Images. When used correctly they can be the most effective aspect of any design and a requirement when your site revolves around them. Mojizu is that kind of site that sucks me in due to its images. I will quickly admit that the dual-colored background on the headers is annoying, but the rest of the site simply works for me.
Seriously, any site that can keep my attention for over a hour has to be doing something right, unless of course you consider me feeble-minded…*cough*.
I love how the homepage just gets right to it by showing a ton of character designs encouraging the users to dig deeper. The color scheme is smooth to my eyes and they did well on the individual sketch pages. It’s just those damn header backgrounds…
Actually, you probably won’t read this so maybe I should address this to Anil because he seems to get around the web a bit more than you two. In any case I just wanted to say thank you for making Movable Type. Without it I’m not sure I would have gotten into blogging because it made my life easier. It brought me into this world and helped me make a name for myself. It gave me a voice that I didn’t know I had and allowed me to meet a lot of great people.
I was proud to be using the web’s most popular blogging software. I was happy that development seemed to occur at a constant pace. I was excited that a couple of people could work on their passions and be rewarded for doing so. I was pleased with the developer community producing useful plugins that allowed me to enhance my blog.
However, now I must say goodbye. Wisdump uses WordPress for many of the reasons that pushed me towards MT in the first place. Using WP, I am filled with the same excitement that I used to have with MT that I wish never left. I stuck around for as long as I could, endured two instances of losing data from my database and patiently waited a total of 90 days, 17 hours and 48 minutes for my templates and archives to rebuild. I’m not saying WP is any better than MT, I just feel better using it and to me, I am what is most important.
Even though I never met you, I always felt like I knew you through your blogging. Now I’m not even sure if you blog anymore at all. If Anil wasn’t around I wouldn’t even be sure if you guys still existed. I’m not even sure Anil still exists since there wasn’t any kickball this year at SXSW.
I know it’s not really your fault. You went corporate and had loftier ambitions. You had money to make and investors to please. I can’t say I blame you, but I wish it didn’t have to come to this. I wish you the best of luck in the future and maybe one day you will open source MT and it can return to its former glory.
Yours truly,
Scrivs
ps - Don’t worry because Business Logs still uses MT, but I can’t guarantee how long that will last.
Some of us catch the redesign bug more than others, but sooner or later we redesign our sites simply to get something fresh out there. Last night I was thinking about writing an article on how creating themes for blogging software and content management systems is a great way to get linked (and banned from Technorati) and gain a bit more recognition. Problem is you might find that you don’t have enough time (to do some free marketing?!) and avoid creating any themes without realizing you have a theme sitting right in front of you looking to be handed out to the public.
When you decide to do a redesign, why not package up your old design as a theme and make it public for anyone to use with a link back to your site in the footer? Hell, some of us would be able to pump out 4-5 themes a year without even thinking about it simply because we change designs so often. Of course you might think that your hard work is meant only for you for all eternity.
I love illustrators. The ones I meet are weird as hell, but their creativity has no bounds it seems. Give them an idea and they will come up with an illustration. Give an illustrator a website and if he happens to have even a smidgen of good design skills lots of times you end up with a killer site and that’s what you get with James Mathias’s Leihu.
I dig the color scheme, typography and structure and after that there isn’t much else you need to like. Okay, okay yeah there are more pieces to a site, but if you nail those pieces things become a lot easier. This is graphical bliss for me.
I have started a lot of projects in the past and many of them either aren’t standing anymore or are owned by other parties. In terms of them becoming huge and garnering me millions of dollars they all would be considered failures, but in terms of walking away and learning something I don’t think I would consider any of them to be a failure. I think that everyone that reads this site has a passion for starting a pet project and I’m sure many of you have done a couple in the past, the problem seems to be that many times we just can’t let go because we don’t want “failures” being associated with us.
Why is it really that hard to let go? I know for me there is always a point where I realize the project isn’t going where I want it to, usually due to the lack of resources I put into it, and I know what it takes to get it back on track. However, I just don’t make that push, but knowing what you can do to make things better makes it harder to let go.
With a success-to-failure ratio like the one I have why even bother starting these pet projects? It’s that whole “if you have an itch, scratch it” kind of thing. My life is about learning and I can’t learn by simply reading and sitting around. I have to learn by doing and that’s what every one of these projects does for me. They teach me new things that I would never have gained by just reading someone else’s observations. It’s not like starting another blog or simple website is going to put me in financial ruin so there really is nothing holding me back.
You may think that your failures become part of your reputation however and if you want to start future projects with partners people may be a bit hesitant to join up with you due to what they know about your past. In this case, hopefully you do have successes on your record that stand head and shoulders above any failures you may have endured. Look at these “failures” and tell me how much they have tarnished the image of the individuals.
Seth Godin and Squidoo (many would say it is too early to tell but I have to chalk this one up in the failure category)
Rick Pitino and the Boston Celtics
Mike Ditka and the New Orleans Saints
Michael Jordan and baseball. Coming back and playing with the Wizards did way more damage to his reputation I believe because at this point he simply couldn’t let things die.
In the big scheme of things your “failures” will only be blips on the radar. Just as you should take as many chances and calculated risks as possible in life, you should also know when it’s time to walk away from something. With that I leave you with these quotes from Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore. Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.
And I mean what I say. If you want to syndicate my content on your site with proper attribution (a link back to me) then by all means go ahead and do it. I’m a producer of content and I can only see the benefits of having my content in as many places as possible. One of the best podcasts around is Ask A Ninja could easily just keep their videos on their own site, but instead they use YouTube to distribute them which also allows their audience to post their videos on their site as well.
Now if you like what you see you will more than likely go and look for more episodes which may or may not be on my site, but eventually if you become a fan of the series you will go directly to them to get the content because there is no need to wait for me to post it. You produce content and you want as many eyeballs on that content as possible so why limit the places it can be seen? Maybe your concern is in a drop in pageviews, but what kind of effect do you really think a system like this has on your site? Maybe since your sole model of revenue revolves around advertising (entry coming up on that) you are a bit concerned with where your content is being viewed.
The folks over at WebDev FeedHouse use my full entry feed to post my content on their site and this doesn’t irk me one bit. What happens if someone reads that site and subscribes to their feeds instead of mine? It’s definitely a possibility, but they are still reading my content, but they are missing the ensuing discussion, which should entice them to come to my site. Either way my name is getting out there. I start to get concerned when content I produce and am expecting payment for starts to get passed around for free. Even when that starts to happen I am going to try and find as many channels to stick that content in as possible.
The FeedPass Dilemma
Today, Mike Arrington wrote about FeedPass and how it monetizes the content we work so hard to produce. Unsurprisingly, some members of the blogosphere are not toohappy with this because they feel as though another company is making money off of their content. It seems they have jumped to conclusions.
If you look closely, FeedPass only post excerpts of your content and the last four items from your feed. Hardly dangerous to me and it seems that it helps push more subscribers to you then pull them away. Now are people really concerned because their excerpts are on their along with an ad that FeedPass is banking off of them? When did we become so greedy with our content, yet so willing to share it with feeds and post YouTube/Google Videos on our site? I can’t say I see a use for FeedPass, but really I don’t see the harm in it either. For further discussion of FeedPass I suggest you read Pete Cashmore’s take on it along with the ensuing discussion.
Tools to Spread
So if I am encouraging people to post my content on their sites what tools can I provide to help them with the process? Better yet, there has to be a 1,001 sites that do this kind of stuff already so if you know any please let me know.
Please don’t walk away from this entry thinking that I believe all content should be free and anybody should be able to do with it what they want. I’m just saying that with the content I produce on this site I don’t really have an issue with it being spread across the web as others might. I see more pluses than minuses when looking at the bigger picture.
Although I’m sure many of us don’t pay attention to the SEO of our sites because we just like to write and get on with life, there are a couple of quick fixes you can do to your site that will go a long way in helping you out in the Search Engine rankings. As much as we’d like to think all the Search Engines have their stuff together, they really don’t. One of the most non-sensical things is how they handle www. vs. non-www domains.
You work hard to get your site placed highly in the search engines. However, you find that different search terms use different pages on your site depending on how people link to you. Some may prefer to use the “www” while others will leave it off. You shouldn’t have to worry whether your www. domain has a higher ranking than your non-www. domain.
The problem is that the search engines see these as two different domains. If you are using Apache and have access to .htaccess files the best thing to do is redirect all your urls to either use “www” or not. I prefer not. Besides, www. is deprecated.
Here is the code I use:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^wisdump.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://wisdump.com/$1 [R=301,L]
With this code all of my pages and PR go to one domain instead of being split. If you are doing this to a new site that has yet to be indexed you are fine. If you are going to do this with an existing site then expect a tiny fluctuation as the search engines adjust. Is this really necessary? Probably not as Search Engines continue to improve, but it’s such a quick fix that there really is no reason not to do this.
UPDATE: Both John Gruber and Mike West have much more thorough articles than the one I wrote along with some additional tips so I suggest you give them a read as well.
I admit to not being a fan of Pearl Jam, but they did something to at least make me reconsider my position on them. Yesterday they released their newest music video “Life Wasted” on Google Video for free and under a Creative Commons “some rights reserved” license. Unfortunately, free streaming and download is only available until next Wednesday (5/24) so they only really got it half right.
Why not keep it free forever? It’s not like it probably won’t show up on YouTube eventually once someone catches it on their DVR and when did selling music videos really become a big moneymaker? If anything I would keep the low resolution version free and simply sell a higher resolution one for the people who really want to see it. Music videos are meant for promotion and using Google Video is a great vehicle to make this happen, especially when people start to share the video on their own sites as I have done here.
It’s cool that Pearl Jam is doing this. It’s not revolutionary and I have to wonder why you don’t see this from every band. Songs are being released on MySpace daily and you don’t read about the negative effect that is having on a band’s sales so why would releasing music videos be any different?
I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore.* Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.
* That doesn’t mean I am happy when someone steals my content and makes whatever amount of money from it without proper attribution. I just hate legal issues and having to worry about something that many times I have control over. Best to stick with producing content and having fun. Let your mom worry who is stealing what.
I’m going to have to call out my good friend James Archer for inspiring this entry so hopefully he doesn’t mind me using him as an example. Recently I have decided I would give FeedBurner another shot. I used them when they first came out, but there were a lot of bugs and what not that made my feeds almost unreadable so I was curious to see if things had improved any. Unfortunately to use their service you must also use their feed url instead of your own.
Thank god for .htaccess.
With the way we experiment with services and technologies it can be a pain sometimes having to fix everything up whenever a slight change is made. Who knows if another feed service will pop up that blows FeedBurner out of the water? Will you stay with FeedBurner because all of your feed links point to it or will you go through the hassle of not only redirecting the original feed to the new feed service, but also adding another rule in your .htaccess that redirects the FeedBurner url to the new service? Mr. Archer has a link that points to the FeedBurner url and hopefully he never changes services in the future because he will have to add a rule in his .htaccess file. Imagine if he changed services 10 different times over the next couple of years. He might get stuck in an infinite redirect loop (maybe that would be cool though), but that might only happen if he continues to change the feed link on the site.
All is not lost for James though since he simply has to redirect his audience from the FeedBurner feed to the new one and can stick with that rule for the lifetime of his site. I like the idea that everyone points to this feed and are redirected to whatever service I choose to redirect them towards all through one rule in the .htaccess file. Try to keep all links on your site pointing to your site because you never know what the future holds.
As far as search engines go, Snap is a waste of space. It’s so slow and bloated, it renders itself practically useless. I don’t need a search engine to load in big images for the results, just give me the damn information! The “Why Snap is Better” page seems to gloss over the fact that if you want to go toe-to-toe with the best contender, you need to at least do as well as they do with the basic tasks. I would rather see a strong and fast search engine, then bloat-ware complete with Javascript scroll bar. Not even in the same ballpark man.
I didn’t let that deter me and decided to dig a little deeper into how the search engine works.
The Beginning
When typing in the search box with the term “Scrivs” (nope, not vain at all) the searchbox went through each letter and did one of those autofill type of things, but unfortunately I was already done tying so that “feature” served no purpose. My connection is slow today so it is possible this played a role in it being so slow, but if that isn’t the case then there is no reason to have it up there.
The Results Page
This is where Snap begins to differentiate itself from other search engines. The search results page isn’t filled with just text results, but also screenshots with previews of where you are going if you decide to click on the site. To view the site you simply have to click on the image. Now this technique can easily divide people in two different camps.
First you have the people who think that a search result should bring you immediately to the site because that’s what they are searching for and not screenshots of where they might want to go. This isn’t a gallery search engine and including the screenshot not only increases the loading time, but also adds another step to finding what we want.
The second camp could easily argue that the screenshots take away the step of clicking on the result and not liking what you want and then having to press the back button or close the tab to get back to the search results. Of course this technique doesn’t serve any purpose when there is no screenshot available at all and therefore requiring another step to get to the results you have been looking for.
Initially I admit to falling under the first camp, but after some use I am starting to see thing the way the second camp would. Search results on any search engine simply do not always provide you with information in their excerpts and therefore many times you are left playing a guessing game hoping to find the best result. At the very least Snap keeps you on the site although it doesn’t compare to the speed of other search engines, but that is something that can be improved over time hopefully.
The results page is powered with AJAX technology so there are never any refreshes, simply watching a loading screen while waiting for either the screenshot or site to appear.
Once You Check-In, You Can’t Checkout
After clicking on the image in a specific search result you are taken to the site…but you still remain on the Snap site as well.
I wonder if they every considered simply taking you directly to the site when you click on a search result instead of having to view the screenshot first? You do have the option of visiting the site outside of the window, but that button has to be clicked for every single search result so to remain efficient its best to stay on the Snap.
Small Resolutions Need Not Apply
This will more than likely be one of the top reasons for the everyday user to stay away from Snap and it has to deal with screen resolution. When you first use the search results the default image is at the largest setting which can be changed by clicking the image resizing links at the top (not like you can tell what they really mean), but at least if you change to the smallest setting it remembers that for the rest of your search results. For me it even remembered when I left the site and came back so that is a positive.
However, once you click on the image and are taken to the site, the site is viewed in all its glory so depending on your resolution you will more than likely encounter scrollbars, which isn’t what you want when you are trying to get to your results as quickly as possible.
Final Thoughts
I wouldn’t classify Snap.com as a search engine website as much as I would a search engine web application. It’s definitely not geared toward the everyday crowd or anyone with a slow connection and/or small resolution. However, power users may find that it can be more efficient than using a typical search engine such as Google or Yahoo. I haven’t played with it enough to completely decide if I wish to abandon it, but I know for certain there are search queries that would work better on Google (etc. images, spelling, language translation, etc.).
Digging deeper you will see that the site uses a great deal of keyboard functionality that power users may find useful once they learn the system, but this further proves that the site was not intended for everyday people. I don’t think Google has to worry about Snap taking their crown anytime soon, but at least it’s good to see companies taking new approaches to an old process.
