If you are one of the over 200 million people with a Facebook account, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard all of the hype over Facebook usernames and vanity URL’s.
These initially became available for both personal profiles and fan pages at 12:01am EST on June 13, 2009. I for one was among those who stayed up late on a Saturday night to get a vanity URL for my own personal profile.
Like many others, however, my fan page was fairly new, and did not meet the initial requirement of having 1,000 fans in order to get a fan page username. That would come later…
The Second Wave = Mass Confusion?
This past weekend, on June 29th, Facebook opened up the second wave of fan page username registration. However, it didn’t come without a bit of controversy and confusion…
Today’s post started out as a short one, to thank the Geek Girls Network for asking me to participate in their interview series. But I soon realized that I’ve been interviewed several times in the last year, and wanted to share those with you, as well.
Most of the interviews focus on my experiences as a web designer, business owner, and as someone who has recently taken the freelance plunge.
I’m honored to have been asked to interview by so many great bloggers - they all ask some very interesting questions, which give you a bit of an insight as to what makes this “geek girl” tick…
Within the last few months, I have written several guest posts on Freelance Folder that focus on topics relating to web site design and development. As I spread my wings in the blogging world, I’ve recently been approached by Mashable about contributing a WordPress related post to their blog.
Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 6 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.
Given Mashable’s popularity, you can imagine my surprise at the invitation - one that I could not turn down!
Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles
First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for the congratulations on reaching my first anniversary of being a full time freelancer! It’s been an amazing first year, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for my second year!
Of course, it goes without saying that I’d like to thank everyone who entered the giveaway, and UPrinting for sponsoring the prizes.
And The Winners Are…
It’s sometimes difficult to believe how quickly time flies…
One year ago today, I took the plunge towards running my own web design business full time, by giving my two weeks notice at work. In two short weeks, I’ll officially be celebrating the one year anniversary of being a full time freelancer!
To commemorate this milestone, I’m hosting a giveaway!
I was approached last summer by UPrinting with an offer for free business card printing, in exchange for a sponsored review. Just starting out on my own full time, it was perfect timing for a new set of business cards to help promote my business.
UPrinting has contacted me again with a similar offer - but this time I’m able to give back to my readers by offering a giveaway!
Given the complexities of the various phases of the web design and development process - including many variables often revolving around pending client feedback - I have often wondered how other web designers go about scheduling their own projects.
Status Quo
Although I officially started my web design company, iDesign Studios, in 2001 - it was originally nothing more than a bit of side work here or there. It wasn’t until the last couple years that I finally had the drive and determination to take my business to the next level.
Next month marks my one year anniversary of having quit my day job to run my company full time, and things have been steadily getting busier. Up until recently, my general policy on scheduling new projects was to start work on them immediately upon receipt of a signed contract and 50% deposit, delivering each major phase within one week (with two to three business days for minor revisions).
With this method, my workload has been (for the most part) completely manageable… until the moon and stars align, and I get hit with three or four people sending in their contracts and deposits over a two day period - leaving me with a very busy week ahead!
I’ve found this to be happening more and more frequently lately, and realize it’s finally time to re-evaluate my scheduling process.
As I focus more and more on designing and developing custom WordPress themes for clients, I’ve realized that there is a core set of plugins that I regularly setup with every new site.
My latest guest post on Freelance Folder details some of the basic and essential first steps…
10 Essential Plugins Every Modern WordPress Site Should Have
While January’s focus was on time management and productivity, February’s focus is on getting out of the feast vs famine cycle with various forms of marketing.
With it being the beginning of a new year, there is no surprise that my primary focus for the month is to get organized
Time management and productivity are at the top of my list - and for all the right reasons… after all, we’re already half-way through the first month of the year, and I am only now posting this month’s goals!
As with any New Year, comes a new set of resolutions! Creating goals and milestones are essential to to the success of any business. However as New Year’s resolutions go, while you want to set your sights high, it’s often easy to fall into the trap of creating too many unrealistic goals for oneself.
As part of the “Just Three Things” series, I’ve decided to limit my own New Year’s resolutions to just 3 major areas. Yes, they each have their own set of baby steps to take in order to achieve each task, but my theme for this year is to keep it in “threes”
2008 was a fantastic year for me, and I hope that 2009 will be that much better! So without further ado, below are the “three things” that I hope to achieve this year…
