What makes me hit Subscribe

I’ve just finished my learning proposal; it’s hosted on my blog but I coded the whole page in XHTML as per the assignment guidelines. I just couldn’t resist using the same styling as my blog layout. /um Weakness: A bit of a perfectionist!

I suppose you’re wondering why I’m up at 2:00am and it seems like I’ve just finished this. Well, I finished most of it ages ago but I only bothered to upload it now. I suppose some of you in my class have at least twelve hours to go. Not for me, I have work in the morning. Time to get up early and eat the cereal I bought earlier tonight. You know eating dry cereal is pretty amazing? It makes for a good dinner if you have nothing else to eat, but don’t tell anyone else that. ;)

I should be sleeping now, but truth be told, I got distracted by a few internet-related things. In light of the WordPress plugin I’m looking to create, I just thought of another example. Tumblr. I don’t know how many of you are using Tumblr for your blogs, or have ever used it, but I like Tumblr’s user interface, for the most part. I guess the reason I brought Tumblr up is because its image uploader is really simple and I’m looking to create something similar. I like that you can add tags and it remembers what tags you’ve used before. I suppose tags aren’t really necessary for images in WordPress, but it would be a nice feature to add.

For those who are regular readers to my blog, you might already know some of my favourite plugins but I’d like to suggest a couple to those in my class. Preview Theme by Dougall Campbell is a great one if you’re designing and developing your own themes. You don’t need to change the theme on your blog but you can preview your layout in different installed themes with a preview URL. In case any of you are wanting to make your own WordPress theme, that’s a handy one.

Tweetable by Matt Harzewski is something I like for the fact that it tweets my posts as soon as I post them. You can also tweet from WordPress, but most people have their own favourite clients anyway. Many other plugins and services tweet posts, but this is the only one I know that does it immediately.

Acronyms by Joel Pan and WPTouch by BraveNewCode Inc are another two plugins you might find useful. The majority of my other loved plugins are more advanced.

I thought I’d share a few of the design newsletters I sign up to. The first is MightyDeals. I haven’t bought anything from them but they have lots of free downloads from time to time, so it’s worth signing up. If you’re serious about design and UI or you wouldn’t mind paying for some high quality graphics, I recommend seeing what they’ve got. I also sign up to Web Designer Depot. Every week or so you’ll receive an email with some links to some very good articles about web and graphic design. Their blog is also full of tutorials and helpful tips.

One of my personal favourites is Vandelay Design. There are lots of free downloads on their website and their newsletter arrives with some goodies as well. You’ll find that they have some inspirational sites in their newsletters that you can browse and be inspired by. Speaking of inspiration, some of you might find such beauty in CSS that you’ll be amazed by websites like CSS Heaven, Best CSS Gallery, CSS Leak and CSS Bake – all which showcase gorgeous web designs.

Lastly, before I get my precious sleep and dream of Weet-Bix, I want to share my all time favourite newsletter – the MyFonts Newsletter. It is one of the only newsletters/emails I look forward to getting each week, particularly over my YouTube subscription updates (which scream “Watch me! Watch me!” but I just don’t have the time). You will find so many great fonts and descriptions about them. If you’re a lover of typography like I am, this is just for you. Additionally, if you’re in love with custom fonts – a suggestion I gave to another classmate was to visit Font Squirrel or Google Webfonts to use custom fonts on your webpages. :)

Anyway, time to dream of electric sheep. Classmates, let me know if you found this post helpful. ♥️

Comments on this post

I’m glad I finished working on my project for the night before I landed on your blog – now I have things to keep me busy tonight…or at least things to look at tonight. I don’t really sign up for newsletters because I just never read them. The only one I read really is about upcoming concerts – ha ha! I can’t look at any font related website, I have a problem I admit it and seeing over 300 fonts on my computer proves it.

Hey…weren’t you kinda sorta maybe against the use of Tumblr for blogs? I see you have had a change of heart…! ^__^

I don’t exactly really ~love~ fonts, but when I’m in the need of some fresh new fonts, I go a little crazy. /ehe

I’m still against it. :P I’m talking about the uploader because it’s really simple. WordPress needs something that simple, which is why I’m looking into creating my own WordPress plugin to replace the current WordPress uploader. :)

I don’t really like Tumblr, either. I have an account, because so does everyone else, but I don’t really use it. I think it’s especially weak if you use it for blogging and not just posting images.

This is a great post though, I like a lot of the links you directed me to. :)

This was very helpful to me, despite the fact that I’m not one of your classmates. :( It was very interesting to read about what makes you subscribe to a website, and I’d be interested to know what makes you like a blog. :)

I use Preview Theme, Tweetable, and Acronyms on my blog, I agree that the best thing about Tweetable is that it automatically posts your blogs. :D

I’ll be sure to check out the newsletters that you suggested, and I’ve been experimenting with custom fonts myself. It’s amazing how much a layout/theme changes when you switch out the font.

I have tumblr…. but I don’t use it anymore xD I use twitter and facebook a lot more. :P It’s interesting blog post what you made xD

Your Learning proposal looks pretty cool. :3 Congratulations on coding it all on your own. ^^

And thank you for sharing the plugins. I don’t need anymore on my blog, though. :p

I like CSS Bake, but I haven’t been there in a while.

I haven’t learned anything new css for about 2 years :/ I’m super lazy. If you’re still up at 2:00 AM and you have work in the morning, do you get enough sleep? I love eating dry cereal (I hated milk as a child). Might I add that this layout is super cute :D

Get enough sleep Georgie!

I don’t use Tumblr because it’s so overrated and mostly useless, but I do like their interface. I don’t even see how the tags would be necessary for Tumblr. Isn’t there a place where you can put tags for your whole post? I could be wrong though because I haven’t touched Tumblr for more than a year.

I love Preview Theme, mainly so I can look at my old themes easily. I don’t really use it when I’m designing a theme because sometimes the URLs go wrong and it gives me a headache.

Do you know about Design Newz? It’s not a newsletter but it links to a lot of interesting design articles. I just check that every day so I don’t get a bunch of subscription emails. And The League of Movable Type has a fair amount of nice fonts, but I don’t think that place is updated.

Thank you for sharing the plugins & newsletters. Many of them were completely “new” to me :)

wow! your learning proposal is a little bit intimidating… It’s very informative! Good work!

You really have got some great links there! I like the Vandelay Design and the Webdesigner Depot websites you have put up. These will definitely be some resources that I will use for the project. And CSS Bake is a cute name – so I’ll use that too /hehe