Clazh » Blogging

Reborn, Resurrected, Relaunched, Reloaded, Redesigned

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:15:48 +0000

So here we are at last, more than a year has gone by since I left this blog in limbo. To kick-start my blogging again I decided to redesign and re-brand the blog. As I mentioned in my previous post I am currently working as a freelance Web/UI designer for the last 10 months or so. So after an year and a half of procrastination, I present you the all new Clazh Technology and Design. Expect me start blogging regularly from now on. I am also advertising my skills as a web designer, very soon I will be selling a some really cool WordPress themes and templates so watch out. A lot of exciting things have happened in the last one year, I hope to keep that momentum going.

About the new design.

Well this is the longest time I have ever taken to design something, the design went through more than 40 revisions, it was partly my fault since kept putting it in the back burner and every time I brought it up to work on I would change something. I happy with the overall look and design. I know its not as colorful as my last one. The pink color in my last design became a running joke among my friends. Currently the site is still in beta.

Running on the latest and best WordPress 2.8.
Very Lightweight.
Uses only one image for the whole site, CSS Sprites.
All Javascript are hosted on External CDN
New featured content slider on the homepage.
New community submitted articles.

Please do provide some feedback, will really appreciate it. If something is broken get in touch with me using the contact form. Lots more new stuff coming up on the site just keep a watch.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Web-Design Tags: Blogging, Web-Design, Wordpress

Back from the dead

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:23:49 +0000

Its going to be almost a year since I have blogged. Its time to get back to blogging and revive this blog again. Lot of things have been happening on my side. 2008 was one the best and worst year of my life, personally and career wise. A few things I would like to highlight are.

I was awarded the Microsoft MVP Most Valuable Professional.
I quit my IT Job at the software company I was working at.
I switched to a Mac, I brought a mac book pro 15′.
I been backpacking and traveling. Bhutan, Dubai, Goa, Kodaikanal etc.
I been doing volunteer work here and there.

So whats next.

Start blogging again.
Revamp the site and design.
Start Freelancing as a web designer and developer.
Lots more backpacking and traveling.

If you’ve been a long time reader, my apologies for the neglect. Do let me know what you like to see on this blog, and how we can improve it further.

Blogging Code Of Ethics, Disclaimer, Copyright Notice.

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 18:02:49 +0000

Just a note I have updated my about page. I been meaning to write this for a long time, since I get quite a few emails from people who contact me about products/services/advertisement. This should give them a better idea what to expect from me before they contact me. This is also to reassure my readers about what they can expect from me and this blog. For people who are too lazy to come out of your feed readers and click my about page I have copied and pasted the content below.

Code Of Ethics.

The view presented on my blog are mine alone and do not represent my employers.
There are no hidden agendas in my posting and I don’t make marketing pitches (this includes friends and close contacts i.e. You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours).
I do not censor comments unless they are racist, abusive, SEO related, personal attacks on other commentors or off-topic.
My judgements and opinions are not in any way influenced by my advertisers, superior authorities or employers.
I only review products/services which I think are of interest to me and the readers of this blog.
I always make it a point to disclose if there are any conflict of interest.
Advertisements and sponsors are clearly labelled as advertisements and sponsors, I don’t do affiliates if I do the links are clearly marked as affiliate links.
I don’t do paid reviews or any kind of SEO advertisement (sponsored themes, text links, etc).
I don’t accept free products/services, money or anything of great value from companies, public relations or advertising agencies about whom I write. If I do, I do so only to review them and return them. (Though I do accept free T-shirts and products of minor value).

Disclaimer.

If you don’t agree with the disclaimers below please do not read any of the material or use any of the services I provide.

The opinions and views expressed here are my own and do not represent my employers. My views and opinion and are likely to change over time, I like to keep an open mind and thoughts and opinions stated on out-of-date posts may change over a period of time and may not hold true for the present. I do not take responsibility or the accountability for the kind of advertisement show on this site through third-party advertisers. I cannot be held responsible for articles written by guest bloggers this blog. Though I try my best to provide accurate facts and present them fairly, the facts presented here are cannot be assumed to be accurate and fairly presented. Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained through the use of the service is done at your own discretion and risk and that you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from the download of any such material. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you or through or from this blog shall create any warranty.

Copyright Notice

All content including pictures, design, code and any other material that is provided or is part of the site are copyrighted, unless stated otherwise. The copyright forbids you to reproduced or distributed any material anywhere on the Internet or offline (magazine articles, CD etc.) without a written permission and consent from me. Though you may link to articles and post with brief excerpts.

I Am Back Online, DCAMP, DNS Issues, MediaTemple and BlueHost

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:26:20 +0000

Well its been a really fun and frustrating two weeks for me. Fun because I completely disconnected myself from the computer and Internet. No RSS Feeds, No blog posts, No IM. I went to to Bangalore last weekend with Sagaro and Sid to attend DCamp an UnConference on Design and Usability at Yahoo India, and I had a chance to met a lot of interesting people there like the dezinerfolio brothers Navdeep and Naveen (I told them about the event), PlaneMad (Show him any plane model he will tell you the model number, also most of the maps on Wikipedia for various Indian Metro Cities have been done by him), also thanks to Allagappan (Yahoo Employee) we played foosball at yahoo to kill time before leaving off for the station.

Here are a few pics from PlaneMad’s Flickr account.

Navdeep and Naveen

Sagaro doing his College record work since we reached really early.

Me and Sid laughing at looking at Sagaro above.

Free T-shirts

PlaneMad

Alagappan No he’s not a kid he works at Yahoo.

Its been a frustrating week for my site because my web host BlueHost screwed up my DNS settings. I just realized that no web host is perfect or can guarantee 100% uptime. I think I was a bit too harsh on Media Temple my previous Web Host, even though they did screw things up a bit for me. After my move from MT to BlueHost things were fine until I realized that my site was facing some weird problems.

The first week I had no clue what was happening, my site would return a blank page randomly. I contacted BlueHost and they blamed it on WordPress. A bit later I figured out that it was a DNS issue and BlueHost put the blame on GoDaddy my domain registrar. I contacted GoDaddy and they told me it was BlueHost fault. In the end I ended up sending a mail to Media Temple requesting them to clear their DNS cache. By this time I had researched enough to figure out who was at fault (also thanks to Media Temple who told me what was going wrong, props to them for replying to my mail even though I am no longer their customer). The fault was with BlueHost. This time I explained the problem fully to them and they rectified it within a hour. For some reason my Cpanel account did not update my DNS Zone files properly and it was still pointing to my old Web Host Media Temple. So why didn’t I ditch BlueHost immediately and move to “A Simple Orange” as I was planning to. After being hosted on DreamHost, Media Temple and now BlueHost there were two things about BlueHost that I really liked, and was willing to excuse them for the down time.

Fast 24×7 Live chat support. I hate waiting for replies that take more than an hour.
Great uptime and response time. Comparing all the data collected in the past 3 months and also my pingdom Stats for sites on MT, DH and ASO and BlueHost I found that BlueHost was better.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, General, Technology Tags: Blogging

A Few Blog Updates And News

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:08:36 +0000

Its been a busy week since the closing of the SandBox Competition. I have been overwhelmed with support emails and feature requests. One things People need to understand is that the SandBox is a Complex theme and you need good CSS skills if you want to tweak it. I have changed my mind and I don’t want to mess around with the core files this would defeat the purpose of the SandBox Theme. I would suggest people looking for support to drop their comments in the sndbx.org forums where there are more people (Experts) available. I wish I had the time to spend and reply to all the comments.

SandPress To be featured in a Book

Lisa Sabin-Wilson contacted me a while back to tell me that SandPress will be featured in her upcoming Book WordPress for Dummies.

I have written the WordPress For Dummies book for Wiley Publishing and am currently in the final round of edits before the book is published. The book is due to be available in bookstores, worldwide, in October 2007.
I am writing to let you know that as I’m going through and editing the final version of the book, I’ve included your SandPress Theme in Chapter 18 – Ten Great Free WordPress Themes.

The Clazh Blog Reviewed in One of India’s Largest National Newspaper

Yesterday my blog was reviewed in one of the largest National Newspaper in India. It was featured in the Sunday’s Edition of Indian Express. You can read the 250 words review here on the online version of the newspaper. The review was done by Arjun Jassal a Science and Technology reporter of Indian Express. I haven’t seen the print version yet. I got to know of it only this evening. The other blogger to get featured along with me was Sakshi.

A Small Review By Dennis

Dennis did a small review Q/A about me you can read it over here. He’s been doing a series of reviews on various bloggers every week you can read the rest of them on his blog.

I am usually reluctant to join blog memes but I thought it would be a good Idea to combine it into a single post. Here’s one that RishiRaj Tagged me with a while back.

8 Random Facts about me

1. I learnt all my Web Design when I was jobless and unemployed for almost a year. Its all self taught I never liked learning from Books. I am a experiment, trial and error guy.

2. Most of the days that I Travel to office in a bus that is so crowded that people actually hang out of it. (Its the truth and I am not exaggerating, see pic below)

source manicturtle

Although its not this bad :)

3. I can sing and play the Guitar fairly well. In College I was part of a small Rock band with ben as the lead.

4. I hate Itunes and DRM its just a personal thing.

5. I love Everything about Apple the Laptops, website and software but I don’t like Steve Jobs and Apple’s marketing I guess I might change my mind if I ever get to meet him in person.

6. I frequently chat with a number of my regular readers. If you want you can add me on Gtalk ajacob[at]clazh[dotcom]

7. I get a number of requests for design related freelance work every week. I turn all of them down.

8. I am saving up for a new laptop. I badly want to buy a Apple Mac Book Pro but its way over priced here in India. Sadly they have not updated the APPLE India site with the latest offerings I had to phone up the dealers to find the correct price. I might have to settle for a DELL XPS 1330 or Inspiron 1520. I am going to wait till November or December.

The 7 P’s for Bloggers

Another Meme this time from cristianr Basically, what you have to do when you get nominated is to write something about yourself; I’ve been given an inventory of seven P’s that I will have to use in this description of myself.

Passion – To do something that touches peoples lives
Purpose – To make the world a better place
Pursuit – To do the best in whatever I am involved in
Position – ?
Pummeling – False accusations and gossip.
Progress – an ongoing process
Personality – Funny Geeky

If you read this consider yourself tagged.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, General Tags: Blogging

7 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks And Digger Hate You

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:56:43 +0000

Ever seen the word Blog Spam being repeatedly used by a number of DIGG users. My last post “15 Crazy Cool Photo and Video Sites” almost made it to DIGG before it got buried even though I managed to get more than 40 DIGG Votes. I have been trying to figure out why it got buried. Here are a list of reasons why I think I/we suck most of the time.

Rehashing Re-posting News.

Your blog doesn’t have any original content. You survive solely by re-posting and rehashing news from around the Internet. Your posts are barely more than a paragraph, half of which has been copy pasted or reworded from somewhere else. You leave a tiny link at the bottom to credit the original source.

No Authority

Even though you’ve been blogging for a long time, you are a jack of all trades and master of none. You do not have any authority over any particular subject or niche, Or your posts do not reflect any expertise. You are happy being what you are, and you see no room for improvement or progress.

No Tact Or Diplomacy

You’ve been know to be very outspoken and critical, and have used abusive language. You don’t know how to be diplomatic. You don’t have the tact or diplomacy to word your content carefully without hurting others. You are a Smart-ass Show Off etc etc.

More Ads than content

Your Blog is laden with Ads and Affiliates links. Your blog is about “make money online”. All you talk about is SEO, Adsense and how much money you made last month. Your posts are littered with affiliate links. Your always looking for shortcuts to gain quick money and traffic.

No Credibility

You do PayPerPost, ReviewMe and paid reviews. You do not disclosed in your posts and think your readers don’t know.

Language, Grammatically errors

You frequently make grammatical and spelling error. English is not your first language. You don’t run your article through a spell check before posting it online. You use at lot of OMGs, Lols and :) in your posts.

Bad Design

Your blog design sucks, its one of those commonly used themes which claim to be made for Adsense and SEO. The font in your design it too small to read. You are using too many widgets, blog bling to jazz up your site.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Internet Tags: Blogging

I Made It To Number One Rank At Technorati So Did You ;)

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:56:18 +0000

Update: For people who didn’t get it. This post was meant to be sarcastic. Apparently technorati had a glitch which has been resolved now.

I made it to the number one spot on Technorati. Yeah that’s right, within just 4 months of hard core blogging and some black hat SEO linking techniques I made it to the number one position. If you don’t believe me take a look at the screenshot below ;). The only problem is everyone else somehow found my secret and now everyone is at number one. By the way it looks like they enabled Snap-Shots Preview by snap.com for the Thumbnails UGH I hate it.

P.S thanks to Jacob From Mutiny for the Scoop

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, General Tags: Blogging

Thank You Guest Bloggers I Am Back

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:02:17 +0000

Its been a week since I haven’t blogged, I was away since I wanted to put in some time and effort for the WordPress sandbox theme competition. This is the first time since I launched the blog four months back that I haven’t checked up my blog regularly and replied to comments. It was a difficult decision to stop for a week(I admit I am a bit addicted to blogging). While I was a bit apprehensive at first to hand over my blog to someone else, the blog has progressed very well, and some really good articles were posted.

I want to personally thank each one of the guest blogger who took the time and effort to write articles on my blog. While more than 7 people had signed up only 4 of them took the effort.

Kyle Hughes from epixx.recoding.net Design Blog Coming soon

Dev Basu from dailymoolah.com Great Blog that has original and excellent content

Dennis Bjørn Petersen from thebetanews.com A Blog that Covers Technology

Nathan Chapman from pixl.utopiaplanitia.org Design And Tech Blog

Thanks Again.

4+1 Things the iPhone Can Teach Us about Blogging

Arpit Jacob — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:00:04 +0000

This post was guest blogged by Dev Basu. Dev authors Daily Moolah dot Com, a blog on making money online. He is an established internet marketer and serial entrepreneur, based in Toronto, Canada. Daily Moolah dot Com covers topics such as blog monetization, affiliate marketing, Wordpress SEO, PPC advertising and much more.

Zeitgeist! No I didn’t sneeze…but there sure seems to be a trend about Apple going on in these guest posts. While Arpit’s taking time off from Clazh designing a Wordpress theme, I’ll try to shed some light on what all this buzz about Apple’s iPhone means for bloggers worldwide.

Establish Your Niche Early On : ‘iPhone’ is currently the 7th most popular search term on Technorati, with over 1700 blogs dedicated to Apple’s brand new ‘uber’ device. Lesson learnt bloggers – Get in on the game early on, because you are competing in a niche with over 306,337 posts at last count.
Press Release Your Way to Buzz-dom: Ok, so buzz-dom isn’t a real word, because I just made it up. But neither is ‘iPhone’. Apple’s marketing campaign has been ingenious to say the least, and hopefully your blog (and mine for that matter) will share a fraction of that success. Establish the same buzz Apple did by issuing a Press Release for your blog or website. You will be surprised to know how many bloggers haven’t considered a Press Release a viable way of boosting their blog’s popularity. Find out more here
Dare to be Different: Touch technology, task scheduling, and the ability to play mp3’s on your mobile phone aren’t all that revolutionary. But the iPhone is as successful as it is because Apple dared to be different, and so should you. I’m talking about uncommon wordpress themes, opinionated posts, disruptive content that makes you and your brand stand out among the rest of the herd.
But Don’t Re-invent the Wheel : Wait a minute – didn’t I just suggest being different from the rest? Yes, be different in your design, content, and opinion. But in doing so, choose technology, platforms, and design that is tried and tested in your niche. The iPhone, while touted as an all-in-one uber device, is still a phone at its core. Similarly, be the best you can be at being an authoritative blogger, coder, or marketeer. In code speak, why use flash when valid CSS is the prevailing standard?
Keep it Simple Sherlock – Is your blog easy enough for a one year old to use? Apple’s iPhone sure is based on this YouTube video. The key here is to have usability and interoperability at the top of your priorities when going about your blog. Make your RSS feed more accessible, your blog easier to navigate, and yourself easier to reach.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Apple, Blogging, iPhone Tags: Blogging, Internet, Usability

Guest Bloggers Required, SandBox Wordpress Theme Suggestions

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 13:57:17 +0000

I won’t be blogging for a week since the last date for the SandBox Wordpress theme submission is 28th July and I don’t have enough time to blog and work on the theme at the same time. The SandBox theme turned out to be more complicated than I expected it to be. After going through the documentation I realized I had no control over the HTML and everything had to be done in CSS. I had to remove a number of design elements from my initial Photoshop mockup since it was not practical to implement them using just CSS. Example a date button like “JAN 09″. If you have any suggestions for the Wordpress theme, layout, design etc drop me a comment. I had planned to give a sneak preview to my regular reader but it looks like I won’t be allowed to do that, according to the sandbox competition rules.

I am looking for someone(some people) to guest blog for a week on my blog. If you interested, use the contact form to contact me. Here’s what I am looking for quality content, Tech/Design related Tips and Tricks or latest important technology news. In return you can have a intro and link to your website on each post. I have an average of 400+ RSS readers. While I won’t be editing or modifying the posts I will be reviewing it before it is published.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Design, Downloads Tags: Blogging