When someone “follows” you on Twitter, they are trusting you to provide worth-while information, and not spam up their already full list. But what then? Sure, you could retweet a few things towards them, or possibly send them a “Direct Message” or “DM” for short, but often times the DM comes off like a bot, or spammy.

Which is why this article is about creating a unique, classy, and informative “Twitter Page.”

First off I will mention that  I do not recommend a mass DM service. I attempted it prior to creating this site, and I already felt like a dirty spam bot.

(Sorry to some of my followers)

Check Out My Twitter Page

Now, to begin you’ll need a few things:

– A domain & hosting in which to create a subdomain & site
(i.e. http://twitter.douglife.com)

- Some web design or coding knowledge (CMS would work, depending on what is easiest for you.)

- Text Editor (Save previous DM’s!) – I find this crucial when trying to write unique and clever DM’s to my new followers

I recommend a decent one page site, or mini-portfolio. CMS like Wordpress & Tumblr are fine, but as a web designer I found it much easier for me to code a simple page. Use whatever is right for you.

This page can offer a variety of things, but try to keep it from becoming a new site itself, you’re just trying to give the follower insight into who you are.

Once you’ve designed the site, and have it directed to a subdomain or domain of your choice, it’s time to edit it. Like I said before, try to keep it to a minimum, just enough to let the follower know what you do and what you’re about.

You will notice I have ads on my Twitter Page, or “TP” as I like to call it. I feel ads are ok as long as they are relative to the follower. The ads I have at the moment are items I strongly believe in, or use every day.

Now that your site is complete, it’s time to unleash it on the Twitter world. No, don’t try to mass “DM” your existing followers. They won’t appreciate that and may unfollow you for it. Be creative with both existing and new followers and offer them something more than just the old boring banter they’ve been reading all day.

There you have it, a nice “TP” tutorial, and another great way to interact with your followers on Twitter. Always remember a follower is a gift, something not to be taken for granted. So take care of your followers!

I personally hope you enjoyed this post, and look forward to reading your comments or feedback on this topic. Thanks again for stopping by.

The Wordpress Cheat Sheet

Even the best at times need sources of reference, some more than others at times, ha! So today I will post…a Wordpress Cheat Sheet! Created by Ekin Ertac, this table shows links and relative pages in Wordpress, from Theme structure to Navigation menu. It has become a great help to me in the past few days as I am doing some work around here, and hope it helps you too. Take a look.

Click to download the PDF..

Also, be sure to check out Mashable’s directory of the latest Wordpress Tips & Tricks for a bit more in-depth Wordpress customization.

Thesis is quickly becoming one of the most used Wordpress Theme today. This is a small collection of Thesis related links & articles for Thesis users.

So if you’ve been here before you’ve noticed we use the Thesis Wordpress Theme. Functionality, ability to add new content on the fly, site design customization without coding, and search engine capabilities are among the great features that draw us to the  Wordpress Theme. Here is some more information if you aren’t familiar with Thesis:

From Diythemes.com Incidentally, WordPress themes have become the most widely-used subset of site frameworks on the Web. Because of this, savvy developers now have the chance to create—and support—robust template systems that will not only drastically alter the Internet landscape, but also set the standard for best practices in coding and site development in the years to come.

After doing some research on how to change a few things for my blog, I’ve decided to repost the tutorials or articles I used to get the job done. Along with that, there are a few more great links for you to check out.

10 useful answers to common Thesis questions – http://www.artofblog.com/answers-to-common-thesis-questions/

How to add a custom background image in Thesis – http://www.bloghighlight.com/add-custom-background-image-thesis-theme/

A great collection of various Thesis Theme tutorials – http://www.sugarrae.com/category/blogging-it/

The Thesis Hacker – http://www.thesishacker.com/

Many of these sites offer enough information to get you up and running. Good luck and have fun working with one of my favorite Wordpress Themes, Thesis.

Now Accepting Clients!

If you are interested in creating a Wordpress blog, or website for that matter, we at Simple Website Development  are currently accepting clients for 2010. Please feel free to contact us for more information @ 352-419-1880

With the apparent onset of Web 2.0, and the almost instant embrace of HTML5 and CSS3, it’s only natural that we begin working with them.

So today I will be showing you how to use the “border-radius” attribute in CSS3. This comes out of W3C’s CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders Module.

This will allow you to create a rounded box, without any images or javascript.

Now doing this used to be such a task, creating the images, placing them in the css, etc. But with this CSS3 module, we can do it with ease.

<div style=”background-color: #333; -moz-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; border: 1px solid #666; padding: 10px;”>

That’s it!

Wondering about browser compatibility are you? Take a look at this great table showing the definition and syntax for border-radius

From: The Art of Web

Unfortunately Internet Explorer does not support this, but you can go ahead and get a head start as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome will support it.

So there it is, not too much work? Thanks for stopping by!