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We had the opportunity to sit down with some very smart bloggers and get their tips for simple, effective things that can be done to improve the look and functionality of your blog. During our chat, we discussed design and coding tips, SEO tips, and some general blogging “best practices”. You can watch the chat below and I’ve also highlighted some of the key tips that came out of our discussion.
Do you know what I did this past weekend that was educational, fun, and a powerful community builder for blogging in western Canada? I went to the BlogWest 2013 conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
There were only about forty of us in attendance, but this conference was so full of good people and connections that it was one of the best conferences I've been to. The breadth of knowledge in the room was astounding, which says something coming from me, because I am heading into my tenth year of blogging and have been attending multiple conferences about it since 2008.
Here's a big, bad list of all the things BlogWest sessions covered:
Jennifer Reynolds' opening keynote, which I missed due to a later flight.
BlogWest ran the gamut from accounting to inspiration and back again, and I'm already looking forward to 2014.
I wouldn't be me if I didn't spend half the weekend worrying over my keynote, forgetting and finding my way back to my purpose, and changing outfits three times until I realized I'd just brought the wrong underwear, but even my nerves couldn't make me miss the real heart of the conference. It was intimate and warm, filled with people who were both learned and generous. I'll be back.
Thanks goes out to Felicia Dewar, the force behind BlogWest. She dreamt big, took huge leaps of faith two years running, and pulled together an incredible conference against all odds. Here's to 2014! Right, Felicia? Right?
When I started blogging in 2003, the tempates that were available for blogs on platforms like Diaryland and Blogger had very little personality let alone style, so I took it upon myself to start learning some rudimentary HTML.
The first bit of code I learned, though, was actually BASIC way back in 1984. I learned how to create a blue square and a red circle with goto and if-then statements. It was magical, and even though it had been 19 years since I had coded anything, I think it was that early experience that made me think I could change my online environment in 2003.
I started teaching myself CSS and HTML so I could create blog templates for myself that would better deliver my individual personality and message, and that control did incredible things for my creativity and ability to grow my talents. I began to really own my space online in a way I had not before, and I discovered a love for blog design that would eventually launch me into a whole new line of work.
The CSS and HTML that I do now is small potatoes compared to what the people in the video below do who build whole systems, but I know enough to have discovered the powerful levels of human expression and creativity that can be born out of a few lines of code.
This whole preamble, though, is just me getting you to watch "What Most Schools Don't Teach", because it's great code inspiration:
I first ran across this video at Karen Walrond's Chookooloonks.
If you've ever wanted to know how to code, please start, and make sure this kind of knowledge is handed down to your kids. Code really is the new literacy, and it opens both personal and professional doors like none other in history.
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Check out Code.org. I've just signed up with their Codecademy, and it looks like a good place to start learning code from the bottom up. Also, WCSchools has a wealth of free tutorials.
UPDATE: I've just been told about Treehouse, which offers paid but more in depth, project-oriented tutorials to teach you how "...to build websites, create iPhone and Android apps, code with Ruby on Rails and PHP, or start a business."
Wednesday, March 13, 2013 We had the opportunity to sit down with some very smart bloggers and get their tips for simple, effective things that can be done to improve the look and functionality of your blog. During our chat, we discussed design and coding tips, SEO tips, and some general blogging “best practices”. You can watch the chat below and I’ve also highlighted some of the key tips that came out of our discussion.
