Social media, online marketing hints, tips and advice – Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal (Winnipeg)

Long ago I became aware of a blog called dooce®.

The blog is written by an American gal called Heather Armstrong. In fact a year or so ago I commissioned an interview with Heather as part of my job as a website manager and online content producer for the National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI).

Heather is often referred to as a mommy-blogger (Heather and Britt Reints – who I’ve interviewed for this blog have a lot in common).

dooce® is largely about Heather’s life and family. She makes her living running dooce®. Her husband does the business and she does the writing.

She’s a no-holds-barred kind of writer. She’s also HILARIOUS.

All this to say that I was in the library earlier this week (I read books at pretty much the same speed as I read blogs: fast and often.) I was there to replenish my reading supply (I read 4 books last week and was having withdrawl symptoms).

I don’t read Heather’s blog often enough to know that she had published a book.

So there I am in the library perusing the ‘New and noted’ section when I come across a name I recognise. Turns out Heather has written a book.

If you’re in the market for reading a book that makes you laugh aloud on the bus and get funny looks from other passengers, this is the book for you.

It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita is the story of one mother (Heather) struggling with her new role.

I’ve never had it in me to be a mother. I have my dog and two stinky nine-year twins who are effectively my step children.

There is no desire in me to procreate.

Reading this book merely confirmed for me that having children is not one of my life roles.

I feel about my dog the way Heather feels about her baby (the good and nice bits).

I highly recommend this book regardless of how you feel about motherhood. Heather is a funny writer and has the ability to turn the most mundane situations into a comedy.

Honestly.

You have no idea how stupidly excited I am about this.

When I moved to WordPress at the beginning of 2009 I couldn’t believe my luck when I found the Paper Trails WordPress theme by Roy Tank.

I used it on my blog until tonight.

It was a delicious, simple and slightly quirky theme.

It even had a cute wobbly title that moved if you put your mouse over it.

I was in love.

Sadly Roy stopped updating the theme earlier this year so I knew I was running on borrowed time.

I regularly received praise about the Paper Trails design (which I can in NO WAY take credit for). My website visitors were in awe of this lovely theme.

I was in awe of the theme.

But the theme was a little unusual. During a blog challenge earlier this year some folks complained to me that they couldn’t view my website because the post titles were rendered in Flash (but they looked beautiful if you were sensible enough to be using the latest version of Flash).

What this all boils down to is the fact that I KNEW I would have to update my WordPress theme.

And then a miracle happened.

Today I was introduced to a theme that couldn’t have been closer to Paper Trails if it tried.

But it came without the issues.

It was created by Woo Themes.

And IT’S FREE!

I have been helping out a number of online pals with their blog designs over the past ten months or so and have scoured the internet LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE in search of new and wonderful WordPress templates.

Often I would come across a design that made my heart beat fast because it looked like the kind of thing Diary of Web Gal 2 point oh would obviously use.

Usually it cost dollars that I couldn’t justify.

So, please if you can, imagine my joy when I ACCIDENTALLY found a theme for myself today.

After some hurried and impromptu design work to create a logo, I can now reveal my redesign.

Ta da!

Apologies to those of you who read this link via my Twitter stream. This seemed like such a great article with so much food for thought I had to post it here too.

Noupe – a website I regularly read – posted an article about how the web might look five years from now.

The Future of the Web: Where Will We Be in Five Years? is an insightful look at emerging trends and some that are already sticking.

Some highlights include:

• There are a few unsurprising predictions such as the growing influence and use of social media (a term, some of you will know, I think is silly). What this means is social interaction on the internet will be an even bigger feature of the web spaces we visit.

• Our never-ending fight against spam and fraudulent internet behaviour may well increase but I don’t think we’ll ever really be totally safe from this stuff.

• As a chick who spends a large (some might say, excessive) amount of time online I heartily look forward to better and more online film and TV content.

• And Microsoft’s world domination of our PCs may be over sooner than you think. With Google set to launch a Chrome operating system we’re looking at a virtual online office as our operating systems move online.

This is all very exciting stuff. But as Noupe points out, predictions fly around the internet at the speed of tweets so there’s no telling what the future really holds.