Archives

It looks like I update sometimes
2012 (17)
February - 2
January - 15
2011 (48)
December - 26
November - 22

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Hurray for things!

blog

code

fun

music

New URL

       

February 12, 2012 posted to code & tagged: import

New URL for my portfolio and personal blog! The blog code and posts took 5 minutes to import over from the old URL and get up and running over here. There are a few changes that need to be made but everything is smooth sailing I think.

One Month of Rokked

       

January 31, 2012 posted to code

So here I am, one month into this project and I have some numbers and some hindsight into what I'm doing. Let's just get to the jump... Read More

Further site improvements

       

January 28, 2012 posted to code

One of the things that being a UX Designer demands is that you have to be willing to admit when you're wrong. You have to be willing to completely drop your ego, realize when you've made a mistake and then willfully fix that mistake even if it goes against what you actually believe to be true. For instance, my ideal website is clean, uncluttered and elegant. The more I develop Rokked and the more I test Rokked, the more I realized traffic (at least my traffic in the early stages of this website) does not respond to clean and uncluttered. Traffic needs to be hit with a lot of content in order for it to be interested in clicking to more pages.


Reading through the analytics, I can only make guesses as to how to optimize the site in a way that will yield results and my intuition and gut tell me to keep things neat and clean but the numbers are telling me to push the content and make things more 'in yo face' so that's what I've been doing.



I do prefer the more 'in your face' solution are as clean and elegant as possible but I realize as a UX Designer that I can't let my emotion take the driver's seat and I have to let the numbers do the talking. Logic should always prevail against feelings when it comes to improving site performance.

Just launched a new site

       

January 24, 2012 posted to code

I still need to add content to it but I just now got http://www.verticalcomix.com/ up and running. It's another comic website. Looks exactly like Troll Dad because it is exactly like Troll Dad. Hopefully it'll perform the same as well. After my interview today I'll head home and dump a shit ton of content into it and see what happens.

a few big changes

       

January 21, 2012 posted to code

I've been working on some more engagement changes on the website. From my last post to now I haven't really pushed much traffic and have also not really retained many users. It's to be expected, it's a new website and I haven't really hit stride with the content yet. Why would anyone visit this webpage? That's what I need to keep asking myself. That's what I need to figure out. It also depressed me a little bit thinking and knowing that no one wants to visit this site yet because it offers nothing. I'm hoping perhaps I can improve as a writer and maybe start to develop my own style of delivering list style content. Maybe I'll learn how to infograph or something.

I'm liking where the CMS is headed at the present. I have more ideas for features, but they require more content, more user interaction... so which comes first? The feature rich website or the users to utilize those features.

immediate need

       

January 11, 2012 posted to code

There are 2 - 3 tasks I need to complete on this site. 1) I need to start DB storing my social networking scores. I need to store whenever a person stumbles/tweets/likes etc. [doing this will lead to trending features] 2) I need to figure out a better design and presentation for these icons, the current implementation looks awful. 3) I'm forgetting number 3 but it may involves tracking pageviews better.

How to Improve Usability

       

January 11, 2012 posted to code & tagged: theory, seo, traffic

So the code is running and it's doing ok. I'm also getting traffic. It's a light amount of traffic, mostly users stopping in, looking and closing the browser window. To expect anything less would be naive and show a gross display of inexperience. I have owned and maintained websites that have gotten a moderate amount of traffic for bursts at a time and ultimately it means little to nothing.

Traffic is meaningful but it is only part of the equation. Read More