Welcome to the new home of the Web Development Blog!

February 23rd, 2009 | Category: Announcements,Blogging,Heidi's Entries
written by: Heidi Cool

Welcome to the new home of the Web Development Blog

After years of building Web sites, I've managed to scatter my content over a number of different servers and domains. During that time I've built a number of sites to aggregate my content. Typically these pages worked well for me. They had links to my content so that I could keep track of my projects. But they didn't really serve the needs of the public.

Now that I'm leaving Case Western Reserve University Marketing and Communications, I've finally built a site that will serve that purpose. While http://www.heidicool.com won't link to everything I've done, I'm hoping it will give you an overall sense of my Web development and marketing philosophy. Naturally, the Web Development Blog serves as the cornerstone of the project. Here I will continue to share my rambling thoughts and observations on the ever-evolving World Wide Web.

Web Development Blog History

When I started the Web Development Blog back in 2005, I thought it would be a good way to share ideas and tips with the Web community at Case Western Reserve University. It was. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that I was speaking to a much broader audience, one that included not only Web developers from academia, but also bloggers, corporate sector content managers, a surprisingly large contingent of real estate agents, students and just about anyone interested in creating and marketing online content.

As readership grew, so too did the editorial slant of the site. Instead of just posting basic tutorials on cropping images or embedding YouTube videos with swfobject.js, I started writing articles about content, marketing, SEO and social media such as:

Here on the new site, you can expect more in the same vein. Forthcoming topics will likely cover marketing and social media and maybe something a bit geekier related to code.

If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic for a future entry please feel free to do so in the comments or via my contact page.

If you are currently subscribed to blog entries or comments on the old site, you can update your subscriptions with these feeds:

Thank you for reading!

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12 Comments »
  1. Thanks for the useful information. I am trying to develop a blog for my business. The problem is trying to determine good content. Any suggestions as to where to get ideas.

    Comment by Rita — February 23, 2009 @8:08 pm

  2. Wow, big news! Congratulations and I wish you nothing but the best.

    Comment by Kyle James — February 23, 2009 @9:26 pm

  3. Rita,

    Try reading my Planning your Web site tutorial to start thinking about your target audience and blogging goals. For a law firm, I think a blog that helps educate clients might be helpful.

    You could either write long explanatory entries like I do here or you may want to try doing short posts that link to news stories on topics of interest to your readers. The Health Disparities Blog offers a good example of that style. Also visit http://probook.stumbleupon.com/. He's a law student who saves a lot of law related sites on StumbleUpon. Best wishes on your blog!

    Kyle, Thanks for the encouragement!

    Comment by Heidi — February 23, 2009 @9:44 pm

  4. Congrats Heidi, I love the idea for your new blog! These will help tons of people, I'm sure. Best of luck in 2009 and into the 'tens'.

    Comment by Michael P. — February 24, 2009 @4:04 pm

  5. Checking out the new digs. Looking... dare I say, "Cool" :)

    Comment by Tom Goering — February 24, 2009 @10:56 pm

  6. Great job, Heidi! This is very helpful information--and easy to navigate.

    Comment by Amy — February 25, 2009 @9:01 am

  7. Nice place Heidi! Any thoughts on WordPress over MT? Personally I have always preferred WP but learned to live with MT. BTW - great tag line - It's not just an attitude, it's my name.

    Comment by dave — February 25, 2009 @1:01 pm

  8. Thanks for the great feedback everyone!

    Dave,
    Truth be told I'm not sure yet which I like better between WordPress and Movable Type. I'm more familiar with MT having set-up so many blogs on it at Case. This is only my 5th WP set-up so I'm still tinkering. Somethings are more complicated on WP where on MT I would have just added a wee snippet of code to a template. Then again some things are more flexible here.

    They're very different animals. But with WP if something doesn't work the way I think it should it's usually quite easy to find a plug-in that takes care of the required feature. Though some plug-ins cause validation errors (such as the one I use on the A-Z index page). Perhaps I'll write more about the transition in a future blog post.

    Comment by Heidi — February 25, 2009 @3:32 pm

  9. Hey Heidi! I was reading one of your older posts on the Case blog... http://blog.case.edu/webdev/2008/05/18/webdrive.html I was wondering how you got WebDrive to work with SFTP. I am trying to connect to a server and it isn't working - not sure what settings I need to fix. Thanks! Raksha

    Comment by Raksha — February 28, 2009 @1:20 am

  10. Raksha, If you're trying to use WebDrive with an account on the main Case server you need to choose WebDav rather than SFTP. If that doesn't help try contacting webmaster@case.edu to make sure you are using the right account name in the syntax https://www.case.edu:8000/xyz67/account. If you're connecting to a different server, and are supposed to use SFTP check with your hosting provider or sysadmin to make sure you are using the right host address. For SFTP you don't have to use WebDrive. I typically use Fugu for SFTP on a Mac, but on a Windows machine you can also use WinSCP. Best wishes on your site.

    Comment by Heidi — February 28, 2009 @1:46 am

  11. ...and a legend moves on. Nice to see you here.

    Comment by Ari Herzog — March 6, 2009 @1:54 pm

  12. I've posted on the old site, and will post here two. Congrats on the transition and enjoy the freelance aspect.

    Comment by Affordable Web Hosting — March 25, 2009 @8:03 am

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