Nate Desmond's Online Portfolio & Resume » Web Design

Practical Manliness Launched

Nate — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:16:58 +0000

A couple weeks ago (on February 22, to be exact), I launched my newest blog, Practical Manliness.

I have been planning and preparing for this launch for nearly five months, so I am very excited to finally have the site launched.

To celebrate the launch, I have…

published 13 posts.
run a giveaway of a Leatherman wave.
started a Facebook page.
built my Twitter profile.

Launching this site has been a new learning experience for me. On my past blogs, I have simply started posting, and the following and traffic have slowly built. This time, however, I used a splash page to build a subscriber base of more than 100 people… before launch day.

What I Learned…

Splash pages are a big help.
Proofreading is essential (If I don’t fix my own mistakes, my readers will).
Expectations are rarely met (My traffic was good, but not nearly what I expected).

In the future, I have more exciting plans for my website… starting with a manifesto release next month.

New Wordpress Installation Site Launched

Nate — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:17:36 +0000

I have just finished designing and perfecting my newest site – Expert Blog Install. Through this site, I now offer free professional Wordpress installations to anyone who purchases hosting through one of my affiliate links.

Why Free?

I am able to offer this as a free service because the hosting companies pay me $65 – $100 for each person who purchases their hosting through me. In effect, I am making more than $65 for each install!

Because this enables me to provide the installation service free to my users, I am able to sell it more easily. No one has to pay anything extra to use my service.

What I Provide

When someone does sign up for my service I will:

Install Wordpress
Install 40+ Themes
Install 30+ Plugins
Setup an Email Address (something@theirdomain.com)
Provide Spam Protection
Improve SEO (fix the permalink structure)

So far, I have spent about 17 hours designing the site and writing the content. Now, I just need to setup one more affiliate account, and I will be ready to start!

MarilynMoll.com Redesign Completed

Nate — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:28:21 +0000

Today I have officially completed my redesign of MarilynMoll.com – the private blog of The Urban Homemaker’s owner. After about twenty hours of work, I took the blog from a basic Wordpress blog with all the original defaults to an search-engine-friendly, social-media-optimized, and (hopefully) visitor-welcoming blog.

What I Accomplished

Updated the Wordpress version from 2.3 to 2.8.
Customized the Atahualpa Theme to match Mrs. Moll’s main website, TheUrbanHomemaker.com.
Setup a Feedburner RSS and email feed to boost reader retention.
Optimized the permalinks for search engines.
Added social bookmarking buttons at the bottom of each post to aid in site promotion.

What I Learned

I now understand how to use the Plesk platform better.
I learned how to use desktop-side ftp clients whereas before I had only used server-side ftp programs.
I gained experience in CSS because I used it to modify the Atahualpa Theme.
I practiced using HTML by creating the subscription widget.

This was a great learning experience, and I am grateful for the opportunity to hone my web design skills. Because I enjoyed this project so much, I hope to do more similar projects soon.