Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
The NicSocks Website Redesign
Starting NicSocks was an attempt at lean fashion ecommerce creation. With the help of the amazing skills over at Obox we launched a quick and effective site seen here:
For the launch of the brand this site was perfect, fun and effective. As sales increased, our customer base grew and the brand itself grew legs we realised that the time had come for a reworking of the website.
Obox has just launched an incredible new theme called FlatPack which fit the needs of the new NicSocks site perfectly. We wanted to give the site an edge and bring it inline with our customers and fans. David Perel took the lead and guided me in all things ecommerce and effective design.
With the amazing photography from Gregor Rohrig that you can see dotted throughout the website and the newsletter we felt that the site was ready to take on it's new and edgy look.
Selling socks is about more than just the selling of socks. I wanted to portray an experience to men browsing the site and show visitors (men and women) what being a NicSocks man means. I really feel like we've achieved this in the new design and hopefully this aesthetic will continue throughout the sock designs and into the Sockaholics Club!
Wordpress goes mobile but misses the poi...
Wordpress goes mobile but misses the point.Mashable! today reports that Wordpress has launched two new mobile themes. But "mobile" here refers to iPhones and Android handsets not to the mobile market that we, in Africa, are referring to.I'm interested to know how many 3rd world (low broadband) countries have Wordpress blogs. What is the number? Is it ten thousand, fifty thousand, more or less?The reason I ask is because I have a feeling that if Wordpress was to start focusing on lower-end handset models in the mobile market they would open themselves up to a massively neglected market. The market that can't afford "smartphones", the market that can't afford laptops, computers and fixed-line internet.It's interesting to think that in 1st world countries the term "mobile" refers to iPhone handsets or "smartphones". What of the rest of the world? What of the people who don't have these phones and can't view the content they are looking for because it costs too much.Meeting with Marc Smith this month was an eye-opener for many reasons. Firstly he told me that Obama winning a Nobel peace prize was not regarded in very high esteem by Americans. Why? Because if Europeans like their president there must be something wrong him. This seems to echo in the approach of many a large company playing in the online/mobile space.Why is Wordpress not going after the African market? Why are they not providing those without fixed-line broadband an outlet for their mobile phones to read and write blogs?To me it feels like a lack of insight and foresight.
This is P2. A microblogging wordpress pl...
This is P2. A microblogging wordpress platform that inspired Automattic to start blogging again. I've noticed how Twitter has begun to eat in to my drive to blog. So I thought that this might be a solution to the problem.
Offer your readers full and partial feeds
I have posted a fair amount in the last month about full vs partial RSS feeds.Finally I was given a solution by a reader of this blog. You can, and I think you should, offer your readers the chance to choose whether they want full or partial feeds. All it takes is one simple plugin for Wordpress blogs.The DualFeeds plugin allows you to manage your feeds in such a way that all your readers will be contented. The lines are clearly drawn and people are split almost 50/50 when it comes to full vs partial feeds. I haven't made my mind up and no longer have to.From the DualFeeds Blog:
This plugin creates ‘dual feeds’, allowing you to offer your readers both a full post feed and a summary feed. This works for all post feeds (category, author, etc), not just the main site feed. Comment feeds are unaffected.
Wordpress 2.3 uses Google blogsearch not Technorati
I find this extremely interesting and a bit confusing as a user. Technorati is out, Google is inPrevious version of Wordpress have made us of Technorati to track incoming links to your blog in the admin panel. Now it seems that with a new version of WP comes a change to Google.I am quite relieved about this move as I feel that Technorati has recently lost some weight in the market and is not being taken very seriously in the online market. While I cannot say that Google is any better but their extended reputation does hold them in good stead in my eyes.I just need to work out how Google Blogsearch relates to my links and what it all means. But it is nice to see a change and to know that the WP guys are listening to their users and interacting with us with every upgrade.
Wordpress v2.3 - Tags, Posts and more
Last night with the gracious assistance of one Hartman, I upgraded SA Rocks to Wordpress v2.3.To be honest, this process is not simple for an ignoramus such as myself. It involves database backups, theme backups (which I neglected to do) and plugin deactivation. Sounds pretty easy, but when your entire blogs history is dependant on your capabilities you start to doubt those capabilities.But nevertheless I went forward with the upgrade. I was going to install Ultimate Tag Warrior to handle all my tagging on the various posts, but alas I was disuaded because the new WP has built in tagging capabilities.So here is my immediate impression of the new WP upgrade:1. Posts are easier to manage in the admin section. You can search by status, date, author, category or simply enter a search term. This I love.2. Built in tagging. This is a brilliant update that has been made. I love tagging and this makes it doable right there in your post editor.3. Plugin updates. These have become automated. Now before you get all happy about that, it simply means that you are automatically told when a new update is available for your installed plugins. This might not seem like a great improvement, but wow what a time-saver.I am having some issues with the tagging process on SA Rocks. For some reason when I publish a post with tags, the tags don't actually click through to anything buy an error page. Does anyone have any advice?Then the next stupid thing that I hastily screwed up was my categories. WP v2.3 offers you the ability to make your categories, tags. I wasn't 100% sure what this meant, and hell, I'm still not sure. But what I do know is that out of my carefully crafted 40 or so categories, I am now only left with about 6 (4 of which I recreated) after "converting" them to tags.Now that they are tags, can someone tell me what the hell that means for my blogging?That's my only major gripe with the upgrade. Otherwise I had a good guide through the process and happy with the results.A word of advice: Ensure that you back up EVERYTHING that you want to keep as is on your current blog before upgrading. I didn't save a copy of my most recent updates on the SA Rocks theme and I had to do some of them over. Not fun.
Wordpress and Blogger both offer custom domains
I've said it before and I'll say it again; I hate it when people talk about things that they don't know about.I was reading a post wherein a commenter on the post was upset that the post referred to wordpress.com and blogspot.com blogs as free, easy and customizable. The commenter argued that Blogger and Wordpress don't offer custom domains. They definitely do offer custom domains such as .com, .net, .info, .biz and others, almost anyone domain you so choose really.The only cost you will incur is purchasing the domain of your choice (around R100 or less) and redirect your DNS (which only some hosts charge for). That's it. Bob's your Uncle, Fanny's your Aunt. Done and dusted.Strangely enough if that person had actually read this blog and simply done a search they would have found that I have posted on this topic before. My post was Blogger specific as I was using blogger back then.Let's review a quote from that blog post:
You need to purchase your domain and make sure that it’s working before you can select it as your new domain on blogger. Once these steps have been completed your old url will point to your new url so there wont be any links lost or time wasted in the past.
It's as easy as that.Wordpress is much the same as far as I know (which admittedly isn't too far). If you have a wordpress.com blog already all you have to do is enter your admin panel and enter a domain you have already registered and Wordpress will redirect all your links to that domain. Simple.From the Wordpress website:
It’s here: you can now use your own custom domain with your WordPress.com blog. For example, if your blog was currently at example.wordpress.com you could buy example.com from us and we would automatically move your blog over and redirect all your links and readers to the new domain.
If you don't have a domain registered you can use Worpress to register your desired domain for a measly $15/year. That is cheap. In fact that is under R400 a year to have a great looking, functional and customised website.
A new theme
Apparently with mumps comes time to redesign your blog! So as of this evening you will see a new look and feel for nicharalambous.com.Something smoother, cleaner, more generic and simple. Colour is sporadic and I have chosen to move things back to a very basic feel.Did a bit of customisation here and there, tweaked the style.css and the images that build the theme. And what do you know, I have a new theme. I think I'll be tweaking it more and more as things progress. But I like what it has turned in to and hope that it has become easier to read, understand and subscribe.Let me know what you think.Oh, one of the main reasons for the redesign is that I realised that I have only been working with Wordpress since January of this year. It's really incredible what one can learn in eight months. I have done a boat load of template designs, redesigns and tweaks since I put the old nicharalambous.com theme. So I thought it necessary to work on my own blog since my skills are somewhat improved from the last time I did this!!Hope you enjoy the theme, I do.
Customizing your wordpress theme
I love Wordpress. I really do. I love designing themes and customizing ones that I have implemented.My favourite part about the themes that I have created for myself and others is the tiny little changes in detail that one can make. Attention to detail is imperative if you ask me.Let me explain. When I write a comment on someones post and then continue reading the thread, I like to know who the author is of the post and read their comments specifically. This can be done but often isn't be designers.When submitting comments I really am bored with pressing the "Submit" button. It's really not very hard to change something like that. SA Rocks features a "Rock It Hard" button in place of the standard "Submit". This makes me slightly more keen to ROCK IT HARD when I submit a post.Doing this is easy: Simply go in to your comment.php file and search for the word "Submit" (or whatever your submit button says.Then in that string of code: [input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit"] <-- that part of the code is what you want to change.For SA Rocks I changed it to: [input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Rock It Hard!"]There you have it. Obviously changing the actual image behind the text is a bit more complicated (not too much more). But the text is a good place to start I fell.There are many other little changed you can make to a theme to make it more interesting for the viewer. One of my personal favourites is changing the Login/Register Wordpress default look to one that matches your theme. If you want an EG of that visit SA Rocks. If you want me to explain how to do that, let me know in the comment section below.PS: I haven't changed the "submit" button on this blog yet. Tsk Tsk.
What to do after some blog downtime
My blog (this one) has been down for almost a week now. What a mission, what a ballsup, what a pain in mine and Justin's asses.Initially we thought we were dealing with a server problem. Not so much.Then we thought it was a DNS problem. Not so much (not so good after many email arguments).Eventually Justin discovered that a plugin I was using was messing with things in a huge way. So we (when I say "we" I mean Justin) upgraded to WP 2.2 and deleted the plugin.This seems to have worked and all that has happened in the interim is that I have dropped in ALL rankings EVERYWHERE. Oh well..It was a refreshing break not having this blog on the back of my mind constantly. The break did come at a bad time though with many things to blog about that were extremely important and obviously groundbreaking at the time. Now, they are all meaningless!!Anyways, here's to a new lease on this blogs life. I am going to get back in to this blog and make things happen. I am going to plan my blogging like I do on SA Rocks and move forward from there.
DOWN WITH BLOGGER!!!!!!!!!
Ok, that heading is a bit overboard but I was fed up and about to slit my blogging wrists (but how would i type then???). So instead of doing that I have moved to Wordpress. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't get what I needed out of blogger, she was good for me at one point, but in the end, the relationship needs to be a two way street. I was giving more than I was getting.After I read this post on techrunch I knew I had to move and was making the right decisionThanks to the gracious assistance of one Mr Justin Hartman, I am able to host my site and have moved. Dude, you kick ass!Welcome to the new look for nicharalambous.com. I will not be changing the theme for a while now. I promise. I have said that before but this time it is believable (that's what all pathological liars say isn't it?).Please let me know what You think of theme, if you dig the design and if you think I stink!
Wordpress plugin directory
It is something that I have been after since I started using Wordpress. Finally they have released a plugin directory. What a great resource and idea.
Wordpress installation trouble
I am starting a new blog and am making use of wordpress to see what it's all about (thanks Mike for the suggestions). I think that for a first time user and first time installation I am doing fairly well. Unfortunately I have run in to a snag of some sorts. So if you have installed wordpress on to a host site before using Cpanel please drop me an email: nharalambous@gmail.com.Thanks.
Wordpress offers .com hosting
I have been seriously considering moving my blog to a .com url. I think that this is a necessary movement for bloggers in the very near future and thought that over December it would be a good idea to get started. So I have emailed some people that I regard as knowledgeable in this area and have done some of my own research. Thus far the best solution that I have found involves Wordpress. A new feature has just been added to the Wordpress services; a feature that allows wordpress.com url's to be moved to .com url's. I think this is a brilliant idea. The only problem with this is that I am obviously a blogger user.Apparently Wordpress offers a service that allows for the importing of blogger blogs to Wordpress blogs. This might have to be done.There is a charge of $15 /per year if you are purchasing the desired url from Wordpress. If you have already purchased the url then the charge is a mere $10/per year or at the most R100/per year. I think this is a fantastic price for a brilliant deal and I think that I shall be making the moving to nicharalambous.com sometime very, very soon!