Happy First Birthday – BRT
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This week is the first anniversary of The Big Red Tomato Company Blog. It’s the anniversary of when The Big Red Tomato Company static website and The Better Leader Blog came together here at www.bigredtomatocompany.co.uk.
A lot has happened in the last year, the blog has changed enormously thanks to great comments by fellow bloggers, hints and tips we’ve discovered from around the blogosphere.
We’ve launched two information products – How To Achieve Your Dreams The Tomato Way, The Number 1 Product Launch Checklist and our one hour consulting and brainstorming service.
Not only that, The Big Red Tomato Company has moved up the blog rankings on Alexa and now stands 2m positions higher than it did this time last year.
So there’s a lot to celebrate – check the blog later in the week to see how you can join in with the celebrations!
What do you think?
Now, we don’t like to rest on our laurels so there’s a few things that we want to change on the blog to make it more interesting and exciting.
Here’s some of the things that we had in mind:
- The ability to tab to Previous post at the bottom of the home page
- Swapping the Welcome text on the home page for a featured post
- Better access to archives relevant to the posts
But what I’d really like to know today is what you think. What would you like to see changed, added, blogged about or stopped over the next year?
How do you think bigredtomatocompay.co.uk can be improved?
Related posts:
Happy Birthday Tomato! You’ve grown bigger and redder (is that even a word?).
BRT is one my influences, my motivator. Thanks for that!
As for suggestions, something’s freaky with your share buttons (Sexy). It’s not showing the buttons. Maybe reset it or something?
Swapping welcome with a featured post(s) seems like a good idea. There’s an unused space in your footer. Maybe add an About area? A short version with a link to your About page. Just a thought.
Oh, hi Matt! I forgot about you. Ha!
Kidding. Have a good one.
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Thanks Gines for your kind words. I’m pleased you’re finding inspiration here.
Good spot, sexy bookmarks (the plugin) deactivated itself when it was upgraded – all fixed now.
Great ideas, I’ll add them to the list of things I want to include in the revamp.
Have a good weekend!
Happy Birthday BRT!!!!
You have such an awesome site here Matthew and I’m so pleased to have featured you on my site so many times.
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Matthew Needham Reply:
August 14th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Hey Ben, thanks for the Birthday wishes!
I’m really glad you like it and I’m really pleased to have your guest posts on here! Can’t wait until the next one!
Matthew,
I am not sure what to call it but blogging software seems to lack some sort of device to bring up all the old gold that is buried in the mountain of posts. I wonder if there is a way to trawl around old blog posts and link to them automatically based on keywords or some other linking strategy?
I know there are archives and tags that help with this but they are collections rather than individual post links.
Anyway, happy birthday.
Michael
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Matthew Needham Reply:
August 14th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Thanks Michael, great points. I need to spend time on both categories and tags and tidy them all up to simplify them and make searching that much easier – I think a nice job for a Sunday afternoon!
Thanks for the comments and the birthday wishes!
Hi Matthew,
Happy 1st Blogging Birthday!
I agree that there’s a whole section of the footer that’s empty. Why not pull something from your packed sidebar and put it in the footer?
Adding “previous” and “next” links to the botton of each post is a no-brainer.
I agree that Related Posts could be improved. If YARPP isn’t working, just do them manually, like I do. At least this way, you can be selective about what posts you think are relevant to the featured one and you can have a specific number each time.
Some of the widgets on the sidebar can go into a Resources or Tools of the Trade page so that you free up space to concentrate on what you want people to do.
Just some suggestions. It’s hard to believe that an entire year has one by already, eh? You’ve done wonderfully with this year – can’t wait to see what the next one will bring.
Karen
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Matthew Needham Reply:
August 14th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the Birthday wishes and comments! I did see on Project Mojave website a perfect footer, but they seem to have stopped using it now.
I had thought of doing that, but I don’t like to have to think too much, so I think on balance, the automation route is good for me as I might choose the posts that I like instead of what the reader may find of use. I think I might go for the Linkwithin plugin as that’s image heavy and I like images!
Good points about the sidebar, it needs some tidying up, you’re right – thanks for the pointers!
It’s been very exciting certainly! Thanks again, Matthew
Happy 1st Birthday, BRT blog! It’s been fun reading all the material in the last few months.
Congratulations for getting over the 1st year hump. Looking forward to new content
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Matthew Needham Reply:
August 14th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Thanks Moon, as soon as I’ve got my thoughts together in the next few days I’ll be contacting the developers and booking the development time.
I look forward to be sharing some great content over the next year with you Moon! Thanks for the comment…!
I am a new reader to your blog, Matthew, but love it already.
Happy Birthday and congrats on the job well done!
Best,
Ana Hoffman
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Happy Birthday Big Red Tomato! (And a little birdie told me that yours is in a couple of weeks too Matthew. Is that right?)
The last couple of months has been great fun as lots of my lovely blogging friends have celebrated their first birthdays. Like I’ve said (more than once!) to Karen, I just can’t wait for Christmas. It’s going to be a blast!
I have nothing to add by way of website advice. I think the lovelies ahead of me have it covered. I just wanted to thank you for all the great stuff you’ve taught me over the past few months, for your help and support with Give A Brick, for the opportunity to write that very fun guest post and for smashing all my illusions about accountants. Long may it continue!
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Matthew,
Happy Birthday for BRT. I year is a very important milestone. Thanks for all the good info you have given in the past and all of it to come in the future.
Steve
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Matthew Needham Reply:
August 17th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Thanks for the comment Steve, really appreciate it. I get a lot of inspiration from your blog so I appreciate the comment!
Here’s to the next year!!!
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