• 1st prize - $50 via paypal, $50 donated to your charity of choice and $100 ThemeForest Credits
• 2nd prize - $25 via paypal, Free website analysis and 10 points you could improve with, $50 ThemeForest Credits
• 3rd prize - 3 months free adspace on baffleinc.com and $25 ThemeForest

So everybody loves free stuff, right? Well on the 20th of December, it’s actually my birthday! So I thought I’d give away some stuff to you all to celebrate it with me (Don’t worry, I assure you I have real life friends to do so!).

All you have to do is subscribe to my feed, and comment on this post, and I’ll draw out the 3 winners on the deadline date!

Draw Date: 20th December.

Note: I will be using Random.org to pick the winner so that it’s fair! Get posting, and I’ll let you all know who the winner is! Max 2 entries per person!

One last thing… I’ll give a dollar per comment

Totally crazy, eh? For every single comment on this post, I’ll donate a dollar to the Just Creative Design fund, with a max of $150. If I ever get there! Cmon… You only have to write a short comment!

The ‘See How Much You Can Get Done in Ten Minutes’ game

I was talking with my dad about his job, and how I always have a million emails piling into my inbox. My dad works for the company Adapt Training Solutions, which is basically a company that run time management courses on Outlook, Lotus Notes, BlackBerries, and just general management.

He suggested; “Ok! Let’s play the ‘See How Much You Can Get Done in Ten Minutes’ game!”

“What.” I said flatly.

“It’s great! Basically you sit down at your inbox, and spend just ten minutes going down your email list and getting very friendly with the delete key” he explain.

“Sounds simple enough. What if I need to keep some of the emails? Do I just leave them in my inb-” He cut me short.

“No way! Create a folder called ‘filing’, and just dump all your important emails into it. I don’t care if they are professional or personal, if they’re in there you just search for them and it’ll come up. Don’t bother with complex sorting folders… That’s a pain in the ass, and you can lose stuff easily! Just one folder! Go! Now! Sort by name, and prune many at a time!”

So I got on my way, started at 10:25 am, and had just ten minutes to see how much I could kill or rescue. It was actually amazing how much I got done. I had one folder; filing. That’s it. No ‘iTunes receipts’ and ‘PayPal info’ and ‘Web Hosting’, just ‘filing‘. All the others went in the can, and I was told to use my inbox as my ‘todo list’. I’ll explain more later.

After 10 minutes, I was down about 400 messages. Felt pretty liberating.

“Wow! That’s great! Usually on my courses, they only get through about 200!” He commended. “Now see what you can do with another 15 minutes!”

By this stage, I had become very friendly with the delete button, so I was mass selecting and deleting. I think I even deleted a whole 100 messages at once. After about 13 minutes, I was done. Down to 4. 4 Emails that I could probably get rid of just by replying to them, as they were todos.

1400 to 4. In 23 minutes. Now if all those high end developers and designers had twice as many emails, it’d only be less than an hour’s work to get them down to a manageable amount. I had 51 all important emails, and that was it!

Using the inbox as a todo list

Generally you get emails asking you to do things, or people asking questions, etc. So you use these emails as a motivation to get stuff done. My last 4 emails consisted of 3 from my contact form that I was yet to reply to, and 1 email about speaking at WordCamp. Once I get the first 3 replied to, I can work on what I’ll be speaking about! It’s a great system that really cleans up your mailboxes.

Now since I retold the story with the technique woven in (with permission) I must cite my sources, right? Adapt Training Solutions is a time management company that run workshops internationally on Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Blackberries, and general time management to teams and one on one executive coaching.

So give it a try! See how much you can get done in 10 minutes

Top Image sourced from bl3ss3d

Google XML Sitemap

If you wanna be listed on google well, this plugin is a necessity. I’d highly suggest installing this plugin, as it automatically updates the XML file that Google reads on a daily basis!

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Leopard Admin

This plugin will soon be obselete; as WordPress 2.7 finally gives us a slightly aesthetically pleasing Admin interface! Yet for now, it’s nice to have a pretty backend.

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Social Bookmark Creator

There are loads of those ‘ad to any’ flashy/javascripty social networking plugs, yet they all seem to fall short in loading time and accessibility. Nothing cuts it like good ol’ text links!

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Twitter Tools

Twitter is the next best thing aside from WordPress, except in MicroBlogging! What’s even better, is to have both of them integrated together! With Twitter Tools, you can seamlessly and quickly integrate both services together, never duplicating content!

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WP Cumulus

Almost any blog you come across will have a list of all the categories. It’s the best way for each visitor to find their interest - visually attract them by using this plugin that displays them in a rotating ball!

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iWPhone

Mobile internet is one of the biggest up coming technology- stick with the trends by making sure your blog has a native iPhone version; you can even code your own themes just like with regular ones!

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Breadcrumb Navigation XT

Navigation has evolved a long way over the lifespan of the blogging culture, yet still the oldest techniques keep reader’s bearings the best. A breadcrumb style navigation gives a physical reference of where they are

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Excerpt Reloaded

The regular WordPress Excerpt is pretty lame. It shows up to the ‘more’ tag, and pretty much strips the images and gets rid of the ‘read more’ link. With the Excerpt reloaded, you can set pretty much anything relevant- allowed tags, more link, amount of characters, etc.

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WordPress Reports

A true gem, this plugin pulls all the information from your FeedBurner Stats and Google Analytics and puts them both right into your WordPress Admin panels under a ‘reports’ page.

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WP PostViews

This fantastic little plug shows how many views your posts have had, and can even display your top 10 most popular posts! Definitely a must-have.

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So there it is! That’s my 10 plugins I’d recommend you getting. They are neat little additions that’ll get your blog rolling again.

Blog Action Day - Poverty

I realise a post on this is kinda late coming, but I don’t see why not now than never. Where to start with such a monumental project?

I’ll begin with some stats. On the Blog Action Day Website, you are presented with 4 statistics. 12 800 bloggers, 14 053 posts, 13 498 280 readers, and 17 top 100 Technorati Blogs. That may not seem like a lot to you, but lets think about that.

You imagine how many hours 12 800 bloggers would have to put in to produce a related post. Regardless of whether it was in depth, a quick note, or a short comment on the matter, the fact that 12 800 bloggers decided to pass a thought about it is pretty monumental.

Look around you. In your office, you might see 200 people. Times that by 64 and you have a pretty damn large crowd. If they are all blogging about something, surely together they can make a difference. Lets say, that on average the bloggers spent just 1 hour thinking and writing about Poverty in their entire lives. That’s 12 800 hours. That’s 533 days. That’s 76 weeks. That’s 1.4 years. Think about that.

Not only did these people put in probably around 1.4 years of time into it, they produced monumental quantities of content! These 12 800 bloggers produced some 14 thousand posts. Let’s imagine that each post has roughly 200 words at minimum - some many many more - then a total of 1.4 million words put up there on the web were related to poverty. Up the amount of words by just 100 - a short paragraph like this one, and that’s 4.2 million words. En masse, a small thing can go a long long way.

We come to our next figure; 13 498 280 readers. That in itself is just huge. That’s way over three times the population of New Zealand. 3 entire populations listening in about Poverty. If every person donated simply $5 instead of having a cup of coffee that day, $67 491 400 would be raised. six and a half million dollars. make it $10, and miss out on 2 days of coffee, and it doubles to 13 million dollars. If every body just chips in a little bit, we can make a difference.

The final statistic we’re given, 17 top 100 Technorati Blogs. That’s about a fifth of the absolute best rated 100 blogs in the entire world. Still not amazed? If 17 out of the top 100 spoke about it, think about what the less-than-one-hundred blogs spoke about.

It’s just fenominal. 1.4 years of time, 4.2 million words, $13 million dollars and 1 fifth of the most popular blogs - something’s gotta give, right?

Just Creative Design giveaway

Eager to play his part, selflessly Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design is throwing a birthday bash for his blog. An $11 thousand dollar giveaway (sourced from his readers and himself) that all leading proceeds will be donated to AIDS funds.

On a smaller scale to Blog Action Day, if every one of Jacob’s readers (~9000) wrote about the cause for 200 words as directed, 1 800 000 million words would be said. If they all donated $10 instead of drinking their coffee, $90 000 could be raised for Aids funds. It’s so simple; if the blogs with so many readers give at least a tiny incentive, we can all pitch in and do so much for the world we live in.

And these are just 2 of the big blogs doing something. There are thousands and thousands of blogs doing something against poverty, so join in!

Youth Connected

YouthConnected is an organisation that aims to get younger generations directly involved in Africa- Actually organising trips over there to raise awareness and empowering them to make a difference.

One large project that they organise, is the Hillchrist AIDS Centre. Directly quoted, “show unconditional love to all infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in a practical way”. Now, I don’t know much about how it all works, but I do know that they use this procedure called a ‘balance’. Kinesiology ties directly into it all, but basically the imbalance of energies throughout the body is checked, then using pressure point acupuncture, the energies are ‘re-aligned’. I’ve had a few of these balances myself and they most certainly make a difference. It works!

More of an organisation than a blog, it had to get a special mention because my girlfriend is involved heavily in YouthConnected, so I thought it might make her happy to see this up here! Probably unprofessional, but it was relevant!

So get out there, even if you can’t be bothered to get off your butt from behind your computer and do something active, you can still do so much online without even moving - author an article, donate $5, discuss it and let the world know what’s there!

You can do a zillion courses, degrees, workshops and seminars on any media in this world, and still fail horribly at it. Not to put you off! As I said, in short, no you do not need an education in Graphic Design to make it big in the World. With these sorts of emerging industries, you’ll find that a huge majority of Freelancers and Gurus don’t actually have education in what they do - It’s all self taught!

Take my age, for example. I’m nearly 16, and I’m doing a whole lot of stuff ahead of my time, but I’ve never actually done any education in what I do (We did a ‘course’ in year 8 when I was 14, but I knew more than the teacher by then). Another classic, spiteful example is Bill Gates of Microsoft. He’s never actually passed a degree. Him and a few mates just loved being total geeks and putting together computers in their white gruts (underwear) on the garage floor! Look how far he’s come, the rich bastard!

In terms of this, sure the theory side of things (I.E. the design process) should be taught and understood properly for maximum productivity - Something that is taught at schools, and is easily accessible online. The skill side of things, I think are pretty much due to experience. You can have a strong foundation from a proper ‘Design education’, but you really learn all the niche stuff at home when you’re mucking around on the interwebs.

Like I said, the design process, target markets, and all the theory attached to the more dull side of design is best taught via education, because it’s structured and all there for you. If you’re like me though, I prefer learning-by-doing, and have lots more fun figuring stuff out on my own. My teachers surely helped with it though!

So to answer your question Elisa, it’s not required, and you can still make it big and do well in this world without an education. If you’re looking to become professionally the best of the best, then sure learning all the theory behind the best designs is a smart idea - but no, you don’t necessarily need an education in design to make it in the Graphic Design World.

Web Design Workflow

My main field. It’s gotta start somewhere, right?

Sketch Pad

Ideas come from your head. Unless you’re a genius with a Mouse or a Tablet, it’s generally easiest to write your ideas down, or even sketch them. When I imagine a layout, I sketch it on whatever is available - usually schoolbooks. This way, when I get to the next step, I can easily remember what was going on in that noggin of mine.

Photoshop

Next up on my express production line is Photoshop. This is the best way for me (or anybody) to get a digital idea of what is going to be coded, regardless of it’s complexity. A visual AND digital rendition of a product is the designer’s best friend - it gives a true estimation of sizes and accuracy! Copying my ideas from a Sketch Book is both an easy, quick thing and good practice.

MAMP PRO

MAMP PRO is my saviour speed wise. The amazing benefit of having an offline PHP server is that I don’t have to wait for all the code, external JS, stylesheets, images and documents to load - as it’s all lightning fast on my computer. Managing Databases are a breeze, as is administering my Test WordPress blogs for article writing!

Coda (HTML)

Now to the nitty gritty. I have loved Coda since the day I laid eyes on that pretty little green leaf. Because I use it so often, getting to where I need to - in regards to files and everything is so quick and easy it takes all of 2 clicks to get from the Sites panel to a brand new file, ready to be coded into with all the relative files in the browser on the left hand side. Quick, familiar setup is what gets me settled right into coding - It’s oddly enough reassuring that everything is exactly the same, therefore I can get on with my task quicker (No I promise I’m not an OCD sufferer!).

In Coda I can develop pretty much all the backend to my site with ease - whether it be a raw HTML site, or a fully function WordPress site - with everything coding in one hub, it’s easy as pie to get going.

CSSEdit and Photoshop

Coda’s CSS editor just doesn’t cut it for my needs, and for rapid designing I rely on CSSEdit’s AMAZING quick preview function to get the visual side of my sites done. The Smart Context Suggestions have remembered the attributes I use most, and are always the first on the Suggestions drop down. I can select ‘Edit with CSSEdit’ whether online or offline in Coda, and my stylesheet will always be saved in the right place - no more mucking around with lost/dupliacte files.

Photoshop comes into play whilst I’m designing my CSS - I need to cut and slice and dice from the initial Photoshop document that I created, and when you develop a quick skill/way of doing this, it’s almost second nature.

Other Browsers

Now for the screening process! To make sure that everything looks spick and span, I have a number of browsers to test everything in - Firefox, Opera, Darwine (OSX IE) and Safari.

So that’s it! Through this short, 5 step development process and screening ability I create my websites efficiently and quickly - without loss of quality!

Images sourced from ~Lunacya and ~koleman

NETTUTS

My obvious… Cmon! With fantastic tutorials at least tri-weekly, this is a must have for all designers.

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PSDTUTS

Another TUTs family member. This site is, I’d say, the best Photoshop tutorials on the net. If not, an amazing source of inspiration.

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Web Designer Wall

I hate to be the conformist type, but there’s something about the infrequent articles that I love and find quirkily great. You might too!

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Adii

Why does he top my list? I don’t get it either. He’s one of the first feeds I ever subscribed too, and for some reason just won’t take it off my list. Kudos, Entrepreneur.

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CSS Globe

Gotta love the newspaper feel to the site… And the content is amazing. About 10+ articles daily (crowdsourced). It’s like my central hub for articles.

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Just Creative Design

This talented Australian based (Woo!) Graphic designer has pretty complete and frequent articles… Something about the way he writes is compelling!

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Smashing Magazine

An obvious favourite for everybody… WHO DOESN’T LOVE FREE STUFF?!

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Stylized Web

Unfortuantely this Gem is for sale… Let’s hope that the new owner picks up where this left off. Fantastic Blog, amazing content. If you don’t subscribe, at least read back.

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WPCandy

If you love WordPress as much as I do, then you’ll love this site! Frequently updated with Community News!

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A new addition for me, WPEngineer seems to have some awesome WordPress based content. So definitely a favourite for me!

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Hongkiat

Probably the only blog that doesn’t use FeedBurner, Hongkiat has LOADS of awesome lists and resources.

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CSS Tricks

This quiet little compeditor has slowly rose up the charts… Frequent content and a HUGE load of vid tuts… Definitely a winner.

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Noupe

Who on earth could forget Noupe? Awesome jQuery articles and other web stuff.

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Web Appers

Once-a-day update on general Web Design resources. Pretty cool site actually, brings all indie developers in!

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Detached Designs

Run by the editor of NETTUTS and ThemeForest, he still manages to pump out pretty interesting articles to the public!

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jQuery for Designers

I need my jQuery fix… Except this site isn’t too frequent… Oh well. Still go there!

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Creattica Daily

Envato and their crazy schemes… Daily content. Amazing. Must see.

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Smashing Apps

Another recent subscriber, some interesting articles here!

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Stylegrind

Stylegrid is all about tech news! With over 12 thousand subscribers, this site is a MUST!

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Blog.SpoonGraphics

Awesome design on this site. Pretty sweet content too.

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Baffle! inc.

Hey! If I wrote the article why not put some shameless advertising in at #21?!

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So there they are! Hope you find some new content to subscribe to there… I certainly have! Enjoy!

1 - Admin Options

I always tend to add some admin options into my newer themes on the front end, so that the admin junk can be accessed with only clicks! If you notice in this redesign, in the top right there is a ‘Login’ button. Sure this is only for me, but it provides an easy, quick accessible way of logging into the Admin end of things. So instead of going to baffleinc.com/wp-admin, logging in, waiting for it to load, then clicking ‘visit site’ and waiting for it to load AGAIN, my login form automatically redirects to the Baffle! inc. Home - to which I now have a drop down menu with all my most important links!

2 - Edit Links

A great habit that I’ve recently gotten into doing is having ‘Edit this post’ or ‘Edit this Page’ links dotted everywhere. Because it’s only visible to the Admin, it doesn’t have to be pretty - as long as it satisfies the need. This bit of code is all it takes to display a post edit link:

<?php edit_post_link('Edit This'); ?>
<?php edit_comment_link('Edit comment'); ?>

3 - Let people know what you’re about!

Google is the most used Search engine. I’d be hard pressed to know a site that gets more hits via google than any other search engine. This means you need to know how to index your page properly. As with any search engine, google loves h1s and h2s. Make sure at the top of each blog you have a h1 with the name, and a h2 with the description. Sure it’s a blatant use of headers (not to mention bunched up) but if you google my site, it comes up with the ’status’, or “Harley is a jQueryfied WordPress designer from Australia.” - perfect!

<h1><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></h1>
<h2><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></h2>

4 - Informative Footers

I always like to have a footer that isn’t just ‘© Baffle! inc. 2008′. Some things you could include are:

• Recent Posts
• Recent Comments
• Archives
• Links
• Twitter Status
• Categories
• About
• An RSS Feed/Feed info
• Related Articles
• Copyright info

It’s actually infinite what you can do. Go nuts!

5 - Manipulate Template Files!

Do it! Use the fact that you’ve got a wide number of template files to your advantage! A full list is on the Codex/Docs. The visual diagram on that site shows just how much there is. Seriously, go nuts. I use a total of about 10 different template files - but I should use all of them!

And that’s my list! That’s my top 5 tips to you, if any. I know you’ll only check out this page for a max of 5 minutes, so I kept it short for you! This is also one of the first Content focused posts on Baffle! inc. with many more to come hopefully. Enjoy!