Vanilla Mist

Share your input on Connections V2

A long time ago, when I was planning on working on Connections V2, I wrote a post asking users for feedback. However, a lot of things changed since then, so this calls for a new poll.

Like I said previously, Connections 2.0 is on its way. There will be a number of improvements based on both my own observations and user input over time (via email and comments on the blog).

But I would like to hear your feedback as to what would be more useful to you in terms of functionalities and design. The obvious things, such as widgets support and full sidebar showing on individual post pages are already implemented. The kind of feedback I’m looking for are things like:

• What plugins would you like the theme to support?
• How important is it to you to have an AdSense optimized version of the theme?
• Would you like to have a 3 column version of Connections?
• How about color schemes? How useful would it be to you to have other color scheme alternatives?
• What weaknesses do you think the theme has that could be fixed (other than lack of widgets support, for instance)?
• Is there something you always wished the theme offered and would like to see in the new version?

I already have a long list of improvements and fixes (code and design wise) that I would like to implement and your input will help me get clearer idea on what matters to the user the most – which might not be exactly what I suspect to be. I can’t promise that every suggestion will be implemented, especially since opinions may vary greatly, but I will compile a list of “most requested changes and improvements” and try to implement them all.

Feel free to answer any or all of the above questions or throw in any other ideas.

Thank you in advance for your input.

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My “yearly post for 2007″

A while ago, a visitor posted a comment asking me “Where is your post for this year?”. I deserved that. I appreciate my visitor’s sense of humor, thank you! It made me giggle. I can’t let him down, though, so here’s my post for this year..

Seriously, though… It’s not that I am unaware of the fact that I never post here, trust me. I am so aware it’s embarrassing. So let me tell you about how I got to this point and where this is going. Does that sound like a good idea for the yearly post on Vanilla Mist? Ok, lets go:

I registered this domain back in June 2003. Yes, it was a long time ago. It used to be a personal blog, period (running on Movable Type at the time). When I switched over to WordPress not very long after that and pretty much (re)started from scratch, I went looking for themes (they weren’t even called themes back then). But as a designer, I wanted to have my own designed themes, so I ended up teaming up with Sadish and becoming a co-partner at wpthemes.info. Sadish and I started working on themes: I designed them, he would code them. This was a very good partnership because we complemented each other’s skills. That’s when the Alex King’s WordPress theme competition came along and Sadish and I decided to work on a theme to submit it to the competition. The theme was Connections.

Well, as some of you know, Connections won first prize as best design and all of a sudden my little personal blog was getting a lot of attention. A whole lot more than I was used to and I started feeling uncomfortable writing the more personal posts.

Meanwhile, Sadish and I were getting lots of requests for commercial work (for personal, professional and corporate blogs). So besides the free themes that were being offered there (not all partnered, mind you – in fact all the themes currently offered at wpthemes.info are his work alone), we started taking these commercial projects too. This went on for a while, but while I was available for this full time, Sadish wasn’t (he has a job in the real world) so as much as we tried our best to keep up with the increasing requests, at some point he needed to prioritize his job and the partnership had to be put on hold, unfortunately. On my side, I kept on taking commercial projects, working with other coders – at first as an independent professional, later on under Essentia Interactive. I was really busy during this period and because I still didn’t feel comfortable with the personal nature this blog used to have prior to Connections (while not knowing what to blog about instead), posting on Vanilla Mist slowed down. Admittedly, the fact that English is not my first language didn’t exactly help either.

That’s when my personal life took a huge shift: I got divorced. It was a good thing and I was fine, but this was a big life change at the time. This kind of event tends to make you question a lot of things and in this process I decided to put my career as a designer on hold until I could figure out where exactly I wanted both my personal and my professional life to go – and this blog, for that matter. I don’t regret doing this a single bit. It was the right thing to do back then, it allowed me to put things in perspective very clearly. As a result of this soul searching process, I closed Essentia Interactive. Back in February 2006, I was invited by a web development firm in São Paulo to build their corporate blogs department as a partner. I almost moved back to São Paulo (my home city) to do that, but after negotiating back and forth, I finally decided against it. Instead, I chose to concentrate on the online projects I already owned – blogs and a community oriented website – and expanding my network of websites. And writing. Also, whenever I received requests for consulting work, I took those too. I started monetizing all of my projects and found myself back on track and in tune with what I really wanted to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love to design and I do it all the time for my own projects, but after about 4 years doing that for clients pretty much exclusively, I felt like I needed a breath of fresh air and to do something that would allow me to use a broader range of skills and knowledge. I felt like by only designing I was restricting myself to exploring just one of my skills and that made me feel confined. Something else I was absolutely sure about was that I still wanted to work for myself, to have flexibility and creative freedom. Not to mention diversity. So, focusing on my own projects was definitely the right choice and it’s been working very well for me ever since.

Sadly, Vanilla Mist was the only blog I was really confused about. If it was no longer a personal blog, I didn’t know what to make of it. The strange thing is that despite the poor content in this blog, the page rank still went sky high because of the popularity of Connections. This is almost embarrassing, but I believe that success is a result of providing value in whatever shape or form and Connections does that to this day, hence the high PR.

(All) that said, it’s now time to finally make the much needed changes around here. I have been thinking about this a lot and I still have some lose ends to tie, but here’s what I can share with you as of now:

1. Connections 2.0 is on its way – for real. Sadish sent me a new version (code wise) a few months ago that was already very, very good (good enough for release), but I decided I wanted to make cosmetic changes and add some extra functionalities, so as of next week I will start working on what I have in mind for Connections V2 – which will actually have another name, but I’ll keep it to myself for the time being. I’m not ready to announce a release date at this point because I don’t have this information myself yet, but what I can say is that I will make it a priority.
2. In the following days I will decide on what exactly I want this blog to be about and once this is done, I will go back to posting regularly. There will be all kinds of changes here, from design to content. I’ll delete all the posts that don’t match the new purpose of the blog, with the exception of those posts mentioning Connections for the sake of reference.
3. I have been entertaining the idea of designing and releasing some new free themes. This will depend on my time availability and some other factors (both personal and professional), but no matter what, this is something I will only be able to start doing in the beginning of 2008. I will post updates about this in the blog as soon as I know myself.

I hope my “yearly update post” has helped clear some things up. Thanks to those of you who stayed around, keeping this blog in your feeds, paying it a visit every once in a while and leaving your comments despite the lack of updates. I promise I will do my best to reward your loyalty in the form of quality content and, hopefully, new themes too.

Meanwhile, those of you who use Twitter can follow me here if you like: www.twitter.com/patriciamuller

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PopulaR in Turkey?

Ok, so apparently someone posted in a Turkish forum (I’m deliberatly not linking to it) about my blog being a PR8 and now I’m getting all these comments that don’t really add any value to any conversations (most of them actually qualifying as spam in terms of content), but of course link back to their sites (mostly non blogs, some of them questionable), all from people in Turkey. One of the commenters said something like: “your stats were going to change, you’re getting popular in Turkey” – something among those lines. Even though I don’t understand the language, the title of post in the forum in question has the words “search-engine-optimization” and somewhere in there a “PR8″ is mentioned (along with the link to this blog), so I’m assuming this is all an attempt to get linked to from this blog in order to increase their PR.

So, if that’s the case, here’s a message to them: all comments are moderated. I’m deleting them all, so you’re wasting your time and mine. The comments area in this blog is not meant for this purpose and I will not allow it. This is also spamming. Comments are open to those who intend to make a real contribution to the conversation.

If you’re Turkish and posted a valid comment and I deleted it, my sincere apologies. I’m checking each link individually in order to avoid this mistake, but it’s possible that one or two valid comments get accidentally deleted in the process. On the flipside of that, if I accidentally approved your spammy comment before I realized this was going on, it won’t be here long.

I guess I won’t be very popular in Turkey after all…

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MyBlogLog

I’ve had an account with MyBlogLog for a while now, but it wasn’t before yesterday that I decided to play with it a little bit. So, now I have a proper profile and all my blogs have the “Recent Readers” widget in the sidebar.

MyBlogLog allows us to connect with those who read our blog as well as with bloggers whose blog we read. For those of you who have never heard of MyBlogLog (where have you been?) here’s how it works: you sign up, fill out your profile and add the blog(s) you author. Each time you visit another member’s blog, if they have the widget set up, your profile image will appear in their blog, along with a link to your profile. If the widget is not set up, they will still be able to know you have visited from their control panel – however, you can choose to hide yourself from any particular site if you want.

Each blog has a community that people can join either by choice or automatically after a certain number of visits (defined in the settings). Members can message each other and add people as contacts.

The service also provides statistics, showing where readers came from, what readers viewed and clicked. New users get a 3 day trial of MyBlogLog Pro: realtime, historical, and full daily stats. After the trial period, if you don’t want to upgrade, your account is automatically set as basic – you still get stats, but with limitations.

There are 2 widgets available that you can set up in your blog: the one you see in the sidebar in this blog under “Recent Visitors” called “Recent Readers”, showing MyBlogLog members who visited the blog and another called “Top Links”, showing the most popular links in your blog. (I’m not using this widget here).

I really like MyBlogLog: it’s cool, it’s social and it drives traffic. And… it finally gives me a better way to connect with some of the people who read my blog.

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What will you choose to believe in 2007?

This post is my submission to the ProBlogger Group Writing Project – Reviews and Predictions.

Instead of trying to predict anything for the upcoming year, I’m going to use this post to talk about a belief I have about the future – and I will start with a Henry Ford quote that sums it all up:

Whether you think you can or can’t, either way you’re right.

The future is unwritten. It will be whatever we choose to make of it – individually and collectively. This is a very empowering belief. When you realize that you’re the only one in control of your future and take charge, whatever your circumstances are in the present, things start to change.

I’m a strong believer in the Law Of Attraction – just in case you missed the “subtle” ribbon at the top of the blog, “ The Secret” is a movie about the Law of Attraction – go watch it if you haven’t yet, it’s a good place to start if you have never heard of the Law of Attraction. I will not go into details in this post, but I’ve had plenty of experiences this year that make it very hard for me not to believe that whatever we experience in life is a direct result of the predominant thoughts we hold – be they conscious or unconscious. We attract the things, people and circumstances that are congruent with our thoughts and beliefs.

So, with this in mind, I repeat: 2007 will be what we make of it. I for one intend to make it a wonderful year for myself – and do that consciously. All of us can do that. We can all create a wonderful future for ourselves, our society, our planet. If you don’t believe you can, well… like Henry Ford said, you’re right. If you believe you can, though, you are right too. So…

What will you choose to believe in 2007?

Here are some links to help you make up your mind:

www.realitycreating.com/
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/06/how-intentions-manifest/
Wealth Beyond Reason
www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Doyle14.html
www.dreammanifesto.com/
evolvingtimes.com/category/law-of-attraction/
The Secret – Larry King Live – Part 1

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Updated Contact page

Just a quick note: I have updated the contact page with information regarding availability, questions about Connections and copyright infringement. I’ve been getting more emails than I can handle and this has been going on for quite a while (to the point where I currently have over 2100 unread messages sitting in my inbox), so hopefully this update will help reduce some of the traffic and people’s frustration when they don’t get an answer. I wonder why I didn’t do this sooner… My apologies to all of you who sent me an email and didn’t get a reply. If that’s your case, please go read this update and accept my deepest sincere apologies. Thanks.

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Who are you?

I know there are people from different parts of the world that come to this blog. My my stats show that most people are from the US, England and Germany, but I see visitors from several different countries. As I was looking through my stats, I started thinking “Wouldn’t it be nice to actually know these people instead of just be looking at ‘them’ as stats, charts, aggregated data and IP addresses? Where do they live, what do they do, what do they think, why are they here?”

I have many friends from all across the globe and I find it incredibly interesting to meet people from other countries. This goes way back, I started penpalling when I was around 12 I think, when the internet wasn’t even around. I would exchange letters and small gifts with boys and girls from other countries and I remember feeling very excited every time a new letter arrived in the mail. In each letter, I could see a different perspective on life, I was fascinated by it. Then I went abroad a few times and not only did I experience some of these different perspectives, but I also ended up making friends who I stayed in touch with for several years afterwards. I wonder how many more people I would have been able to meet if the internet was around in my teen years and early twenties. Wow, that would have been great!

So, I was sitting here thinking about this and decided to write this post. And ask you: Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do? Why are you here? I’m really interested. So, if you’re reading this, please introduce yourself, either in the comments or send me an email if you care about being more detailed or would rather keep it more private. (mpatricia at gmail.com). I realize this could generate either zero replies or so many that I might have trouble writing back, anything can happen, but I think it’s worth a shot. Even if we have no interests in common whatsoever, I would still like to know who you are. Be creative, if you feel so inclined. Cite a quote that means something to you, share a point of view on any given subject, I don’t know, give me a little bit of your own perspective. Even just basic info will do, if you feel it will be nice to introduce yourself but don’t care to share further details. I’m sure there are plenty of cool interesting people reading this blog, so, I’d really like to know who you are. Go ahead, don’t be shy! Post a comment or send me an email, as you will. And who knows, I might even make some cool new friends.

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Database errors

Yes, I can see the database connection errors all over the blog and they are also inside my WordPress admin panel. Working on it. Thanks to those of you who pointed it out.

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Updates

Hi, folks, I’m back for some updates. Things are slowly falling back into place for me, and the big news is that I will be moving back to São Paulo next month, after 4 years living in a small quiet town. The move is due to professional reasons, I’m finally getting myself a real office and right now I’m working on the buniness model plan with a partner agency. As some of you know, I’m specializing in corporate blogging and this will be the main activity of my new business – as opposed to regular website development. This has been keeping my mind busy and away from personal issues that had taken over my life a couple of months ago. While I still have to deal with them, I’m still moving forward with my life and quite thrilled to see new horizons opening up for me professionally.

Thanks for those of you who took the time to write me with support words.

Thanks again for your patience waiting for the release of Connections 2.0. It’s still not on top of my priorities, but it’s getting closer, so don’t give up on me.

Last, but not least, I’m planning on updating this blog more frequently. Before the release of Connections, this used to be a more personal blog and now that most people come here and read my feeds to monitor for future releases, I became a little confused about the purpose of this blog. So I take personal posts to my blog in portuguese, but I’m thinking maybe I should post here more often too and not just about wordpress themes. Let’s see if I can do that without boring my audience.

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Change of plans

Hi, everyone! I just came here to say that Connections 2.0 will take a little longer than I antecipated. The reason is personal, I’m having to put many things aside at the moment until life gets back to its course – in fact it’s not even that, it’ll have an unexpected change in course that I’ll need to adapt to. So I hope you can all understand, I will work on Connections v2.0 as soon as I can, but it’ll take a little longer.