As you can see here, I haven’t updated the blog in more than 4 weeks now. Apologies to those who came here to find something new and saw the same article for such long time

All this time I worked. Had some client sites to finish (still have), worked on some of the sites in the network, wrote some articles in my other blogs. I would like to say I took a long break, but it wasn’t the case. Still I thought about this the only day I really ignored ALL work and had fun.

Yes, I wasted one day and now I feel I accomplished so much just by not working.

It’s weird I know: how can I say I had a 24 hour break from all my web related work and still I feel I gained so much?

Some years ago I trained in Karate. It wasn’t something serious since I was on a fulltime job at a radio station, 24 year old female. So no competition for me. Still I trained like a maniac, because I loved each minute. 4 “classes” a week, each 2-3 hour long. I was in the best shape of my life and the technique got better each day.

And then .. I reached a plateau.

I trained so much I wasn’t good anymore, my muscles were sore (even if I was in that awesome shape), I kinda disliked this and that, would go through the Kihon sessions with no passion etc. I was overburnt and sick of all, even if I still loved all the training. And then I took some time off.

It was the winter vacation, we all went to a moutain resort or stayed at home. No Karate for 3 weeks. In the first days I felt like an addict who’s not getting his dose, but after a week it was all better. My blisters healed, my muscles weren’t as tense as before, I got my passion back.

We met again in the dojo and I was a new person. My technique was perfect, I was full of energy and the class was amazing. I missed it so much, I was rested and had my full strength again.

Getting back to our jobs as web developers, we do get this exhaustion, even if we don’t see it. And most of the time this “muscle soreness” hits us exactly when we should work more and better. The moment projects pile up and clients are tough with the deadlines, we break down. How could we take a day off when we know there is so much to work?

Simple. Just do it. Wake up that morning (weekend is better, since clients are also resting) and just go to get some tan, go to visit your city, meet with friends etc. Just IGNORE anything web related, don’t even open the computer if possible. As much as you think the world will come to an end, don’t worry, nothing will get destroyed, no one will die just because you took a day off.

This is what I did this saturday. Got a friend to come to the pool with me, we spent 5 hours in the sun, swimming and chatting like women do. Then I got back, took my car again, another closer friend and we hit the town. Drank some soda, chatted some more and then  met my boyfriend. I refused to touch my laptop, so I finished the night with some TV (Discovery Channel).

The next day I woke up with a HUGE “need” to work. I turned on my computer and checked to see if the world was still as we know it. All was OK. My network was there, the 4 reseller accounts were OK, the payment from some of the advertising companies was issued. I was fresh now and started working.

At the end of the day I realized I haven’t lost anything with my one day break. I worked better since I wasn’t that tired and covered easily for the 24 hours of inactivity.

When was the last time you took a break?

I own several webmaster related forums (both in English and Romanian) and maybe because I am the admin and have the highest post count people consider me to be something like a “yoda” and direct the questions to me. Of course there are other members who are as good as I am in this and some are way better, but I seem to attract the questions like a huge eye-glasses wearing magnet.

One of the most important questions in many members minds is “How can I learn web design?”.

We have a lot of possible ways to learn this, there are several well known sites with articles and tutorials, there are online books and even those books we don’t read as often as before, the “real” ones with paper pages and that smell of “print” on them. There are many webmaster forums all dealing with the aspects of running a site (that would include web design too), chat rooms and blogs.

And still .. nothing beats the good ole’ practice you can do on your own.

I never would imagine learning web design and knowing what I know now just from reading and discussing. And I am so glad I didn’t waste time with a lot of planning and I just started doing something.

6 years ago I started Karate and wanted to teach the others some of the things I was also learning step by step. This meant working on a Front Page template (back then), then work it on dreamweaver, passing through the “heavy java scripts” time and the flash intros trend, animated gifs and all the jazz. And then I started learning more HTML, some CSS and working with the layers that made it possible to be able to come up with some decent designs in Photoshop.

I was able to modify that site and also learn step by step all about site design, forum management, traffic, SEO, things you can just learn in theory from the books, but you need to experiment.

Reading articles and tutorials is a great thing since you can be informed and solve all kinds of issues, the forums have been one of the best place for me to exchange ideas and ask for help, but nothing beats your own experience and your own work.

Even now, after 6 years, I can’t tell anyone “you learn web design starting from here, and then go there and there”. Web design is something hard to “define”, it’s not a map or a road, where you just see your destination and checkpoints. Web design means a lot of things and can be mastered in different ways by all people. Some people work well with following a tutorial step by step, not changing a pixel, not moving a colour. Others can’t keep themselves from experimenting and always end up with something new. There is no right or wrong in learning web design, there is no “bad way” to achieve beautiful results.

The only thing I was able to advise all my members and soon-to-be-awesome-web-designers was to “start a site” and just do it. Find a topic they love and think about a project. Try to work on that design, see how the layers look bad and try to understand what makes a design beautiful. Slice it and use tables or (even better) divs and see how horrible they look in IE as compared to FF (Internet Explorer and Firefox, for my readers who are not as familiar as I am with these “shortcuts”). Search on Google for tips of browser compatibility and then head to the SEO side. Learn how to bring in traffic, low quality traffic through all kinds of schemes and then that good quality traffic.

I can’t imagine learning web design from the books, I can’t imagine driving my car just from discussing this. Just as I have to learn how drive safely, avoid other cars, keep the car on the road and even park without destroying my wheels, I also have to open Photoshop and work on the layouts, the program I use for coding the layouts and scour the internet for new ideas of CSS effects.

If you wan to have a shot at learning web design, then you’ll just have to start … web designing

“Why do I exist online?” would be the question I like to ask myself from time to time. OK, I have a network of sites, I am a web designer, I am a content creator and also a forum manager, not to mention blogger. Am I here to make money online? To offer content and help others? Mix these two? Why do others exist? Do they really bring in something good to this world? Would the internet be less rich if their sites would cease existing? Would we all be thrilled to not see them again?

I visit tens of sites daily. Some I can’t live without, some I’d delete myself from the servers they occupy with no use to anyone, but the one who created the junk. I see people run scam sites, MFAs, splogs, who are just for some easy money. They don’t care about the fact they don’t help anyone, they just try to cheat the system. We have the copy-pasters who steal our work and pass it as theirs, the porn site managers who deal with something very tricky, we have the social media sites, the forum owners, we have the personal sites and blogs, we have them all.

From time to time I try to find out why I am here with my sites. What drives me daily in this online world: easy money, content, spam? What am I here for?

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We can refer here to promoting a site, to posting information on the forums or updating our nice blogs. It is important to kick start them with some content and try to keep up the content adding in a REGULAR way. This “regular” should be our main word in here.Having some “content writing sprees” is OK for the first days when we need to create information and post it. Afterwards we get into the so called “maintenance” phase when we need to keep up the posting rhythm and sustain the site’s growth.

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I just cannot believe it .. I am actually saying this “GET A DOMAIN”. And yes, I am very serious about this .. as I was 3 years ago on one of my first articles posted on Wtricks (it was on a free host back then) when I was totally against a site domain and paid hosting. I thought we need to first learn and test and only then pay. But what happened all these years that I started thinking the exact opposite?

Well .. I learnt. When I started webtips (as this site was initially called) I also started learning how to use a CMS (used e107 for the start, then in 2 day I moved to Php Nuke). I also learnt to modify an image, then the css, then make a header and then even en entire theme. As I got higher on my learning schedule I was able to offer good content and also promote. My link was doing nice, I even got a PR4 for the page and 500 visitors a day. Not huge, but so nice for a free hosted site.

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Let’s step on some more toes today, dear readers. I was too “nice” lately and it’s time for another post on my very personal web development blog. This time we discuss about the web development courses, online or at different Universities.

Time to start with a small personal history too so that we can get to our final conclusions.

I am a woman who’s been working as a radio DJ for 8 years now. I should be a teacher at the kindergarten or maybe a teacher at gymnasium/high-school level. Guess what? I am not. I chose the radio business and I have been doing this for so many years. Read the rest of this entry »

In my country there are more blogs and sites that use Digg and other similar networks to promote their articles. In some cases there were some excellent traffic spikes that made them enter the high traffic sites group for few days.

The sad thing is that most of the time the traffic ends up and then you go back to the small visits number with no serious improvements compared to the statistics before the event.

In these cases the traffic boosts do nothing.

Still one can make up for this problem and try to get as much as possible from these events. Here are some ideas that might help you tame the “digg traffic beast” and benefit from all these:

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This article is dedicated to all the directory owners (who seem to be quite many since it’s a lucrative project if all done well). Let’s try and learn together the secret of making the directory take his first steps on the web.

You just created your directory. You have a nice domain for it, you downloaded a free script (phpLD, indexu or another one), maybe you even paid for it. Now it’s up and running. What do we do next?

1. We style it and install modifications

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I would like to start my short blog entry by mentioning I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST ads on a site. As many of you I have invested thousands of dollars worth of money and work and I would really like to see some of my investment covered.

Still .. from having some ads to bring in revenue to not being able to read anything from all the banners, links, widgets etc. is already another story.

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