Cool

Note: I'm posting this early as I'll be out of the office for the next 2 weeks, during which time I'll only have limited Internet access. I'll try to approve/reply to your comments as soon as time allows.

The first post. It's hard to believe I used to write such short entries. (Some of you probably wish I still did!)

Starting this blog was one of the smartest things I've done. To be honest though, it's not something I began on my own, nor did I anticipate how it would evolve over time.

To celebrate the anniversary of this blog (which actually occurs on February 28th), I thought I'd share a bit of its history and reflect on how the blog and I have adapted to changes in the Web and the interests of you, our readers.

A communications need—in search of a solution.

Five years ago Kevin Adams and I were the Web team for the marketing and communications department of Case Western Reserve University. In the second half of 2004 we'd rolled out a new site design as part of a university-wide rebranding effort. Our mission was to maintain the home page, build (and maintain) new sites within the campus Web presence and work with departments across campus to help them do the same with their own sites.

To this end we had periodic meetings with campus Web folk, and answered many an e-mail question or phone call, but this wasn't enough to keep up with the demand for support. Our campus community included hundreds of Web maintainers, of varying skill levels, who had questions ranging from how to edit HTML to how to develop content that would best support their marketing strategies. We needed a more efficient way to serve this audience.

As part of the new site roll-out we had created a Web Toolkit where we shared template files, and various reference materials, but as a static site it seemed an unwieldy place to post announcements or other bits of advice. We needed a system that would let us organize the information more effectively. Thankfully such a system had just been created.

Case launches a campus-wide blogging initiative.

I used the Case blog system to develop a variety of sites ranging from the Community Outreach site to the Case News Center. In July, 2008, I presented Blogs, The many voices of a university at EduWeb 2008 to demonstrate the ways that Case (and other schools) were making use of blogs in the classroom and beyond. You can get a sense of how Case continues to use blogs by visiting Planet Case, a site that aggregates all the most recent posts from the system.

In November 2004, Case's ITS group began alpha testing a campus-wide blogging system using the Movable Type platform. In January 2005 they opened up the system for campus-wide beta-testing, allowing any university students, staff, faculty or alumni to create their own blog(s).

Having previously experimented with blogs on Blogger, I watched the project with interest. Then one day Jeremy Smith, who runs the blog system, called me up to see if I might be able to create a new template design for one of the senior staff. Soon thereafter I had a test account set-up where I could experiment with creating this new theme.

Although I was a regular blog reader I'd not really spent much time thinking about blog construction. As I played with my designs, I found they weren't quite living up to my expectations. I was trying to visually re-style an existing blog structure, when I should have been rethinking the entire interface. Thus the results (such as this example) just didn't feel quite right.

I was learning that the blogs required a different way of thinking in regard to the user experience and navigation system. So I set those first designs aside and focused on learning more about blog structure and the code behind it.

At some point in that process I realized that the blog system was just what Kevin and I had been looking for.

The birth of the Web Development Blog

I don't recall the exact conversation but one way or another Kevin and I agreed to start blogging. Since I'd already been tinkering with the system, I took one of our campus templates and rebuilt it as a blog theme. Once that was ready I wrote our first post. You can view a copy of that post as it appears here on this blog, or the original post on the Case system.

As you will notice the post was surprisingly short. I introduced the reason for the blog, suggested users add contact information to their site footers and listed the hexadecimal colors for the Case Web templates.

Over the next few months Kevin and I continued in that vein, offering basic how-to tips such as setting up password authentication or redirecting pages and posting announcements, book reviews or links to interesting blog posts. As we added more content, the blog began to serve a customer service role. While campus Web maintainers continued to call us, they could now also go to the blog to find answers to many of their more common questions.

Broader mission and the birth of longer posts

When meeting with campus clients to talk about their new Web sites, I often started the conversation by asking about their goals and target audience, much as I do today with current clients. Alas with over 300,000 pages in the Case realm, and just me and Kevin to advise, we weren't able to sit down and have these conversations with everyone. As I was working with the department of pharmacology on their new site it occurred to me that I could write about the Web planning process and post it on the blog. This way users could walk through it themselves if Kevin or I weren't able to meet with them.

On July 1, 2005, I posted So you want to build a Web site, the first chapter of what turned out to be my Planning Your Web site Tutorial. Over the next few months I kept adding chapters while Kevin kept posting smaller articles on various tips and tricks. Kevin spends much of his spare time playing the trumpet in polka bands, while I'm often compelled to write, so it came as no surprise when I turned out to be the more verbose contributor to the blog.

As time went by I found that sharing the Web site tutorial with clients, before we met in person, helped to save us time in the planning process and ensure that we were all on the same page. I also found that people outside of Case, both in academia and beyond, were beginning to read our posts.

As people commented and asked questions we started writing on a wider range of topics. Instead of focusing strictly on issues pertaining to building sites, I also started writing about related topics such as marketing and graphics.

In 2006 we both wrote a combination of how-to articles such as those on editing images but also branched out into more general topics such as discussions on writing styles. By 2007, I'd also begun covering topics related to what we now call social media. In May of that year Kevin left to work on the corporate sector, so I continued the blog on my own.

Between building Web sites and advising clients, we'd never had much time to blog during office hours so I wrote many of these posts in the evening. Writing on my own time also allowed me the freedom to experiment a bit more with what I wrote. By this point I knew my audience extended beyond campus, so while much of my focus was on Web communications as they pertained to higher education I also wanted to include information that would be helpful to other audiences. And, instead of just writing things to help people build better Web sites, I wanted to address related issues such as promoting and marketing those sites. Topics like search engine optimization and social media were a natural addition to this content mix.

Life after Case

Last year after working at Case for almost 10 years I left the university to venture forth on my own. I knew the blog would continue to be an important communications tool, so I brought it with me to this site, while leaving the original files there for archival and reference purposes. I installed WordPress in a directory on this domain, created a theme to match the rest of my site, exported the blog entries from the old site then imported them here.

While I still sometimes find an odd link that goes back to the old site, the process worked surprisingly smoothly—considering that I was not only moving files but changing from Movable Type to WordPress. For a few weeks during the transition I cross-posted to both blogs then on February 23, 2009 I posted The Web Development Blog is moving! as the last post on the old site and began posting here full time.

Starting a new business takes time, so I've not blogged as often this past year as I'd have liked, but for the most part the editorial policy for the blog has remained similar to what it was at Case. Most of my clients are in small or medium sized businesses so I'm writing a bit more with an eye to the corporate sector. I'm still interested in the higher education and non-profit worlds, so I also use examples from those sectors, and read posts from BlogHighEd to keep up with what's happening in academe.

The role of the blog

What began as a simple way to communicate with clients has turned into much more. I think it worked out because Kevin and I started blogging to serve a specific goal, we didn't blog just to blog. As a result, The Web Development Blog has served as a marketing tool, helped me to establish my personal brand and given me the opportunity to connect with bloggers, clients and others with an interest in Web related issues. And of course it gives me a place to wax forth on whatever Web related ideas I may be pondering in a given moment.

But as much as I like to write, none of this would matter if you weren't out there reading. So now, as I near the anniversary date of the blog, I'd like to thank you all for reading, commenting, reTweeting, etc.

And of course if you have any ideas on things I should cover in 2010, please feel free to share them below.

Social Media Marketing Blog

I am now also a co-author of the Social Media Marketing Blog with Wayne Smallman and Emily Cagle. There we'll be focusing on social media marketing tips such as my first post, Listen, learn and leverage your brand via LinkedIn Answers. That site is also home to Wayne's e-book, The Beginner's Guide to Social Media.

Fan me on Facebook - Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something interesting I've found in the blogosphere.

At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful. And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool. (I also have links to more accounts on My Social Media Profiles page and am now also babbling on Buzz.)