Make your new readers feel at home

welcome

When you’ve been publishing blog articles for a while, it can be very easy to forget that many visitors to your website are arriving for the first time. They may not be familiar with your site navigation and how to make the most of the time spent on your blog. That’s why it’s a good idea to offer signposts every now and again, to aid deeper navigation. Here I show how.

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13 of the best WordPress plugins

WordPress logo

The beauty of WordPress is the fantastic number plugins available to add a little extra to your blog. I’m often asked which ones I use, and how I achieve certain effects, so here are the 13 WordPress plugins currently installed on davidairey.com.

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Focus on reader comments

It’s no secret that you, the people who read my blog, are full of excellent ideas. The comments you leave add great value to my articles, and I’ve been told so on many occasions.
Therefore, I’m going to start highlighting comments along the way. Those that deserve extra attention. Here’s the first batch (more to follow […]

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Online business is all about transparency

People deal with people, which is why publishing a blog can do wonders for your business. Showing how you operate, and expressing your thoughts through a blog connects us in a way that static websites (those with no interactivity) simply can’t. Allowing people to comment on your articles invites conversation, and can give a great […]

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Should links open in a new window?

This is a web usability question that concerns you, the people who read my blog, and also those who author their own blogs / websites.
Cat, at Creative Latitude, and I have been wondering (as was Darren at Problogger some time back) about how we present our external hyperlinks to you. When you leave our sites […]

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How to deter thieves from stealing your images and server bandwidth

Nobody likes a thief, and we all want to stop them in their tracks.
Lately I’ve been finding more and more bloggers lifting images directly from my server and using them on their own blogs / websites. Not only is this stealing, but it’s also using up the bandwidth you’re paying your web host for.
The last […]

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Top 50 graphic design blogs

It’s not so easy finding quality graphic design authors. So to make things easier for you, here I present my top 50 graphic design blogs. I’ve categorised these blogs by their Google PageRank (PR), which is Google’s way of determining the authority of a website / blog.
*Don’t read too much into the PageRank, as all […]

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Scotland’s first Adage Power 150 blog

My humble blog is Scotland’s top entry into the Adage Power 150.
The Power 150 is a ranking of the world’s top English-language media and marketing blogs. The positions in the list are calculated using Google’s Page Rank, subscriber data from Bloglines, Technorati back-link info and a subjective total from Todd Andrlik (who created the original […]

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Graphic design prize draw winners

It’s finally arrived, the month of my one year blog birthday, and in celebration, I’ve given away some fantastic prizes, kindly donated by a host of excellent blog authors.
The winners listed below were drawn, using a random number generator, by Jamie (above right) of Terinea, an Edinburgh computer services company. Thanks for your help, Jamie.
Here […]

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Google search rank drop: advice needed

If you show advertising on your website / blog, or are thinking of doing so, this is something you need to know.
I’ve just removed what little advertising there was on my blog. The ads were shown below my category list, and included just four simple text link ads (two for print cartridge retailers and two […]

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