Wisdump

Dumping wisdom on design and the web

Join the 9rules Network: Round 1

You have a blog and there are some goals you would like to accomplish:

  • More Traffic
  • More Consistent Readership
  • More Business Opportunities
  • More Money

Maybe you only want one of the items listed above or maybe you want all of them. In any case that is what the new 9rules Network is for. Here are some of the details:

  • The network is intended to be a win-win situation for both 9rules and the sites involved.
  • If you have a blog and you would like more traffic, eyes, and money and feel that you provide quality content that deserves more attention then this might be the opportunity you are looking for. 9rules will help get you the traffic and also consult with you in better ways to make revenue from your hard work.
  • This will be a revenue sharing venture, but will be greatly tilted towards the owners of the sites. Meaning no 50/50 split here. This also helps to keep the 9rules team focused on helping you out because the more we help you, the more we help ourselves.
  • You own the content. Hell, it’s your site and you put the effort into it. Why shouldn’t you own it? We are not here to tell you what should or shouldn’t be written, but we can provide guidance as to what direction you can take your content.
  • A private 9rules forum where members get to discuss their secrets and methods for success. Also just a place to chill out and talk.
  • Any type of site can apply, even those personal ones that are funny as hell. We are looking for high-quality content sites (doesn’t have to be a blog per se).

Now I have already written about this over at Work Boxers to get a sample test of interest and the results have been overwhelming. To control the chaos a bit better we are going to open the window for applicants for a set amount of time. Next Wednesday (April 6, 2005) at 12:00am Eastern, we will post an application form on the 9rules site where you can submit your site(s) for review. Only a set number of sites will be allowed into the network for this first round because we want to be able to provide the best service possible to them. The form will be up for 24 hours.

So if you think you might be interested make sure that your site has been updated with quality content and feel free to ask questions in the comments.

More details later.

Originally posted on March 29, 2005 @ 3:00 pm

Textpattern or WordPress or DIY

I was patient. I debugged. I grew tired. My next blog (that hasn’t been worked on yet) will use a new blogging software and I need to decide whether I head down the Textpattern route or WordPress route. Eventually, I think the 9rules team will build our own software (we have a top notch designer, an usability expert, and a guru programmer…and I am none of those) for blogging use since I still see some room in that market, but for now it’s time to move on from MovableType. What’s the problem I have with it? Well let me first admit that I have not done any research into this problem so it might be something that I am missing, but that doesn’t matter since it’s time to expand my blog software knowledgebase anyways.

The problem that I am having is that MT doesn’t rebuild some pages or build them properly once I publish an entry. This only occurs with the latest version (3.15 as of this writing) and causes a major headache, because after I publish an entry, I then have to go back and rebuild all the files to make sure everything is in proper order. Wouldn’t be a problem if I was just one man, running one blog, with one author, posting once a day, but that isn’t the case.

Here is a list of features that I am looking for:

  • Easily import entries from MT
  • Multiple authors with different permissions
  • Multiple blogs. For example, I may setup a site with a news blog and an articles blog sitting side-by-side.
  • Decent spam prevention
  • Can use the same url structure as my current sites (very, very important)
  • Free
  • Easy plugin architecture in case I get creative and decide to program something of my own
  • Easy export in case I decide to build my own software

It’s a basic blogging list, but those are the essentials. Any advice beyond just telling me which one to go with is greatly appreciated.

Originally posted on April 8, 2005 @ 10:43 am

Creating the 9rules Logo

Hey guys and gals, I’m Mike Rundle and I head up the design of all things related to Business Logs and 9rules. You may know me from my personal weblog, phark.typepad.com, or maybe that negative text-indent image replacement technique. Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s get down to business.

The new 9rules Network will be launching soon with two primary goals. The first goal is to provide readers with a variety of well written blogs on a wide range of topics all in one spot. The second goal is to provide writers of well written blogs a chance to reach a wider audience and potentially generate some revenue along the way. This community-like atmosphere is the main focus of 9rules — to have many different kinds of weblogs on completely different topics all brought together under one umbrella.

We’re currently working hard on the infrastructure that will support this new network, but my immediate role in this entire thing is to design, design, design. We’re not only launching a new website, but we’re re-launching the entire 9rules brand as well. Since weblogs are the driving force behind 9rules, and Whitespace readers are some of the most well-informed bloggers in the world, we think that some design collaboration should be in order.

Working the Metaphor

I see the 9rules network as a living, growing community of weblogs, and as such, I wanted the logo to represent something organic and changing. Weblogs are categorized based on topic, and then those categories make up the full network. This reminded me of leaves growing on branches, then branches making up the entire tree. So now that I’ve got my metaphor, it’s time to start thinking about what I want to do with the logo.

The brands that come to mind when I think of “organic” design are Apple’s iLife ’05, BP, Jon Hicks’ new logo, Adobe Creative Suite, and of course, Organic. Before starting this project, I’ve definitely seen all of these brands before and I’m sure they all weighed in on my creative process. I wanted a leaf-like logo, and to tie it into the domain, Paul thought I should have 9 integrated petals. So here’s what I came up with:

I haven’t even thought about the typography associated with the logomark yet (probably another entry!) so right now I just have the symbol. For smaller applications of the logo, as well as print work, the logo can be monochromatic and still have the organic look:

The Process

To be completely honest, this is the very first time I’ve opened Adobe Illustrator to produce something relevant. The Pen tool and I don’t get along, so I was pretty reluctant to produce an illustrated logomark. Just like with all my designs, I rock them out analog style to start. I drew some concepts on my trusty Miquelrius notebook that integrated ‘9’ and ‘r’ into a leaf design, but those just didn’t cut the mustard. I started working with the logo in Illustrator, and just like all design work, it evolved into something different than what I started with.

I used the curve tool to make each side of the leaf, then used the Pathfinder palette to connect the two (thanks Mike!) into a leaf-like shape. From that I just duplicated, rotated, and re-colored to make the shape you see there. It originally was going to be completely green, but I thought adding color would help with the rest of the site’s color scheme. Plus, the “budding into a flower” analogy worked with the overall strategy, so I went with it.

Conclusion

I started with some line drawings on paper with an idea in my head, and it turned into what you see above. Now that you know what went into the design, you can give some comments and suggestions. We’re all ears.

Editor’s Note: Mike will be traveling all day today (Monday) so I will try my best to answer any question until he gets to where he needs to get to.

Originally posted on April 4, 2005 @ 12:24 am

A New Type of Whitespace

Prepare to see a new type of Whitespace as I post more frequently about design topics around the web. Instead of staying with a couple of posts a month routine, I am going more with the way I do things with my other sites and going to a couple posts a day (on good days). Every once in a while you will still get the longer articles you are so used to here at Whitespace (I will wait till you’re done laughing…finished?), but there are so many topics that I would like to cover that this is the best way I see to go about it.

Of course I could fall flat on my face and this ends up being a disaster. Only time will tell. Hopefully you enjoy it. Posting starts tomorrow.

Originally posted on April 7, 2005 @ 10:47 pm

My Unadulterated SXSW Highlights

Quick story before the real content

One of the questions that I received the most at this year’s SXSW was “What happened to Whitespace?” A good question and all I could provide those that ask was this simple answer:

I can’t login to MT.

I had been shutout of my own installation. So therefore you get a site with no content for over a month. Well I tried everything in my power to try and get it to work, but nothing was working. So now I have downloaded all the files and done a database dump from MySQL and am starting from scratch. Old content is still there just not linked to at the moment. Hopefully order will be restored shortly.

The Highlights

Kickball. The Business Logs team showed up to the kickball game with only one intention: to beat the crap out of anybody daring to step in our direction. As fate would have it the great Anil Dash put me on a team separate from Mike and Matthew. Oh well I figured, I could dominate this game by my lonesome. I mean I was playing against other fellow web geeks so how hard could this be?

Not enough space to tell the whole story, but I can sum it up like this. I kicked the shit out of the ball twice and celebrated with the best run scoring dance of all time…only to lose the game in extra innings.

Meeting the Doctor. Who in the hell is the doctor? The doctor is D. Keith Robinson. I call him the doctor because I always thought the D meant doctor. Well I later found out it stood for Doogie so I wasn’t that far off. Anyways, it was cool to finally meet him because we all know how much of a super dork he is on his site, but in real life he is one cool brother. Very easy to drink him under the table though (I can say this because he is still at SXSW and probably won’t read this…)

Seeing I am not alone. Some of you are aware of the party lifestyle I live. Rundle was here last Tuesday to spend a couple days in Tampa before going to Austin so he got to witness the crazyness that is my life. To say the least I don’t hangout with web people or anybody that remotely resembles someone that knows how to turn on a computer. So I fully admit to wondering if I was going to be a stranger in a strange land at SXSW.

There were a couple of people that were really great fun to hangout with. Don’t get me wrong, everyone was fun to talk to, but hanging out with someone past midnight takes a certain type of fun factor. Now I can have fun just chatting with people past midnight, but there are just party types that like to keep it going for a bit longer. These are the ones that had it:

Now if you aren’t on the list, it’s no diss to you. These are just the group of guys that I found myself spending the most time with after midnight doing what I usually do in Tampa.

My Acceptance Speech. You see Business Logs was up for the Best Blog award at SXSW and the only competition we had was some no-name guy who goes by The Wolf. Well the no-name won and when he got up on stage he said something to the effect of:

Take that Scrivs!

Or something like that. But what I heard was:

Haha, Scrivs you punkass, how do you like dem apples?!?!

So of course I did what any other sane blogger would do and went onstage and did No-Name’s acceptance speech for him. The legend of the Spotlight Stealer has now been fully established.

Liquid vs. Fixed It was Monday night/Tuesday morning and this was easily the best night I had there. This night was only for the true party types and played out like a game of Survival seeing who can stay up the latest. I lost because I crashed at 7:30 am, but what really made this night fun was Patrick Griffiths popping the most controversial question in our lil design community. Let me set the mood.

In a suite on the 17th floor of the Hilton at about 5-6am you have around 10 people in a room feeling ‘nice’ as I like to call it. Some of these people include Molly “Checkout my Jew fro” Holzschlag (as she kept on calling it), The Doctor, Jeremy “Which is the first name and which is the last” Keith, Garrett, and Kyle Bradshaw. There were others, but these were the ones whose lives would change forever.

Everyone is drinking, chilling, screaming, and being very professional *cough*. All of a sudden there is silence and PTG screams out:

Fixed or Liquid?!?!?!?

WTF?!?!

To say the least all hell broke loose after that and the only thing I remember is thinking I am never getting into this argument with Jeremy Keith again because he is going to write a whole damn manual on this crap within 10 minutes.

Good times.

Good Times All Over

I had a great time and will be there next year for sure. So many events that I didn’t reflect upon in this entry and so many people that I need to say my thanks to for bearing with my inconsistencies. You go into these situations looking not to make a fool of yourself because understandably many of these people consider you to be a professional. I went in with the opposite approach. I was me through and through and mostly everyone seemed to enjoy that. That was a good feeling.

Monday I will talk about the lowlights that many of the people on the web refuse to discuss because I don’t want to make it seem like everything was peaches and cream. There are some bastards in this industry and they proved it while I was there.

Originally posted on March 18, 2005 @ 2:45 pm