Well, I attended two WordCamps back to back this past two weekends. I was a speaker at both of these events. Everyone I met was awesome, and I had a great time.

WordCamp Raleigh 2010: How to Utilize Facebook and WordPress to build a more interactive community

WordCamp Fayetteville 2010: I’ve got a blog, Now What Do I DO?

Hope you guys will find these helpful.

This will be a very short and quick post that I am going to do because I don’t want you to miss this cool offer. 1and1 the domain registrar will be giving away a free .com domain registration. Click on the banner below and get the domain for yourself NOW.

I don’t care what you do with it, remember its a free domain. Go list it on a forum and sell it. That is the easiest money you will make. BUY IT NOW.

New! Get a .com 1 year FREE! from 1&1.
Enjoy

Why Newsletter?

Newsletter creates a love bond between you and your readers. It allows you to really connect with your audience. No matter how often a reader visits your site, there will be times when they miss something crucial. That is when the newsletter comes in handy. People check their emails REGULARLY, so newsletters are a more reliable source of communication. Second, the newsletter allows you to distinguish between the average reader to your loyal and valuable readers. Your loyal readers are the ones who really care about your site, and they want to support you. I think they deserve something better than everyone else.

Advantages of a Newsletter

For you as a blogger, you can expect a better turn around for any product that you promote through a newsletter. If you are launching a new product, the best place to get started with the promotion is through your newsletter. Your newsletter subscriber actually opted-in to see what you are offering. They want to hear what you say. You can’t get a better connection with your reader than this. They trust you!

How to get Started?

There are tons of newsletter delivery services. Heck you can even use the combination of WordPress and Feedburner to create a Free Email Newsletter. But if you are thinking about this more seriously, then I would recommend:

Aweber
Mail Chimp

Don’t even consider any other companies. I have used both of them and I am more than satisfied. MailChimp has better email designs, so for a design blog, I recommend them. Aweber is very efficient and easy to follow.

The reason why you want to go with these paid services is because they are more Reliable then feedburner. The statistics you receive from them is no where comparable to the free newsletter tactic.

How do I create a huge mailing list for myself?

This is the biggest question that everyone asks. The answer is simple. Simply create something that other people would find useful. Then you want to give it away for free in an exchange for their email address. If they really want your product, then they will enter the email. The more often you do it, the bigger your list will be. There will be times when one of your product will do very very good and others it won’t. So its a matter of feeding the hunger. Give people what they want, and they will give you what you want.

Lastly, I want to apologize to you guys if you think that I am ignoring you here on Balkhis. I have a huge project going on at WPBeginner which is taking a lot of my time. Also Uzzz Productions is doing great. So I am having a really hard time keeping up with Balkhis. I want to say to you guys if you want my tips on marketing, blogging, and WordPress in general then consider subscribing to WPBeginner’s Newsletter. I send out weekly emails with resourceful articles that I am certain that you guys will find useful.

Don’t worry, I hate SPAM just as much as you guys. So this newsletter will not be spammy. I will NOT be using it as spamming tool like a lot of other marketers do it. These newsletter will have useful tips that are exclusive just for my A-List users. P.S. I will treat your emails like my own email so I won’t sell, share, or lease it to anyone.

Oh by the way if you sign up, you get the powerful Smart Sharing Plugin for WordPress that my team at WPBeginner developed. This plugin uses Skinner’s positive reinforcement theory and it is proven to work. It will add a floating share box that you can see on anyone of WPBeginner’s post. (Example)

If you have created a newsletter and want to share your experience then feel free to do so.

Sponsors for this Trip

Buy Sell Ads

Romow Web Directory

Why am I excited about this event?

The main reason is networking. I will get to network with top guys in the industry like Gary Vaynerchuck, Matt Mickiewicz of Sitepoint, Yanik Silver himself, and many other top entrepreneurs in the industry.

I will keep this post short as I am writing this while sitting at Orlando Airport, but there will be more news about this event on Balkhis through out this week.

Even though I got the conference ticket through the scholarship which was a big expense, a lot of other expenses needed to be covered such as airfare, lodging, food etc. I am very happy and thankful to the two companies that stepped up and they are sponsoring my trip to D.C.

Sponsors for this Trip

Buy Sell Ads

Romow Web Directory

What is Romow?

Romow is one of the most reputable web directories in the industry. According to Wikipedia: A web directory specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Romow directory has been around since 2006 with strict editorial guideline. They regularly add (both old and newly emerging) authority sites in various fields on an ongoing basis. Informational articles are published to keep the category content fresh and useful for users. The navigational structure of the entire directory has been optimized for the best user experience.

In short: This is like the Yellow Pages on the web where you can submit your websites and businesses to be found by other users who surf through Romow.

Why submit to Romow?

Many webmasters and SEOs use web directories to get a credible backlink and exposure for their sites. Romow is one of the top web directories on the web. Some of the facts that you should consider:

- Google Pagerank 5
- 650,000 page views per month
- 150,000 unique visitors per month
- 570,000+ inlinks according to Yahoo site explorer
- All listings remain permanent (as long as the sites remain operational)

By submitting to Romow, you are getting a backlink from the category page, and your site’s detail page. You can also get a featured listing, which will be featured at the top of the category above all other listings to increase your exposure. (Submit to Romow Now)

Romow Affiliate Program

Romow has a very generous affiliate program for webmasters. They pay a 25% commission for each paid directory submission you referred to them. So for each regular listing, you will earn $15, and for each featured listing, you will earn $30. Payment is made via PayPal once your balance exceeds $50.

This could be a good campaign if you have a website in a webmaster niche. They have numerous banners that you can find once you signup to be their affiliate. (Become an Affiliate Now)

I joined their affiliate program, and I think the affiliate backend is easy enough for everyone to follow. All the traffic and paid submission referrals are monitored by their affiliate software in real time. Once you log in to your affiliate account, you can check your paid submission referrals, commission balance, as well as detailed traffic and conversion statistics.

Romow Blogs and Guest Posts

Romow has integrated their blogs and directory into one big platform. Their blogs contain informational articles on wide range of topics. If you are interested in Guest Posting to get some exposure to your writing skills and website, then you are in luck because Romow accepts guest posting. Their guidelines are strict to ensure quality control. (Submit Your Guest Posts)

My Review

I have been a big fan of Romow web directory since my early days in the directory industry. I have seen many directories come and go, but this is one of those sites that have continued to grow. Definitely Check out Romow.com to submit your sites to their directory.

I will be attending WordCamp Raleigh and WordCamp San Francisco. If you guys live in the area, and/or planning to attend these events, definitely let me know as I would love to meet some of my cool readers.

If you don’t know, Mashable is one of the leading Social Media Magazines that cover everything related to Social Media and then a little bit more to earn some extra cash from their advertisers. Recently when Google Buzz came out, like always Mashable jump on the bandwagon to get a lot of followers. Which is not really hard to do when you already have a massive readership. They added a mini little Google Buzz button which actually is not really a Buzz button. It posts your articles to Google Reader, so if you are new don’t hit the Buzz it button on any website because they are all doing the same thing. Now this is understandable, everyone is working around technology.

But Mashable loves to take it one step further. They came out with this one article called Google Buzz Buttons learn to count which basically tells you how they are trying to help the industry by collecting data.

“We’ll be gathering the stats about how much people share on Google Buzz (Google Buzz) versus Facebook and Twitter, and we’ll be sure to report back with our findings!”

That is the quote exactly from their website. The truth really is that the data that they are collecting is SKEWED. It is not really how many people buzz their story, it is how many people click on that link. Which they too mention in the article that they are using bit.ly stat API.

Now my attention was brought to this when a lot of my clients wanted to incorporate this technique on their site, and I had to explain to them that this is a dirty trick. I am a firm believer that it is better to be not informed at all rather than be misinformed. Which is exactly what Mashable is trying to do right now. Web users, they are going to come up with a new data that shows that more readers Buzz stories then they share it on facebook, and half of the web will jump on this bandwagon where the truth is that these stats are manipulated.

The Number Game, Psychology trick – People tend to feel a social pressure when they see a high number of people doing something. Now if I can simply click on the Buzz link and refresh the page 50 times, or create a mini script to do that. It will show that all of my articles have been buzzed 50 times, or even 500 times. Then other people will want to Buzz it as well. (DIRTY)

Let me show you how easily it can be manipulated.

This post is the one about google buzz count button. It had 778 Buzz and I took 30 seconds and manipulated the count to 794…. Now imagine the validity of this count button.

I always thought these cheap tactics are employed by one of the lesser quality sites, but Mashable doing something of this level is just despicable. I think this post deserve to be heard, so Retweet, Facebook Share or just plain simple let others know about this, so they don’t think that this is something really cool.

Why Redesign?

Some of you are probably wondering why did we redesign the site. Well the answer to that is quite simple. The old design was outdated, ugly, and hideous for the modern trend. The design was last touched in 2006, so you can imagine how it was. Table structure, Flash (Eww, Not SEO Friendly), Tons of Grammatical Error, Content was not highlighted and much much more. It was to the point that I was embarrassed to show our portfolio site.

That is how it looked. Now compare that design and our new products such as WPBeginner’s site design. People could not believe that they were both created by the same company. If you check out the current design, you can see how much different and better it is. Enough of bashing the old design, lets see what the site has now.

Starting the Process of Redesign

I am the lead web designer in the team, so it was my job to come up with the design. I wanted this to be very simplistic, yet feature rich. I wanted to give this design the elegant look that I gave WPBeginner. With that in mind I started the design. The first thing I noticed that had to go was the logo because the old logo would not match any of the new designs mock ups that I made. So the first thing I did was re-create the logo. I didn’t want to change the logo completely because this has been the identity since 2006, so I moved the arrow from the middle to the top as you can see in the new design. This was the logo version 2.0

I presented the team with 4 mock ups before they finally liked this purple design. I decided to name the theme “Purple Madness” because that is exactly what it was. Insane use of jQuery and crap load of pressure from the team was making me go MADDDDDDDD. Thus it got the name Purple Madness.

Now one would think, why did I choose Purple? It is not one of the most conventional colors for the web. Well when I chose orange for WPBeginner, I set in my mind that I need to make a purple site and a green site. I did show the team a green version of WPBeginner, but sadly they did not like that. But the Purple one got the approval and now it is on the site. Purple is bright, lively, and attention grabbing. I see it as the New RED except not as annoying. That was my decision behind choosing the color Purple.

(P.S – I really want to create a Green Web Design…Let’s see when I get a chance to do that)

In the Coding Process

Coding this site was one of a kind experience. I did not separate the site in numerous images instead, it is just a few images. You would be surprised to know that the homepage is only using 8 images in which two are the list background plus and it’s hover. There are 3 images in the switcher at the top, so that leaves only 3 background images for the rest of the design.

Font choice, I decided to go ahead with Arial as the main choice because it went well with the logo font. I used Cufon to get the heading fonts which was really easy. I had a tough decision between sIFR and Cufon, but I chose Cufon due to it’s usability. It is a JavaScript thus it does not require the client to have Flash pre-installed unlike sIFR.

Many Portfolio sites have long detailed service page which I think is pretty stupid. Clients don’t really have time to read a whole page that basically says we offer PSD to HTML service. So therefore I decided to put it all in one page (the home page). I am using the best of best content slider script known as Coda. The reason why I picked this script among all the other scripts is the ease of use and the elegant speed. Coda runs very smoothly with all the other JavaScripts running on the site and it functions pretty well.

The WordPress Bit

As you know that I am a huge fan of WordPress. Like all my sites, this one is also powered by WordPress. The last version of Uzzz was also using WordPress, but the portfolio part of the site was powered with Flash. The disadvantage of that was that the site’s portfolio stuff was not read properly by the Search Engine bots that is why I decided to keep everything on WordPress in the new version.

I understand that the image above is too small to see, so make sure you click on it to see the live view to understand what I am talking about.

The site uses the category and post functions to display the portfolio. If you have used WordPress, then you know that by default, you cannot show posts like we are showing in the Portfolio page. All information is stored in one post. You can use custom fields and create 15 new custom fields every time you want to make a new entry in your Portfolio, or you can create a custom write panel like we did.

Pretty Neat eh. Well this function is not something that we do unique. It was actually written by a very cool guy named Spencer who works at WeFunction. (Check out his Tutorial) He is also based out of Florida, and I had a pleasure to meet him at WordCamp Orlando. Well using his function, we were able to make this portfolio job a lot easier.

There is a custom function that will only show Testimonial button if the testimonial exists. Testimonials have their own category, and we are utilizing the wp_query function to call the post data from related posts in the single post page for testimonials. Kinda confused what I am talking about? Just look at this example. The whole portfolio information is being extracted from a different post.

As you can see that the site features Web Design Resources. That is a simple plugin that is pulling information from the site that I want and displaying it in Uzzz. Contact form is created using Contact Form 7 Plugin.

Tweets are being pulled using jQuery and displayed using JSON. To do this, I am using a very elegant script by seaofclouds called Tweet.

The Easy Parts

Because we didn’t want any comments, it cut down on a lot of work. Search is also disabled, so we didn’t have to work a lot on that either. These were the only two easy parts in the site. The rest was not hard either, but it was time consuming.

The Last Bits

The last bits in the design was to make sure everything is working. Then I realize, I didn’t make a 404 page. My favorite part of the design. So I created a Pretty Cool 404 page (or so I think).

The site is using 9 WordPress plugins and I think it is pretty fast loading. It has a YSlow grade of B. Let me know what you thought of this new design.