A full year’s worth of blog post ideas

I got this brilliant idea from Chris Whitely a few years ago. You can literally buy 365 fantastic niche-specific blog post ideas, in a single pack. All you have to do is tear off the top page and write about whatever it says, each & every day. Don’t copy them word for word, just use them as your springboard to get you started.

And if you know a blogger that is struggling with ideas for what to write about, it would make the perfect holiday gift. Just be sure to point out that it’s a blog-post-idea-a-day pack, because it might not be that obvious to them to use it for that purpose.

To make it easier for you, I dug up these from amazon.com. If you have a blog related to any of these topics or want to start one, these will be perfect for you.

 

Yes, they are affiliate links and Amazon will throw me a few cents if you buy through my links, but it won't cost you any more than if you had just gone to the site and found the calendars on your own. And if none of these calendars interest you or you don't like the prices, you are free to look elsewhere.

Related articles

• 2011 Blogging Calendar (valuebookshop.com)
• 12 Days of Blogging 2010: 12 Writers Writing (blogworld.com)
• Blogging On The Brain (webmanmarketing.com)

The Single Most Important Book I Was Ever Exposed To

When I was a kid, Ed Emberley's Make a World was a library book that my younger sister and I monopolized. One of us would check it out, and keep it for as long as possible, renewing it for the maximum number of times allowed. Then the other would grab it before the librarian could put it back on the shelf, and repeat the process.

We did this for years. I am really surprised my parents never bought us a copy, but to their credit, they remembered this and bought my daughter a copy when she was about 5 years old.

Ed Emberley teaches that if you can draw a few basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, lines, dots, and a few numbers and letters), you can draw anything that you can imagine. From building a heart shape from two circles and a triangle to more complicated things like castles, dragons, and even the Canadian flag, Ed shows how easy it really is.

But it's not "just a drawing book"...it's a whole lot more. It's a child's first technical how-to manual. It sets them on the right path for acquiring the skills needed to self-educate.

Image by Austin Kleon via Flickr

It's really good for teaching kids how to follow step-by-step instructions, especially ones that contain no text...a skill that will come in handy later in life if they have to build IKEA furniture.

It also teaches a valuable life skill by changing how you look at the world. It teaches that anything in life that seems too complicated and hard to do, is made much easier when you analyze it and break it down into much simpler parts. The earlier in life a child learns this, the more doors will be open to them, and the list of possibilities greatly increased.

It's not enough to tell a child that they can accomplish anything in life that they set their mind to. They need to be taught how, and this book is a great place to start.

 

Purchasing this book through my Amazon affiliate link will not increase your price and is a great way to show your appreciation to me for introducing you to this book.

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• Ed Emberley and Friends (coolhunting.com)
• Draw a Sasquatch the Ed Emberly Way (boingboing.net)
• The Creatures, Devils and Weirdos of Ed Emberley & Friends at Scion Space (laist.com)

CaSe Matters

Budding young web designers and developers usually learn this pretty quick, when creating a page on Windows and not using the same case as the files and folders they are linking to. They often will use lowercase in all the URLs, regardless of the case of the actual file and folder names. And this will work fine when viewed on their Windows machine. But as soon as they upload it to a server that is running something else, like Linux, it stops working. Their page is full of broken images and dead links, because they used something like mypicture.jpg in place of the actual file name of MyPicture.jpg and about.html in place of the actual file name of About.html.

Or they upload an Index.html and wonder why when they visit their site they still see the default index.html page provided by their web host and why when they check on the server there are now two index files and not one.

For the domain name part of the URL it doesn't matter. That part is not case sensitive.

example.com is the same as Example.com is the same as EXAMPLE.com

For the rest of the URL it could matter, depending on what operating system is being run on the server that is hosting the site.

 

If the server is running Windows, case doesn't matter. The reason for this is because you can only have a single file or folder of a particular name in a folder, regardless of the case used in that file or folder name.

index.html is the same as Index.html is the same as INDEX.html

All three will lead to the same page.

In Windows, adding a file or folder of the same name with a different case to a folder, overwrites the original. Only one can exist.

 

If the server is running Linux, case matters, as you can have multiple files and folders of the same name within a folder, each having a different case.

index.html is not the same as Index.html and not the same as INDEX.html

In Linux adding a file or folder of the same name with a different case to a folder, does not overwrite the original. Linux will allow all three to exist in a folder, and each are considered different. If you change the case of a file or folder in the URL path and the server is running Linux, and that variation does not actually exist on the server, it will result in a 404.

And if you upload a file of the same name but a different case, it will not overwrite the original. You will have both on the server, and lowercase is the default index file. This is the reason why the place holder index.html supplied by your web host is still seen, even though you have uploaded your Index.html file, and why you see two index files when you view it in your FTP client.

 

It is always best to assume the server runs Linux when creating links to pages on the web and when typing URLs into the addressbar of your browser. It is the only way to ensure that if case matters, that you are using the correct URL.

It is also best to use all lowercase in the folder and file names of your website when creating the files and folders, regardless of what operating system you are using locally. Always assume the site will be run on a server that is case sensitive. That way there is a set standard of practice you follow that leaves less room for error.

Step 1, before you begin coding, should always be to fix all your file and folder names so you won't have to worry about it later.

Free Art Download: Blame Game (CC-BY)

What you get: This image, about twice the size, without the watermark text, on a transparent background, in both PNG and PSP vector formats.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, suitable for personal, non-commercial, and commercial use.

This item has been moved to my art site.

Free Image: Instant Photo (CC-BY)

What you get:

This image (drop shadow is included), about twice the size, without the text, on a transparent background, in both PNG and layered PSP formats.

On the layered PSP, you can easily insert the image of your choice over the black area.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, suitable for personal, non-commercial, and commercial use.

This item has been moved to my art site.