I can't stress how important it is to have confidence in yourself. Leverage your skills – for they are many, and manifest in legion different ways.

Think personal: your friends. Your friends, how they love you. You probably help them with their relationships, take them to pubs and root out the big issues of the day and nail them to the hypothetical cross. You give them freely of your time. You make yourself available any time of the day, whenever they need you.

Think business: Bet you're there when it comes to bringing ideas to the meeting, right? You think laterally – if someone's suggesting we launch x product, you're asking them why they hadn't considered the customer's needs before their own. You go back to basics, when everyone else is absurdly obsessed with scratching around for the next big thing. Your boss worships you, admittedly in silence, for the way you drive your team forward in motivation and ethical values.

You're one of the most important people on earth. Why wouldn't you succeed at everything you do? You have the fuel of inspiration and creativity inside you. So go and pour fuel over everyone you meet. Metaphorically.

Get out there, right now, and grow your niche. Start with community. Because community is everything, all we have and you're their inspiration.

Here's how to be niche:

Give everything. I have to disagree with those who say you can overshare. You can't. I've been of Buddhist tendencies too long to dismiss the idea that you are what everyone else is. We're all in this for the race. I own nothing. You own nothing. So if you don't own your ideas, why keep them to yourself?

Excite YOURSELF. Here's your drill for the next week (unless you do it already, in which case, you're even more remarkable than you think you are. Go straight to the top of the class.): Rise at 6.45am. Walk for an hour. Home, shower/breakfast (what's your schedule? If time's tight, do both, only shower in asses milk and eat cornflakes) and on your way to work, figure out how you want to change the world.

Change the world. You can. Remember Einstein? He didn't have a fraction of the awe you do. He was a hell of a self publicist. Why aren't YOU working on your brand? Think about your core message. What is it you stand for? Are you a Jesus fan? Do you love pies? Are you authoritative on cream and food preparation? Everyone has something they'd die for. What's yours? Now, live for it.

Love your posse. Compliment them (thanks, Dave). Focus on their every whim. Excite their minds. Delight their senses. Care. Care. Care. Look at Leo Laporte – feel his warmth. Every guest on his The Tech Guy show gets his unmitigated attention. He's an instant friend. He's the uncle. He's The Man. Damn, I've never even called him up but every piece of advice about 'anything with a chip in it' feels like I should go the hell out and go buy the kit under discussion so I can feel the pain points and remedy them. Do your folks empathise with you? Do you empathise with them?

Understand how you can take what you have now, and make it into something phenomenal. Don't work on the minutiae – work on you. Feel like you need something to take you to the next level? Go grab it by the scruff. Once you have it in your hands, or in your mind, you can give of yourself unconditionally, and your folks will love and feed on every last scrap of your everything. Feel whole? Reach for the stars. Optimise everything you do with everything that's out there. The universe is a pretty big place but it's a fraction of what you can give. So make it yours. Reach out and seize the day, every day. Eventually it'll all make sense. Until then, tell them what you know. In any way you can. That's niche marketing.

Be gratis. that ebook you've been labouring over for so long you can't remember the last time you weren't working on it. give it for free. Why sell everything? Leave that to the supermarkets. When was the last time a supermarket enjoyed the warmth and compassion of a friend? When was the last time Home Depot was valued by one of its customers? If you can build relationships through the power of what you know, through the words that Miss QWERTY dances for you, you've attained master of niche status. Be proud and keep styling your craft.

Build that tribe. Christopher S Penn is one of the best proponents of this genre. Every day he slaves over a post with meaning. Every day he grows his disciples – in number and in strength. The critical mass here is unique information. You have this information oozing out your pores. The key is how to channel it. Focus on your people. What do they know? What do they need to know?

Mean it. Whatever you write isn't just laced with intent – it's practically smothered with it. When you love what you do, you don't work, you just serve your purpose. There are thousands, millions of people out there fulfilling their life's goal. Don't believe the BS that work is a responsibility of life. That's for people who don't dream. When you dream, and you commit to that dream every waking minute of your day, you live it. And the rewards will follow. So be true to yourself, be true to your constituents. Every word has to carry honesty and integrity. Are you on that wavelength?

Research what they want. C'mon how hard can it be to go out there and influence and research stuff that people on your subscriber list want to know about. It's not the science of rockets, it's simply the fact of life. People love to learn. Can you teach?

Emasculate. Stop being so alpha male. There is, I swear, no subject in the world that belongs to a sex. Guys love getting ready to go out. Women love gadgets, especially pink ones that shake like an epileptic. And don't forget the lure of the feminists. Research I just conducted from the pit of my mind suggests that suffragettes are once again in a resurgent phase. You cannot at any point in the evolution of your niche disenfranchise yourself from asexuality. Be atypical. Be available to anyone, come midget, come woman, come man.

Community, you remember? It's everything we got. Now be there for them.

What are your tips for understanding how to find your niche, and make it work for you?

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Only the other day I was in conversation with Spence Wilson, son of Kemmons – the guy who created Holiday Inn. We talked at length about the importance of providing your clients with service beyond expectations, and the providence of planning. He'd correctly predicted the changing face of the consumer and fine-tuned his product while others in the hospitality industry sat still. Like father, like son.

Today I enjoyed an hour with Rosanne Zusman, officially one of the greatest minds in sales and marketing. She's a brand girl, and we chatted through how any company – small or big – can propel themselves to the top of their field by staying loyal to their values, creating a personality that resonates from bottom to C-suite, and finding that special something that sets them apart from the rest of the pack.

JetBlue, Nordstrom, Microtel and Zappos are famous names that each stay firm on their principles and have defined an almost humanistic deviation from standard corporate practice. Have your customers empathise with you and you're on the way to cracking the greatest mystery of marketing: the path to converting clients to brand evangelists. As Rosanne explained: "Customer revies are the new advertising".

What the hell does this mean to you? Well think back to the paragraph before last. That 'special something setting you apart from the pack'.

Ever heard of 'niche'?

Nice is nice because it's the only way to amplify your message and personal brand above the forests of blogs and businesses too idle to find an element of uniqueness.

In the first of a three-part series in a regular series called Weekend Workshop, we try to answer this question: Why go niche?

1. Let's look at that personality thing in depth. The only blogs worth reading are those that gel with your emotions. You have to get it. The pixels popping with syllables have to resonate and provoke you – good or bad. Simply, if you don't know what you're talking about, your personality is as dead as a crumpet. So revive yourself and your readers by jabbering about what you do best.

2. Niche is all about the detail. And detail matters more than you know, if traffic is your game. If you're confident about your subject, you can go to town with the content. The content that people will flock to. If you can inspire people to take action, then you're in super-niche territory, and that's for another day. But put simply, create descriptive content with authority and you'll take your blog into overdrive.

3. It's like nothing you've ever seen before. The crux of the niche blog is its exclusivity. When you drop in on a blog authored by an expert in the scene, you instantly fall in line with their core beliefs, values – and desires. You can lead a tribe with a niche blog. You can change the world with a niche blog.

4. It's not a blog without niche. So there it is, on the line – I truly opine that unless you're writing about a specialist topic, yours is just a personal journal. A manifesto for life is always interesting: to a point. But face it – unless your name is Netenyahu are you really going to gather a crowd round your makeshift podium? Forget it. Forget any reason you got into this gig unless it involves doing it for ego or an archive that your kids can look at and laugh. Oh, and even if that's your motive, you're probably out of luck because you're bound to forget about renewing that domain name and before too long the screen burn from those words you've been staring at will have faded away.

5. Selling is buying in niche. Folks hate to be sold to, but they love to buy, right? I just bought my first ever eBook from IttyBiz because I felt like This Was It when it came to a fulcrum of all the essential elements that I myself hold dear about blogging and marketing. If you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that your ingredients are sugar and spice rather than filthy smoke and rancid cheese, that you blog with integrity, openness and honesty, then you got me suckered. And the only way you can achieve all these things is with the passion that comes with operating out of your skin, in a sphere of knowledge that resembles a niche.

6. Time, gentlemen, please. A niche is a staggering way to waste your time. Until you reach Breakthrough. When you combine a niche with Breakthrough – let's call that the moment your RSS subscriber tally reaches 100 – you're unstoppable. All the anguish, recalcitrance and cerebral pausing that defined the first phase of your growth, fades away and you become something approximating a brand. Strong, robust, firm. Like a big cock. And with folks hanging off your wisdom.

7. Think of yourself. If you're going to be something special, it takes . And since you know yourself better than most people – except those voices caterwauling in your head in the middle of the night about Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia.

8. Learn, baby, learn. Self-development. Greater level of awareness. Developing a network of fellow thinkers and movers who in return for your bright ideas will share with you theirs. Now do you see why everyone benefits when you focus on what you love?

9. Being inspirational works. I'm not about to play the betting game and say Bill Gates wouldn't be able to speak lucidly about knitting for a half-hour but, y'know, I think it's kinda unlikely. Or maybe he pearled one too many while he was waiting for the computer room to vacate so he could get to grips with his coding. Either way, I'm sure he'd prefer to ramble on about his charitable Foundation or the glory days for Microsoft. And you can definitely bet he'd draw a sizeable audience if he ever started blogging about them. Inspirational sells: take a look at the clothes and cars Anthony Robbins moves around in if you haven't yet discovered the value of motivating people. If you're talking your language, you're serving up an intriguing concoction of relevance to others who follow your field of interest. Go make it worthwhile.

10. Find new opportunities. If you can be genuinely original, insightful and generous with everything you do online, you're but destined to yield what you sow. Fantastic repercussions, offers of partnerships, formidable testimonials and powerful gratitude that will take you places you never even dreamed of.

Now are you interested in niche? Stay tuned, because tomorrow we'll talk about how to find yours…

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I've been spending a fair whack of time cruising my favourite marketing-related show-o-pages and come to the conclusion that there's too much interference out there. Too much static.

I'm talking specifically about the cumbersome motherload of eBooks and courses that show you how to do stuff.

I wonder if there's a way we could introduce some sort of barter system to exchange skills for skills? So a plumber who wants a nice hog for his mother's birthday roast (they're not interchangeable) could go to the butcher and fix up his refrigeration system which has been keeping the hogs slightly warmer than they should be.

You get the picture. In this case John Plumber may have chosen to buy himself a hog at the Pig Discount Store, but the methodology is sound.

At my old place of work we pitched a Points version of a standard exchange system. The thinking being the extra flexibility would tantalise the excitable minds of holidaymakers.

And it did.

Points simply represent a currency. If you have 100 points you can spend 20 at a time, thus spreading out your ownership. Take that in context of the skills exchange and we see that if you teach Bob's kid how to play guitar four times, you have enough 'currency' to get Jakob to pop round and show you how to completely transform your website usability.

Anyone who knows me realises I have a giant gob and a passion for bargains. And this is the very thick end of the bargain spectrum: instead of paying for an endless and mostly futile stream of eCourses you get proper mentoring and it's entirely ethical because you're Giving Back.

Where was I? Oh yeah, those 10 incredibly inspiring free ways to change your life:

1. Focus on someone else. It's the zenith of every personal achievement since time began. Everything that's ever been admired has always been done with a third party in mind. From Jesus to that blue kid in Avatar. Doing stuff for others is great for them, but the sense of fulfilment you get is magnified nineteen-fold when you giving of time or mind for the benefit of someone else.

It works in every environment. In business, it makes you a worshipped brand. There's some serious shit in this karma ideology, you know. Whether or not it's founded in religion I guarantee – that's no risk – that when you go out of your way to commit something to someone, you'll climb a couple of notches on the life ladder and become someone's hero. Word of mouth, you hear? You'll get it back.

2. Take yourself to market. Even if you don't actually do it, practice selling yourself (and I don't recommend doing so bodily in any case – too many risks, like crossing a road in the dark). Update your CV, and don't forget that these days, your CV is in the digital tracks you leave. Still want to have a pop at Mariah Carey's arse being the size of two planets?

3. Ask for help. Every single time – that's every, single, time – I've asked for advice, I've realised how much I've learned as a result. It's easier to do it now, because Googling means you can act stupid and save face. But take that a step further, and ask stupid to a real, live person. Because it isn't stupid. It's just learning. And we all need to learn to survive and thrive.

4. Just do it. Your mind says no, your heart says yes. Just frickin go and do it. Seven-eighths of my life have been spent turning down offers. The balance saw me regretting not cashing in on opportunity. Lethargy is a cancer that attacks us all.

5. Show your strength. Strength is best manifested through our weaknesses. It's only at moments of pain that we truly acknowledge our emotional and physical resolve.

6. Step out of the comfort zone and take a chance. I WILL jump out of a plane this year. It scares the hellfire out of me but I know the only way I'm going to grow is to do things that I'd ape if I were living as 2008 Dave. Time moves on. We have to move with it, and give ourselves the chance to be what we should be (even if we don't know it). I also need to do more karaoke so the world truly understands my inner clown.

7. Bond. It sometimes takes the might of a world-class spy to achieve poster child status in the eyes of your family. Or so it seems. But when was the last time you spent some proper time with your sister, brother, cousin Jack or uncle Billy? Only he's not your 'real' uncle, is he? A fictional title bestowed by your dad after he lent him his axe for that tree overlooking your garden. And how was he to know there was a cat in it?

8. Jam. Old petrol can? Tree? Can tie that loose bark to the can and with a few elastic bands (how the hell do those red ones from the postie wriggle free from parcels with such regularity as to adorn my street with the apparent detritus of a mouse hula hoop championship) and you got yourself a guitar. Make some music with some pals, or if you have a Wii/PS3/Xbox 360 to hand, rig up Rock Band and caterwaul your way through some classic choons.

9. Cook. Rustle up some chow and you have friends for life. Shop local and you're thumbing your nose at the titans of trade. Slay your own lamb and, well, Ray Mears or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall will come round and feed it to your kids. Raw.

10. Take a week off the web. You've fought tigers, ridden angry bulls, jumped off bridges wearing only a meagre strip of cord and climbed Everest. But try as you will, you just can't shake your internet addiction. Believe me, I'm with you (apart from all the other stuff preceeding the web revelation). I'm in a bit of an internet-free stranglehold grip here, admittedly, since someone seems to have stepped on the wires and cut o2's network off. Which is ironic, since I'm using a wireless broadband connection. Yet…

While it feels strangely neanderthal to be cut off from the internet revolution, I've been behaving like one of those people from the Victorian age. Not exactly dressed as a flapper, I've been demonstrating peculiar tendencies such as talking to people, reading – gasp – books bearing paper, and using my legs to do something other than push me away from my desk towards the mini bar.

And you know what? It's strangely empowering! You should try it. Who knows, one day someone might cut your internet connection and you'll be liberated from the shackles of PC hell!

So come on, own up – what do you to motivate yourself and lead your own soul?

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Posted via email from 10 for 10

if there's one thing we all need on a Sunday night it's a bloody big dose of inspiration.

I've always been a huge fan of the greats in motivation: no surprises for anyone remotely connected to a successful businesses that the likes of Napoleon Hill, Richard Branson and Dale Carnegie crop up with almost monotonous regularity in the list when I'm asked who gets me buzzing.from.

Sometimes, though, it's all a bit of a challenge to find new inspiration. New ways of thinking.

All of these things talk to me in a language I both admire and understand. Being a communicator with a high level involvement in technological gubbins it can sometimes be tough to impress me but I only need to be in the company of these things or sites for a short time and I realise how incredible the world is – and how lucky I am to be in it.

NorthxEast and its blog series on Building a SuperBlog. I've been a big fan of FreelanceSwitch since I started pretending to work for myself. The 'Switch spawned Freelance Radio, the first podcast I ever listened to on a meaningful level. NorthxEast developed the 'Switch site, on WordPress foundations, and delivered something incredible for the freelancer looking for help and advice. Which, in short, is all of us. The SuperBlog series – which is only two-posts wide so for heaven's sake, go read it and turbocharge your site – is one of a range of idea-spawning creations by NxE.

Matt Mullenweg's 10 favourite blogs. Back in November CNN asked our Lord to opine on his most inspirational sites. Some are as you would expect – Dave Winer's Scripting News, featuring essays on technology (among his latest missives, a drive to encourage us all to cement ways to archive all the content we create – otherwise it will all be lost, forever. Fact is, most of the writing we're doing now, no matter what tools we use, will disappear, probably a lot sooner than you think, he says) is chief among them – but you wouldn't have imagined xkcd, a surreal webcomic with no obvious objective, was his thing. Shows that code aside, Matt's as eclectic as a fish with three gobs.

GazoPa. If you're trying to connect the dots for a mood board or simply looking for themes or colour palettes that synergise with one of your thoughts in the real world, get an image that says it all for you and upload it to GazoPa. Wonderful things will happen, and GazoPa will come up with a bunch of pictures that speak to you in a way words cannot. They'll solve your problems and bring the sunshine out to play all day. Google Image Search is also out there but I like GazoPa for being the first and the best.
Cleavage

True/Slant. A very loose definition of the raison d'etre of this site is: Insights on today’s news from people who know. And my God, do these people know. Some of the world's best journalists get under the skin of their subjects, and share with you their views and hard-won ideologies. Then T/S goes and shows you what these guys and gals are reading next, so you can keep your finger on the pulse of the world through their eyes. It's almost an experiment, but a litmus test of humanity, its wars and winning ways. Love.

Marketing over Coffee's 'conference in a box'. John Wall and Christopher Penn have that exquisite ability – near-talismanic – to predict what you need and output a solution during their weekly MoC podcasts, recorded in a Massachussettts coffee shop at an insanely early hour. God knows how. So when I found out they'd created a conference of some of the world's biggest names – and attendance was free – I was there like a shot. It gets way better than this, though: transport costs are also free, because this is a conference that takes place on your PC, whenever you get time to tune out of the daily grind and settle down for a day's worth of intriguing presentations. This unconference defines the potency of the internet – and shows how much rich, free content there is waiting to be harvested whenever you need some mind biscuits.

Spezify. Got something on your mind but can't be arsed researching it further? Don't junk it – thrust it into Spezify and quickly discover what people are saying about your chosen subject. It's endearing, it's addictive, and it crawls all over the web on your behalf. It's free, it's inspirational and it might just about do your job for you if the boss wants some benchmarking done on the cheap, quickly. Being a fan of cartoons and baboons I wanted to find out all about the Jungle Book. So I did.

Leo Laporte and Tech TV. Leo's made the internet and podcasting hip by throwing fortunes of time and currency at futurising people's ears and eyes. His netcasts command regular viewing and listening figures in the hundreds of thousands – magnetising geeks in particular with his unique brand of gadget and tech talk. His The Tech Guy radio show (on satellite airwaves, if you will) is his main earner and TWiT (This Week in Tech) his sandbox poster child. Having said that, TWiT and its derivatives – that span Google netcasts, operating system presentations and even foodie shows – grossed $2m in 2009. With a staff of 9 and new stuff being unveiled all the time, including more and more hi-def telly versions of his shows, Leo is en route for greater and greater things. Even if, frankly, his CES stuff was junk this year and he should think seriously about taking another five years off the show to repair the damage on my listening orbs.

Inspired Magazine. How could a rag with this title not make it into the Ten? I have to say they don't disappoint, the kids who rail and nail it. One of my all-time faves from this magazine – which sports a particularly natty and easy to navigate design – is Type Porn. There's something seductive and ultimately intoxicating about jazzing around oodles of delicious fonts. It makes my heart race, my skin redden. And then something pops up – an idea, out of nowhere, that sends shivers down my spine and keys clattering afront my screen. An abject moment of creativity, one step away from Helvetica. Which is my all-time favourite font and will never be beaten, I'm afraid. But there are some amazing pretenders here, nonetheless.

Justin Tadlock. If there's anyone who epitomises 'community' and the beauty of WordPress, Justin hits the nail every time. He gives, gives, gives. The creator of the Hybrid WordPress Theme Framework (the future of WordPress sites, as if you didn't know already) and just about the best plugins available for the platform, Justin is Jesus. At least, he is if you're infatuated with blogs and how to serve them up in the best and most flexible way we can. You da man, Mr T.

Seth's Blog. Love his straightforward, talksy style that educates and inspires you all at the same time. You don't have to like competition in order to understand that it exists. Your fair share isn't going to be yours unless you give the public a reason to pick you. Hell, he must be a diamond marketeer, otherwise why would I ha
ve
bought a book called Purple Cow?

And if you don't find at least one thing above to stimulate your withered brain cells, check out Mashable's 10 Sites to Learn Something in 10 Minutes.

What are your main inspirations out there on the world of the web?

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2. if (is_category('1008')) {

    $postCount = 0;
    $imageQuantity = 8;

}

else {
    $postCount = 0;
    $imageQuantity = 3;

}

I say that because that's my very first from-scratch coding endeavour since I modified a program listing from Crash! magazine back in 1983.

WOO!

3. Child themes are rock! The clever folk at op111.net have done a good 'un with a pictorial guide to child themes.

4. I'm just absolutely shocked to the core by how simple it is to write conditional tags. I urge everyone to go out and do it. On Monday. Meantime it's THE WEEKEND!

Enjoy, everyone. My other six for the day were publicised earlier when I announced the first sight of WordPress 3.0 – twice.

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PHP and CSS can do that to better men than I. If they were foes in a Dungeons and Dragons book it wouldn't matter which page you turned to, your hero with the flaky armour would be battered and extinguished before you'd even discovered your fate. Combined, they have the capacity to bring armies down.

But despite having indulged in the wrong side of sanity I felt like I was approaching some sort of breakthrough. Hell, I'd even partly understood The Loop at about 8pm last night – and that was during the first half of Whistle Down The Wind, which was altogether unconnected to computers.

I think it was because a friend had enlisted the help of her scant memory ability to declare it was set in Burnley. An Andrew Lloyd Webber 'classic', Whistle Down The Wind features the Boyzone classic 'No Matter What'.

As the curtains rose it became absurdly clear the presentation was set in redneck country. While Burnley fits that criteria in an English environment, it was the lofty wood-built windmills and the 'yee-hah' of the priest that suggested this production was set in an altogether different town. Specifically, somewhere near Alabama, or Arkansas.

Distracted from code I was given the opportunity to review my gains. And despite my naivety in a coding context, or anything else for that matter, I realised I'd come a long way, baby.

So today was a lovely way to live. My client had enumerated an ability to count past 20 (I knew this only because the amount of amends had exceeded a score) and I was on the cusp of despatching my comfort zone altogether (Me Manifesto – tick).

What did I do today?

1. Changed the navbar to show pages in a funny order.

The WP Codex is a wonderful place to hang out if you enjoy massaging numbers, letters and special characters. There's such an array of fascinating strings waiting to be pumped.

As it happened, you simply:

• Change the order of the pages in the Pages > Edit section, starting from 1, to 2 and so on.
• Grab the following code: wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order')

There's lots more about concocting the way you present lists of posts and pages in your WordPress site at http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages#List_Pages_by_Page_Order.

2. Changing the order of categories in a list

This proved to be more challenging than simply changing the order in the backend. This involved – eeoooooaaaaaaahhhhh – some mySQL amends.

Face the vortex, DT, face the vortex…

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/253951?replies=7

Awkwardly I needed to exclude one of the categories from the vertical navigation. Love a challenge…

So once I'd messed about with the database, hecked up one of the categories and then discovered it made no difference to the order, despite a logical intervention, I relented to the threat of sanity. And bagged a plugin – Order Category (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/order-categories/ ). I felt a little undersold that the code for the Categories sidebar widget provided by the WP team themselves offered no 'order by ID' control or similar flexibility.

3. Styled the MailChimp plugin widget. Now I'm moving on to the newsletter subscription panel. The widget they offer is frankly pants – and if these pants were for sale they'd be Primark rejects. Man oh man, who in their right mind wants a cyan box on their site? Seriously! It's the worst-designed panel I ever saw. Especially when my eyes were spoilt just a few days ago when they courted the subscription panel used by the boys at solostream on their WP-Genius and WP-Sublime WordPress themes. MailChimp: if you want to keep up with the aWebers and Campaign Monitors of this world, you'd definitely be best advised to keep an eye on the design chops of your competition. They absolutely cane you, every time. Even if you do have a way fancy website. And what's with the video section? There's nothing there!

4. Making the navbar arrow turn around. Here's a funny one. So I couldn't figure out how to make the little arrow on the drop-down navbar turn to the right when I got into grandchildren (2-deep hierarchy) territory. And then the wonderful Darren Hoyt hit the nail on the head. Create a rotated arrow and go with the li li css!

Here's the code with a class element for the arrow itself:

li li .sf-sub-indicator {
background: transparent url(images/arrow-right.gif) no-repeat;
}

Smart arse, he is. A lovable one nonetheless. Arrow is now summarily called into action like a dagger about to puncture its grandchild. Oedipal? Only with chips.

5. Embedding magazines from Scribd. I've been skirting round this issue for some days since I was anticipating a conflict between the new oEmbed rules brought in with WordPress 2.9.
Well blow me down with a leaf spreader. As of now you can simply add in the URL from the 'Share' button above the document you wish to embed in Scribd. Until now it's been a case of 'throw another plugin on the WordPress barbie.' Well, no more. From now on this baby's built in and my readers can breathe a sigh of relief, and save a millisecond of their time while eagerly anticipating a digital version of the latest magazine. Er, w00t!

6. Custom Admin Branding plugin. Loving the flexibility this plugin brings (and it's my theory once you attain 'I got 50 plugins!!!!!!!111111111111' status another one ain't gonna hump the turkey. A beautiful interface a delighted client makes. So it's going in the mix. And it'll look purdy.

7. Redirection plugin – any sections from old site re-routed. We have an old site on the existing domain and sections won't tally with the new version. Now, unfortunately navigability and usability weren't strong points of the predecessor (although it had a neat line in 404s, which is just as well, since they were served up more often than fresh content) so we need to keep a close eye on those areas people may have bookmarked (ha!) or those that Google may have allocated a Page Rank of, say, 6 to. Which wouldn't have belonged to us, in any case.

8. Headspace2 or All In One SEO? I've not seen a definitive 'Spy Vs Spy' on these two brawling brothers since AIO SEO went to the dark side with a premium Pro version for bucks. My money's on Headspace2 at the moment due to the experiences of people close to me. One of the things I love about Atahualpa is it integrates strong SEO options right out the box. No such luck with our dear friend Mimbo Pro.

9. Massive colour revolution. Just waiting for buy-in from Mr and Mrs Spends. But it's my theory that we go with a palette comprising black, greys and greens – tallied with the colour of the company logo, which is kind of a blood red. Blood, mixed with soy sauce. A ninja colour, something I imagine the Triads would get their teeth stuck into. At times, literally.

10. Google News. My numero one crusade for this site on launch is to have it recognised by Google News and added to its list. This is important for any magazine-type site carrying authoritative content produced by in excess of one author. I'll update and document my plight as I progress towards the holy grail. Do you think it's important to be on the Google News roster if you're dispensing sage information that has a newsy element to it?

Well frankly this is all a bit of a poor show compared to the mighty awe meted out by D
av
e Doolin on his latest WordPress in a Weekend post. That guy inspires, like a Wrigleys chewing gum satisfies.

Top drawer all the time.

What are you working on for your blog these days? Share all.

Finally, five great WordPress related resources:

10 Ways To Improve Your WordPress Site – WPShout.com is a constant inspiration and touts some of the finest hints of a WordPress persuasion around.
Find Creative Commons images for your blog – the kids at WordCast are simply sublime. Regular podcasts add an extra dimension to this fascinating subject.
30 WordPress Hacks in 30 Days – once you've graduated from Dave's WordPress in a Weekend course, get your spurs with this month-long revolution in WP props.
110+ WordPress video tutorials – says it on the tin. Expand your mind and your hard drive with this compendium of WordPress challenges.
Pro Blog Design – just like the Digging into WordPress site, this is packed with tips applicable to the very latest developments in WordPress. Excellent A+++!!!!

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