Tag Archives: riding my bicycle

Riding My Bicycle To The Bakery

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There’s a bakery close to my design studio that bakes the most delicious things and has some really, really good, coffee. I frequent “Goehrig’s Bakery” often, sometimes to pick up Joey’s amazing carrot muffins or almond cookies, and sometimes for things to share with friends. Goehrig’s Bakery is also one of my clients, having built their website, but I go, because everything is just so awesome.

almond-cookies-goehrigs

Almond Cookies,
photograph by Goehrig's Bakery

Recently, I was talking to Joey and said, “if I keep eating all that amazing stuff, I’m going to get fat! Maybe I should start walking and riding my bike more!” Joey answered, “Maybe you could ride your bicycle to the bakery.” Well, it sounds funny of course, but it made me think, how many of us do something good, so we can follow it with something bad?

We trick ourselves, don’t we? If I walk two miles, when I get back, I can eat a cookie or two; if I go to the gym and work out, I can have some wine with dinner or that dessert.

I know that many times, I walk down to Hoboken with a friend and we can walk around and around, and then go for coffee and a snack or have lunch out.

I suppose we balance it out everyday, the good and the bad. If we were good all the time we’d feel deprived. I know I would.

So, today since it’s starting to warm up, I’ve got my sneakers on, and will go for a 2-3 mile walk and on the way back, I will stop in at the bakery for a coffee and….

Knowing When Your Website Needs A Complete Redesign

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A few years ago, I started another website, so I’d have a vehicle for self-expression. Ideas that just come to me and a place to show them. I already had a portfolio website with a body of work, and as I complete projects, I add more and more to it, but this new site would be different.

This would be for logos, and t-shirt ideas, about conservation, being a “green” person and designer, and assorted other ideas. So I created the site, put the images up there, and waited. Well, 2 years later, it got minimal traffic and after much thought about why, I realized it wasn’t because the imagery wasn’t any good, it was because the site wasn’t content rich, and no one could find it.

This taught me a valuable lesson in not just naming pages or posts, which I’d already known about, since earlier this year, when I took a series of online webinars in SEO content and tagging, but how the pages need to be content rich, and have the right keywords or tags, and categories. The web is a big filing system and it not only files your content by the title of the page, and the tags it has, but the date it was published. So, when your searching for something, it’s going to show you the most current as well as closest match to your query. This is why blogs are usually more effective than regular websites. Most websites are built, but rarely maintained, and just sit there, getting older and more out of date, unless you’re an artist, of course, and updating your work often.

So, I dumped the old site, created a new custom designed, (of course) WordPress blog in it’s place, and started posting articles, galleries, and made sure everything was linked and tagged. I’ve posted almost 50 times already and have all sorts of galleries from gardens I visit while riding my bicycle, to going to the Yankee Parade in NYC.

I’m also quite good at publicity, so I’ve been pushing the blog’s address, articles and galleries through social media.

Well, I’m now going to report that the new blog, has surpassed what I imagined and now gets comments, has followers, and the traffic has improved by 1,000% or more.

When you put information out there that someone might find useful, it’ll always draw more more traffic than just showing off work. If they find the resource interesting, it may send them to your portfolio site as well. So, when you want to start a new website, consider carefully what the usage is, who’s coming to it and why, and maybe it should be a blog.