Prepare for Stage 3

Tonight was an interesting night for me as a burgeoning WordPress user.  My mother informed me of a WordPress user group that meets in Atlanta.  This group is meant to bring WordPress users and developers together for collaboration and sharing tips.  For anyone that follows my Twitter account this will be a repeat, but my mind was positively blown by all the powerful things that WordPress can do.  My attempts so far have not scratched the surface, hell I haven’t even touched it yet.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve always known that WordPress is a remarkably powerful tool for bloggers and full website makers.  If it’s good enough for Wired.com, Entertainment Weekly, and CNN, it must be capable of professional work.  A decent host, some CSS and HTML knowledge and the WordPress.org software are all that separates the novice blogger from the expert site builder.  The problem is…. well, I don’t know HTML or CSS and I don’t have a host for WordPress.org.  As such, it never seemed like it was

That changes today.  Spending only a few hours with these people has opened my eyes to the power of WordPress.org and it is time I leveraged that power.  Besides, I’ve always wanted to learn CSS and HTML, so this will give me an excuse to spend time learning these useful languages.  Thus I am commencing Stage 3 of Digital Gravitas: the progression to WordPress.org and DigitalGravitas.com.  Stage 1 was the creation of the site and initial development of my content so that I could define myself.  Stage 2 was expansion of the site into stronger content and larger readership (courtesy of Freshly Pressed).  Stage 3 is a final transition to the much more powerful tools that WordPress.org gives me and hopefully many more years of rich content and continued growth.  This will be a multi-week process as I select a host, import my data, and begin to hopefully customize a theme that allows me to experiment with CSS and HTML.

Still, you guys will probably notice none of this.  I’ll develop the site as I need and once the time is right, accessing DigitalGravitas.Wordpress.com should redirect you directly to the new site.  I’m very excited for this next stage, and I hope it allows for a more powerful site and richer content.  Here’s to the future, because it’s (almost) here.

Digital Gravitas 4…. something

Honestly I’ve lost track of what version of the site you can call this.  But suffice to say I was getting bored of the old design so this is a fresh take on one of WordPress’s many interesting themes.  Mystique brings a couple of great features like quick access to my facebook page, twitter feed, and RSS subscription.  You’ll also notice the widget to the left has a tabbed interface for quick access to my categories, comments, tags, and most popular posts.  Plus the theme gives me a lot of new features on my side for displaying content.

Love it? Hate it?  Indifferent?

Some Updates

Hey everybody, Digital Gravitas coming to you from my fortified bunker in the DC hell hole.  Wanted to touch base with everyone since my posting has been pretty much absent in the past few weeks.  Basically, the deal is that academic pressure means I can’t devote as much to the blog as I want.  That should change in the next week or so but keep it together until I go all John Henry on this mountain of work (ignoring the fact that John Henry’s heart exploded in the end).

Anyway, I wanted to take a second and express some really sincere remorse and blessings to the People of Japan over their terrible tragedy of the past two weeks.  I have an extremely deep respect for the Japanese people in their cultural and technological contributions to the world and the current crisis in Japan is truly sad.  I encourage everyone to give some money to relief efforts and keep our Japanese comrades in their hearts.  Some of you may wonder where I was during Haiti and other crises from the past year.  It’s not that I don’t feel for these other countries and peoples, but Japan just holds a special place in my heart as a land of fierce cultural identity and an economic and technologic power house.

Here’s the to future, because it’s already here.

I’m on Twitter Now

I’ve been mulling over this decision for a while now, but I’ve made my choice.  Digital Gravitas is now on Twitter!  I’m doing this for a few reasons.  First, WordPress has an automated system in place that will publish links to my posts in Twitter, and that helps get the word out.  Second, I’m starting to like the Twitter concept.  Being able to make quick comments about stuff going on is going to be useful in giving all of my readers a better insight into my opinions with out my ridiculously lengthy posts.  Like it or not, 144 characters demands brevity.  And thirdly, I really want an excuse to follow MayorEmanuel on Twitter, that guy is hilarious.

Anyway, please follow DigitalGravitas on Twitter for all the latest updates, quips, editorials, and general tomfoolery that I enjoy.

Happy Birthday to Me

Can you believe it?  It has been one year since the founding of Digital Gravitas.  You know, back when I started, I honestly never thought I’d make it to this point.  I figured I’d make it maybe 6 months, top out at around 10,000 hits, and call it a day.  But the success I have had has been nothing short of remarkable.  And I have no one to thank but all the loyal readers out there: friends, family, and the random reader who has stumbled upon my site.  Can you believe that in one year I have had 256 comments (and 981 spam hits), 144 posts, 2 publishings on Freshly Pressed, and 252,545 unique hits?  It’s been astounding.

So what’s the plan for 2011?  Hopefully, big things.  I’m toying with getting a private domain and getting some ads up (need to weigh my options up).  I’m hoping that this becoming a source of income for me will motivate me to update the site more often.  Also, I’m thinking about jumping into the Twitter game, so people can get more updates and short thoughts through that medium.  Again, I’m weighing my options – do I really have the time to manage a Twitter account?  Either way, I want to double my success in 2011 so it is a year of ambition and I want your feedback!  What do you want from Digital Gravitas in 2011?  It’s not about me, fair readers, it’s about you.

Here’s to the future, because it’s already here!

Digital Gravitas: Let’s Call it 3.6

It’s been an interesting week or two here at Digital Gravitas. While readership has fallen off a bit, I admit my posting has too, so all is forgiven. I am in my first semester of college finals as well, so you can imagine things are tense. I’d like to announce that two days ago we crossed 250,000 unique hits on the site, which is absolutely fantastic. I’m really grateful to everyone who made that possible.

We’re coming in on the one year anniversary of Digital Gravitas (and the former entity known as Digitas Gravitas). While I have grandiose plans for 2011, I thought I’d preview some visual enhancements. I’ve updated the header something a bit less sterile. I originally had this great custom header built, but it seems WordPress has some bugs in the header importer. Oh well.  You’ll see a new background with something decidedly more “techie”. What you are looking at is a silicon wafer, what all microchips come from. So it has some importance, plus it’s colorful!

I hope the visual improvements give the site some personal touches that make it really mine. Enjoy them and give me feed back!

I think I’m Getting Spammed

Today I have received the most views ever.  But I’m not happy about it.  That’s because these views aren’t reading articles or posts, they’re just random clicks on my home page.  I’m pretty sure that some automated bots and spam machines are just hitting my server and then moving on.  While normally I’d love these high stats, it’s not because of my real accomplishments and that is sad.

I would prefer no hits at all to over 6000 illegitimate hits.  Anyway I can block these guys?

Back to Enterprise, But Not A Step Backwards

After a brief experimentation with the “Fusion” theme I have determined it’s best to stick with “Enterprise” from version 3.0.  I’ve realized that Fusion was too narrow to allow me to fully post some images, which was degrading the quality of the site. Also, I just liked how Enterprise was clean and orderly.  I’m not calling this a movement back to 3.0, but rather we’ll call this 3.5.  I’m hoping to have my custom header up by the end of the week, which should add a personal touch to the site.  Honestly, I think Enterprise is the best theme on WordPress right now, so why use anything else?

Screw The Hiatus, I have Fans to Support!

Yesterday I mentioned that the site had to go on hiatus because of scaling problems with my academic career and personal life.  I will not say that things are becoming insurmountable or I am drowning in some kind of stress-induced limbo, but the fact is that things are getting intense.  I have midterms arriving and other social obligations that are hard to avoid, this is the truth for any college student, so don’t think I’m just crying out here for all the Internet to see.  These factors remain true today, but….

I was posted on Freshly Pressed yet again today, the second time in 4 months!  It’s so wonderful to be recognized again by the WordPress community to which I owe so much.  Even more interesting is that that post was up for like a week before WordPress recognized it, and TechCrunch (one of WordPress’s most popular websites) even posted something similar a few days later.  Yet, looks like I won the day!  So despite my personal needs for a hiatus, it would be irresponsible of me to leave you all out in the cold now that the site is surging back into popularity.  This blog only exists with all of you, so I will do what I can to keep you interested.  As such, even at personal cost to me, I will do what I can to keep things moving smoothly through these rough waters.  I can’t say I will succeed, but I will do my best to keep it together.

Be looking for my thoughts on the Windows Phone 7 announcement hopefully by the end of the day.

We’re On Facebook

We, being the royal “We”, are on Facebook. Whenever site popularity jumps up like crazy I like to make shameless plugs to spread my popularity. Join the Facebook group to get updates on new posts and to meet others who are interested in the site. Also, don’t be afraid to share my site with any of the numerous services listed at the bottom of the page like Facebook, StumbleUpon, or Twitter.