Welcome to rachelsays... The blog of Rachel Lewis, containing my thoughts and musings on illustration, design, fashion, music, cakey-bakey goodness, culture and things that I generally find cool. There's also a good chance my own illustration work will pop up on here.
All work on this blog is copyright to me unless I state that it isn't. Obviously. Don't do stealing, kids.
So come on in, have a look around, and leave a comment if you like what you see.
Wow. So, I’ve done it! Sort of. Things are in the mid-way between being terrible and being better. Remember I posted about wanting to switch my website and blog over to one place? Well here it is. It’s using a basic template at the moment; I will eventually make a custom one and it’ll be all spangly.
Things left to do are:
Try and reformat the fonts used; not loving these sans serif things. And also get rid of the black on the header! Ew.
Upload my entire portfolio. This will take a while. I’m trying to grapple with plugins etc to make it work.
Contact page, twitter plugins, all the rest. RSS feed. Automatic post to fb and twitter. Etc etc.
But I actually managed to make it work :D Yay me!
Until it's in its presentable state, I'll dual-post over here and over there. Eventually I'll let this blog die. Or do some kind of redirect thing. When I've figured out how to do RSS feeds for it over there I'll keep reminding you daily to resubscribe. But for the mean time, just sit back and watch it fail rise from the ashes.
So once it's presentable, I'll do a nice redesign, get my awesome tech friend to code it up, then I shall surely have a site worthy of awesome-ness.
Stay tuned! I need one of those 'men at work' signs. Hang on.
This is going to a long-ish post so I apologise. It's one of my rare 'thoughts spilling out' posts but I'll try to keep it interesting. If you'd rather have pretty pictures then.... come back tomorrow.
I recently started subscribing to David Airey's brilliant blog and came across this article: Seven blog mistakes to avoid. I thoroughly recommend you go and read it (the whole blog, if you have hours to spare, or just that article) because it's great. And so useful if you write your own blog. It's started me thinking about this blog, and my website too, and now I have a big conundrum that I need your input on.
His first mistake in the article is 'not using a self-hosted blog.' Oops. I fail at the first hurdle. I've known for a while the benefits of hosting your own blog (you will actually own your content) and yet I still use blogger. Ol, faithful, annoying, uninspiring blogger. Why? Because it's safe. It works. And I'm terrified of moving! I wish I had started using wordpress, but I started this blog in 2007 and it was meant to just be a 'this is my work' blog. Obviously, it's a whole lot more now.
I own my own website - www.rachelsayshello.com and yet most of my hits come to this blog, not my website. Here are the pitiful stats: my website (which is basically just a static portfolio which gets updated say, once a month) gets about 6 hits a day, this blog gets about 40. Sometimes a lot more. Basically though, both are really bad. You do the maths! Surely it makes way more sense to host my blog on the same domain as my portfolio? My blog will do the work, being constantly updated with fresh content, and my portfolio will benefit from all the added exposure. At the moment, you have to click on a button over there ----> which takes you to my website; which at the moment is an external link. I've tried to link the two a bit more (the title of this blog is now rachelsays...) but this blog is still hosted at www.rachellewisillustration.blogspot.com, which is a mouthful and nothing to do with my website. And I'm paying for my spangly domain name. Why not use it as much as I can?
Mistake #4 from David Airey's post sums this up quite well: "When I launched my first website about two years ago, I wanted my portfolio to be its primary purpose, and the blog a secondary aspect. Then last year I discovered blogs. It didn’t take long to realise the number of clients I could attract first through my blog content, and then directing them to my portfolio. It’s generally the content I publish that attracts visitors, rather than the work in my graphic design portfolio."
Which is exactly what I should be doing. I write about good stuff. I'm pretty cool, people subscribe to what I say here, they're vaguely interested in my point of view. So I'm missing a huge opportunity in that my work is not easily accessible right from here. And that also, this is clearly a blogger template. E v e r y o n e uses this one because it's the least offensive. But it doesn't stand out! I'm a pretty unique girl, and this blog says 'hey, I use blogspot, cos I don't know nuffin about the mintynet' which isn't true.
So... the obvious answer here, is switch to wordpress (and I mean .org, not .com... download the template and install it in the root directory of my site). Move the whole shabang over to rachelsayshello.com, start again. Stop using indexhibit (it's great, but quite restrictive) and get a custom/nicer wordpress template over there. Make the blog content the primary landing page, and then all my portfolio work as a secondary, but still lovingly presented and relevant.
Sounds great! Except.....
1) I would lose all my SEO and links and everything. I would probably still keep this blog running but everything would die. I'd probably have to rebuild my subscribers again and I'd really miss you all if you didn't follow me over.
2) I know a teeny bit of html but no way could I deal with a custom wordpress thing, with code and all that. I could install it in my root directory, I'd get that far, then I'd have no idea.
3) This all sounds like it's going to take more than a sunday afternoon. I work full time. Help will be needed, help which I can't afford.
4) I'm scared of messing with things in case it all goes tits up.
So, I don't really know. I want to change things up, but I just really don't know where to start. There's a few peeps on my twittersphere who could probably give me advice but generally, I'd have to muddle my own way through. Argh. All I know is that the way things are is not really helping: I'm paying for a domain name which is getting less hits than my free blogspot page. And blogspot isn't really that cool.
Incidentally, my website is down right now and I have no idea why. Which is slightly worrying. I'm sure it's probably just godaddy being weird and it'll be back soon, but I don't like it. Make it come back!
What do you think, minions? Is it worth the hassle, to switch and be all spangly under one domain name, or just stick how I am and be all amateurish but safe. Your insights are very much welcomed, I am trés confused.
Surely, you could buy online. Surely. But no. It seemed the 21st century had slipped Selfridges by... if you wanted their stuff (and there's a lot of it...) you had to get down to Oxford St or the Bullring (or the one in Manchester, but I've never been there) and buy it in person. Or get a minion to do it I suppose.
I think originally, Selfridges didn't want to get into e-shopping because they though it would take away from their in-store experience. After all, they're pretty good at putting on experiential shopping and buying something online, they thought, would dull that experience. Also, there was a thought that luxury shoppers wouldn't want to buy online - if you're going to spend a couple of K on a handbag, you want to do it in person, you want to see it, feel it. Not so. While I was on placement at Open, we undertook some trend and consumer research for Selfridges, particularly into the habits of high-end luxury buyers, and actually, quite a lot of people do want to buy luxury goods online. Maybe they're not the type to splash the cash and show off, maybe they're just too damn busy to navigate selfridges on a busy saturday. In any case, there was a need. And it seems Selfridges listened.
The homepage is nice and clean, with good interactivity and not too much flash-usage. All those boxes you can fling around with your mouse. I've spent a good while stacking them up neatly. Slightly calming, yet alarming.
The Selfridges blog is just starting up too, called Selfridges Says... (slightly familiar don't you think! I know I'm great, but no need to rip me off ;) haha.)
What I really like though is the identity of the branding. It comes across best in the emails they send out:
It's just really fun and quirky, I like the hand drawn illustrations and the fact that the product shots aren't just cut outs of flats, they are displayed like an exhibition, curated almost. That's a word we threw at Selfridges. Actually that's a word that's being thrown around a lot recently. It's a good 'un.
The Wish Rooms
This is brilliant. It's like Wish Lists 2.0. As you browse the site, you add things to the Wish rooms. Then you can hop on over and create outfits from what you've added, arranging them on the mannequins. You can then send to a friend (ah, sharing, way to go) or just rush and buy them cos you're so rich and NEED that Stella Mccartney jumpsuit. Sharing them is good as your friends get to see them on a mannequin, as an outfit, and can give you advice! I also think it would be good for fashion bloggers who don't like awkward outfit posts (like me...) - you can just stick the stuff on the perfectly formed mannequin and all is good.
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