hasselhoff. A lot.

4.) Participating in the web for as long as you have, I am sure you have opinions on where this whole blogging/social media thing is heading. Do you think anyone is doing it well enough to really effect the grip that mainstream media has on the world? And do you think you will still be able to blog for money in five years?

Honestly, I see traditional media going the way of the dinosaur unless they get their heads out of the sand and check out this new thing called the webernets. For example, I don’t know anyone in my age group that depends exclusively on the TV or newspapers for news; they go straight to the Web because A)it’s instant and B)they control access. For instance, election night? I wanted to hear about our school bond passing or not passing, and I didn’t even bother to watch the tube, I just Googled it. Another example: Britney and Kevin (come on, you know you’re interested). Within one hour I knew the whole scoop, but next week, an entire week later, after the fact, the gossip rags will have some info that I’ll have to pay for to get to. No, thank you.

And as for anyone doing it well enough…I can’t point to any one organization and say that THIS Is the savior of social media; I think the whole conglomeration of those who would classify themselves in the social media category are doing pretty well. It’s now a matter of getting the word out past the geek firewall to the regular folks – that’s when all this stuff is really going to take off. Most people who get on the Web are just now discovering that they can watch Family Guy on YouTube or Google themselves; but when they get their heads around Digg, or Yahoo Answers, or Netscape, or Wikipedia….they’ll be amazed.

Blogging for money in five years..I don’t see why not. Unless you know something I don’t….do you? DO YOU? Seriously, lots of people make their living on the Web and I see that actually growing instead of diminishing…it’s just too enticing a prospect to go away.

5.)If someone was looking to get to where you have with your blogging, what tips or advice would you give them?

Number One: don’t expect overnight success. So many people get into blogging or tweaking something on the Web and don’t take into account that there’s no magic formula to making this work. It’s just as much hard work as any other job, except you do get to wear your pj’s all day (if you want to). I would also say that you need to find your niche, find what works for you, instead of trying to piggyback on someone else’s success. Lastly, have some fun with it.

Some great advice there. Having fun with blogging should be pretty high on the priority list. Thanks again to Wendy for taking the time out of her day to answer some questions between writing on b5media, and dealing with her kids and cats.

While he couldn’t do it right then and there as he was a speaker, and live blogger at the Blog Business Summit, I was able to get him on Google Talk later in the week, and ask him some questions.

Me: First off, tell me a bit about yourself. Tris is an interesting name. Is it short for Tristan, or what’s the etymology of your name?
Tris: It’s short for Tristram, which is the old English version and pre-dates Tristan. The meaning remains unclear, though some say it relates to Triste (sad).

Me: What makes Tris tick? You are from the west coast of Canada, right?
Tris: Well, I live on the West Coast now, but originally I’m a New Englander (go Red Sox!) What makes me tick? A lot of it has to do with being a geek at heart and liking to goof around with new stuff. The rest is that I have found a niche and passion in writing about tech and new media.

Me: Can you tell me more about how you got into blogging? When did you start, and who was your inspiration?
Tris: I started blogging in the days when I was in market research and bored that I couldn’t play with collaboration apps at work, they just weren’t into it. So I decided that I needed to kick start my consulting practice and needed to get into this blogging thing. That was April 2004.

I had started a blog before then, but deleted it (which is a shame because then I could say I had been blogging since 2003)

Me: So we are quickly coming up on more or less your third year in the blogosphere. You are one of the ancient ones when it comes to online publishing then.

For all of those out there that have not heard of Qumana, what can you tell me about the company and what it provides?
Tris: Yeah I guess I’m old guard now, eh? Well Qumana started off as just an offline blog editor.

The first version was pretty advanced, probably too advanced for its time. So now the application is much simpler.

About two years ago I had a flash of brillance (they don’t happen often) and came up with the idea of “post-centric advertising”. This gave birth to Qumana now… an application with a simple way to insert keyword-generated ads into your posts.
Me: Kind of like Adsense?
Tris: Yeah, but focused on content and letting authors control whether or not they want an ad in a post and what the ad is for. So you could write about kids toys and have an ad for fly fishing if you so desired (clearly not a good idea though). But the point is we give the control to the author, not a server.

Me: I noticed your blog a View from the Isle has no “powered by” logo on it. It looks like Typepad but it says Blogware on it? And which software is your favourite thus far for blogging?
Tris: Yeah I took the Powered by off my posts because it was mucking up me tracking other people using Qumana that’s why I put the graphic on my blog. So, yes it’s a Blogware blog, they have sponsored it for about two years now.

My favourite for DIY is WordPress, my favourite for completely free is WordPress.com. Hosted, well that’s hard. I’m not a fan of Typepad, but they are leaders and offer good stuff. I like a lot of the features in Blogware though.

Me: So you have used just about every blog software out there. That’s pretty nice. Why Blogware though? Its not one I have heard much about.
Tris: I have, I’ve tried them all at some point. When I wanted to move my blog off of Blogger a friend had just become a reseller for Blogware. You don’t hear much about it because of the Tucows reseller model.

Me: What do you think blogging will be like in two to five years? Will there still be professional bloggers or will main stream media come in and be the only source for paid blogging?
Tris: I think blogging in 2-5 yrs will just become more about “writing”. Because there is always a market for writers/content providers, there will always be a market.

Me: So you think that mainstream media will have to compete against blog networks and whatnot like b5media? Or will they just buy out such companies/networks?
Tris: I think they will have to compete and leverage the content being generated. I wouldn’t be surprised if online versions of MSM outlets (and maybe even the dead-tree versions) pay bloggers for their “columns”
Me: We can only hope… Google… I am available if need be…
Tris: lol

Me: You seem to work for a wide variety of different companies, networks and independantly. Give me a quick rundown of who all do you work for now and how much time do you spend blogging in a day?
Tris: I keep being amazed at how fast things move … I think we’re going to be blown away by what’s around a year from now. I pretty much blog all day. So I write for myself, Qumana, and b5media. Then I contribute to Business Blog Consulting as well.

I should start doing more blogging on BigBusinessJet.com soon as well. There are other cool things in the works that I can’t talk about yet.

Me: Can’t give any hints or tips? Like…stay away from blogging about that subject.
Tris: Hmm… essentially, I might be contributing to a pretty high-profile blog that you might have heard of.
Me: That’s great. I can think of a few that you have “access” to, and I will be watching to see what happens.

Me: So, lastly… If you were to give one tip to all the bloggers out there aspiring to achieve as much as you have, what would that tip be?
Tris: write everyday. Every day. It really is the practice makes perfect. If I could give another, it would be to read lots of sources.
Me: What is lots of sources for you?
Tris: Well I’m in the 600-700 range. But generally don’t just read blogs, read places like the BBC, CBC, Google News. Getting out of the echo chamber is essential.

Me: I totally agree. Thanks again for taking the time to do this Tris.
Tris: Your welcome, it was great.

Me: Tell me a bit about yourself. What does the D. at the start of your name mean, and why don’t you use it rather than Keith? What are you interested in? And where can people find you online?

Keith: The D. stands for David, but people often like to think I’m a Dr. If you knew me well this would be pretty damn funny. I don’t use it because I’ve gone by Keith my whole life. I’m not really sure why my parents did that to me.

You can find me online at dkeithrobinson.com or at my company, Blue Flavor. In addition I’m sure if you run a Google search for me you’d find lots of other fun stuff of mine.

Me: You have been involved with some great sites and companies over the last few years. What has been your favourite blog or site to write on thus far and why?

Keith: Well, I think my own blogs have been my favorites. I’ve got a bit more freedom to do what I want there and there is less pressure to write. That makes things easier. I really enjoyed writing for Lifehacker however and would say that’s been my favorite of those that I didn’t own myself. Although I’m currently writing for the Podbop blog and that’s been quite fun as well, I really wish I had more time to devote to that.

Me: Your current personal blog design is absolutely amazing, both in design and as a resource for information on design, writing and development. Why did you move away from 7nights.com/asterisk? And why didn’t all your archives come with you?

Keith: First of all, thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate hearing that kind of feedback! So, the choice to move my domain was a hard one. I think the biggest reason is that I did so much writing that my Movable Type install had become a bit unwieldily. The rebuild times were horrendous and I was having lots of problems with comment spam.

In starting a new company I was finding I had less and less time to work on those things, and I was writing less as well. So I went out on a limb and made a completely clean break; new domain, new CMS, new design, etc. I didn’t see any compelling reason to move the archives because they were fine right where they were.

Keep in mind this was my personal blog, there is pretty little risk in me doing whatever I please with it. Had this been Blue Flavor’s blog I’d most likely have done something a bit more thought out.

Me: How much do you think design matters in a blog’s success? And what about standards based code? Isn’t the content the most important part?

Keith: Content is the most important part. No argument there. To be honest I think it depends on your audience how important those things are. If your readers are Web designers things like standards and good design are very important. You’ve got to walk the walk.

In general good design and proper code will help your blog be successful, for various reasons, but they’re no guarantee and if you’ve got to make a choice you should work on your content.

Now, having said that, I can’t think of a good reason why you wouldn’t want great content, a great design and a properly coded site. That’ll do the most towards making sure your blog is successful.

Me: I know you have tried Movable Type and Expression Engine, among others I am sure. What has been your favourite publishing tool, and why?

Keith: I’d say overall it’s been Movable Type. I’ve found that it’s very powerful and flexible if you’re willing to learn the ins and outs, as I have. It’s a great one for people who are willing to get their hands dirty as you can do lots of customization with it. I imagine, however, that the same could be said for Expression Engine, WordPress, etc. I just have quite a bit more experience with Movable Type.

I will say that I’m really liking Expression Engine quite a bit so far.

Me: What do you think has been the key factor in getting you where you are today? (i.e. Design skills, networking, understanding client needs…)

Keith: Hard work and having a passion for what I do. All of those things you mention are important, but at the end of the day it’s the people that are willing to do the work and love what they do that become successful.

Me: In an interview with the Web Standards Group, you mentioned the “Golden Triangle”.

The “Golden Triangle” I talk about is simply a metaphor I use to illustrate the delicate balance of goals that should be laid out for any successful Web project.

Can you apply it to personal blogging? Or is it a business use only metaphor?

Keith: It can apply to many things. When talking about personal blogging it could be balancing your personal writing goals against your readers level of engagement and the amount of time you’ve got to devote to it. Obviously there isn’t much risk involved with a personal project as you’re the only one who’s likely to have a major stake in things, but the same theories can apply.

Me: You have worked for many large companies before, and seen how they approach the web. Do you think traditional media and big box companies like Microsoft ,or Boeing are ready for the shift that is occurring with the online world via Blogging, podcasting, social media, citizen journalism and the like?

Keith: No.

Just kidding. Really, I don’t think they’re 100% ready yet, but they are starting to pick up on these things. For example there has been great interest in blogging by all of these companies and my guess is things like podcasting are going to follow shortly if they’re not there already.

There are smart, forward-thinking people at these companies and as long as they’ve got interest you’ll see this stuff work its way in.

Me: Thanks again to Keith for taking the time out to do this interview with me. If you have not taken a look at his personal blog, you should. The design is inspiring and his content is great. So check him out at DKeithRobinson.com.

1.) Most people that read this site know you thanks to WordPress, but I am sure there is more to you than that. Could you give a few details on the other things you have done?

1. I once climbed to the top of Masada.
2. I did a jazz arrangement of Mario Bros music for a saxophone quartet and played it, which you can find on the net if you dig.
3. I’ve been very lucky in finding folks smarter than myself and hiring them for a funny little company called Automattic.
4. I’m an adviser to Sphere, and I dig their stuff.
5. I take a lot of photos, but I’m really behind on uploading them.

2.) Can you give us a quick history on WordPress? It was not just you that decided a fork from b2 was needed, correct?

Thanks to the wonders of permalinks you can actually read the comment where WordPress was born, from a swell fellow named Mike Little. We started by integrating his links code and some of my texturize/autop stuff and then worked a lot of creating the options system (moving stuff out of config files) and simplifying the install. Add in a new default template, XHTML compliance, and remove all color from the admin interface and you have WordPress 0.70, which was used by approximately 5 people including myself and my cat.

3.) I am sure everyone has an opinion on where WordPress should head over the next year or two. What is your vision for WordPress (both .com and .org) and where do you see your biggest competition?

I would love for WordPress.org to have fewer options and a more streamlined administration, and a richer way to interact and update plugins and themes.

For .com I’d like to see some really rich customization options and a lot more effort on the internationalization front, and to continue the lack of downtime we’ve been lucky enough to maintain. We’re also experimenting with some .com stuff that’s going to make it super-fast, but I can’t talk about that yet.

The biggest competition is probably Google’s Blogger. I don’t take competition too seriously, you have to do your own thing and not focus on other projects, but where services or features are particularly successful I have no problem examining them to find the underlying elements of coolness to consider integrating into WordPress.

I don’t consider any GPL software competition, because development on one piece of software can directly benefit another, and I will always promote other open source software whether it does the same thing as WordPress or not because at the end of the day we’re all really on the same team. I believe Open Source is the future.

4.) What’s to stop some big company from taking WordPress dumping a bunch of money into creating some Knock-OffPress and mass marketing it as a way to gain attention for other services or products they have? After everyone moved to WordPress when Movable Type’s pricing structure changed, how confident are you that WordPress users would remain loyal or what could Automattic do to compete?

I have no problem with someone creating Knock-OffPress — that’s one of the freedoms of the GPL and those who would trade freedom for security of their business deserve neither. (Hat tip.)

Frankly if someone could take a product we wrote and do a better job with it then they deserve the success. It has been tried before. It’s not really something I worry about a lot.

Don’t forget Automattic also has a strong business around platform-agnostic tools, like Akismet, that are licensed by several people who could be construed as competitors to WordPress or WordPress.com. We’ll roll out more of those if we see other urgent needs in the blogosphere.

5.) What’s Automattic’s next move? I know you have been focusing on the next versions of WordPress, and your great Anti-spam service Akismet, but with the people in the Automattic now and your great eye for filling a gap in the marketplace, could you give out any hints on what we can expect next?

Sure. There has obviously been some renewed interest in bbPress, and Mike has been doing a great job there. We’ll probably roll out a hosted version of that someday when it matures enough.

We’ve got a few plugins and services we’ve cooked up internally that we’re going to provide to open source, including a little todo/project management app. We’ll probably expand the company bit, maybe to 12 by the end of the year, and we’ll almost certainly break the half a million mark on WordPress.com by December.

6.) I watched the video with you on CrankyGeeks. You handled yourself really well, and it was nice to see you via video online. What do you think of the video and audio mediums online? And do you think people will shift away from publishing text on the WordPress platform and switch to video blogging on YouTube or another such service?

Thanks! Video transcoding and such would be really hard to do inside of WordPress.org, so I imagine there will always be a market for web services that make that easy to host and distribute video for free. I think the success of services like Flickr and Youtube add to blogging, not take away from it. I’ll give you some private stats from inside WordPress.com.

On any given day, about 5% of the entries posted to WordPress.com contain a Flickr photo, and about 3% of the entries embed a Youtube video. We’re talking about tens of thousands of posts every week embedding Flickr or Youtube content, and I think that’s great.

Blogs serve as a personal aggregation point for people’s online activities. You might spread your junk all over the web, but most people like to bring it back together in someplace they own and can call their home, and for many that’s their blog.

I think these services are introducing a lot of people to the concept of creating content online, and as they mature and their needs grow theywill find their way to blogs, and the savvy ones will end up on WordPress.

Finally I would never count out text. Words have been with us for a very long time and I’m betting people will need a good way to press them for any lifetimes to come.

7.) You recently added domain registration and mapping for WordPress.com. Will you ever be moving your personal blog photomatt.net to the WordPress.com service? Or has that already happened, and I did not notice?

It would be really easy except for the photolog which has over 13k photos and is well over 10gb. But even if I figured that out I would probably keep them separate simply because it’s hard to develop for something you don’t use, and I want to continue using both .com and .org every single day.

Thanks again to Matt Mullenweg for taking the time out to answer a few questions. Hopefully, some of you will find what he has said as interesting as I did.

photo via Dries Buytaert

Justin, a friend of mine picked them up and let me know they were in his car. I have to admit to not being prepared, but very excited. I posted about their journey on BloggingPro just before they started it. Now they are over two weeks into it and going strong.

Me: Hi Scotty, this is David from BloggingPro. I posted about your mission not too long ago.

Scotty: Kinda caught you off guard being in the car huh?

Me: Yeah, seriously. I figured I would only just keep watching the website. So to start things off, why was 50 consecutive days was chosen? You could have stretched it out to far more… 100 days sounds like even more fun.

Scotty: Maybe so, but it doesn’t have the same edge as 50 days. We figured 100 days would be easy, so we wanted a bigger challenge. Also, 50 in 50 has a nice ring to it.

Me: What about this “Golden Ticket“, other than the fact of maybe getting to go on a trip, why do you think people would want to give you a ride at a chance to party with you? What activities do you have in mind?

Scotty: We’re hoping and planning as much as we can that the final destination is Hawaii. So Hawaii alone is a good time. We’re also hoping this will snowball enough with the media and publicity, so the events may come through the level of exposure we get. If that is never realized we can just hang out on the beach, surf and eat pineapples.

Me: What about money concerns? Is there some corporate sponsor we don’t know about?

Scotty: No, there is no sponsors. We dont want this to be “Yahoo presents Hitch 50″ or something like that. If there’s a corporate bank account behind the project it takes away the feel of it. It would be easy for people to do this if they had a big budget. We’re trying to keep it ‘grassroots’. So we’re taking the risk on ourselves through our credit cards.

Me: Oooh…credit cards. Nice. Have you found it hard to keep up with the blogging? Getting online must be annoying sometimes?

Scotty: Sometimes yeah, we have mobile broadband service so alot of it is done in the back of cars. Also, we are trying to spend as much time with our drivers and hosts as possible, without being burried in our computers. So alot of work is done between 1-4 AM If we take a day off from updating the site we get just burried in work to catch up. Also, we have a short time-frame, with only 50 days to do the project we need to keep the content comming to maximize the exposure.

Me: How have you found the interactions that you have had so far with other bloggers, commenters and the people that pick you up?

Scotty: Almost all comments have been positive and supportive. We get alot of “I wish I thought of that” or “I’m living vicariously through you”. The people who give us rides are thanking us for letting them be a part of the project. So its been so positive. As for bloggers, we’re getting the same support. I’m not sure how many blog links we have now, but we had like 40 in the first day alone. Its the bloggers more than anyone who see the vision of the project. Many of our rides are from other bloggers and we try to link to their sites.

Me: I am one of the people living vicariously through you guys. Infact my fiance is now bugging me to do something similar across Canada now… Thanks a lot…

You have to come through Canada to get to Alaska, any chance you will save a day for British Columbia? I know it is not the USA, but us Canadians are friendly and would probably give you a ride, and B.C. is beautiful.

Scotty: Sure, we’re gonna be in Victoria soon. Oh ya, we’re both from Vancouver so we know what its like.

Thanks to Justin for creating the opportunity and Scotty for being up to it. I really appreciate the time and effort that he put into going back and forth with me in the car on the move.

Scotty also let me know that his buddy that is doing all the great programming and whatnot on the site is going to be releasing some new features soon where you can see the approximate speed they are travelling as well as some geo-tagged photos.

Great stuff, and the best of luck to them from me.

The most interesting question for me was the one about blogging of course.

You have a unique advantage of having one foot in the world of blogging, and one foot in the world of Web 2.0. What advice would you give to a blogger, and what advice would you give to an entrepreneur?

My advice to bloggers is to write frequently. Bloggers who write frequently seem to find their voice more readily and establish an audience who come back expecting to engage in conversation frequently. My advice to entrepreneurs? Goodness, my advice to entrepreneurs is not to listen to other people’s advice. There are fifty reasons not to start a company, and when you start it, there are fifty reasons not to continue to pursue it when you run into the first spot of trouble (which will be the first of many spots of trouble, even if you’re the next Google). You have to focus solely on what you want to accomplish and ignore everything else. [emphasis mine]

Not surprising he advocates posting more often. It just works. More posts means more chances to get things right, more content to read, more writing practice, more things for a search engine to index, and unless you are going too crazy with the number of posts, it means a constant reason for people to come back often to check out the new things you have written.

Check out the full interview at Folksonomy.

PodTech is built on top of WordPress, a blogging and content management package from Automattic. Here we sit down with Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic, to talk about a variety of things — from Om Malik to splogs and what Automattic is doing about that problem.

It is a very interesting watch, and rather amusing. I highly recommend the video.

MH: So how do you find the motivation for it? I know lots of people (myself included) that might leave a professional writing gig with a book, blog, or magazine and say “fuck this mere pittance they’re paying me, I’ll do it on my own, and it’ll be better, and I’ll have complete control and make way more money” but then they can never muster the energy to even begin. This is why I wanted to talk to you — you have come out of the gate just killing it! And I can’t imagine what it takes to muster up that kind of productivity and motivation.

JJ: See, that’s so funny to me, because I feel like I’m just barely puttering along.

MH: Really? I signed up to read the feed and I’m amazed by how much original content is popping up every day. It’s almost too much, but it’s useful and good.

JJ: I’ve come to realize that I’m a pretty fast writer, which helps. I also am extremely self-critical, so if I don’t get six posts up a day I feel like I’m a horrible person.

Also, the more you blog, the better and faster you get. (Which applies to all writing, sure, but so much of what is important about blogging is just getting it out there and worrying about polish later. Or never.)

Suffice it to say, I’m glad to hear that you’re not feeling like it’s lacking!

A great interview, and it says a lot about how different people feel about what they are producing, and what people are getting. You might think that your blog is producing nothing of value, while others see it as a great resource, so try not to be too hard on yourself, and enjoy what you are producing.

I was amazed that someone I had been reading for months was at all interested in what I was doing, but she sent off an e-mail with a few questions and so I proceeded to answer them.

An example of our exchange includes:

Aren’t there already enough WordPress themes and plugins to go around?

Honestly, I still feel some very important areas have been ignored. How many grunge themes are there? Themes that are more girly in nature? What about good three and four column themes? I still feel that there are also so many ways WordPress themes could go that have not been explored.

Also as the community grows, I have been noticing that there are about a dozen themes that do really well, while all the rest are more or less ignored. I would like to see that upper level increase to a group of two dozen superb themes.

I also think the same of WordPress plugins. You might say “how many plugins do you need to integrate an image gallery into your site?” but honestly I have yet to come across one that does what I need it to do, how I want to do it. With plugins, the different workflow that people have has to be taken into consideration, which is why you can have a dozen plugins that do the same thing, but people will follow the one that works the best for them.

I think that there are still more plugins in the minds of creative people that if given the right incentive, and motivation, will be released and we will all go “Wow!”.

Check out the rest of the interview over at Successful Blog, and look around the archives of the site for some great golden nuggets of wisdom, as well as some links to some great sites.

While he is a little of an internet celebrity to me as his themes are of quality that I feel a little jealous. Thankfully, it has not gone to his head, and Phu was willing to answer a few of my questions.

1.) Can you tell me a bit about your motivation behind starting your Theme a Day challenge? You mention in your original post doing it in part because of a lack of ‘real’ posts on your blog, was that honestly part of your motivation?

Phu Ly: As with many things, the reason is multi-faceted; the idea of a theme a day week makes for excellent blog fodder as well as a huge anti-procratination motivator. However, the root of the challenge was that I like web-design, I like seeing my works being enjoyed by others and that I wanted to make a point that you don’t necessarily have to spend ages to get something that isn’t Kubrick.

I’ll admit that the spontaneity, novelty and challenge held a sort of perverse pleasure; I was also aware that it was the sort of post that attracts attention. But had I not enjoyed web design, I wouldn’t have even considered embarking on such a crazy challenge. When you’re working full-time, it’s not always easy to find time to design, develop or even write. Like people who run marathons for charity, having an external motivator is a great incentive to do something that you want to do, even if it is torturous and painful.

2.) Would you ever do another project like the Theme a Day challenge you imposed on yourself?

Phu Ly: It’s highly unlikely at least not under the same constraints. Whilst the WP theming engine made the technical side simple, the creative aspect (that is designing a new usable, aesthetically pleasing and non-derivitative design) as well as the tight time constraints (design, develop and test each theme in a day whilst maintaining a full-time job) meant that the challenge was quite intense to say the least.

If I were to do the same again, I’d either design and develop the themes (and release them over the course of a week) or make it into a theme a month challenge.

3.) What kind of projects are you working on now? I noticed you have been rather busy, or are you just taking more time to cuddle with your new(ish) MacBook still?

Phu Ly: As with many people, the day job takes priority; between that, the world cup, and enjoying the summer weather, the blog has been sadly neglected recently. Hopefully, I have a few projects on the horizons and I’ll certainly be getting back into the blogging groove so keep your feed-readers tuned in.

4.) There are many 9rules members using other blogging engines, why did you chose WordPress and are you the type of user that always makes sure they are using the latest version?

Phu Ly: It’s always a good idea to make sure WP is up-to-date but I’ll confess that, even with the use of Subversion, I’m not always that diligent. As to why did I choose WP? Initially ,the choice was a lot easier; when I’d first started, the choice was really between MT and WP; TXP was still in the process of being born and Movable Type static page generation and perl background meant that I was never completely at ease with it.

WP was the first blogging platform that I’d actually enjoyed using; I’d been using a custom home-grown CMS for my sites up to that point and it didn’t take long for it to convince me to move wholesale onto it.

Nowadays, we’re flattered with choice; TXP, EE, Typo, there’s a plethora of options for all your needs but WP still has my heart. The back-end is still the most comfortable (for me) to use and the flexibility of the theming engine has meant that your only constraints are your own ambitions. Combined with the maturity of the package and level of support by the community, it’s easy for me to still consider it my first choice blogging platform.

5.) What do you think of the current state of WordPress, and its plugin and theme communities?

Phu Ly: It’s fair to say that WP is probably the most mature package around; it’s easily the most well supported in terms of plugins and themes and it’s by far the most popular self-managed blogging solutions. Probably the next big item on many people’s wish-list is probably the integration of the recent Shuttle UI design work. However, there are a number of features on competing platforms that’d be nice to see implemented; increased modularity, throttling, version controlled content, analytics ( e.g. stat tracking) etc.

With regards to the plugin and theme communities; the recent work on the Theme Viewer has been a boon for users but there really isn’t a community as such. We have theme developers and plugin developers but no real place for people to congregate, find out more or get started. There’s a lot of knowledge on individual sites but no real single place for people to get started. For example, when you start a new WP blog, what are the recommended plugins? What should we do to stop spam? The support forums are a good start but they’re really a place to go for answers to questions; sometimes, what you don’t know what the question is. This would be something I’m planning to help address.

6.) Are there any tips that you could give to someone looking to create a WordPress theme?

Phu Ly: If you’re planning to design a WP theme, the first thing you should do is forget that it’s a WP theme that you’re developing. It’s better to start with the basics by asking yourself what it is that you’re trying to achieve; for my blog, I know what my writing style is, what type of content I write about, what type of image I’m trying to project which gives me a starting point from which to begin designing.

You should aim to get the structure in place, and then play around with the components; when you eventually begin coding, create the html/css first. Don’t even touch any PHP. Get a test page mocked up looking the way you want it to; after you’ve tuned it to your hearts content, it should be only then that you start turning it into a theme by replacing and separating out the various blocks with their respective WP code.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed when you initially start but if you work on it piece by piece, it’s much more manageable.

7.) And since you are part of the very popular 9rules network, I have to ask… What do you think of blog networks? Also, are we ever going to see a video of you dancing?

Phu Ly: There are a number of different types of blog networks; some start with the aim of financial return, some to satisfy specific niches and some, such as in the case of 9rules, to simply create a haven for good content. Each of these will experience different levels and types of success but at the end of the day, all networks have the same two simple goals.

If you’re a content producer, being part of a network has to provide you with more utility than not being part of one; whether that utility is exposure, opportunity, community or financial gains will differ from network to network and writer to writer but there has to be an appropriate quid pro quo for joining the network. If you’re a consumer, then a network should make it easy to find worthwhile content; this can be directly i.e. a particular network becomes the jumping point for a particular piece of content or indirectly i.e. a being part of a particular brand provides a signal or cue for a given level or type of content. Unless a blog network achieves these two goals, then there is no additional value of that network beyond than it being the sum of it’s parts.

As to your other question; there’s more chance of seeing Bill Gates rap than me dance in a video. Take it from me, you’re better off not imagining either…

Thank you so much for spending this time to let me know your thoughts on this very wide variety of topics. You can catch Phu Ly over at his personal blog, If..Else, the 9rules Network and of course his themes at his blog under the A Theme a Day project.