Just thought you’d like to know, you’ve only got about 10 hours left to purchase the Thesis Theme for only $67. The pre-launch hoo-rah is over, and now it’s time to get serious about theme software.

I really can’t believe how awesome the possibilities are.

Because of the way they are misused all over the Web, categories have grown to become something that we regard in a purely user-centric light. We think of them as navigational tools and guides for users, but in reality, categories are a powerful tool that bloggers can use to exercise precise control over content in a dynamic environment.

Unfortunately, the true power of categorized content has been masked by the one size fits all implementation you see everywhere on the Web—the proverbial long, ugly list of category links now appearing on a blog near you.

As luck would have it, that awful category list also turns out to be a very poor presentational strategy for your site… But why? [Read more →]

Back in 2005, I purchased shared server space from a well-known hosting company. In an attempt to “save” money, I paid for two years up front, and $268 later, I had my first real home on the Web.

Two short months after that, I came to the harsh realization that my server package was completely inadequate for my needs.

Ouch. Ultimately, a few key details made the difference, and although I learned this stuff the hard (read: the expensive) way, the good news is that you can avoid these same mistakes. You simply need to know where the potential traps are, and that’s precisely what I want to share with you today.

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Without question, getting comments from interested readers is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of blogging. Unfortunately, interacting with people through comments is an asynchronous task, and this oftentimes makes it difficult to follow the ongoing conversation.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve seen designers and programmers attempt to solve this problem with things like threaded comments or even in-line AJAX commenting. Problem is, solutions like these tend to fall into one of two categories:

1. They are ugly as sin and a nightmare to style.
2. They are technical, complicated, and require you to install a plugin to get the result you want.

Man, oh man… If there’s one thing I hate more than ugly, it’s complicated.

Clearly, we need a comment management solution that is not only stylish, but also simple enough that anyone can execute it. [Read more →]