Below are a few of my looking ahead posts from years past. I linked to the first one last time and the other two posts are the 2nd parts of the others I also linked to last time around.

• Looking Ahead In 2008
• Looking Back At 2008 And Ahead To 2009 – Part II
• Do You Have Goals For Your Business? Part II

Why Set Goals?

I mentioned last time how the review process helps to identify patterns that can limit your success and that the process helps you stay focused.

One of my goals from a few years ago was to be more productive and toward that end I’ve been taking advantage of task management software and systems which include weekly and monthly reviews.

Setting and reviewing goals on a regular basis helps you see the big picture. It’s very easy to get lost in the minutiae of the day to day of running a business, but when you spend the time to set and review goals it helps you take a step back and see the forest through the trees.

Taking some time to set larger goals allows you to step back and really look at your business. When I set goals I try to set them in the overall direction I have planned for my business, which naturally gets me thinking about the overall direction of the business again.

A nice bonus of having goals give you something to work on during the ebbs in client work that inevitably occur.

There’s also something to the act of writing things down and sharing them. It makes a commitment to do what you wrote and shared and has a tendency to actually get you to do those things.

Done well setting goals can keep you focused on the big picture while providing realistic projects for the months and year ahead. And as with reviews it works best when you set and review goals more consistently than once a year.

My Goals for 2011

Last year I said I was being ambitious listing 4 goals for the year. I’ll be ambitious again and list 4 this year as well. One of the goals will really come about as part of one of the others and like last year I’ve left one a little vague.

• Redesign this site
• Develop a WordPress theme framework for myself
• Continue Improving the small business forum
• Write an ebook

Hopefully this time next year I’ll be telling you how I got all 4 done. Even better you’ll see them getting done during the year. I think the first 3 are very doable. The last I also think doable, but having never written an entire book before, I’m not sure what to expect.

Also the goals above tie in to goals of years past. Some of my goals from prior years, such as being more productive and writing better content, are ongoing goals. I don’t list them here, but I’m still working on them.

Redesign This Site

I’ve been wanting to redesign this site since the day I introduced the current design. Actually I was ready for a redesign before I introduced the current one. The design you see today was one I came up with a year before anyone else saw it. It looks dated to me and I don’t think it reflects my current skills as a web designer and developer or reflect the kind of site I would design for a client.

There are things I realize I failed to style the first time around or could have set up more flexibly. Neither the visual design nor the code behind the design is as good as it could and should be. A redesign will also give me an opportunity to put into practice some of the theory I’ve recently taught myself.

There are also issues with the design inluding some that affect working with it on a daily basis like

• Not enough room in the content section
• 3 columns where only 2 are needed
• Blog categories I never use
• A lack of tags on posts
• 1 px misalignment in the navigation bar

I could go on and on and on with all the little things I don’t like about the site as it is.

I also have some ideas for things I’d like to do here that would be hard to integrate into the current design. I’ll hold back on sharing some of those ideas since many aren’t all that fleshed out and I’d rather not promise a few things I may not be able to do. Suffice it to say the current design won’t be able to handle well some things I’d like to do.

I talk about communicating messages and creating unity and harmony between all your messages and design elements. Well the message I want to convey has changed somewhat from what it was a few years ago.

Then I was interested in having this site align with a certain group of people who were becoming my clients. Now I want to communicate more the information and educational resource I’d like to think I’ve been building here.

New message —> new design.

There’s more, but what it comes down to is over the last few years I’ve changed and my business has changed, which means the design of this site should change as well to reflect those other changes.

And to top it all off I’m a bit jealous of designing and developing better sites for my clients than what I have here and want to change that.

Develop a WordPress Framework for Myself

This is me scaling back the WordPress site I’ve been wanting to develop these last couple of years. Again I still want to do this and this will be the first step.

Whenever I think about a WordPress site I naturally think of offering themes and/or a theme framework. I also think a lot about having enough content to maintain a blog. Last year I gave myself a small start on the content and this year I’d like to have a theme framework in place.

The idea serves 2 purposes.

1. It will speed up my own development time. I currently use a mostly blank theme when turning html/css into a WordPress theme. I think I can do better than a mostly blank theme and think a framework will lead to quicker and better WordPress development in my own work.
2. As the framework evolves I expect it to reach a point where other WordPress developers will also find it useful. There are plenty of good theme frameworks out already, but I think I have some ideas to make them easier for some to use.

My goal for 2011 is more the first idea. SInce I haven’t built the WordPress site I keep setting as a goal I thought I’d set something that will help lead to that site as a goal instead.

I’ll get the start of the framework going when I redesign this site. It’s something I would be mostly doing anyway. If by the end of the year I’m using the framework as a starting point for all or most of my WordPress development I’ll consider this goal successfully completed. If it happens to lead to a WordPress site sooner so much the better.

It’s not part of the current goal, but I’m also hoping to work a little more on some of the WordPress related content I started this past year. It’ll either be cornerstone content for the site I hope to build or it will be a stockpile of posts I can use here or for guest posting.

Continue Improving the Small Business Forum

Again I’ve left this goal a little vague. In part it’s because my plan for the forum is still rather loose and informal. The first part of this goal is really tightening the plan and organizing the ideas I’ve put down into a more cohesive whole.

There are a few things I know I want to do.

• Continue fixing and improving things. I did take care of the most important fixes, but I know there are plenty of small improvements I need to make. There are also a number of modules that I’d like to add to help make the place run smoother.
• Automate admin tasks. There are a number of tasks from backing up the forum database to fighting spam than can be automated better and more than they currently are.
• Upgrade the forum software to vBulletin’s full publishing suite for reasons I’ll talk about more below.

As with this site I see my small business forum as one that could do well with advertising if it grows large enough. Nothing as obnoxious as I’ve seen on some forums, but enough to generate a significant amount of money. It’s time the forum starts paying its own way and then some.

What the full publishing suite does is allow for non forum content to be easily present on the site. It can be used to publish articles and forum members can be given permission to publish blog posts.

While I don’t plan on letting every member of the forum publish on the site. there are a select group among the existing community who I think could be counted on to create content worthy of reading and spreading.

Allowing those select few to publish should improve overall traffic and visibility to the site, the community, and the authors. In the end I think it will be a win-win for both the site and those members who contribute.

Ideally I might publish there once a week and have the community supply 4 more blog posts or articles for the week. At the least the posts and articles should serve as starter topics for forum threads. At best they should help bring more people to the site and the community.

Setting up the publishing suite and working toward some community generated content will be my main goal with improving the forum this year.

Write an eBook

It sounds a bit scary just typing it, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for awhile and will work toward making it happen this year.

I have a few ideas for books I’m qualified to write and have already worked on the outline for a book about visual design. What it needs next is fleshing out the outline a little more and then filling in with lots of words.

Digital products are something I want to add here as a way to scale my business and having one or more ebooks for sale is part of that overall plan

Given my enjoyment for writing as well as the compliments I sometimes receive from those who’ve read what I’ve written, an ebook seems like a natural fit for me. Add to that an enjoyment of learning and teaching and an ebook was probably inevitable.

I’m somewhat nervous about the whole idea and I’m wondering if I’m biting more than I can chew with this one, but I’m up for the challenge and excited at some of the things I can do in an ebook that I don’t really get to do here on the blog. Mostly that will mean being able to design the pages of the book in a way that reinforces the text.

We’ll see in about 12 months if I can make this happen. I suspect that those of you who enjoy reading posts here will enjoy what I have planned for the book. Wish me luck on this one.

Summary

Those are some of my big goals for 2011. It feels good to have shared and also a little scary knowing I’ve put some things out there that you’ll be watching to see if I get done.

That works since it’s part of the idea of writing them here. I’ve set a challenge for myself to keep me focused and give me some direction for the year ahead.

I may not get to everything, but having goals will motivate me to get as many done as I can. Sharing them will make me work a little harder to get them done too.

Feel free to offer your thoughts about my goals and plans. Am I crazy to think I can get everything done and still run a business and 2 sites? Are there things here I should forget about and some others I need to consider?

How about you? As I asked last time do you set goals for your business? Is it a once a year thing or do you set goals regularly and consistently review how you’re doing? And do you find the setting of goals helpful for your business?

Here are a few previous looking back posts. The 2008 post looked back and ahead in one post. Since then I’ve been splitting these reviews and goal setting posts in two. I’ll link to the looking ahead posts next time, though they should be easy enough to find if you’re looking for something to read over the weekend.

• Looking Ahead In 2008
• Looking Back At 2008 And Ahead To 2009 – Part I
• Do You Have Goals For Your Business? Part I

Monday will be my first post of the new year and as you guessed I’ll share some thoughts and goals for 2011.

Why Look Back?

Before getting to the goals I set for myself in 2010, I want to talk about why looking back and reviewing what you accomplished is a good idea. While I’m looking back at the whole year in this post, I do this for myself more often.

The review process helps keep me focused on what I want to achieve and helps me move my business forward. It works better when the review is more frequent than annually of course. I tend to review some things on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and other things every couple of months. The larger the goal the more time I’ll leave between reviews.

Seeing over time what I’ve accomplished and what I haven’t accomplished reveals some patterns that may be limiting my success. Am I not completing one goal, because I’m not as interested in completing it as I thought or am I letting other things get in the way? Where is my time going? Is my effort being placed on the right tasks?

It’s easy to feel good about goals you’ve completed. Looking back and seeing what you’ve accomplished builds confidence for the day to day work. When it’s day to day it sometimes feels like you’ll never finish anything, but several months later you can look back at all you really have achieved.

When I see what I’ve finished it motivates me to get other projects done and sustains my energy during times where I feel there’s too much to do to complete one project or another.

Looking Back at 2010

At the start of 2010 I set 4 goals for myself where this business is concerned.

• Develop a site around WordPress
• Create more content
• Generate more passive income
• Do something with my small business forum

I completed one goal, kind of did what I wanted with another, did things to help make one easier to accomplish this year, and did absolutely nothing about the one remaining goal.

Even as I wrote the goals down I had a weird feeling about them. Not so much questioning my desire to get each done, but rather that I wasn’t really sure where to begin. In years past it was easy to prioritize my goals. The ones I might not finish were those of the least priority that I put off till the end of the year.

This year was different. I was never really sure where to begin. I also gave myself a little more to do having done well with goals in previous years.

Overall though I consider the year to be a successful one for reasons I hope become clearer as I share more of the details below.

Develop a Site Around WordPress

This is the goal that I did nothing about. I’m not really any closer to this site being ready than I was this time last year. Maybe the slightest bit closer, but nothing measurable. It’s also a goal that’s been on my list for the last couple of years.

I still want to set up a site and a business around WordPress. Most sites I develop end up on WordPress and most of the existing sites I work on are powered by WordPress. Seems like a natural to set up a site around it, especially as I don’t spend a lot of time talking about WordPress here.

I could offer all sorts of excuses for why I haven’t gotten this done, but I think the real reason is the time and effort that will be involved maintaining another site. Mostly time and effort spent creating new content on what would likely be the blog on the new site.

More than likely (ok positively) you’ll see some form of this goal on my list for 2011. I’m somewhat hesitant to list it as a goal given my poor track record with it, but it will fit in nicely in a lesser form with one of the other goals I do feel confident completing. More next time.

Create More Content

This was a rather vague goal in my mind. It’s also the one I feel I accomplished quite well. When 2010 started I had begun attracting a few more of you to this blog, but writing was still very slow for me and I thought the content needed something more to take it to another level.

Even though the goal explicitly said more content, to me this goal wasn’t only about the quantity of my posting. It was to me an effort to improve my writing and blogging all around. I even wrote a post during the year about how posting less can improve your blog. Oh the irony.

When I looked at the other goals on the list being able to produce more and better content seemed like a step in each of them. It didn’t take me long to realize this is where I should be putting my focus first and I never did stop placing most of my effort here.

A funny thing happened not too long after the year began. A number of other sites started approaching me and asking me to write for them. Early in the year I wrote a handful of guest posts. Just about every time I would finish the posts I’d promised more people were contacting me asking for a guest post. The guest posting led to writing a chapter in a yet unreleased, but soon to be released book.

I still owe another round of guests posts to a handful of sites, which I hope to get to early in 2011.

The good news is I’ve taken this blog from one post a week to two posts a week and despite my slowness in writing, managed to write a series of guests posts and a book chapter. Really more than I expected to be able to get done when the year started.

More good news is traffic and subscribers roughly tripled (comparing Q4 of 2009 with Q4 of 2010) over the year as more of you have been recommending what you read here to others. For that I need to say thank you and also ask you to continue over the year’s to come.

In the end much of this past year for me was spent writing one thing or another. I think the improvement in both the quality and quantity of my writing exceeded the expectations I had when setting this goal.

Generate More Passive Income

My main thinking with passive income was to start by selling some advertising here on the blog. To the right you see 4 banners, but one of them is for my own small business forum and the other 3 are products that helped me for which I’m also an affiliate.

I can’t say I’ve had much luck as an affiliate marketer. I don’t really try that hard with it I suppose. I placed some banners for a few things that helped me and left them there. Not exactly a lot of effort on my part.

What I was thinking with this goal was to grow this site to a point where it’s more attractive to advertisers.

I don’t expect or want to litter the place with ads everywhere. but 6 ads in the sidebar isn’t much more than what’s there now and being able to bring in some advertising revenue would allow me to be more selective with clients and provide more time for my own projects.

When I looked into some of the better ad placement services most wanted to see more traffic than I had at the start of the year. To set up advertising the way I want means more traffic and more content here. Another reason for the continued focus on content creation in 2010.

Again I’ll point out how traffic has roughly tripled. During the year I did start receiving offers to buy advertising, though most were for things I didn’t want to endorse.

Overall while I didn’t make any more passive money than I did the year before, I do feel like I made some good progress with this goal. Maybe not the actual goal as stated, but with the preparatory work needed to make the goal happen.

Hopefully this time next year I can be telling you how advertising accounts for a significant part of my revenue.

Do Something with the Small Business Forum

Probably the vaguest of all my goals. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my small business forum at the start of the year other than knowing I wanted to do more to grow the community and the site.

In it’s first year my time went mainly to starting and replying to threads. I posted a lot. This year I wanted to be able to scale back a bit on my posting while still seeing the forum grow. I also wanted to look for ways to promote it better, upgrade the software and fix some issues members have mentioned.

I also wanted to create a plan some kind of business plan for the forum.

I did find time to upgrade the software and fix some issues. Of course the upgrade led to more issues which I think I’ve mostly fixed now. At least I fixd the most important of the issues.

I have come up with something of a plan or rather some ideas loosely organized for the forum, which I hope will increase what it brings to my business.

The community more than doubled this past year. I’d like to tell you how hard I worked promoting it, but truthfully it’s been growing on its own as long myself and the moderators help keep it as spam free as possible. Amazing what building a quality product can do.

Like this blog the forum has started receiving offers to advertise and I even had one offer to buy the whole thing.

Technically I suppose I can call this goal completed. Something is rather vague after all and I did do some somethings. Not quite as much as I wanted last year, but there was a reason this goal was listed last and listed vaguely.

Summary

That was look back on the goals I set at the start of 2010. Depending on your perspective I either did ok or not too great. I made a lot of progress with one goal and some progress with 2 other goals. I’m sure that’s better than some, but not better than others.

Myself? I would have liked to have gotten more done (always the case), but I’m still happy with what I did do. While most of the year was spent writing and creating content, I think it was something necessary if I’m to complete some of my other goals as I’d like.

How about you? Do you set goals for your business at the start of the year? At any point in the year?

For those of you who do how many of your goals do you accomplish each year and does setting goals and reviewing your accomplishments help keep you focused?

Next time we’ll look ahead to the coming year. I’ll share some goals for 2011 and offer a few thoughts on why I think setting goals is important and how I think it helps your business.

Smashing Magazine

Two design posts that present some thoughts on commonly held design ideas. The first walks through and questions the absolute wisdom of the idea that form must always follow function in design. The second looks at Maslow’s hierarchy of psychological needs and then talks about them in the context of design.

• Does Form Follow Function?
• Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs

instantShift

You can see from the titles that both of the posts below are about css. The first talks in-depth about the css box model, which controls just about everything when it comes to the layout of a web page. The second is a long list of mostly short tips with snippets of code for doing things like centering in css, clearing floated elements, using background images as bullets in a list, etc.

• CSS Box Model: The Foundation For Improving Your CSS
• 47 CSS Tips & Tricks To Take Your Site To The Next Level

onextrapixel

This is a two part series that takes a PSD file and turns it into a working web page. It’s different than most of the posts you typically see on the same subject. Instead of presenting every bit of code I tried to talk more about different decisions you could make when moving from the design to the development stage and also explained my rationale for the decisions I made.

The first post talks more about the overall layout and the second posts gets into some of the details in developing different sections of the page. I created a working demo as well as a zip file of all my code along with the images I used in the demo.

• Part 1: How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page
• Part 2: How to Turn a Design Image Into a Working Web Page

I’ve already written a few more posts that should be published before too long and I’m working on a some others as well. I’ll try to do better when it comes to letting you know, though I may wait till a few are published so I’m not creating a post just to link to a single article.

Hope you like some or all of the above. Happy reading.

The bigger development changes were mostly to convert pages of the site external to WordPress into actual WordPress pages.

In a perfect world everything will now be as it was before the hosting issues, but realistically I expect there to be a few things not working that I missed while making this move. If you notice anything not working properly, please let me know. I’ll be digging into the site as well, but the more eyeballs checking the better.

Blogging the Redesign

One of the options I mentioned last week was a complete redesign. It should be obvious looking at the site that it didn’t happen. However I do plan on redesigning the site in the not too distant future (I hope). In fact I thought it might be interesting to redesign things somewhat in public.

Instead of working behind the scenes and springing the new design on you when complete, I thought I’d blog about the redesign as I’m in the process. Ideally sharing my design process while still in that process will prove valuable to some and give you a chance to offer some feedback along the way.

It’ll be a few weeks before I can get started, but once I do I’ll share with you the early documentation for what I’ll be trying to achieve as well as early sketches and wireframes all the way up to the finished site and how I develop different parts of the site. Hopefully you’ll find the window into my thought process helpful in your own designs.

Let me know if you like the idea of blogging the redesign or if you’d prefer to just see it when it’s ready.

Thanks

Thanks again for being patient this past week or so. I’ll do my best to get you a tutorial post later in the week and again if you notice anything not working like it should please let me know. I’m sure I missed a few things here and there while moving.

I awoke to find my site down, disabled by my web host. Oh joy.


photo credit: Tim Dorr

Hosting Issues

According to my host wp-cron.php was a bit too active and using too much server resources. Hard to believe considering this sites only receives so much traffic on an ordinary day and the previous night’s promotion was somewhat limited. We’re not talking Digg of Slashdot effect here. Traffic maybe doubled for the day.

After getting in touch with my host they turned the site back on and I began to implement some of their suggestions such as the obvious installation of WP Super Cache plugin, which I had neglected to install.

I also did some of my own research into the problem with very limited success. The web was split between this being the fault of a poorly configured server and WordPress using resources it didn’t need to use. Unfortunately what seemed in small supply were definitive solutions.

The minor fixes I did implement worked well enough and within a few days my host let me know things were all good with the site. Seemed like everything was ok again, especially after similar promoting efforts on a couple of subsequent posts were problem free. Fine, that is until last week.

photo credit: Lazurite

Once again I published and promoted and awoke to my host turning off part of the site. This time it was wp-comments-post.php causing the problem. Apparently it had spawned 50 processes of itself in a short amount of time.

The post in question on the GPL and DRM and the issues with WordPress developers and type foundries was chosen since it’s something of a push button topic for some. I usually don’t write posts specifically designed for comments (though I always appreciate them) and I thought I would give it a try and see how successful I could be.

Alas we’ll never know as the comments were down shortly after the post went live. Boo hoo for me.

Over the weekend I replaced the comments here with a brief message, and as I’m writing this post the comments are still off. My host has let me know they’ve turned things back on, but I see no reason not to expect a re-ocurrence of the same problem. I thought the message about comments being temporarily off was better than getting an error message after trying to leave a comment. I may turn them back on, but if I do understand it’s possible they may not work.

More Inconclusive Research

As with the wp-cron issue, I spent some time researching the wp-comments-post problem with similarly limited results. Again no hard answers and more people passing the blame from one side to the other. What most seem to agree on in regards to both files is that once you start having these problems with your web host the problems aren’t going away.

I’m sure I can implement the latest fixes suggested by my host and try a few others I find to fix things temporarily. However, I’m also sure in a couple of weeks I’ll wake up to another part of the site being down for using up too much of the processor on the server.

Methinks the ultimate solution requires an upgrade in servers. Fortunately I have a VPS (virtual private server) for another site and have started the process of moving this and another site to it. Comments may be on or off or back and forth (I do not like green eggs and ham) until the move is complete.

photo credit: jnkypt

What to do? What to do?

The question is when will the move be complete and I don’t have a good answer at the moment. When I developed the current version of this site I knew less about WordPress than I do now. WordPress has also undergone some big changes during that time. If I’m remembering right I started developing on WP 2.3 with 2.5 out sometime before I finished.

Given my lesser knowledge at the time and the changes in WordPress during the last year and a half, some of the ways I developed this site aren’t the best way to have developed a site on WordPress. As I’m moving the site anyway…

I thought I might as well do things right. Or as right as I know how at the moment.

Naturally that will add some time to the process of moving. In addition I’ve been thinking of redesigning the site and now wondering if that time should be now. If I’m going to be redeveloping the code anyway…

Why not do a redesign prior to redevelopment?

That’s where I am at the moment in my thoughts. I’ve already moved much of the site. WP is set up and the database has been imported. There are still some things that need to be done at a minimum, though nothing that can’t be fixed by the end of this weekend.

Between now and then I may decide the new design makes sense. I’m leaning toward the lesser redevelopment of the code or at least the minimum amount of code needed to prepare for a redesign, but I’ll probably try some design sketches first and if I get excited about anything I come up with, I may go for the full redesign.

I wanted to let you all know in case you visit over the next few days or weeks and things here don’t look quite right. It’s probably me working behind the scenes. I should be able to get everything done without anyone noticing, but like I said above comments may be on, off, or in between and a few visits in a short amount of time could also lead to another file being blocked by my host.

I’ll try to get everything done as quickly as I can. I’d like to ask if you have any suggestions or if you know of a possible solution to WordPress using too much server resources is, but I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to leave me a comment. If you see a comment box below, by all means offer a suggestion. If not then accept my apologies and thanks for your patience until I have everything sorted out.

If you read my last post looking back you’ll notice my goals for this year are mainly to finish some unfinished business from 2008. What I’d like to do in 2009 is:

• Get more organized and be more productive
• Develop a business model around WordPress
• Follow through on changing the direction of this blog in order to grow

Getting Organized

One thing last year taught me is that I need to be more organized so I can work more efficiently and be more productive. It’s not that I’m disorganized and I do get a lot done, but I found in order to work on my own projects it meant working ridiculous hours. I don’t mind working, but having to put in 80 hour weeks month after month is too much.

photo credit: karindalziel

Last year after redesigning the site I felt burned out for a time, which kept me from getting started on the next goal. I realize there are a lot of things I’m not doing now to gain back some time that I should have been doing long ago.

A good example is making better use of code. All developers reuse code from project to project and I’m no exception. I can tell you right now that the next menu I code for a site is going to be based on an html list and then styled with css And yet I also know I’ll be typing it all from scratch. There’s no reason to do that when so many code editors let you build a library of code snippets you can quickly add to any project.

Code snippets are far from the only thing I can do to gain back a few minutes here and there and as the year begins I’ve been putting more effort into little things like saving a small block of code so as to never have to type it again. Ideally within a month or two I’ll have gained back a few hours each week, which I can then put toward other goals.

Develop a Business Model Around WordPress

I started using WordPress when I first set up this blog and over the years I’ve been designing and developing WordPress themes for clients and myself. I’ve talked often enough about the scalability issues of a service oriented business and know for me to grow I need to begin developing my own products.

WordPress seems like a natural fit for me, since I know it’s innards pretty well after working with it for a few years. Even more I really enjoy working with. The obvious choice for a business model is to sell premium themes, but I can see that model changing and if I can be ahead of the curve so much the better.

photo credit: surrealpenguin

New Directions for the Blog

I’ve talked quite a few times about changing the focus of this blog and by now I’ve probably bored you with some of the details. I can hear you all saying, “yeah we know where you want to go with the blog, so just shut up and go there already.” Ok maybe that’s me saying that to myself and not you saying it back to me, but I have mentioned this more than enough.

You know I want to move toward the design part of the name in the logo up top and now it’s up to me actually move there. I’m slowly getting back to the rhythm of blogging after being away for a bit.

Other Goals

One lesser goal I started playing around with last year and would like to play around with more this year is affiliate marketing. It’s another way to expand beyond services, but it’s not at the top of my agenda yet.

I also have this small business forum to work on, but most of my ideas for it need it to grow a little more so outside of some basic promotion and general forum posting those ideas will likely hold till next year.

Of course one of the things I learned last year was to expect the unexpected so who knows. Maybe one of my lesser goals will become more important to me and maybe a month from now I’ll decide to go off in a completely unplanned direction.

I closed last time asking how well you achieved your 2008 goals. Now I’ll ask if you’ve set any goals for 2009. What are they? Did you give yourself a time frame to get them done? Do you like to set goals that reach beyond what you can likely achieve to push yourself or do you like to set more realistic goals?

Looking Back At 2008

When 2008 began I had three main goals I want to accomplish during the year.

1. Redesign this site and move it to a new domain
2. Enter the WordPress theme market
3. Rework the direction for this blog

In the end I completed the first, made progress on the second, and only barely scratched the surface of the third. Still I consider the year a success.

Redesign and a New Domain

The redesign was really the most important to me and that alone was enough to consider the year successful. You may remember that my old domain was yellowhousehosting. When I first opened for business I had planned for hosting to take a larger part in the business model. That was only until I discovered I didn’t really care much for the hosting business and my heart was in the design, development, and marketing.

I thought the domain and the old quickie design were hurting when it came to attracting design clients and that priority one for the business was moving to a domain more inline with what I actually do along with a new design and copy to reflect me better as well as the services I offered. Given that last year, particularly after redesigning the site, business picked up significantly, I suspect I was right.

WordPress Themes

photo credit: EMMEALCUBO

A couple of busy months later I began working on a WordPress theme. I’ve been creating custom WordPress designs for a few years now and enjoy working with WP so it’s a natural fit to move into the theme market. However it’s one thing to design a theme for a specific site and another to design one that may be used in a variety of ways.

I do have a theme mostly done, though I’ve decided to take the wp theme business model in a different direction. I may release what I have as a free theme if I find a little time to finish where I left off. More importantly my skill and experience working with WordPress increased dramatically. I can now better serve my clients and I have new ideas to apply to WP themes.

Redirected Blog

I’d left this goal last for the year since I wasn’t really sure how to redirect things here. There’s a lot I like about how this blog has progressed, but something has been missing for me. This blog has always leaned toward the SEO side of things in part because I was able to write those posts quicker in the beginning. But it wasn’t quite right and it wasn’t quite me.

I also think there are other blogs far better at covering some of the topics I attempted to cover. That’s really not the way to a successful blog.

Technically the direction of this blog continued where it was already heading, but with a little help form your answers to a poll, I’ve decided where it should go. As soon as I can retrain my writing rhythm you’ll see more design and development oriented posts, though I still intend to keep most of the other topics I’ve covered in the mix.

Unplanned Goals

Part of the reason goals two and three above went unfinished were due to a couple of unexpected things I got involved in. The first was starting a new small business forum and the second was buying and moving into a new condo. New for me anyway, not for the people who had lived here previously.

photo credit: bionicteaching

A Community Reborn

Some of you know I’m active on a few forums. For a couple of years I’ve been an admin at Webmaster-Talk and a moderator at a small business forum. The small business forum has changed ownership over the years with each new owner being less and less a part of the community. Current ownership was completely unresponsive and early last year I had thought of leaving entirely.

While I enjoyed the community and think forums are a valuable source of business it became frustrating to moderate.

For most of the spring and summer I was the only person moderating the place with little to no communication from ownership. Then in July the forum went down spitting out a database error instead of the usual threads and posts. I emailed the owner offering to help, then to buy the forum, and then to help again without a single reply.

When the forum eventually came back months worth of posts had been lost, signature links weren’t working, the entire admin section was visible to the public. The place was a mess, yet there was still no word from ownership. The community made it known they were ready to leave, but before they did I asked for a few days to see if I could set up in a new location.

A few days later those of us who were left moved to the new forum I’d set up. The first couple of months the forum demanded most of my time. I was posting about 50 times a day trying my best to make the place look less empty, making sure to welcome every new member, and shaping the direction of where I hoped the community would go.

A New Home

Oddly enough about the same time the old forum was fragmenting, a few things were making my living arrangements less desirable than they had been. My landlord decided to raise rent, an unpleasant neighbor moved in, another neighbor suddenly found an interest in loud power tools, and the city kept digging up the same few feet of road every week on the street in front of my apartment.

It all led up to me becoming a first time home owner, which demanded so much more of my time than I ever expected.

The Year That Was

I’m a baseball fan so one out of three is enough to get me into the hall of fame. A 67% incomplete may not have been the success rate I had hoped for, but it was still successful for me as I completed what was by far the most important of the three and added a couple new things along the way.

Before getting on to my goals for 2009 I want to take one last look at 2008. There’s a theme running through my goals of growth for my business. The redesign was about growing the service side of my business model, which for the most part has been my entire business model. It grew in large part because I cut out some services and better focused on what I do well.

The theme market was all about adding a new source of revenue that fits entirely with and complements my services. Each would reinforce the other and the themes would help the overall business scale. Those of you with service based businesses know they can only scale so much before you need to outsource or hire in house. While I don’t mind outsourcing, I’m not looking to hire. Scaling for me means expanding revenue streams and exploring new markets for passive or semi-passive income.

A custom theme can be sold exactly once and the price is directly proportional to the time spend creating the theme. Themes on the WordPress market can be sold time and again and if done well can bring in revenue long after development time. Premium themes scale better than custom themes.

A new direction for the blog was also about growth, focus, and scale. Redirecting the posts toward design and development again falls into the area of trimming fat and focusing on what I do best. As with WordPress themes the new direction will complement the services I offer and any themes I eventually create.

Overall each of my three goals for 2008 was aimed at bringing my business more in focus and aligning the different components of this site. I may not have reached each goal individually, but the overall theme of the goals was met to a degree I’m happy with.

Looking Ahead To 2009

I’ll continue with my goals for the year ahead next time and leave you by asking how well did you meet your goals for 2008? Did you have specific goals in mind when the year began and how well did you meet those goals?

photo credit: Menage a Moi

Can you feel the cobwebs? Do you see the tumbleweeds blowing across the pages of this blog? I know I do. It’s been awhile since I posted and I figured it was about time I explained my absence and how I’ve let this place become a temporary ghost town, especially since a few people have recently asked me if I was still ok.

Lucy, you got some ’splainin to do.

It feels somewhat lame to same I haven’t posted because I’ve been busy, but to a degree that’s exactly what happened. Three things over the last few months kept me away from here.

Vacation in New York

Some of you know by now that every year I visit my family for Thanksgiving. A number of years ago when I was working it was a good time to visit since I was already getting Thursday and Friday off. I could get in a week’s vacation, while only using three vacation days.

It didn’t hurt that I happen to like Thanksgiving in general and that fall is a nice time of year in New York.

Now that I work for myself I can be more flexible in how long I stay. One of my clients turned friend lives out east and a couple of years ago I extended the trip on the backend so we could spend a day together. This year a family obligation required me to extend the trip on the front end and all told I was in New York for close to two weeks vacationing with family and friends.

Increased Client Workload

As summer was heading into fall my client workload picked up. Good for me and my bank account, but not so good for my free time or this blog. Normally I do my best to finish every project I’m working on before heading to New York, but this year it was a lot more difficult to achieve.

Seemed like every time I gained ground on one project another client called with a new one. I know I could have made a few wait, but some of the requests came from very good clients and I pride myself in being able to get the work back to them sooner rather than later.

Much of my time went into one project that began over the summer as a small JavaScript application without a deadline, and morphed into a much larger project with a deadline of yesterday. It wasn’t easy to get it finished, but I managed with a couple of days to spare.

A New Residence

Both of the above weren’t really enough to keep me from posting. I take the same vacation every year, and anyone in a service based business knows the work ebbs and flows quite a bit. It’s not unusual to have a couple of very busy months and then have a couple lighter ones.

Perhaps the main thing that kept me busy was that I bought a condo in early November. That’s one corner of the living room above, the day after we painted it. The lamp is still there, but now it has furniture to keep it company.

For the last six years I’ve been renting the same apartment. When I moved in I considered it rustic, but over time it felt more run down than rustic. Back in July the landlord showed up on the property, cleaned up the leaves and trimmed the hedges for the first time in about three years and decided to raise everyone’s rent. Nice, huh?

The person managing the building for him also mentioned how he hoped to sell the property to developers or tear the old buildings down. I didn’t like the idea that I could soon find out I had 30 days to find a new place to live.

Given my business has been picking up and housing prices have been going down, it made the most sense to buy instead of rent. This is the first property I’ve owned and the first time I experienced the process leading up to a closing. It was a lot more time consuming than I imagined.

I’m pretty sure I signed away my first born and possibly even my soul to you know who. So many papers were pushed in front of me I can’t honestly say I know what every paper I signed was actually for. After a couple months looking and a month securing a mortgage and signing more paperwork than I knew exited, I’m the proud owner of the place I live in.

The timing of the close could have been better. We closed about a week before I left for New York. During that week I painted the new place with a friend, had carpeting installed, and began packing and moving. I finished the packing and moving after getting back and have been enjoying unpacking all those things I packed every since.

Other than a few boxes of things I don’t really use I’m finally in and settled and very happy in the new digs.

photo credit: half alive ☺

The Months Ahead

Again I apologize for the extended absence. Hopefully you understand that life outside the blog took over for awhile. I also have to admit the longer I was away from writing regularly, the easier it became to skip just one more day. I’ll do my best not to let it happen again.

Having said that posting will probably be on the light side through the holidays. Of course compared to the last couple of months they may seem kind of busy. I do have a This Month In SEO post planned for next week.

I mentioned a few times during the year that I want to change the direction of this blog and for a few months I’ve pretty much known where I want to take it. Looking at the results of the poll I’ve had running in the sidebar for far too long you all seem to agree with where I want to go so that’s good.

It may take a few weeks to get into the rhythm, but I plan on offering more design and development posts and leaning the blog that way. A little more focus on the design part of Van SEO Design than the seo part, though still covering both.

For everyone who’s still here with me thanks for sticking around through my absence. For those of you who left thinking I’d abandoned you and this blog, well I guess you’re not reading at the moment. But I will do what I can to bring you back.

Thanks for understanding.

photo credit: lemonjenny

If you need a reminder about how guest blogging can benefit your blog you can revisit these posts.

• Grow Your Blog By Giving Away Your Content
• Your Content On Another Blog May Be The Key To Your Success

You can also check out how guest blogging here and other places helped James grow his blog a few months back.

• The guest blogging bonanza: My motivations (Part 1)

And if you decide to write a guest post here or elsewhere you can learn how to increase the return on your investment.

• How To Improve The ROI Of Your Guest Posts

Computer Problems And A New Laptop

It’s somewhat lame to tell you the reason I haven’t been blogging regularly the last month or so is that I’ve been busy, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I’ll offer some more detail in the hopes of making the excuse a little less lame.

A month ago today, just after hitting the button to publish this post about how to highlight the current page in wordPress, my laptop decided it was a good time to shut down permanently. If you remember about a year ago the same thing happened to the same laptop.

photo credit: Brymo

This time it was the motherboard that failed and unlike last year the warranty had expired. Oddly I didn’t panic. The laptop that died was close to four years old and I had been wanting a new one anyway. Seemed like a good time.

I decided it was time for a change and bought a MacbookPro. I had been thinking of making the switch last year and despite a few reservations was convinced it was the right move in part by this post from Dan Thies. Dan, if you find your way here, thanks.

I won’t go into all the details of switching to a Mac in this post. (if you’re interested in my switch to a Mac, leave me a comment and maybe I’ll write about my experience in a future post). I will say I’m happy I switched and that changing to a new OS did keep me from being productive for a few days. That’s when the busyness started.

Work, Work And More Work

At the time work was moving at a nice pace. I had a couple of projects that were ahead of schedule without pressing deadlines. A week without work later and with deadlines moved up I wasn’t all that far ahead of schedule as I had been.

As luck would have it many of my clients started calling around the same time with new requests. Not that I’m complaining. I’m happy when clients have more work for me. Still it contributed to a lack of time for blogging.

Since then new clients have arrived and existing clients have sent even more work. It seems like every day someone else is calling. Good stuff for me, not so good for keeping up with this blog.

Personal Demands On My Time

One last thing has added to the time crunch. I have something going on in my personal life that’s demanding a lot of my time. I’ll hold off on mentioning what it is at the moment, but it’s all good. Just something that requires a lot more of my time than I realized. I’ll fill you in on the details in a few weeks.

None of the above is meant to offer a excuses and I know being busy sounds a bit lame for why I haven’t been writing much. I mostly wanted to let everyone know I was still here and fill you in a little on what’s been going on.

Along with a lack of blogging, I haven’t been as active at most of the social media sites where I participate and have even been lagging some in replying to email. Thought I’d let people know I haven’t entirely fallen off the face of the earth.

So once again I’ll ask if anyone would like to write a guest post or two. While I do hope to find more time for writing in the weeks ahead I suspect my posting will still be on the light side for another month at which point we enter the holiday season. If you’re interested in writing here send me an email. Thanks.

Forum Traffic Is Sticky

A few months ago while discussing social media referral traffic I displayed an image showing a few sources of referral traffic to this site. The image deserves another look here.

You’ll notice that Webmaster-Talk and Teaching Sells arguably provided better traffic than either StumbleUpon or Sphinn.

Visitors from each bounced less and stayed engaged with the site for a good deal of time. I surmised on the original post the reason for the engagement here was based on my engagement there. Both are also forums.

Teaching Sells isn’t technically a forum, but it does contain a forum, which is where the above traffic came from.

Social sites like Digg have the potential to drive greater numbers than any forum, but they don’t drive the same quality, because they don’t allow the same level of engagement on your part at the site. Old school internet as they may be forums still allow you to show who you are and what you can offer better than your typical social site.

Networks like Twitter and Plurk are great for getting out short messages, but there’s still a lot to be said for having more than 140 characters to make your point.

Forums Are A Source Of Customers

Most people look for forums on similar topics as their site. It’s natural since your topic is what you’re interested in and you’ll meet like minded people who share your interests.

photo credit: me-2007

The people there will be peers and you’ll have have plenty to share and discuss. Your peers often provide a good source of links, a good source of blog subscribers, and a good source of people to partner with on future projects.

There’s another type of forum though, that can prove just as beneficial. It’s the forum where your customers spend their time. I’m a firm believer that marketing yourself is about determining who your customers are, finding where they spend their time, and building a brand in that space.

For me that’s meant participating in small business forums and that participation has led to more clients for my business than any other source.

Forums Are A Source For Market Research

The same communities that hold your customers are a great place to do market research. What better way to find out what your customers want than to ask them and listen daily to the questions they ask.

By listening to what your market is saying you gain the information you need to tailor your business to them. It’s easy to think we know what our customers want, but it’s no substitute for actually having them tell you what they want..

photo credit: Jacob Bøtter

Forums Are An Online Networking Group

If you own a small business I’m sure someone somewhere has suggested joining an offline networking group as a way to find new clients. You may have joined one and you may or may not have had success with it.

Forums, especially small business forums, can be the online equivalent of networking groups. It doesn’t take long to build a rapport with people working in other industries.

Through the relationships I’ve built I have a list of go to people when clients inquire about services I don’t offer. I know I’ve made it on the shorts lists of others as well, which has led to new business on both sides.

Again I hope you’ll forgive my romp through forum land and one last pitch for our new small business forum I recently helped get started. We already have an active community of great people with knowledge and experience across a variety of industries. We’d love to have you join us.

Do you still or have you ever participated on forums and have you found them to be a good source of business? In what ways have you found forum participation to be a valuable part of your business?