You may have been popping in here this week and thinking, “why isn’t he blogging every day, after he said he’d aim to do a post a day for the whole year?”. I’ll explain why I’ve been quiet on here for the past few days.

Over the past few weeks, i’ve been working with Michael Krapf and Mark Forrester over at WooThemes on our new theme (released today), “Unsigned“. This theme, geared primarily at bands and solo musicians, is a theme that’s near and dear to me, as music is a great passion of mine, as is the independent music industry in South Africa. More on “Unsigned” in another blog post though. Back to Project 365 and the “post a day” concept.

While blogging, I tend to ask and re-ask myself the same questions every so often; “who am I blogging for, really?“, “is it worth posting every day for the sake of posting every day?“. I believe, after much thought, I’ve found answers to both of these (which I’ll most likely find again, should I end up re-asking these questions yet again).

Who am I blogging for?

Ultimately, I’m blogging for myself and for anyone who wants to read it. It’s not a case of “I’m blogging for me and that’s that” or “I’m blogging just to get readers”. Both of those viewpoints are really inaccurate… first off, if you’re blogging for yourself, why do you need it to be online? Just blog in a journal app of sorts on your desktop, or in a text document. Why go to all the effort of setting up a blog?

If you’re blogging for others and not for yourself, you’ve lost the point of blogging. Blogging is, as I see it, sharing. Therefore, by saying “hey, I found that interesting, let me share it”, I’m blogging both for myself (because I found it interesting) and for others (because I’m sharing it) at the same time. Question asked: question answered.

Is it worth posting every day, for the sake of it?

No, it isn’t. Quality over quantity any day. Not much more to say on that front. All clear, right?

What about Project 365 then?

If blogging is about being original and making something “your own”, to a certain degree, then lets do that. Instead of saying a “post a day”, lets say, a “post for each day of the year”. That means, as long as there are a minimum of 365 posts at the end of the year, we’re golden. That means I can stick to Project 365, while retaining a certain level of quality and interest in posts (instead of posting randomly with pictures of cats climbing out of shoe boxes and whacky Lolcats pictures… what’s the point of that?).

In other news, I made a few visual tweaks to this blog’s theme recently, highlighting the comment count on each post, adding post thumbnail support to each post (I’ve been meaning to do that for a while) and a few minor visual tweaks. I’d like to keep evolving this blog where I can, refining the layout, rather than switching it up completely when I get tired of the design. I feel that’s more in line with both my ideas for this blog, as well as my schedule.

Have a great weekend everyone.

It’s often said that one should blog first and foremost for oneself. If you like a topic or post, you should write about it of you want to. While this is true, the next question I ask myself is, why share thoughts and ideas if I’m blogging for myself and, by association, not for readers?

I’d say a mix between the two works best for me. Blogging about what I like, as well as touching base with you all and finding out which posts you like best and ideas for topics to blog about in future posts.

So… what do you guys think?

We thought it’d be a cool idea to showcase what the recruits of 2012 have compiled.

Check out what the 2012 recruits put together:

• mtricam
• genevievedavids
• augustinemutale
• margofortune
• suzannesmith42
• justinejooste
• ricardoglittle
• thembil
• nathanieldicks
• gershwin21
• cyrilmphanga

Pretty cool, right?

These are the slides from yesterday’s presentation at the GROW Academy. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The GROW Academy is an initiative to educate and empower the youth of today through technology. The Bootcamp session covers everything from social media and setting up e-mail, all the way through to search engine optimisation and an internet super-user course, for those who wish to continue on with more advanced studies. The GROW website’s “About” page (built on Canvas and Canvas BuddyPress by WooThemes) has a detailed explanation of the initiative and it’s founding partners.

This year, Jeff and I will be making some exciting additions to our presentation. While code, to some, can seem dry and boring, I can assure you that there’s nothing dry or boring about our presentation. We had such a blast at last year’s Bootcamp and are really looking forward to getting into some code with this year’s recruits.

If you’re keen to get involved with GROW, I’d encourage you to contact the GROW Academy and see how you can help out.

Remember: it’s all easy, and there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

So far, the journey (pfff… it’s been only 5 days) has been interesting. The main challenge, really, is to figure out what to post about. I’m definitely of the belief that a blog post should provide some form of value for the reader (not just a video of a cat jumping into a shoe box, for example). That makes it all the more difficult. Luckily, I find I learn a lot and find & pick up web development tips on a regular basis (such as more rigorous use of the Transients API- thanks Warren), which fills up one section of posts I’d like to write. I also tend to think of concepts and theories, which I could flesh out a bit more and post up here in my “thoughts” category. These may become a bit too general though and would need to be filtered into the proper categories.

On the whole, blogging is something I really enjoy (especially using the “distraction free writing” feature in WordPress, which this blog post is currently being written in). I’m really glad I chose to blog for Project 365, as I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Got any ideas for blog posts you’d like me to write up? Pop them in a comment below.

2011 was a year of much excitement and many developments for me. Travels, WordPress plugin releases and exciting developments at WooThemes, coupled with the inclusion of our new family member, Maddie (now almost 5 months old), made for a truly amazing year.

With 2011 now firmly in the past, I’d imagine the usual chain of thought is happening with you all as well… “what new years resolutions should I make?”, “should I make any new years resolutions at all?”, “can I actually keep any of them?”. These are three questions that have been on my mind on and off for the last day or so (clearly, new years resolutions don’t weigh down on me ). I figured, lets cement a few down in a blog post as a starting point, and see if it’s possible to get them done sooner rather than later in the new year.

1. Blog more.

Yes, yes… this old favourite. Don’t we all just want to “blog more”? Luckily, this very post is a starting point for making this resolution happen. With the post-a-day and post-a-week projects run on WordPress.com, surely it’s possible to achieve at least a post a week? What always keeps me from this resolution is the question “is this blog post relevant, or am I posting it for the sake of the post-a-day/post-a-week?”. Therefore, I’ll do my best to keep the posts as relevant as possible. If I truly can’t think of anything to blog about at any given time, I’ll either not post or try one of the topic ideas from post-a-day/post-a-week.

Note: This isn’t me committing to a set posting schedule… I’ll post when and as often as I can.

2. Learn another instrument.

I’ve been wanting to learn drums for many years now, as well as one or two other things. Drumming is starting to call on me more. While this one may not happen for sure, I’d really like to look back in 365 days and say “hey, I did that”… so why not add it to the list, right?

3. Do more.

Okay, this may seem like a stupid one. Let me explain.

When I accomplish goals, I get this sense of overwhelming calm and satisfaction. Therefore, accomplishing more goals produces more of this great feeling. That being said, having too many tasks on the go at any given time, while exciting, can become a bit pressuring. Therefore, a more accurate description of this would be to “do more, and not over-extend my bounds”. This should surely make for an exciting year, as there are many many ideas rattling around in my brain, just itching to be executed.

Right, I’ll keep this short and sign off for now. Here’s to an incredible 2012 and a happy New Year’s Day to all. If you’ve written a similar post or have any similar new years resolutions, pop them in the comments below and share them.

This brings me to the main topic of this post: do self-hosted WordPress users miss out on natural community interaction?

The WordPress.com community has many natural integrated ways of sharing the scope of their blog network- a page of “freshly pressed” blog posts from across the network, surfing to related posts throughout the network similar to the post you are currently reading, the ability to subscribe to and add to your blogroll any blog on the network that you find interesting and would like to share, with a single click. All of these factors lead to strengthening the community around the blog network.

Self-hosted WordPress.org users, however, have more of a task on their hands, I’d say. With no real integrated community of blogs across a network (given that they blogs are all self-hosted) the blogger, should they wish to build a community, has to somehow create said community manually or naturally through the power of their awesome writing ( note: not all bloggers are professional copywriters ). This also leads to bloggers needing to be more creative in the ways the promote their blogs, making more conscious use of social networking and social media platforms (WordPress.com has automated tweeting of new blog posts, FYI), taking potential time away from the blogging itself.

As you can see by visiting my blog, I’m a self-hosted WordPress.org user. The ability to fully control and customise my entire blog, along with any themes or plugins, is a necessity for me. I’m also familiar with web hosting, domain registration, etc, so it’s not a necessity for me that all of that gets taken care of by WordPress. For many users, WordPress.com is the way to go, as they can dive straight into their blog’s content. The lack of out-of-the-box allowance for custom themes and plugins on WordPress.com is completely understandable, which they in turn make up for, in my opinion, with the addition of strong community-driving elements (ultimately more beneficial to WordPress.com users, in my opinion), as mentioned above.

To answer the question posed above, no, I don’t think WordPress.org users are missing out. It’s simply a case of looking at it from a slightly different angle. There’s a lot that can be said about both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. My solution: have both. The more the merrier.

Okay, just a little bit of techie stuff (let’s get it over with, shall we?). Over the weekend past, I released the WP Section Index WordPress plugin. Check it out and let me know what you think and how it works for you.

I find that, throughout the day, I get ideas for blog posts I’d like to write. Posts about music, WordPress or random thoughts that enter my head. Gradually, I start forming the skeleton of the post in my mind and, at times, the post gets entered as a draft in the administration console, eagerly waiting to be finished, polished and published. This approach, more often than not, doesn’t seem to work.

I formulate the idea, draft it out and then it sits. Waiting. Waiting for a finishing touch. The finishing touch that takes weeks to arrive as it simply isn’t on the tip of my fingers to login and finish the blog post. So there you have it. Draft posts simply don’t work for me. I find that, if I sit down and write a blog post in one session, the post gets done. A while ago, I wrote a blog post about making time to blog. I wrote another about blogging in general around a similar time. I’ve also tried several routines for blogging, such as my June 2009 blog-post-per-day idea, which lead to some interesting blog posts.

The aims of this post are to a) explore the concept of changing one’s location when online and how it affects productivity (currently blogging from the couch, by the way… super productive, actually) and b) to mention that this entire blog post is being written in one sitting with no drafts being manually saved (save the auto draft feature in WordPress, ofcourse). I’ll open the post up in a bit, do some linking and check things over, but generally speaking, the post is being written “on the fly”, as it were. It feels good and I think I may just keep it up… in between all the techie posts about all that coding stuff.

So yeah, there you have it. A nice long ramble about where and how to ramble on your blog.

The other day, my mom discovered blogs. This got me thinking; how many people discover blogs and blogging for the first time every day?

Daily blogging is an interesting concept. In terms of content, it can produce interesting results, some posts being “stronger” than others, depending on the day and topic.

Overall, I enjoyed the daily blogging experience. I’ve tried, and will try, one or two other techniques as well. My question today is; “How do you blog?”