How My Fan Mail Can Serve As A Motivator To You (Plus Some Insight On How I Designed Blogussion)

Last week, I received a great email pretty much praising Blogussion for everything that it is. In the message (which I will post below), I not only received comments towards the blog, but was asked some questions about some of the things I did here, which I will also cover in this post.

The email message came from a now frequent Blogussion user, Nick Tart of JuniorBiz, and I think that my blog has really made an impact on him and his site. I’ll let you read his message (which he agreed to let me post here) and you can decide on our impact on him.

As well as answering his questions, I want to go a little more in depth of how this email can inspire you as well to really take pride in your blog. So here is his email:

Hi Alex,

My name is Nick Tart and I have spent about 8 of the last 16 hours on Blogussion.com (I live in Longmont, CO if you want to check Analytics). It sucks! I am getting nothing done and it is completely your fault. I can’t explain it. For whatever reason, I have become addicted to reading articles on your and Janith’s site. What is the cure?

Honestly man, you have done an incredible job with the content, interface and usability of the site. It’s weird, I have never found a website that I have wanted to stay on for so long. I’m not even that interested in blogging! At least I didn’t think I was. I would consider a total waste of time (considering everything I was supposed to do today), but I have learned a lot. To the point that I am going to consider it to be a free education.

I have enjoyed Blogussion.com so much that I am considering completely rebuilding my own site, http://juniorbiz.com. I debated for the longest time whether to build my site with WordPress or Joomla and eventually settled on Joomla. After seeing your site, I am regretting it. I have never seen a Joomla site look as nice as yours. In fact, I can’t think of any sites that I prefer aesthetically over Blogussion.com. I understand that a lot of time and customization went into configuring your theme, but I am wondering about exactly how you did it.

Did you start from scratch or did you start with a basic WordPress theme and adjust it to fit your fancy? If so, what was the base WP theme? Did you already know how to do all of the customization or did you learn as you went? How long do you think it would take someone with little WP knowledge and even less WP Thesis knowledge to build a theme like Blogussion’s?

On another note, I don’t think you and Janith play up the fact that you are 15 and 16 enough. It’s amazing what you have done, especially at your age. I’m particularly impressed that Michael Dunlop paid you for a review. What he’s done is also incredible.

Thanks,
Nick

P.S. I predict Blogussion will be in the Alexa Top 10,000 by the end of the year.

That email was the nicest email I have ever received regarding Blogussion! The things he mentioned in there made me feel really accomplished about what I have been doing on this blog, and that feeling of accomplishment only encourages me to do more.

Let’s Dig A Little Deeper

Alright, so here I have this amazingly inspiring email praising the blog here. This email was so powerful and so motivating that I feel like if I were to just show you guys what people have to say about me and not let you in on how you can get ideas from my comments, then I would be a little greedy!

The Knowledge I Gained That You Can Get From Your Own Fan Mail

Believe it or not, I learned a thing or two from this message. From any fan mail you receive about your blog, you should have learned something from it. If you don’t, then I feel like you missed the point of the entire message.

The things I learned specifically were:

• I am an inspiration to someone - I have always been thinking that I am just another blogger dishing out articles on a daily basis, but here I get this email from someone who has totally changed their perspective on something they didn’t have any interest in before they got to my blog. That’s just an absolutely amazing accomplishment on my part.
• I received feedback - The message had a lot of feedback – positive feedback. The comments made towards my blog showed me that I was doing something right, and in that regards, my content and design met and exceeded their expectations. That tells me to keep doing what I’m doing.
• By impressing people, you are more likely to create lasting relationships - I have a feeling that Nick is going to be around here for a while, and the things that he already does in this community, and the community at my other blog are really showing a sign of friendship between Nick, myself, Janith, and the rest of the community here.

We all get fan messages, even if it’s not in the form of an email. They can even be in blog comments too. You get them every time you publish a post to your blog, and they’re usually the comments you don’t particularly like all of the time – “Nice Post!”

Just check through your blog or email inbox every so often and read any comments directed at you and your blog. Try to see the real picture behind what they are trying to say, even if it doesn’t come out as its exact meaning.

The Things I Need To Do Now

Because there have been so many positive things said in this message, I have decided that there are two tasks I need to do now. The first task is to work as hard as possible to get more people thinking the way Nick did about my blog, and two, keeping his current comments true and alive.

If I am going to build a good readership on my blog, the one way to do that is to have the majority of the people who visit the blog have these same thoughts as Nick did in his email. His comments showed me that I have done that for him, and he serves as proof of my progress in achieving that good readership.

Keeping His Thoughts Alive

From his message, I gathered that he loved the content here, and he liked the interface and usability of the design. By reading our content for eight hours (woah) that tells me that a good flow of quality content has been posted here over and over again.

His particular interest in the design here also says that it’s what compels the readers here to stay around for that extra time to search out the content because it is easily navigable and appealing to the eye.

Those two things are without a doubt the most crucial things to get right on my blog, and according to one of my readers, that’s what is right here. As long as I can understand that people like what is being done, I can stick with it and even make it better.

Bonus: The Answer’s to Nick’s Design Questions

I promised him in my reply that I would answer the questions he sent in a blog post, so here they are for anyone else who is interested. These are all questions regarding the design of the blog, which is something he put the most emphasis on in his email about what he liked about the blog.

1. Did you start from scratch or did you start with a basic WordPress theme and adjust it to fit your fancy? If so, what was the base WP theme?

In my design process, I first write down everything I want my design to have. That’s all of the stuff in my header to footer or every last feature I can think of. As I go along, I can add/modify/remove some of those things, but I always like to start off with a basic of idea of what’s going to go onto the blog, which really helps coming up with the design layout.

Once I have a list of the things I want on my blog, I start figuring out some design aspects. Stuff like colors, number of columns, fixed or fluid layout, etc. I can get to work in Photoshop. Yes, I am fortunate to own a copy of that expensive piece of software, but if you are completely serious about your design, then I totally recommend you get it if you can afford it!

I used to just code themes from a blank page (that’s what the first version of this theme was, all code from scratch), until I started, as you already know, using the Thesis framework. I can’t believe how simple Thesis made coding a theme like this was. If you can dish out the $87.00 for it, then absolutely buy it.

2. Did you already know how to do all of the customization or did you learn as you went?

The customizations you see on this current design now are based off of customizations made on the last theme here, which as I said above, was made from scratch. The customizations from my first theme came from about two years of coding and designing.

As you go on customizing and updating your design for a while, you will learn how to improve your skills and keep improving your blog. I’d say that creating the Blogussion theme has opened my eyes to more advanced HTML and CSS tricks, and has even gotten me learning the basics of PHP.

3. How long do you think it would take someone with little WordPress knowledge and even less Thesis knowledge to build a theme like Blogussion’s?

Believe it or not, this theme really isn’t that complicated. It may look the part because of how different it looks from Thesis, but the code behind it is just really simple.

As much as you hear it, WordPress is easy to use. It’s ridiculous how many resources there are out there for WordPress, and the majority of those tutorials talk about its customization. Search the web for anything WordPress related, and I can almost guarantee you that there is a tutorial or plugin for anything you want to do on your blog.

As for Thesis, it can be hard to understand for some at first because it doesn’t use the normal coding style as other WordPress themes do. However, if you can learn how to use Thesis, even a little, you can build an amazing theme. Just check out Thesis from the link to it above and you will understand this much better.

Photo by Ilbrahim Iujaz