Just a quick thought, blogs and the whole personal touch are the way to go. I am new to your site, but have been checking it out a lot more lately. I personally find it is great to see interaction between business owners / site owners etc and their clients / visitors. in a day and age where there is loads of competition, making youir business personal provides a solid differentiator and I am sure will ensure, (at the least) some return visitors to your site. Im all for online transparency. thanks for the great advice, snippets and design stuff. keep it up.

Nugroho Adi Pratama’s last blog post..Maybank plans expansion on Indonesia

It’s interesting what you say about different niches. One can definitely draw more traffic than another, depending on the world-wide appeal, but don’t let it dishearten you. Millions of people are concerned with financial issues, and if you’re providing information of use, why shouldn’t they visit your blog?

Nugroho Adi Pratama’s last blog post..Maybank plans expansion on Indonesia

It is working for me, and I’m grateful.

I’d say this is proof enough that it is better to be transparent.

Ross’s last blog post..Design or Writing?

You make a good point, about me informing my readers of my holiday. You’re certainly right that the next time I’m away I’ll be tightening up on security, and at the end of the day, the attacker still had access to my account, whether I left or not. It was probably just a matter of time.

Thanks very much for your suggestions.

At the same time, we really can’t get too carried away. The fact is that there are people just waiting to prey on you, whether it be through identity theft, conning you out of your money, or stealing your domain name. So we can’t give away too much information about our personal lives, because sometimes too much information becomes a risk.

When it comes to business, being open really gives prospective clients a sense of who you are, and some form of a comfort level before even meeting you. So for example, someone may build trust in your skills as a graphic designer David, and opt to do business with you over geographic boundaries.

To this day, I don’t think that you telling us you were goingon vacation was a bad thing. You were showing your readers that you considered them enough to say hey, I won’t be around for a while, so if it seems I’m not blogging, here’s the reason why. The person who undermined your site’s security took advantage of the fact that you wouldn’t be around to sense that something was going wrong sooner. I’m sure the next time you jet off, you might encode some higher security measures, much like what you’d do for your house.

Another suggestion worth considering may be hiring someone you trust to manage your site for you while you’re away, if it is that you can’t get regular access to the Internet.

Karel - Caribbean Public Relations’s last blog post..Longer visits or more hits? Tips for increasing visitor stopovers

With the WP search feature, I found the results nowhere near as accurate as the Google search. I’d tried using the ’search everything’ plugin, but to no avail. I also like the functionality of the Ajax search form employed by Google.

Didik,

You think I’m being too honest? I’m not sure you can be too honest, but I guess you mean I reveal too much information. I try to put myself in the shoes of a prospective client, and it’s clear that they want to know how I work. Sure, a designer can look at my process and use it for inspiration, but I take that as a compliment. I’m interested to know which articles in particular you feel are too revealing.