• Using Psychology to Create a Killer Sticky Website – What social web features appeal to our human instincts for acceptance and belonging? Laura Alter takes a look at some of the key components of successful social media sites.
• Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET? – If you checkout the new startups on TechCrunch, it seems like every new startup is something Linux based and is not ASP.NET. And I really want to know why.
• Notes On The ProBlogger Logo Design – Mike from Makalu Media shares his design notes and sketches of the new logo for ProBlogger. Interesting write-up of the process of logo design and the client requirements.
• Outsource Your Blogging Chores for Free – Hint: recruit your loyal readers to muck in and help with moderation and promoting your site (among other duties)!
• 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber – Excellent, thought provoking post about the major problems with blogging today.
• Is Wikipedia Corrupt? – Interesting post about the editorial process and politics at Wikipedia. This calls into question the impartiality and reliability of the site and calls Google to task for favouring Wikipedia in their rankings. Rightly so.
• 10 SEO Tips to Remember While Launching a Site – Eric Lander presents an excellent pre-launch checklist of SEO-related factors that may either help or hinder your site upon launch.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Automating WordPress customizations – the plugin way – How to create a plugin to automatically set defaults in WordPress to your specifications. Really useful for anyone who manages multiple WordPress installations.
• MySQL Optimization – A Little Tip – A quick tutorial on how to optimise your MySQL queries for better performance when using complicated joins.
• Three Ways To Spice Up Any Blog Post – Here are three techniques that will have you bringing zesty back to your blog in no time. Some smart copywriting advice from Bryan Clarke.
• How To: Plan Your Blog Posting Schedule – Darren is running a fabulous series of posts about reinvigorating your blog. Steve Rubel talked about editorial calendars a while back, and Darren is also advocating a planned posting schedule as a method of keeping a professional blogging workflow. Highly recommended advice for anyone who s taking their blogging seriously.
• 10 Steps to Success on the Net Without SEO – Tadeusz Szewczyk believes conventional SEO is dead in a world of blogs and social media. I m inclined to agree that social media on its own can generate a lot of traffic, but all these activities contribute to a sound SEO plan also.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• The Business Blogging Toolset: 100 Resources for Entrepreneur-Writers – Wow, if you re looking for an introduction to blogging, this is as comprehensive a resource as you re likely to find. 100 links to useful sites and classic blogging articles.
• Rediscovering ScribeFire: 7 Reasons To Use The Blog Editor – ScribeFire s been around for quite a while, but many bloggers are only just waking up to the productivity benefits blog editors can bring them.
• Creating A Magazine Layout For WordPress – Excellent post describing how to create a magazine style homepage for a WordPress blog.
• Fighting Duplicate Content On WordPress – A default installation of WordPress creates a lot of duplicate content. Here are some tips for optimizing your posts and avoiding Google s duplicate content filters.
• Blasting the Myth of the Fold – Probably the most talked about aspect of web design in 2007 is the fold – a mythological creature that changes its appearance on every different monitor and curiously prevents people from scrolling down a page…

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web – I thought this was going to be overhyped, but it s really an excellent collection of tutorials for jazzing up text.
• Why Small Businesses Need SEO to be Successful – An important essay on why small businesses need to be aware of the power of SEO to improve their business. I d argue that while SEO is great at bringing in new business, you also need to focus on things like easy ordering systems and outstanding customer service. Finding your website is only part of the equation!
• Short Term Gains Versus Long Term Value – Chris Garrett expounds upon the futility of empty linkbaiting, describing it as essentially a short term strategy compared with writing useful insightful content.
• RustyBudget: Multi-Author Blog Management – Bridging the gap between blogging and professional multi-author management, this looks like a must-have tool for blogging teams.
• Get Anyone to Read Every Word You Write With These 7 Steps – Excellent 7 step advice on editing your writing ruthlessly in order to better serve the needs of your readers.
• 16 Best-Loved Font Bits In Web Design – Useful article looking at fonts for use on the web. Some aren’t universal, so they can’t be used as pure text, but they would be quite nice for graphical titles.
• xcavator ? Advanced Image Search – AJAX-driven stock image search. Pretty interesting colour matching technology.
• Organizing Tips for Bloggers – When blogging becomes more than a hobby, you need to get organised. I like to think of it as more like running a magazine. Either way, you should find this post useful for keeping your blog running smoothly.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Elliot Jay Stocks – I stumbled across this site today, and it’s one of the most unique, beautiful designs I’ve seen on the web in a long time. Inspirational stuff..
• Weird Advertising Characters on Flickr – In a break from web design/search engine links, here’s a set of offbeat advertising characters hosted on Flickr
• Web Design: 7 Surefire Styles that Work – Very nice article and screenshots of different visual styles that can be used in websites. Worth a look if you’re trying to break out of the Web 2.0 mould!
• Top 25 Blog Directories – Useful list of top 25 blog directories. I don’t agree with all of them – the Yahoo! directory is very exclusive and I don’t know what real chance you have of getting listed in there. The DMOZ directory – last I heard – hasn’t accepted new submissions for a couple of years now. Nevertheless, a good starting point for anyone wanting to promote a blog.
• SEO & Importance of Valid Source Code – Does W3C compliance impact a site’s search rankings? Always an interesting topic – I’ve always considered valid code to be ultimately easier to crawl and index. This article takes a different stance.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• How Drupal Will Save The World – Not so much a thesis on how Drupal could end global poverty, but an assessment of what needs to be done to make Drupal more attractive to non-techie users.
• Drupal’s Designer Future – Interesting discussion about Drupal and the need for better design within the community and better theme support. It’s a recurring topic with Drupal and one that needs attention. I might just lend a hand….
• Drupal and FeedBurner – Handy tutorial for integrating FeedBuurner with Drupal, and link to a Drupal module for FeedBurner which should make it even easier. I’m working quite a bit with Drupal at the moment, so this stuff is always useful!
• DIY PR – "So what I am recommending is not howto manage an agency, but something more radical: not hiring an agency at all. Here are ten reasons why."
• Should you switch off adverts for members of your site? – Should you consider switching off advertising for registered users to improve their experience? Seems like a good idea, as it’ll encourage signups and regular visitors don’t generally click adverts. Worth a read.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Web Strategy: How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website – Jeremiah takes a look at how corporates can no longer control what’s being said about them by a website alone – there’s a shift in web usage now that leads to people searching for information on social networks. How can businesses embrace that shift?
• Supercharge your image borders – Nice, consise tutorial showing how to improve the appearance of images by giving them custom borders
• Plugins To Make WordPress Stickier – Aaron lists a number of WordPress plugins that help make your blog ‘stickier’ for visitors.
• Styling the Button Element with Sliding Doors – Very nice, simple tutorial on how to get custom, graphical buttons for your site using the sliding doors CSS technique.
• Data Tables and Cascading Style Sheets Gallery – Zen Garden-like gallery of CSS Table styles

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates – Smashing Magazine provides yet another knock-out collection of web design resources. Inspiring stuff.
• How To Write A Popular Post – A useful guide to writing popular articles that give value to readers and score high on social media sites.
• Design Goodies – A handy (and timely, for me) collection of resources for web and graphic designers. Some nice Photoshop brushes in there…
• Supplemental Results and WordPress – Interesting trick to discover which pages in your site are held in Google’s supplemental index.
• Don’t Sweat the Small SEO Stuff – Search veteran Jill Whalen urges reader not to get too tied up in the small details of SEO, and to focus instead on the marketing and brand building benefits that a popular website can bring.
• Building An Open Source, Distributed Google Clone – Emre Sokullu floats the idea of creating a decentralized search engine to rival Google by using home computers in a grid formation. Interesting concept with the ultimate goal of creating something which can truly rival Google in search.
• How to make sexy buttons with CSS – This tutorial will teach you how to create pretty looking textual buttons (with alternate <em>pressed</em> state) using CSS. Dynamic buttons save you heaps of time otherwise spent creating graphics and will basically make you a happier person at the end of the day.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Dr. Dobb’s | What Is Drupal? | April 30, 2007 – A very comprehensive introduction to Drupal. Almost a bit too simplistic in scope and content, but a worthwhile overview. (Note to self: play with Drupal more)
• The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs – There’s nothing definitive about this guide at all – it’s all commonsense advice. And also – why does this just apply to blogs? Any website should be applying semantic structure – for accessibility and search engine reasons. SEO is not just for bloggers.
• How to: Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M – My second visit to Andy Hagan’s site looks at building a website of value over a period of a few years and then either selling or keeping. Interesting insight into the process.
• Top 17 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic) – Interesting list of alternative social media sites that reputedly bring traffic. Since the rise of Digg and the Pligg platform that allows you to easily create a niche social media site, undoubtedly there will be more of these sites to come.
• 3 Reasons to Add Articles to your Web Site – If you’re a small business owner, publishing articles about your topic area on your website will help attract visitors to your website. This is an oft-overlooked strategy and something savvy small businesses should be looking into.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.

• Master Stylesheet: The Most Useful CSS Technique – Another take on globally resetting styles using a master CSS file. To elaborate, different browsers have different default settings for web documents. By using a global reset, you can control this and make the display settings much more consistent.
• Eric’s Archived Thoughts: Reset Styles – Eric Meyer looks at how we can use a global reset CSS file to iron out the inconsistencies between web browsers. Check out the original article and the follow-up which refines the process.
• Link Building Structures: Hunters and Collectors – An interesting look at link building structures. Can’t say it all makes sense, but it just might be an interesting series….
• 10 Steps to get Traffic from Yahoo Answers – Yahoo! Answers is a very popular service where people can ask a question about virtually anything and receive answers from the community. This post looks at ways to leverage the service to create traffic for your website.
• How To Turn Google?s Paid Link Reporting Into Profit | Scoreboard Media Group – Google is taking on the paid link industry by introducing a "paid link reporting" facility. This post eloquently exposes the scope that exists for abuse of the system. While any link-building I’ve done had been organic, I think the strategy of reporting these types of links is a bit of a liability.

I use Ma.gnolia to bookmark interesting things on the web. Here are my latest bookmarks.