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Line25 just passed its sixth month of operation, and has seen awesome growth since the first post in March 09. I’d like to put out a big thanks to all subscribers and readers, as you’re the ones who have helped the site grow so quickly in such a short period of time! Let’s take a look behind the scenes at some stats and figures, which will hopefully provide handy hints or tips to anyone growing their own design blog.

line25

A little history

As many of you know, Line25 is my second design blog. I originally set out developing Blog.SpoonGraphics in April 2007, which has grown to an amazing level. Between late 2008 and early 2009 I planned on increasing my blogging activities to include more postings and a further look into the world of web design. I was in two minds whether to simply post more stuff on Blog.SpoonGraphics, or set up a second website. With Blog.SpoonGraphics gaining quite a reputation for Illustrator tutorials, I decided that setting up a blog specifically for web design was the way forward.

After a couple of months of designing, brainstorming and building, Line25 was ready for launch. It went live on March 9th 2009 as has since amassed 58 blog posts through a mix of weekly articles, tutorials and sites of the week roundups.

Growth stats

Analytics stats

Traffic stats have been slowly rising since launch, with a couple of peaks from popular posts. The highest peak of traffic between March and August was 11,906 visitors following the 10 HTML Tag Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit article. Lately the figure is averaging around 3400 per day.

RSS Subscribers

The growth in RSS subscribers has been the greatest achievement in my eyes, quickly rocketing to 12,667! No doubt the already established audience from Blog.SpoonGraphics has helped out here.

Twitter Followers

Line25 has had its own Twitter profile from the start, where web design links and resources are posted on a semi-daily basis. These links obviously come in handy with the Line25 profile gaining a following of 3644. The Twitter profile has also been a handy place to pump new articles when they go live each week.

Most popular articles

Every now and again an article hits the spotlight and brings in an influx of visitors. The general trend is that after each peak the level of average daily visitors then increases due to the increased exposure. The most popular articles on Line25 are:

Main traffic sources

The main sources of referring traffic are:

  1. Direct Traffic
  2. Google
  3. StumbleUpon
  4. Twitter
  5. Blog.SpoonGraphics

Line25 has also developed a good level of search optimisation thanks to Wordpress and a cocktail of plugins such as the All in One SEO pack and Google XML Sitemap. The highest referring keywords are:

  1. Line25
  2. jQuery Lightbox
  3. Web Design Blog
  4. CSS Menu
  5. jQuery Plugins

My tips for launching a new blog

After learning various tips and gaining the experience from developing Blog.SpoonGraphics I had a good idea of how to go about launching Line25. Plus, the already established audience will have no doubt have helped in developing a core subscriber base. I have also tried out some new techniques. Here’s my top five tips for launching your own site:

Schedule a bunch of posts beforehand

It’s no good using all your energy building the site, then not having any content. Remember to schedule a collection of quality topics to launch the site with.

Launch with a bang!

During the very first week of Line25 it gathered plenty of traffic from the Line25 Launch Party, where a range of companies kindly offered prizes that were given away on the site. The contest cunningly asked readers to enter by posting out a tweet, or writing a post about Line25 on their site. The result was an amazing level of exposure which no doubt put the site in front of the right audience.

One high quality post is better than 3 average topics

I’ve always stuck to my one-post-per-week schedule with both my blogs, with each week’s topic being either an extensive roundup or a tutorial. Always try to create a post that covers everything the reader is likely to want to know. Additional filler posts such as weekly favourites or sites of the week are pretty easy to put together, and can help give exposure to other blog and website owners.

Stick a few social media buttons at the end of your posts

When I browse other blogs, I’ll always click all the voting buttons at the end of the article if it was a good read, but if there isn’t any, oftentimes the post might go without any votes other than the built in StumbleUpon button in my browser. Traffic is the life source of any website, so make sure you make it easy for readers to promote your content.

Optimise your website for search traffic

Search engines can provide consistent traffic once a site has become established. Setting up your Wordpress permalinks and using plugins such the All in One SEO pack can seriously transform your blog into a spider magnet.

Thankyou!

Finally, a huge thankyou to everyone who has stopped by and subscribed, and of course the advertisers who help keep the site active. Be sure to call back soon, hopefully some of the future posts will come in handy!

What?! You’re not subscribed? Head on over to the RSS feed to get your fix, oh, and don’t forget to follow @line25blog on Twitter ;-)

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[info - syndicated] line25_feed

Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs. In this week’s collection, we have designs from CoTweet, Odosketch, Paul Barlow, Camp Creative and Giant Creative.

CoTweet

CoTweet

The CoTweet website features typical clean and crisp web app style graphics, making a great looking interface with a mix of whites and pale blues.

Odosketch

Odosketch

The Odosketch site goes all hand-drawn with a mix of sketched elements and pastel colours.

Paul Barlow

Paul Barlow

Paul Barlow uses a clean and spacious layout, with injections of vibrant pink.

Camp Creative

Camp Creative

Camp Creative use a vibrant header design alongside plenty of detailed elements on the page.

Giant Creative

Giant Creative

The Giant Creative website features a sliding single page, designed with large typography and distinct colour coordination.

Similar Posts

[info - syndicated] line25_feed

Danny Outlaw is a fulltime freelancer, and the guy behind the popular Outlaw Design Blog. Danny is well known in the community and shares his experiences of freelancing from abroad, managing clients and outsourcing work in video and blog posts. I caught up with Danny to ask a few questions of my own…

Danny Outlaw

Hi Danny, thanks for taking the time be participate on Line25, let’s start with an introduction. What is your background and what do you do?

I pretty much specialize in Wordpress and BuddyPress. I do mostly design and project management stuff, as I am lucky enough to have two awesome developers who I work with on a regular basis. I of course do loads of other stuff in the design community like videos, podcasts, and blogging.

As for background, I have been into design and the business of design since I was a small child. It was only a few years ago that I really started to do freelance work full time. I had always made an income doing design work, but it was always on the side, as I was learning.

Before I started doing design full time I raced sled dogs in Alaska during the winter and was/is a whitewater raft guide during the summers.

Outlaw Design Blog

You’re probably most known through your website, Outlaw Design Blog. How did the decision to set up this site come about?

Outlaw Design Blog started as a simple blog to my first design company that was hosted under the name Outlaw Design. I really just started it for fun and to promote my business. For whatever reason, it picked up popularity fast. It was also on what I call the end of the first wave of design blogs. I attribute some of its success to that. I didnt start as early as Smashing Magazine, but I got started well before a lot of the design blogs that are out there these days.

The Outlaw Design Blog is constantly pumping out great content, how do you and fellow authors find your post ideas?

I have no idea. Sometimes I can come up with a ton of ideas all at once. Other days I struggle to even come up with one. I keep an eye out for ideas everywhere. Obviously I get some ideas from the online community, but I also get ideas for non design related magazine, my personal experiences, or on topics that I have questions about.

T-Shirt Mogul

I’ve noticed you’ve appeared on a bunch of high profile blogs through guest writing, how much of a role does blogging take in your average working day?

At this point it depends on what I am in the mood to do. Some weeks Im all about designing, while others Im all about writing. Should I choose to want to blog, I have a number of clients and big name blogs that I know I can count on to buy my work. If they dont need any work, I can always focus on outlaw design blog more.

Your videos share some great tips and advice, and they give a great insight to your personality, what benefits have you seen from communicating through this form of media?

I think its still to early to tell. I really started doing the videos because I thought they looked like fun. I was terribly camera shy and my first few videos are awful. But, I decided to record them and post them just to get over it and become more comfortable in front of the camera. Now, not only do I do videos but I host a podcast on Outlaw and for the TUTS+ Network.

If nothing else, I think it helps put a face to the Danny Outlaw name and helps me stand out a little more in the industry.

Wordpress Designers

It seems you’ve done plenty of collaboration with fellow designers and developers on various projects such as Wordpress-Designers. Do you find a lot of satisfaction from working on these various outlets?

I love working with other talented designers and developers. I just find it so inspiring and fun to work with creative designers. I whole heartedly believe that working with a team, or at least one other person, can do wonders for a design business. But, I am also really in to the business side of design as the creative side. I like playing the role of creative director as much as I do designing. I recently started a project called T-Shirt Mogul that was a design collaboration with Andrew Lindstrom.

Do you have any plans for any new websites or blogs, or any exciting ideas you’re looking to put into practice in the near future?

Oh man….I ALWAYS have new ideas. I am an idea machine! The biggest problem is time and money. So if their are any investors reading this, call me! As far as exciting things that will be happening soon; I am rebranding Wordpress-Designers, which is really fun and exciting. I have always used that site as a back burner project, but plan on launching it into a network of sites such as BuddyPress-Designers, Drupal-Designers, etc.

On the Outlaw front, I am in the process of writing three months worth of webinars that I will hosting on Outlaw Design Blog. The webinars will cover mostly business related topics for creatives such as self branding, marketing, finding more clients, etc. The online community has shown a lot of interest in them, so it should be exciting. I will be hosting a free beta webinar soon, so subscribe to Outlaw Deisgn Blog to stay up to date on that.

Finally, please list out any social networks where users can find you and connect.

I dont do a lot of social networking sites. Aside from twitter that is, www.twitter.com/dannyoutlaw

Similar Posts

[info - syndicated] line25_feed

Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Imaginaria Creative, LemonStand, Legacy Locker, Kris Colvin and CK Editor.

Imaginaria Creative

Imaginaria Creative

The Imaginaria Creative website features a great muted colour scheme, as well as a nice selection of images and textures to make an interesting homepage design.

Lemon Stand

Lemon Stand

The Lemon Stand website uses a huge detailed shopping cart icon on the homepage, and provides plenty of well presented information.

Legacy Locker

Legacy Locker

The Legacy Locker site uses a fresh blue colour scheme mixed with crisp graphics to give a clean, modern design.

Kris Colvin

Kris Colvin

Kris Colvin uses a mix of awesome textures and illustrations on her website, giving a fantastic tactile feel to the theme.

CK Editor

CK Editor

The CK Editor website uses an extremely clean layout with touches of vibrant colour, although my favourite feature is the fantastic interactive slideshow.

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Weekly Update: 14 September 2009

Sep. 14th, 2009 11:49 pm
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise posting in [info - community] dw_news
It's now eight days until [info - personal] sarah and I are going on vacation, and 16 days until [info - staff] mark's last day at his dayjob (and thus, working fulltime for Dreamwidth). (And it's a toss-up as to whether [info - staff] mark or I is more excited about having him fulltime.)

That's not all we have to be excited about in this week's update, though. Come with me as we take a tour of this week's activity in Dreamwidthville.

Weekly Update, 14 September )

[Tablua Rasa] INDEXED (spot color)

Sep. 14th, 2009 10:59 pm
[stock] cropped woman with kitestring on her wrist and a plane in the sky behind her
[info - personal] binary posting in [info - community] dreamwidthlayouts


>> image preview
>> live preview

This is my first layout, so I know the CSS is probably still a bit of a mess, and I may have missed some things. Please give me feedback if something is messed up. ♥


Also I do plan on making some additional color schemes once the basics have been ironed out.

( CSS & Instructions )

Please credit [info - community] janecraft if you like the layout.
zvi: Black woman w/ glasses, bunny slippers, TV
[info - personal] zvi posting in [info - community] dw_styles

The purpose of this guide is to help you change the colors on a style using only the wizard; then save the color settings in a way (as a theme layer) that allows you to re-use them; and, last but not least, share your color settings for other people to use. Remember, if your theme is accepted as an official theme, you get two months of paid time.

You do not have to know any HTML, CSS, S2, or programming to use this method. The most advanced technical skill involved is cut and paste.

NB: This procedure will not work with Zesty. Zesty has to be rewritten to be a real official style.

On to the guide! )
Cat under a blanket. Text: "Cats are just little people with Fur and Fangs"
[info - personal] afuna posting in [info - community] dw_styles
[info - staff] mark did a code push today! Which means there's lots of exciting news for this entry.

...not all of which is good


First of all, oops. If you're a user of a Transmogrified-based theme, you may have noticed some elements in your journal are missing some background colors. This was a side effect of some cleanup we did, where we moved some colors around. This wasn't supposed to break anything, but it did. I'm sorry about that -- hold on another half a day or so; we have a fix coming up.

ETA: Fixed now.

But most of it is!


New styles


The Select Journal Style page is very different from how it looked two weeks ago. The past two code pushes have given us a ton of color themes to play with, and now we have five new layouts.


More about the layouts, featured themes, categorizing by base layout, changes to text properties )

ETA: Added link to the quick and dirty guide creating a color theme above (and here)

Code pushed.

Sep. 12th, 2009 11:11 pm
Photo of Mark's face, taken in warm lighting.
[info - staff] mark posting in [info - community] dw_maintenance
Code pushed. Let me know of anything weird or broken, and we'll get it fixed up as soon as possible.

Edit: We know of one issue with some people's home pages that causes them to not load. We're working on it. Fixed!

Edit: We are aware of some issues with Transmogrified and Negatives colors. We did some work to move colors around to make things easier in the future to develop more themes, this apparently caused some bugs with existing themes. [info - personal] afuna is aware and is on it.

code push in 90 minutes

Sep. 12th, 2009 09:25 pm
Photo of Mark's face, taken in warm lighting.
[info - staff] mark posting in [info - community] dw_maintenance
Short notice -- but we would like to do a code push in ~90 minutes. That puts it at 11PM PDT (0600 UTC). Please make sure you're out of harm's way, and we'll update our @dreamwidth Twitter account as per usual.

Thanks!

(no subject)

Sep. 12th, 2009 07:53 pm
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise
Who's got stuff for the Monday update?

(I've totally been floundering for the past few weeks, so pleeeeeease give me stuff!)

Weekly Update: 8 Sept 2009

Sep. 8th, 2009 01:20 pm
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise posting in [info - community] dw_news
We hope that all of our US dwenizens had a good Labor Day weekend! I did, although I'm more looking forward to the vacation that [info - personal] sarah and I are taking at the end of September. (All cliché aside, we're going to Disney World.) [info - staff] mark, meanwhile, is anxiously watching the calendar until the beginning of October, when he'll be working for DW fulltime.

September may be full of us both counting down the days, but we've still got some good stuff in this week's update. Let's go to the videotape.

Weekly update, 8 Sept )

Tropo Red & profile page tweaks

Sep. 5th, 2009 08:58 pm
Gerard Way, Warped tour 2005
[info - personal] turlough posting in [info - community] dw_nifty
I've made a userstyle that tweaks the Tropo Red site scheme a bit and makes the profile page look more like LJ's did before they changed it.

All site scheme pages have a slightly larger font size and the visited links are in a different colour - the same as the hover colour for the page and a light grey for the drop-down menus.

On the profile page I've got rid of the grey bar under the username and the dotted lines below the section headers. I've moved the default usericon to the right (where it belongs, dammit!) and removed the unnecessary toolbar/actionbar text. I made the title and subtitle larger, made the stats slightly larger and in black, and made the font size of any adult warning match the rest of the stats and also removed the bolding of this line.

This is how my profile looks with the script installed.

You can install the script here on Userstyles.org.

update!

Sep. 5th, 2009 02:53 am
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise
Who's got stuff for the Monday update?

they say she talks a lot.

Sep. 3rd, 2009 11:28 pm
still from The World Unseen
[info - personal] aqrima posting in [info - community] dreamchasers
Hello! My name is Shana. I've posted here before, but it was a fair while back (3 months), and my journal underwent some changes in that time period. But now I've migrated to dreamwidth for good (from lj, yeah), and it's back in full force. So. I'd like to get to know some more people around here. Preferably people who actually keep journals, not just to-do lists or mundane & casual details "journals," or impersonal blogs. Because, although I engage in the mundane and casual too, as well as more "bloggish" entries and posting of writing... mostly my journal is intense, fiery and rampant with emotion. And very personal. It's also a kind of autobiography project, continually updated with stuff from the past, fictional writing and poetry, emails/letters, etc. And I'd really like to get to know people who are interested in that kind of groundbreaking personal soulsearching and intensity. It helps to build trust too, for that matter!

I'm nineteen in a week, and I am (about to be) a sophomore at a women's college in New England (US). Classes start on my birthday, heh. I can't wait to get back. I identify as a cisgendered girl/woman, queer/pansexual (sometimes more lesbian), pro-sex, pro-choice, a PoC (person of color), multiracial/mixed-ethnicity, (South Asian) Indian, American, multicultural, international but US citizen, rather rootless, atheist and unspiritual, varying degrees of middle-class (somewhat upper in India, lower in US?), a feminist and womanist, mentally "problematic" according to the psych conformists, a suicide survivor, very anxious, anti-capitalism, anti-determinism, NOT liberal democrat republican or any western major political party affiliated, quite extroverted, a rambler, stubborn, somewhat social though not good in groups, somewhat dis/abled (hearing impaired/hearing-aid-wearing, and my left hand is deformed), straight-edge, not vegan or vegetarian, a "standard" range weighted person, anti-"thinspiration" and other proanorexia type shit, pro-health at every size, anti-military, anti-weapon proliferation, anti-hunting (especially for "sport"), a cyber/netizen ... I'm running out of terms here. Also I think I went from identification to declaring my opinions thus far. Oh well. I'm not really always decided, but I do know how to take a stand. I'm not the best at arguments and discussions, but I keep trying. I hope I'm getting better. I definitely think it's important to have .. conversations.. about difference, to spread awareness, to acknowledge inequalities, etc.

I write a lot, usually more in my journal, though I spout out poems and bits of stories once in a while too. I used to be more creative earlier; I find it a lot harder now. I procrastinate a lot too, so.. I don't read as much as I should, and I often skip/skim a lot, a terrible habit I've had since forever and haven't been able to shake off. I'm not into fandom (whether it's anime/manga or tv show/movie/book related), but I admit to reading smut once in a while. Sometimes! Terrible, considering my issues regarding pornography. Well, I don't know. And sometimes other fanfiction, but hardly ever. I'm also not into gaming. I often get irritated with fandom and gaming, but I try to be fairly considerate. I think. A lot of my online friends are really into that sort of thing, and it's okay. But it's true; I do long to find more people who aren't into it so much, often/sometimes.

I'm an artist, but I do art sporadically, even more sporadically than I write, and I haven't done much in over a year. I have done quite a lot of intense artwork in the past, though, I hope to do more in the future. I'm not musical -- I like listening to music a lot, but the only musical experience I've really had was taking three years of singing lessons with playing on the harmonium when I was ten to thirteen. And I didn't practice enough. I tend to be rather tuneless, or in any case very bad at catching tunes. I think this probably has something to do with my hearing loss. Too. I'm also terrible that way when it comes to dancing, though. Terrible, worst, often, at getting in sync with others. I want to dance more on my own, though, at least, but I'm lazy (never get enough exercise) and I never get around to it. That's another thing. I've always sucked at sports, and I loathe them. If I have to choose, I'll do with something more individual, like jogging/running/fast walking or biking or swimming. I tried ice skating once; it might be good to try it again. But I'm really not athletic, bodily flexible or sporty. At all. I'm also really not into spiritual/meditation-like sports, like yoga. Tried it a few times, was forced to, rather, and I just don't get it. My counsellor at school doesn't either; really quite a miracle, seems like those psych people usually love the stuff...

I don't believe in providing lists of favorites in these sort of add-me-please! entries, and when I'm reading I skim over those (and often don't care for the people who only provide such things..), but I do make lists a lot, and in the past I used to do the whole lists of favorites thing in every introduction entry, so here it is. For reference! I update it once in a while. hah, I know I'm such a hypocrite. Will you forgive me?
You can also check out my profile for more links and info on interests and such.

Oh, as for the whole multiracial/multicultural thing: I grew up mostly in India, but I've moved back and forth between the US and India a fair amount, especially in the past four or five years. My mother is white/Caucasian and American, though she's lived and worked almost exclusively in India for the past 25 odd years, and continues to do so. Her family's scattered about the US, though, and we've visited. My father is Indian (half Bengali and half Punjabi), and his immediate family lives in Kolkata (earlier known as Calcutta), where he grew up. I was born in India, and I've grown up speaking English as my first language. I moved back and forth a lot between the US and India in the first four years of my life, too. I am not fluent in any Indian languages, though I studied Hindi for nine years in school. I can read and write and understand a fair amount of it, but it's faded and keeps fading a lot. I've been living in the US more permanently since I started college last year.

This is getting long, but I'll warn you: my entries are very often much, much longer! So if you can't put up with this, you probably won't like subscribing to my journal. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you could tell me how old you are and what your sex and gender are (cis, trans, male, female, genderqueer, intersex..), should you wish to friend me.

I'd very much love to know you.

Organizing layouts

Sep. 4th, 2009 02:35 am
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise posting in [info - community] dw_styles
We've been talking a bit about how the Select Style page should be categorized and laid out as we get more and more styles added (and OMG, I am loving the styles that we've been adding!), so it is time to discuss how we should categorize things.

[info - personal] afuna and I have already been talking about a few options, but I wanted to throw it out to the community at large to see what you guys think first, before we talk about what we've been thinking, to see if anyone has any great ideas that we would have missed!

To that end, a poll:

Poll #1158 Layout choice
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
[ Display Results ]

When looking for a design for your journal, how do you expect to be able to browse/select one?









Discussions, ideas, pros-and-cons, and other thoughts go in the comments. :)
A series of interconnected dots in the shape of an M.
[info - personal] foxfirefey posting in [info - community] dw_nifty
I come bearing gifts for your kind alpha testing, [info - community] dw_nifty! This Greasemonkey script was made at [info - personal] niqaeli's request. It's for dynamically collapsing and expanding entries on your reading and network pages (and other journals, too). What's more, the script will remember your options between page loads.

You can install the script here: DW Post Expand/Collapse/Hide. Please test it for me!

Further instructions )

Micro code push

Sep. 2nd, 2009 11:15 pm
Photo of Mark's face, taken in warm lighting.
[info - staff] mark posting in [info - community] dw_maintenance
We just did a mini code push with ~10 patches. Mostly fixes from things that were broken from the last code push (logged out reading page, some styles fixes). But this also includes a few new styles that slipped in. You might see them kicking about in the styles selector.

As always, let me know if you see anything awry!

TEST TEST

Sep. 2nd, 2009 05:41 pm
Photo of Mark's face, taken in warm lighting.
[info - staff] mark
Another testing post, please ignore. Still to be ignoring!

Reading page errors

Sep. 2nd, 2009 08:44 am
Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome
[info - staff] denise posting in [info - community] dw_maintenance
If you get a "Oops, Dreamwidth is broken" error when viewing your reading page while logged out, do not panic! This is because of a bug we uncovered during some of our code cleanup work. We have it patched in testing, but the fix hasn't been pushed live yet.

You don't need to email us about it (even though the message says you should) -- we'll have the fix live as soon as possible. You can work around it by logging in to view your reading page: the error only manifests when you're logged out, and even then, only when one of the entries on your reading page has a screened or frozen comment on it.

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