Sitepoint have released yet another fantastic free ebook. Last time they released The Photoshop Anthology, this time around they have released The Art & Science of CSS, over 200 pages of great reading on Cascading Style Sheets, crucial for any budding web designer or developer.
You can download the book by going here and submitting your email address for the download instructions, or by following @sitepointdotcom on Twitter.
Just Tweet It is “THE directory for Twitter users”, a place where you can submit your Twitter URL and a short bio in one or more of several categories and find new Twitter friends to connect with. Just Tweet It is the creation of Dani McDaniel and Adelle Charles and is built on WordPress. I spoke briefly with Dani to congratulate them on their creative use of WordPress and the success so far of Just Tweet It.
Q - What made you choose WordPress for the site?
A - I chose Wordpress because I LOVE IT! The dynamic ability of Wordpress allows it to easily be used for so many things; you just have to think outside of the typical “blog” box.
Q - Did you develop the theme yourself?
A - The theme is a custom design that I built using my anidandesign.com theme which is also an original theme.
Q - What was your goal in starting this site?
A - My experience was so positive once I began networking with people on Twitter I thought JTI would be a super easy way to find people on twitter with similar interests to help expand my Twitterverse.
Q - How did you promote the site when it was launched
A - Our promotion consisted of tweeting about it and submitting to the usual “promo” sites like digg, stumble upon, design float, delicious, etc. But really once we started telling our circle of twitter friends about JTI, it just sort of took off.
Just Tweet It makes clever use of some in-built features of WordPress along with a few well chosen plugins to add extra functionality. The main components of the front page are the directory itself, subscription options, latest blog posts, a “featured Tweeter”, and the newest directory submissions.
When it comes to attracting subscribers the most important thing a blog can have is great content, but no matter how great your content is if your visitors can’t work out how to subscribe then you will miss out. Shoemoney found this out a few months ago when he noticed his subscriber numbers had plateaued after he removed the clickable link to his RSS feed.
Recently I took part in a ProBlogger group writing project, and I noticed that even though it sent me a lot of new traffic I didn’t convert any of those into subscribers. One of the things I suspected as being a cause of this was the poor visibility of my subscription link.
So I decided to do something about it. I removed the subscription link from my WordPress theme and replaced it with a more visible link. I also included the option to subscribe via email, which is increasingly popular these days, and is a service that Feedburner provides. Now my subscriptions area looks like this:
I’ve also signed up my own email address to receive the updates via email. I recommend you always subscribe to your own blogs via RSS and email so that you can make sure your posts are getting to your readers okay.
Lets see if my new subscriptions placement helps draw more subscribers.
For a limited time Sitepoint are giving away The Photoshop Anthology - 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks and Techniques as a free downloadable ebook. All you need to do is give them your email address.
If you’re into web design and want to get better at using Photoshop to create graphics for your websites then this ebook is for you, and at $0 you won’t get a better deal anywhere else!
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