Chris Brandrick

The guys over at WooThemes are bringing them thick and fast as yet another quality premium wordpress theme has been released. WooThemes club members must be pleased!

The new theme is called ‘Fresh Folio’ and is a mix between two older themes bringing together both a portfolio style theme and a blog theme. Together this new theme offers a nice balance for the professional wanting to show off their work yet still have a blog on the homepage. Check it out now!

Yesterday Google announced they will finally be entering the browser market, and I can only hope Internet Explorer and Firefox are ready.

The Google browser will be known as ‘Google Chrome’ and hopes to be a better browser that adapts more suitably to the web of today. A lot more detail on the browser can be seen in this comic (38 pages) that Google have released, it goes in to good detail as to what to expect and how the browser handles certain tasks, for example resource management, javascript, and security.

The browser promises stability, security and speed, and I have no doubt that the team at Google will deliver. The browser will apparantly be availble for beta sometime today, so keep an eye out on the official Google blog.

It may have taken longer than it should, but ChrisBrandrick.com is finally running on the stable release of Wordpress 2.5. I mentioned in a previous post that the latest version of the popular blogging platform was on the way, and now, as you may have read on other blogs, it finally has arrived.

After having the new version installed for over a day now, I have familiarised myself with the new layout and although it is a very different it has several neat new features which overall make the back end experience all the more a pleasure to use. If you haven’t upgraded, be sure to do so now.

Recently I have been working on a redesign for my blog, mainly because I feel it’s about time I got a personalized look and a unique design to help strengthen my online identity and brand. I have made several designs and mocks in photoshop but haven’t really hit the nail on the head yet with the look I want to go for.

When the time is right I will no doubt show the mock designs, and of course the design I plan to go with here on the blog. In terms of colours I will be using blues, greys and blacks, and for branding I will continue to build upon using my personalized avatar, be it in advertising, emails and around the site. As for coding the design from a psd to a valid Wordpress theme I am still on the look out for somebody to complete this task, and despite me having a few people/companies in mind I am always open to suggestions, so either drop a comment below or contact me.

Getting a custom design for my blog was one of my goals for 2008, and now having made a start on visualizing how I want it to look, I am feeling very confident on reaching this goal.

Back in December I posted that in till the end of January I will be offering free blog reviews here at ChrisBrandrick.com, well that offer is almost up, so if you want your blog reviewed for free, be sure to check out my offer as it expires in only three days.

I have received over 50 requests for reviews so far, so keep them coming. I consider this free blogging offer to be a success, considering the amount of requests I received, these reviews provide not only content but possible backlinks and writing experience for me. Please remember that not all blogs will get reviewed, but over the next few months a majority of those 50 will be. 

Only a few days remain, so get your free review now.

This is the third post in my series of BlogReviews, if you are interested in receiving a free blog review, please click here to find out more information.

ReviewBunker is a relatively new blog which launched in November of last year. It has a simple yet ambitious goal to review ‘everything’. It would probably be more appropriate to say that ReviewBunker will review ‘anything’.

To those new to the site you are instantly greeted with a simple yet concise blurb of text as to what the blog is about, which contains links to other sections of the site, this is a great way of letting visitors know what your about, although a suggested addition to this front page presence would be to add a link to the ‘request review‘ page.

The content on ReviewBunker is random to say the least, and for those of you looking for a review blog which concentrates on a specific area then this blog is not for you. ReviewBunker covers a wide range of products, websites and services from things like Brownie Cake Mix, Office boxes, even movies and restaurants. Despite this random mix, the writing is very concise and informative as well as pleasantly informal. If you do happen to find a review that takes your interest then I recommend reading it, as without a doubt it will be helpful.

ReviewBunker also offers readers the opportunity to become a guest blogger and review anything for the blog, so if you are looking for an outlet to review something, or anything, then this may be worth checking out.

The site uses a free blog design, which is customized with an appropriate header image, the colour scheme is easy on the eyes and overall flows well, and boasts well integrated AdSense adverts. Oh, and it has the Entrecard widget, which is great.

My only concern for ReviewBunker is that its content area is to broad, and it may be wise to cut this down, visitors will never know what to expect. Maybe even just reviewing offline products exclusively, and not reviewing websites. Reduce confusion.

A well written blog, with potential to shine. Focus and concentrate your niche to a more specific area, and keep up the good work.

http://www.reviewbunker.com/

I recently outlined my plans to be making £100 ($200) per month from this blog by the end of 2008, and although this may not seem like much to some bigger bloggers, I think its a realistic goal that I have good chance of reaching.

In order to monetize my blog I decided to sign up for various review networks and try them out, and recently I got approved for Smorty. Smorty describes itself as a tool to connect various advertisers with bloggers like myself. Smorty works in a similar fashion to other advertising networks in that advertisers can pay bloggers to write opinions and thoughts in a post and link back to the advertisers site. With smorty you get paid to blog.

Upon signing up, my blog got approved rather quickly (impressive), and without little hesitation I logged into this blog for money service and was instantly greeted with four money making opportunities, some I will take others I may not, but either way you will see the results here at ChrisBrandrick.com. Whether the opportunities will continue to roll in is yet to be seen, but Smorty has a sleek interface which is easy to use, navigate, and offers you your current opportunities at a glance. Simple.

Once you have earned enough you can get paid via PayPal, and for those of you with multiple blogs Smorty supports you to.

Smorty - Get paid to blog. Check it out, what have you got to lose!

Whether you just comment on blogs or run one, you should know about gravatar’s.

Gravatars stands for globally recognised avatar, and as you may have guessed it acts as your avatar when commenting on a wordpress blog. Most wordpress themes include gravatar support as standard, although some blog owners do choose to replace the gravatar space with a MyBlogLog (or other similar service) avatar area. Either way, if you actively comment on blogs and want to attach a visual representation of yourself to these comments, gravatar is the way to go.

Getting yourself a gravatar is simple, its free and all you need is an email address, just head on over to the official website and follow the simple instructions. Once you have uploaded an image (80×80) which represents yourself online, you then simply attach the image to any email addresses you may use when leaving comments, once confirmed, your gravatar will appear on the comments section of any blog you have commented on with gravatar support. Simple!

If you want to add Gravatar support to your blog, or if you just want to learn more check out Wordpress’ documentation here. Why not make a gravatar now, and come back here to test it? Just leave a comment.

Did you like this blog post? If so subscribe to my RSS Feed to get updated when I post next! 

Since Wordpress 2.3 hit it introduced tagging into the back end system, allowing blog owners a simple way to associate quick terms of information to their posts and display a tag cloud on their blog. Now this all may well seem all well and good, but was the addition of any value? Personally I think adding a tagging system is a move forward, but it was handled in the wrong way. It’s far to basic and does not share your tagging data at all.

Tagging not only allows the visitor a quick and easy way to see what a blog blogs about most (via the tag cloud) it also acts as a simple search to a collection of content surrounding a certain keyword. But tagging, as far as I am concerned is much more than that. Tagging when put in a social environment helps paint a rich tapestry of what bloggers, and the web, is talking about.

At this point of course I am talking about blogging networking services like the popular Technorati. Not only can bloggers benefit from the traffic and various other benefits having a Technorati account can bring, but via linking up your blog and it’s tags to Technorati you will be contributing to a live view of what bloggers are talking about. For example, for the past few months a lot of bloggers have been discussing entrecard and its strengths and weaknesses, say you blogged about it, tagged it, and then gain visitors and potential subscribers via them finding your thoughts via Technorati. Your helping yourself out, and your helping create a more true image as to what folks are blogging about.

Of course for the introduction of tagging in to the back end to be truly perfect Wordpress and Technorati would have to come to some form of partnership, but they haven’t (yet) so it’s down to you to make that partnership yourself. If you don’t already have Technorati tagging set up I recommend you do. First up sort yourself out with a Technorati account, and then install this great plugin from David Gibbs over at Geeky Ramblings: WP Tags to Technorati, with everything installed and activated your tags should now appear below your post and on your Technorati page.

You are now adding to the greater view of the blogging world. Enjoy the benefits.

Before I begin, just a quick word, hoping you all had a good Christmas.

For the first in a series of blog reviews I will be taking a look at DailyNintendo.

DailyNintendo, as the name suggests, is a blog which concentrates on aiming to deliver daily news about the popular videogaming company Nintendo. The site appears to have started posting Nintendo news back in March of 2007 and since then has been reporting various informal tidbits of information at a healthy rate. Despite having a healthy flow of news, it is worth noting that this rate is far from the advertised ‘daily’ (more so every couple of days), maybe something for the site writers to work on in order to stay true their name.

In terms of design the blog has a simple layout which appears washed out and unfortunately somewhat bland. The world of Nintendo is bright, colourful and fun, maybe the blog should reflect this. The header image is a positive step in the right direction, offering the visitor various imagery from Nintendo history (just refresh or visit another page), something no doubt any Nintendo fan would appreciate; although it may worth stylizing the DailyNintendo logo to increase recognition of the sites name and on a whole the sites identity. A splash of colour and a tweak to the logo will go a very long way.

Upon opening the blog, my eyes were immediately drawn to the Google AdSense advertisements on the right hand side, now this may well be down to my personal familiarity in dealing with AdSense, but the placement of these ads are very apparent and will probably result in very little organic clicks. The AdSense spots underneath each individual news post are much more effective, and no doubt receives more clicks. Check your stats and if so maybe consider removing that unsightly ad spot on the right.

At the very footer of the page a blurb of text quotes ‘Podcast Powered by podPress (v8.5)’, DailyNintendo may well have a podcast, but I can’t see it, and this is a problem as podcasts are great ways to bring return visitors and a superb way to interact with your loyal site fans. If the site doesn’t have a podcast, then why is it there? Am I missing something?

DailyNintendo is connected. Each post offers the reader the opportunity to bookmark it and add it to a wide selection of social sites, such as social news sites like digg and del.icio.us, and even networking sites like Facebook. This is a great way to get the site exposure. As expected of any blog you can also subscribe via the RSS feed, this is offered to the user via a small graphic on the right sidebar, and should be exposed more (bigger more attractive RSS image perhaps?) to increase readership; maybe even run a contest to get people to subscribe.

This blog delivers content at a healthy rate, but could be improved, as lets not forget, content is king. Spruce up the colours (Maybe a classic Nintendo red, or the Wii’s subtle blues?) and pay some attention to the logo. With these changes implemented no doubt your visitors will appreciate them, and no doubt you will too. Keep at it.

www.dailynintendo.com