Greetings techy bloggy people; geeks, bloggers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and any combination thereof. – Also hello to casual observers.

In this edition of The Horizon I’m going to be summing up a lot of changes that have occurred to this blog, in addition to anything else that happens as time goes by. I realise that this may not appear very professional in the light of day; but I’m writing this rather long article in sections, and to some extent as and when it happens. I’m then hoping, as a conclusion to the article, to recap on the points that you might find useful, ignoring what is in reality just news, and go into them in a little more depth.

There probably is a better way of doing it, and I anticipate the horrified look from those readers who are more experienced and adept at editing an online magazine. – Which is basically what The Horizon is. This is only the second edition though; if you could go so far as to claim that it’s actually edited – which I guess it kind of is – :S  Everything will improve given time. I must be the only case where the Second Law of Thermodynamics fails to hold true: In my case entropy actually decreases with time as everything that I create becomes more ordered. OK it’s not exactly a closed system, but who cares about splitting hairs?

…And On With The Show: -

This last month you may have noticed quite a few changes in the blog’s appearance here at Kkomp – Beyond: Firstly, since one of the major problems with regard to this blog had long been a lack of visual – synchronisation between the sidebar and all posts and pages, including the front (index) page, I’ve done away with the sidebar on all but most posts. What effect has this had? Well the idea, particularly in regard to the front page, is to stimulate the reader to follow a distinct eye-path from the top-left-hand corner of the screen sideways/downwards, in order that the first thing that the reader sees is the branding coupled with what the blog is all about.

When someone comes to this blog – no matter to which post or page, the first thing they see is the header: -

…And what hits them smack in the face? – My opt-in form. – Anyone can become a member of the Kkomp.com – Beyond Community, and it’ll cost you nothing.  Just fill in your email and you’ll get what is promised. I’m showing this opt-in as a pop-over in a primary place because I want it to be noticed and used. people on my list will get the full benefits of this blog; at times in advance. People on my list are willing potential customers who I can begin to build up a relationship with much more easily then those who just appear, read, and disappear again; maybe never to return – ?   I can give people on my list the first choice in special offers. I can offer them more, I can interact with them more. I can give them more in terms of value and can potentially make more in terms of money from them… Well something has to keep this blog going, and I’m not a charity. I realise that it’s a solution/solutions that people are looking to buy, rather than me and my expertise, and that’s a fair point; but unless I have at least some kind of familiarity with my prospective customers then they will never become my actual customers.

…So they either fill-in the line asking for their email or cancel the form, or even ignore it and scroll down; which is unfortunate as something is missed by not either submitting or removing the form…

Yes, the Google Custom Search bar has been moved right into the header. Why?

1. It has been moved out of the sidebar – and the sidebar removed from the front page.

2. People who want to search don’t want to have to visually search for a search-bar all over the page; so now it’s quite “in-your-face”.

Also the page-menu has got fatter, and I display the more recent and popular page-listings in it. There are other, unlisted, pages, but there just isn’t room at present to list all of them.

- OK, so what’s this? : -

- Remember there used to be a chat-room powered by Meebo? – Not many people used it: They had to click away from the page they were on. This has now changed: Click the CHAOS! logo in the header of any page or post and chat will take over your screen. One more click and it’s straight back to the page or post that you were reading.

Back to the topic of eye-path. – Let’s take a look at the reader’s intended eye-path, after they’ve removed the opt-in form: -

The reader’s eye enters top-left and is attracted straight to the red word HELP! – Well help is the topic of this blog; help to make the most of your computer. Their eye might notice the graphic, but plunges through the text to the rather cool-looking picture of me, appearing like an aged imitation of Lady Gaga, (My hair is currently strawberry-blond at time of writing. That pic was taken around midsummer 2010.) drops downwards and sideward to the search-button, down through the page-listing and chat-link, and into the page or post itself, without a sidebar to distract attention on all but posts.

Posts

…And moving on; in this instance in the case of posts only: -

Note: Rather large banner-ad in a very prominent position at the top of the post: That’s about the only way to get a banner-ad noticed these days. Note the banner-ad in the sidebar (Clearly marked as such for convenience. ); 19 clicks on it this year so far – no sales from it yet, but there’s hope. Why? It’s a dreaded banner-ad: These days most people ignore banner-ads by default, especially if they’re in the sidebar. So why display it? In truth it’s filler-content that just might get a click –no more. I do seriously promote 3-Day-Money, but I’ve got a much bigger animated-cartoon ad for it further down underneath the post and comment-form, at the top of the footer – well, in fact a tiny page within a huge template. ( – Yes almost the entire index page is a template; a template that I created specifically for that page and that is used nowhere else on the blog. – ) (I might try some different advertising methods in that position as an experiment.) True, it’s not in a prominent position; but it’s not the main item that I’m promoting right now. The Six-Figure-Blogger-Blueprint is the main item at time of writing, so it gets a featured-spot and appears on every page.

So the readers’ eye follows the content of the post down the page, through a Google ad, with maybe a quick glance at the well-spaced and uncluttered sidebar, and down to the footer – which has a couple of ads and some  largely-uninteresting or semi-interesting text and links in it.

You may also notice that I’ve changed the design of the prominent banner-ad mentioned above since that pic was added to this article. Don’t be surprised if this changes again at any point in the future: I’m experimenting with design and variations of…

There’s also a Mozilla FireFox 4 download-banner added. This blog has no commercial affiliation with Mozilla, but, since I’m a FireFox user and I own this blog, I’m giving everyone a helping hand in getting a brand new html5-compliant browser with a slimmer-appearance that even works in Windows XP.

- You see this blog is constantly evolving, hopefully getting better and better, more reader-friendly and easier to use as a whole.

Pages

The new page-template is almost identical to the post-template, but doesn’t include a sidebar, and has a slight adjustment in the css.stylesheet file in order to centre the text to partially-cover the missing sidebar’s absence.

More descriptive text is featured, describing the blog’s subject-matter in further-detail; and the Six-Figure-Blogger-Blueprint banner (or whatever my current main-promotion is at the time) is again featured prominently.

Moving on down you may just notice something else: In the latest-posts-listing there is no longer a date of posting displayed, and neither is there a number of comments in the form of a link featured. Reason: -

The internet moves so fast. Anything older than a day becomes, in general, viewed as ancient history. Advertising a blog-post as today’s may attract readers; but tomorrow you’ll be advertising as yesterday’s post, and it instantly becomes dated in the mind of some readers. Also having the publication date and number of comments displayed acts as further clutter, adding to any confusion that might arise.

My solution: don’t bother with it. A clickable title-link is all that’s needed in such a listing. The less clutter the better – clutter being something that I’ve been guilty of in the not-so-distant-past myself with regard to this blog. :S

Also I’ve removed the footer widgets too, with the result that the blog looks tidier still. In addition to that I’ve made the sidebar widgets, which can be seen on pages where a sidebar is displayed, all the same width: which makes the sidebar look a lot more aesthetically pleasing.

…And I could go on; but maybe that’s enough about blog-design for one day; one month even.

Got get a drink and take a breather right now. – There’s more in Part Two; coming right up after these adverts: -

Normally most blogs have a lot of white-space, but this isn’t a “most blog” and I’m not normal; therefore I decided to break the mould somewhat and have a background that looks a bit more interesting then just plain white. Now this isn’t as simple as it sounds, because – well you’ve seen those amateur blogs that have a coloured background with a lot of gamma, and they look so sucky. Another thing with coloured backgrounds is that they can make certain types and colours of text almost seem to be invisible.

The answer: Pastel colours with very little gamma. – But have you seen how utterly awful that will make anything well-defined look? So what’s not well-defined but big enough to cover a screen? The answer; clouds. _ But not harshly-drawn clouds. Not massive cumulo-nimbus with central spiral vortexes… I tried that and it sucked. The only thing which proved to be satisfactory was a dirty clumpy mist with a gentle light-pastel-blue faded background.

E-Books

OK , so that’s the cosmetic surgery accomplished as well as decrapification by removal of clutter. – Nice. I also added another free download to the footer in the form of an e-book containing some adapted versions of articles on the blog; even one that isn’t published on the blog itself. I’m offering this as a “thank-you for visiting” souvenir: No strings, and no sign-up required. – Just download and do what you like with it.

There’s another e-book that you can download if you like; in addition to the Six-Figure-Blogger-Blueprint and the souvenir compilation. It has actually been featured on this blog for a while, but the download-location has been rather hidden within an individual post; that being Ohm’s Law in Basic DC Electronic Circuit Design – Crash Course.

Go there, when you’ve read this article, by clicking the linked title above, ( I might include an appendix of links at the end of this article if I have time to do so.) reading or scrolling to the bottom of the post, just above where the author information, where it says “* A pdf of the paperwork from the tutorials of a Basic Electronics Course is now available for FREE download on this site. (Download size = 5.55MB.)”. Click the link below it and download it if you like.

And Now…

And now – an apology: Between an unknown date and 11th March 2011, this blog’s 404 page has been returning a syntax error within a piece of php: -

“…/404.php – Unexpected “>” line 10.”

The cause of the occurrence of this error is unknown, but is presumed to be due to an error that was overlooked when I was re-coding the page in question earlier in the month. The error was fixed as soon as it came to my attention. I have no idea how long this has been happening: probably about a week. I apologise for any inconvenience caused due to this error.

I have a tendency to get really geeky with an ongoing project that I embark on, such as this blog, at times, and errors do, unfortunately occur. While most are put right before anyone really notices, the odd 1 or 2 might at times manage to slip by undetected for a while.

It is with this in mind that I currently intend to, in time, set up a method for my readers to report such errors if they would be so good as to do so for me. I’ll tell you more about this as and when I get it sorted.

Earth Hour

8:30PM (in the UK. – Overseas times may vary.) on Saturday 26th March, was Earth Hour: An international event where humans give our planet and Mother Earth a rest: If it uses the planet’s resources – switch it off, just for an hour. By the time you read this it’ll be over until next year. I hope you participated. I put up a video about it on Thursday 24th; as soon as I learned about it – (Late, this may be true; but better late than never as they say.) – at the top of the section “Additional Items & Announcements” on the Home (Welcome) Page.

Popular Posts

The most popular posts for the 30 days up until 25th March 2011 are as follows: -

I’m rather chuffed about the #4 place there as the IE9 article was written & published in March, and has seemingly become an instant success. At 66 views it’s hardly gone viral, admittedly, but it’s a start. You might think that the amount of views is academic compared to your own blog statistics. – That may or may not be the case, but every visit is important, whether 6 or 60-thousand in total.

All the other posts in the other 4 places are (rewrites of) posts saved from the old blog. The Ohm’s Law article at #1 is a post adapted from an e-book I wrote some years ago, and also compiled into a downloadable e-book.

That’s about it for this April edition of The Horizon. I compiled the content during the month of March 2011, up until the 26th of the month. Question: Do YOU like to read this type of thing? Is this what YOU want to see in this monthly magazine? If not then give me some idea as to what it is that you want to see in it.

Have a great April 2011, and may success and happiness be yours.

Until next edition.