Inside Candy’s hot new site design draws them in!

Posted on October 20th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,644 views

It’s a simple concept to grasp, really. Give your blog a fresh new makeover, and watch the visitors pour in to enjoy your new eye candy.

I like Candy Tothill, a lot, but despite liking her and enjoying reading her writing, I enjoy it so much more now. I found the previous version of her Inside Candy blog quite difficult to read, and that obstacle proved enough to put me off reading some of her longer entries.

I discovered how much I was missing out only recently since she’s had her site completely redone. Everything about the fresh format is a joy! The unique font she uses is very easy on the eye – it simply dissolves away the strain of reading text on a monitor.

But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself.

One last thing, in the interests of full disclosure – I was the one responsible for overhauling her site. I also registered her blog’s domain name and I host it for her.

Tags: author, beautiful friendly intelligent woman, Candy Tothill, Inside Candy, poet, South African blog, writer
Filed under Candy Tothill, Inside Candy | 1 Comment »

Whose the DADDY of social networking sites?

Posted on September 26th, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,546 views

It’s not Digg, neither reddit, nuh uh del.icio.us, nor muti, amatomu is not-the-mama, afrigator who?

It’s StumbleUpon!

If you want traffic, get onboard StumbleUpon today!

I discovered this yesterday when I installed Alex King’s beautiful WordPress plugin called Share This. It’s a thing of total beauty. Customising it with your favourite social site is child’s play. I added Muti to it in under 5 minutes, including the little muti thumbnail graphic.

Ironically, the first site I shared one of my posts with was StumbleUpon which produced a very healthy flow of traffic. Seeing that, I was encouraged to stumble more of my posts, and I experienced a sudden rush of people from all over the world. A heady experience when that happens.

Share This doesn’t spread a whole row of tiny little graphics across your web site (that no-one can decypher), instead it places a simple green distinctive Share This icon to left of the words. Clicking on it, brings up a window which allows your visitors to share your posts with all the social sites you have installed, as well as send your post to friends via email.

Alex King is working to integrate his amazing plugin with ShareThis.com who offer a very useful service. It integrates with facebook, so I was able to share a site with a friend directly onto her facebook wall. I think it would be better, though, if it went to her facebook email.

Okay, so now I have to thank Candy Tothill for introducing me to StumbleUpon. Thank you, Candy! She is a published South African author and she is also an avid blogger – insidecandy.blogspot.com.

Tags: afrigator, Alex King, amatomu, Candy Tothill, del.icio.us, Digg, Inside Candy, muti, Plugin, reddit, Share This, StumbleUpon, Web traffic, WordPress
Filed under StumbleUpon, Web traffic | 6 Comments »