Every so often, things break.

Today was one of those “every so often” times, and instead of the “What’s new in this version” admin screen I expected, I was greeted with a horrifying white screen, completely empty of content. I immediately checked the user-facing part of the site, and that looked fine, so I was confused. I’ve never seen a blank page instead of an admin panel, which is wacky enough, but having that while the user-facing section of the site is functional? Inconceivable! (Princess Bride anyone?)

Trying anything I can think of

A quick Google led me to try something that didn’t make any difference.

My next step was to turn on WP_DEBUG to see what errors came up, and the first one said “load_plugin_textdomain was called with an argument that is deprecated since version 2.7 with no alternative available” — so clearly something else installed on WP was no longer compatible with the new version. Now I at least knew what I was dealing with, it must be a bad plugin.

And no, of course I hadn’t turned off all plugins in order to upgrade, who actually does that? Admit it, you don’t either. And I’m sure you don’t back up your DB before-hand, either (neither do I).

So, the next step was obvious: Turn everything “extra” off and, assuming that brought my admin panel back from death, then start turning them back on one at a time to figure out what was breaking the site.

Turning off all plugins without an Admin panel

To get rid of all plugins, I went into my FTP client and dragged all plugin folders into the wp-content folder. This makes their files inaccessible to WordPress and essentially uninstalls them. Depending on what plugins you had, you may get additional errors after doing this step, and you’ll need to deal with those (for example, cachine plugins often add additional PHP files to wp-content, and those will need to be deleted through the FTP client).

When I refreshed wp-admin, the admin panel popped up! Score!

Time to turn the plugins back on one at a time, until the site breaks again, in order to find . . .

The Culprit

The cuplrit? Popup Domination.The plugin we all love yet hate. With the website that makes GoDaddy seem friendly and streamlined . . . figures.

I found this post in their support section saying that an updated version of the plugin is available that IS compatible with 331, so I’ve emailed them to get a copy.

Sure woulda been nice for them to proactively mail their customers letting them know . . . hint hint Popup Domination. Free services give better customer service.

click for bigger

Just came across SaneBox today after reading about it on a friend’s blog, and I signed right up. A service that will make my disaster of an inbox sane? Yes please!

I can’t speak to how well it works as it’s still “analyzing” so I haven’t actually used the thing yet, but that’s not what I want to talk about anyway. This post is about the design of the site and how it immediately won me over with its playful design.

On the “about” section of the site it says that none of the guys behind the product are designers, but they sure fooled me! I love the hand-drawn elements, the blue character with his crazy facial expressions, and the playful, almost silly ad copy.

Take this “how it works” graphic for example:

The concept it’s illustrating is pretty simple, but there’s no obvious way to visualize it. They could have made a simple graphic with just three arrows in it, but instead they went for this brilliant Rube Goldberg-type image. In one glimpse it tells you everything you need to know: how simple it is for you and how complicated what they’re doing behind the scenes is. And it conveys all that without taking itself too seriously. That’s really hard to do!

If you were being snarky, you could say that it’s not a very refined graphic (look closely at how the blue funnel connects to the gray machinery area, and how the envelopes are a totally different style of drawing than the rest of it), but I think that’s part of the charm. It feels real. Not stuffy. And the focus is on what the service does, not on business speak.

Assuming the product works as well as the site’s branding does, I’m going to love using Sanebox for sure!

One of my favorite parts of it is the “No thanks! Go to Homepage” link — too many signup forms like this don’t include the option to get out of the page but still see the site content and that drives me nuts!

Of course the reason for not giving any options OTHER than signing up is to try to force more conversions, but in my opinion, if your target audience is web-savvy, giving them the “no thanks” option will lead to more loyal readers/fans and therefore more valuable conversions long-term. I had no idea what this site was about when I landed on this page, so I clicked through the “no thanks” link first, poked around a bit, and then went back to sign up. I even agreed to receive their two other prompted products afterwards. I’m not sure I would have signed up at all if the “no thanks” link hadn’t been there.

On the other hand, one thing I think they’re doing wrong is having the “as seen in” logos link out to the coverage on external sites. And those links aren’t even opening in a new window! That’s a sure-fire way of losing people’s attention. If I clicked through to the Times article, what are the chances I wouldn’t be sucked into something else on the Times site and never hit back to actually sign up? Much too big.

For this project, the client, Seth of Seth Wernow Photography, showed me exactly how he wanted his site to look. He sent me a link to another site, one done in Flash (gag, cough, gag some more), and I told him what I could do for him without using Flash. The result is a minimalist photography site where the photos shine through above everything else.

To ensure a quick turnaround and a solid site with fast load times and excellent SEO capabilities, I again used Thesis for this project.

If you click through to the Thesis site with the above link, you’ll see that the default look of Thesis literally looks nothing like the finished product. That shows the flexibility of a theme framework like Thesis and helps explain why I’ve used it on so many client sites over the last few years!

photo credit to giveawayboy

Writing list posts

Today’s exercise is “write a list post” and it’s one of the steps I remember from starting this book last year. In fact, back then I actually started a list post for Chiagu that was meant to work for pre-Christmas 2010, but that I only ever finished for pre-Christmas 2011! The post is this one: Free Stuffed Animal Knitting Patterns and it’s now the 7th most popular page on my site. Wowzers!

Unlike yesterday’s step, I have no qualms about this one. I love it when other sites write list posts and I do them myself pretty often! On my cooking blog, I write list posts for any cooking magazine issue that has a lot of recipes I want to try. I also write list posts for cool cooking-related things I’ve come across that I might buy. Those posts are some of the most popular (and have led to the most affiliate commissions).

On the brand-new WordPress Hound, I’ve already written three list posts, each of which gathers social media icons and categorizes them together. I wrote those lists posts literally because I wanted them as a reference for myself! Most other posts on icon sets just dump everything together, so when I knew I wanted, say, a round set, I had to dig through a mish-mash to find them. Since I had started saving them in categories for my own use, I figured others would want them categorized too.

For the other two sites, Chiagu and Inside the Alley, I don’t tend to write list posts as much. I have ideas for both of them and will start writing list posts for them, but don’t intend to post them for a little while. For Chiagu, I’m working on a post of “most useful knitting tools” that will be an ode to my favorite knitting gadgets. For ITA, I want to write a post with a list of startups that have good social media proof regarding working there, but I’m nowhere near having enough data to write it yet.

This step’s list posts

The book says that the list post doesn’t have to go up today, and I probably won’t put any of mine up today myself. But this list will become links once the posts go live:

• Chiagu: The Most Useful Knitting Tools
• A Chef’s Daughter: Basic Cookbooks Every Home Cook Should Own
• Inside the Alley: Startups with Social Media Proof about Working there (title needs to be fixed!)
• WordPress Hound: 5 Plugins I use on Every WordPress Site

I think each of those posts has real value to my readers and might even go viral . . . we’ll see!

Step 2 Summary

Todays’ exercise was quick and easy for me, probably because I’ve been blogging for so long (it’s been 10 years, have I ever mentioned that before? Crazy!) and didn’t actually finish writing any of these posts today. I can usually put together a list post in about an hour, depending on the number of items included in it and the subject matter. So by the time I finish writing all these I will probably have used about 5 hours.

Further Reading

I realize this post doesn’t really give you much info on actually writing a list post, but there’s tons of information in 31DBBB to help you actually write your own post. There are also two free resources offered by ProBlogger: 10 Steps to the Perfect List Post and 301 List Posts Submitted by ProBlogger Readers.

Oh and today’s tag is #31DbbbDay2 if you want to search for others who’ve done a more thorough job than me at explainging this step. I don’t blame you if you do!

Photo credit to NixonMcInnes

The first roadblock

As soon as I hit publish on my last post, I dove right into 31DBBB and started reading. When I saw that the first task was “develop an elevator pitch” I literally groaned out loud and almost quit on the spot (I told you I suck at setting goals and then following through on them!). I remember this task from reading the book last year. And I hate it.

I think my biggest problem with the concept of an elevator pitch is that it seems so limiting. I know this is ridiculous because limiting the scope of your project/business/blog is totally the right business decision, so I quit my whining and kept reading.

Coming around

As I read through the tips on where to use the elevator pitch, I all of a sudden realized that I already have pitches for almost all my sites! Pretty much any time I set up a new WordPress site I spend some time coming up with a perfect Tagline, and that tagline is exactly like an elevator pitch. D’oh!

So I went and retrieved each site’s tagline to see what I had to start with:

WordPress Hound: “Sniffing out the best themes, plugins, and customizations for your WordPress site”

Chiagu: “Knitting patterns for your favorite hand-dyed yarns from Chiagu.com! Your knitting pattern resource.”

A Chef’s Daughter: “Cooking blog from Ivete, a chef’s daughter” (this one really sucks!)

Inside the Alley: “discover what it’s like to work at a NYC startup before you even apply”

Hey, most of those aren’t half bad! Maybe this task won’t be so hard after all.

Turning a Tagline into an Elevator Pitch

Each of the above taglines has good and bad things, but they’re all generally a bit too short to be real “elevator pitches” according to this assignment. And I’m sure I can improve on them as “short pitches” too, so I got to work.

WordPress Hound

Because this is a brand-new site and I had just finished coming up with the tagline, this is a unique situation. The blog doesn’t have much content yet (there are like 5 posts so far!) and while I know that I’m targeting the casual WordPress audience (as opposed to developers), the niche that this site will fill in the WP blogging world isn’t quite decided yet. Here’s where my resistance to limiting in an elevator pitch comes in!

What I had to start with was my tagline, which I quite like:

“Sniffing out the best themes, plugins, and customizations for your WordPress site”

I think this tagline is pretty perfect if I do say so myself, and can serve as my “short pitch” without any changes. But I have room to add to it in the “longer pitch,” and what’s missing is a clear description of who “your” is. I already know that my site targets everyday WordPress users, but how should I address them in my elevator pitch?

I took a cue from the example in the book:

“Home Ec 101 is a site dedicated to teaching a broad range of life skills to adults in a conversational and entertaining manner.”

And came up with:

“WordPress Hound sniffs out the best themes, plugins, and customizations for your WordPress site. We take the time to research and test so you don’t have to.”

I’m pretty happy with it and have added it to the (extremely bare-bones) About page on the site. I was about to get distracted into finishing that page but forced myself back to the task at hand, a pitch for the next property:

Chiagu

The tagline started out as:

“Knitting patterns for your favorite hand-dyed yarns from Chiagu.com! Your knitting pattern resource.”

I think the first sentence is good and the second one dumb and redundant. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I initially wrote that!

Chiagu has actually changed a bit in the last year and I’ve been focusing on selling kits as well as patterns, so I want to add that to the pitch somehow. My key competency is in designing knitting patterns that use hand-painted yarns well, which is something that not all designers can do, so having that prominent in the statement is definitely important.

After trying a few variations I settled on:

“Chiagu.com brings you knitting patterns designed for your favorite hand-dyed yarns. Show off the gorgeous colors of Koigu, Madelinetosh, and Noro with my patterns and kits.”

I also adjusted the tagline to be:

“Knitting patterns designed for your favorite hand-dyed yarns”

Much better!

A Chef’s Daughter

This one needed the most work, which makes sense because I wrote it in 2008 before I really knew anything, and haven’t changed it since! In 2012 I want to revive this blog so figuring out what the blog is really about is particularly important for this property.

The tagline I started with, which is pretty much useless, was:

“Cooking blog from Ivete, a chef’s daughter”

As I thought about what the blog was really about, I settled on some key points:

1. My dad taught me a lot about what to do in the kitchen
2. But my cooking is more “modern” than his in many ways
3. Some of my most popular posts reference how we ate growing up
4. The top posts are reviews of products

With this in mind, I know that I need to shift the blog focus from “what I cooked today” to “why I cooked this today” — and add a bunch more personalization in the form of stories and reviews.

The tagline I ended up with is:

“Combining my chef dad’s lessons with fresh, seasonal ingredients in a tiny NYC kitchen”

And the full elevator pitch is:

“My cooking blog is full of recipes and reviews that combine my chef dad’s lessons with fresh, seasonal ingredients. In my tiny NYC kitchen, every tool and gadget counts, and flavor is king above everything else.”

I think I’m getting better at this as I go down the list! May have to back up and review the first two . . . but before that, I have one more:

Inside the Alley

I already love the tagline I’d come up with, and the concept of this site is already tight and clear, so this one was probably the easiest:

“discover what it’s like to work at a NYC startup before you even apply”

I actually think that tagline in itself is enough to qualify as an elevator pitch, but I made a longer version of it anyway:

“Inside the Alley helps you discover what it’s like to work at a NYC startup before you even apply. On our site you’ll find honest reviews from current and past employees of NYC startups.”

Done! This one was definitely the easiest and fastest to write!

Step 1 Summary

From start to finish, today’s exercise took about four hours (although I was also knitting, trading, and eating during parts of this work!). I think I got some great work out of today and it’s made me feel very energized about the 31DBBB project!

Further Reading

If this post has made you want to work on elevator pitches for your own site, you might want to check out ProBloggers post that includes over a thousand blog elevator pitches.

And if you want to read about other’s journey through this book, day 1′s tag is #31DbbbDay1. Google or Twitter search that and you’ll find many posts like mine, detailing the process of coming up with an elevator pitch for your blog.

Now that I’m freelancing full time (need a WordPress expert for a project? Contact me!), I’ve set myself the goal of working through the 31DBBB book from start to finish. But to kick it up a notch, I’m working through it for four digital properties at the same time.

Want to watch my progress? Subscribe to the RSS feed for each site, and feel free to yell at me in the comments if you see me slacking off!

The sites are:

1. My knitting patterns business, Chiagu.com
2. My cooking blog, A Chef’s Daughter
3. My brand-new (less than a week old!) WordPress blog, WordPress Hound
4. My site about working at a NYC startup, Inside The Alley

And some exercises I might even do on a few of my other properties, too . . .

I’ll be documenting my progress on this blog. My plan is not only to tell you what I’m working on, but to also show you any tangible results I’m able to track from the work I’m doing.

I’m confident that if I work through this book that all my properties will increase in value, traffic, and revenue. But I don’t have a great track record of setting goals for myself and then working through them to completion. So can I do this? Only time will tell!

If you haven’t subscribed to the RSS feed here yet, you maybe want to do that now. At the very least you’ll learn with me while I work through 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB from now on). At best, you’ll be able to laugh at me when I fail miserably . . .

For Flavie Bagnol‘s site, the client, Flavie, wanted to convey a playful, feminine vibe without veering into the girly or cheesy. She showed me images of 50′s pinup girls and asked me to take colors from a specific image she loved, and I went from there.

The main design elements on this project were the colors and fonts. In the end I created a simple “about me” type website for her that conveys all the information in one single page. When she’s ready to add more sections to the site, it will be super-easy since it’s built on WordPress (of course!). For now, the single-page site works perfectly for her purpose, which is to have an online presence to make it easy for people to find and contact her.

I again used the Thesis theme for this project and am very proud of the way it came out! This is one of my favorite projects for sure.

Assuming you are using Feedburner, here’s how easy it is to pull a list of your recent posts onto another site (for example, at the bottom of your Shopify shopping cart).

1. Go to the Publicize section of your Feedburner account:

Scroll down to the “Boost Your Cross-Promotional Potential” section and click on “BuzzBoost”:

Choose the options you’d like from the settings menu and click Save.

This will bring up the BuzzBoost code you’ll be installing on the other site:

Then just copy the code from the top section and dump it wherever you want to show the posts as previewed in the bottom section.

Pretty cool huh?

My client, growthmountain.com, wanted to change their homepage from the default look that came with their theme. Instead of having blog posts in the main content area, they wanted to have that whole section of the landing page be populated with WordPress widgets that they were already using in their sidebar.

This kind of request is pretty common because it enables an end-user to customize the look of their site without doing any coding. Most WP users know and understand the widgets section intuitively (because it’s so well-designed!) so being able to use it to populate the homepage is a no-brainer.

To make this work, I created a new template in their theme that kept the slider, then instead of loading the blog posts into the main content area, I called the widget function. I created a new widget area specifically for the homepage, so that the end-user can make the content of the sidebar widgets different from the landing page widgets if they want to.

My work changed the landing page from this:

To this:

Now the client and list and reorder products on his landing page with just a click-and-drag interface. Pretty cool!