David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start & Design for Hackers.
David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start & Design for Hackers.
One of the most often overlooked factors of design – by beginning and even professional designers – is that of the delicate use of white space. By really considering the way that white space works, you can communicate more elegantly, and create design that has a more “clean” look. By really considering the way white space works, you’ll be less likely to use extraneous ornamentation such as rule lines, and you’ll be less likely to change fonts and colors just to differentiate pieces of information in your design.
Last week, I signed a contract to publish Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty with John Wiley & Sons. I still have plenty of work left to get this book onto shelves – and to exist at all – but I’m extremely excited about it, and wanted to share the news with everyone, especially visitors coming from Hacker News (more on that in a bit).
I’ve been writing on kadavy.net since May 31, 2004 – 6 years and a few months. Last month was the first month that kadavy.net reached 100,000 pageviews, which is a modest achievement, but at least I know that there are many blogs that will never reach this milestone. Even more gratifying is just looking at how traffic has grown over the years (Google Analytics has only been available since November of 2005).
The basics of SEO are stupidly simple; and it seems like everyone knows – or at least pretends to know – those basics. Still I get asked about SEO pretty often. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’ll share what I know, and hopefully it will help some people.
I’ll be talking Google-centrically because Google will likely account for the vast majority of your inbound search traffic. Additionally, if you rank highly on Google, you will probably do pretty well on other search engines anyway.
This is week 6 of Creativity Bootcamp, based upon the Eight Life Hacks for Creative Thinking. Last week, I told you to Isolate by doing an activity that strengthens your individual point of view. This week, I want you to Laugh. keep on reading »
This is week 5 of Creativity Bootcamp, based upon the Eight Life Hacks for Creative Thinking. Last week, I told you to Socialize by finding a group outside of your core interest. This week, I want you to Isolate. keep on reading »
Remember last week when I told you that Google Webmaster Tools was reporting faster page load time? Well, I found another interesting metric, under Diagnostics < Crawl stats. It looks like the Googlebot is also crawling my site much faster: keep on reading »
This is week 4 of Creativity Bootcamp, based upon the Eight Life Hacks for Creative Thinking. Last week, I told you to Use Your Senses by cooking something. This week, I want you to Socialize. keep on reading »
Note [February 11, 2013]: Since writing this article, I found administering my own server to be a bit over my head. I got sick of getting hacked, update WordPress, and trying to manage my own CDN. So, I’ve been experimenting with various hosted WordPress solutions. These are like hosting companies, but they keep your WordPress installation up-to-date, fast, and secure, for a slightly higher rate than working with your own server.
I have hosted various sites on three different WordPress hosts over the past couple of years, and have finally settled on WP Engine. They are reliable, have great support, and serve things up fast. I’ve lined up a special WP Engine coupon with them that will save you some money.
I’ve also written a WP Engine Review, and you can use their speed test to see how your site performs. I’m a member of the WP Engine affiliate program, so if you sign up with them, I will get a commission.
WP Engine does cost a bit more, so if you’d prefer something cheaper (though not as fast), I’ve written a tutorial on the Design for Hackers blog on how to create a WordPress blog on a Hostgator free trial.
—–
I heard rumblings last year that Google would start altering their rankings based upon speed of page loads. This was confirmed a couple of weeks ago on the Google Webmaster’s blog, and – while they say that their new speed standards will only affect 1% of searches – you can bet that portion will rise in the future. keep on reading »