I haven’t posted much, or even been watching Twitter, for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been busy. Hopefully, in the next few days, I’ll be posting about new site launches. I’m quiet, but not gone — got my head down getting stuff done for clients.
It took a little while, chiseling away at my competition for Google search on my name, but my website is now the number one result for a search on Wayne Hastings.
I still regret never registering my name on the .com TLD — I just never imagined anyone else would have a name this lame and want to publish under it enough to register the domain.
Live and learn. If you haven’t registered your name on the .com TLD, time is running out quickly.
July has been an incredibly busy month for me. I have a bunch of new sites in production, designed and waiting for production, and waiting for a new design not even ready for production yet.
I just posted two most recent site launches, one for a church in Memphis, TN, and one for a computer networking and support business owned by a friend who is also in Memphis.
On the fun side of living in Los Angeles, my roomate’s parents were in town last weekend and we all went to Universal Studios. Universal Studios is a lot of fun.
If you haven’t already, log into FaceBook and get a vanity URL set up.
I have a namesake in Nashville, and I wanted to get my URL before he did…
Twitter is ornery. I’ve been trying to get it to accept a background graphic for my account for several days, and it just didn’t wanna take what I was trying to give. But today, finally, the sweet taste of success.
See it in action: twitter.com/waynehastings
Have you seen your Google Profile yet? Visit http://google.com/profiles/me and get started, then!
Google Profiles might be a stealth attempt at building a social network in the shadow of FaceBook’s dominance. The profile isn’t as feature rich or complex as FaceBook … yet … but does offer an opportunity to post a photo, contact information, and links to other sites.
And regardless of where Google plans to take this function, they have already added Profiles to the Google search results, making Profiles an important element in your search engine optimization plan.
You get to customize the URL, so claim yours early before your namesake beats you to it like he did with that .com domain you never got around to registering.
Check out my Google Profile here:
http://www.google.com/profiles/waynehastings
A couple weeks have gone by, and I have been tweaking this site a bit, both in the look and feel of the user interface and in the functionality in the plugins installed.
I added one new plugin, deactivated one and replaced it with another.
Since my last post, I have deactivated ShareThis. I felt it caused too much delay in page loading. In its place, I am using Sociable, which looks prettier and loads faster.
For managing the top level navigation, I found Page Lists Plus. This plugin gives you a great deal of control over the main nav, which WordPress creates based on your Pages. The link to my resume in the top nav is a link to a Google Docs page. And I have created a couple of other pages that I want in the site but that I don’t want in the main nav.
To configure Page Lists Plus to do the redirect, install and activate the plugin. On the Setting page, check this box:
Then create the Page, where the following appears at the bottom of the admin:
As you see, I have entered the Google Docs URL in the Redirect To field. Now the Resume page appears in the top navigation, but redirects to an off site URL instead of the page in WordPress.
So, this Part 2 of the series isn’t earth shattering in content, but, in the case of the main navigation, important in managing the functionality of the site.
The limited behavior of the main navigation, based as it is on Pages, belies WordPress’ history as a blogging platform. As WordPress continues to grow towards a more full-featured CMS, little amenities like these need to migrate from plugins into core functionality.
After Chet twittered about my blog running the WPTouch theme, I was reminded I hadn’t customized it at all.
First things first, a new icon! Now, if you go to this site (waynehastings.net) on your iPhone or iPod Touch, click the Bookmark “+” icon, then click “Add to Home Screen”, the icon will look like this:
Thankfully, the makers of the WPTouch theme included a Photoshop document, so creating this icon took just a few minutes. Little amenities like that make using some open source software an absolute pleasure.
Just for fun, I also replaced my Twitter profile picture with this icon.
Obsessively Googling my name, I found these lovely nuggets.
Facebook — late to the bandwagon again
Thursday, 20 September 2007So I set up a Facebook page. I knew you were waiting for that.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=618093298
Twittering
Wednesday, 12 September 2007I still think services like Twitter are a solution in search of a problem, but hey, I’ll give it a try.
http://www.twitter.com/waynehastings
Follow me!
Now look at me…
Last night I had my first “brush with greatness” since moving to Los Angeles. And this is a story for everyone who claims noone ever made money off of Twitter.
I discovered Heather B. Hamilton (aka Dooce) several months ago while I was still living in Memphis, TN. I spotted a reference to @dooce — one of my Twitter friends had replied to her — and the name caught my eye. Curious, I hit her website and discovered www.dooce.com and became a fan. I really enjoy her sense of humor and general outlook on life.
Earlier in the week, I saw her post that she was going to be at Book Soup in LA on April 2. So last night, we made the trek from our home in Alhambra to West Hollywood for the reading / signing.
It was a lot of fun. Heather was as funny and charming in person as I was expecting. She signed my copy of the book and I think I managed to get away without letting my star struck adolescent self make too big a fool of me.
Now think about this interaction for a moment. Heather is a writer. I found her first on Twitter. I became a fan of her work on her blog which I typically read via RSS in Google Reader. I travelled across town to a book signing at a book store I had not (yet) visited in person. And finally I purchased a book while I was there.
I can’t say that I would have ever discovered her if I hadn’t been on Twitter at just the right moment.
I think it is fair to say that being on Twitter was profitable for Heather. She is reaching an audience that might otherwise never find her. And since I have become a fan, I have been sharing her site with my friends (and the whole world) on my blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook, among other places.
Chalk one up for Twitter. If your business isn’t on Twitter, you’re leaving money on the table.
