August was a great month for Contented Niche. With quite a bit of traffic flowing in, I’m pleased with the success this blog has experienced so far.

But now is the time to take it in a new direction. I’ve noticed that resource posts and other, longer, articles are drawing in the most attention, so I’m going to focus on those for a few months until I can sustain my numbers at a comfortable place. Then I’ll be back to daily posts and see where things go from there.

Does this mean I’m not going to highlight some of the best and most unique icons and WordPress themes? Of course not, just not as often.

And did I mention that I’m hard at work on building a few themes of my own? I don’t want to give any set in stone deadlines, but expect to see the first one posted by mid month.

So expect to see the changes come this week with fewer, but better (and certainly more in depth) blog posts to come.

Oh, and if you have any suggestions for a post you’d like to see, just drop me a comment below.

Thanks for sticking around.

I always get a kick seeing how much some people valuate their blogs at. Basing their estimates on data from some fly-by-night site that seems to calculate data by pulling it from a part of their body where the sun doesn’t shine, these people generally get their numbers wrong.

What was that? You have 50 subscribers, 300 posts, and an Alexa ranking of 400,000? And your blog’s worth $15,000 USD? Riiiiight.

Of course, correcting someone on how much their blog is worth is definitely bad form. I’m more than willing to let people live their fantasies and assume that their site could be sold for thousands at the tip of a hat. But I found a post the other day that I may just present to people who enjoy going around spouting out how much their blog is worth.

It’s right over here, at Pajama Professional. A fun little post that discusses the discrepancies between a number of the multitudes of blog valuation engines.

According to the post, Sara’s blog ranges from $331 to a whopping $16,074 and everything else in between. That’s a pretty wide span.

So what is the lesson we can all learn from this? That blog valuation calculators are utter garbage. They’re good for nothing more than a laugh. After all, the real amount your blog is worth is whatever someone is willing to pay for it when you decide to put it up for sale. For some people, it’s the cost of a domain name. For others, it’s well into the millions.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what these sites think my blog is worth? Have a look.

Website Outlook: $1306.70
CubeStat: $575.97
CyberWyre: $125
SmartPageRank: $103
dnScoop: $21

Just a quick post to let my growing audience know that I’ve lowered all of my advertisement rates.

Until Contented Niche reaches an average of 300 daily uniques, the two standard ad sizes cost no more than a dollar.

Only $1 per month for 125px square ads. Only $1 for every six months for a favicon ad in the first footer.

Even better, we’re finally offering more bang for your advertising buck. For just $5 per month, you can get an in-post ad measuring 300×250 pixels. Or, if you’d prefer the ultimate in advertising goodness, you can buy a review for as little as $10. We’ll review your program, website, blog, whatever you (reasonably) want.

You can see a full list of our advertising rates at our Advertise page.

We’re growing fast, so don’t expect these low prices to last.

Contact us and we’ll set something up.

The IE6 dilemma.

I’m not a professional web designer/developer, nor do I claim to be. Everything I ever learned about XHTML, CSS, and PHP is completely self taught. This means I know how to code for browsers like Firefox, Safari, and even IE7–but the way IE6 works boggles my mind.

I was reading a fun little post yesterday about why people still use IE6. It was a clever read with some interesting insight, though not backed up by facts whatsoever. Totally the author’s opinions–and they were well grounded. However, I tend to think that most people use IE6 because they have to, they don’t know any better, and Microsoft as well as professional web designers are enabling IE6 users by continuing to code for the almost decade old browser.

Whatever the reason, I made up my mind once and for all when editing the new theme that I would not support IE6. If it worked, it worked–but if it didn’t, I don’t give a damn.

Guess what? It didn’t work. Surprise, surprise.

I’m actively alienating potential readers, and I don’t care. It feels good.

Now, I know that no self respecting professional designer would scrap IE6 support once and for all–though a few are–but what is your reasoning behind keeping the support in? Don’t you think that if more and more websites stopped supporting IE6 users, the visitors would eventually get the hint and upgrade?

But she’s so young.

Frequent visitors will notice that Contented Niche got a facelift today. I figured that if I was ever going to modify the theme for my blog, I’d better do it sooner rather than later. You run into all kinds of branding and confusion issues later if you change the theme once a blog is already truly popular–and I didn’t want to go through the headaches.

The previous theme was based on Charred by Jason of WPElements. It was a beautiful theme, truly. A bit dark at times, though, and I didn’t think it fit as well with the idea of my blog. Also, I was tired of battling it out with PNGs and IE 6. In any event–it wasn’t working out as smoothly as I hoped.

So now here we are. The new theme is a very heavily modified version of the Dreamworks Redux theme by Vinh of the Blog Design Blog. Thanks goes out to commenter Liam for introducing Vinh’s blog to me. I’d not heard of it before I checked out Liam’s site.

In any event, it was the colors and the typography that drew me to the Dreamworks Redux theme. Bold, beautiful, and a great starting point for what I hoped to achieve. I’m not a designer, after all, but I do know enough to be able to turn an existing theme into one that I find useful and attractive. While Dreamworks Redux is great in stock form, I think it truly shines now. But more on what exactly I did to edit the theme in another post.

There is, however, still more work to be done. I have yet to modify that big blank space in the header and I have some ads to put up here and there. Oh, and about that IE 6 support. Well, the site still looks like crap in Microsoft’s tired old browser–but at least it’s still functional.

So what do you think? Do you like the new theme or the old theme better?

Let me get something out in the open here. I despise Internet Explorer 6. There. I said it.

Is it the lack of security? Is it the fact that a third of the internet using populace still embrace it? No, it’s the fact that it is annoying as hell when it comes to web design because the Microsoft engineers were too lazy to make their browser obey common standards.

So where does this leave me? I know about all of the bugs and annoyances built in to IE6, but I’m a Mac user, so I don’t really get to see where the problems are until I’m able to use a friend’s laptop running XP. What do I find when I look at Contented Niche? Garbage–all thanks to Internet Explorer.

If you’re looking at this site through Safari, Firefox, Opera (and likely even IE7, though I’m not entirely sure), you’ll find something that I consider stylish. Transparent PNGs, an attractive background, well laid out columns and images. None of that is present in IE6. Well, the background is, but that’s about it.

I implore you, if you’re still using Internet Explorer’s previous model, upgrade now. It doesn’t hurt. I know you can see that spiffy Javascript drop down designed by Save the Developers. Click it. Read about how much better the other browsers are. Make the switch. Stop wasting your time on a shoddy browser. In five minutes, I guarantee you’ll have a better browsing experience if you upgrade to Firefox, Safari, Opera, or even IE7.

I’ve mentioned a few times that Contented Niche has undergone some changes over the years, and most of you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. To the masses, it seems as though this site is as fresh as a newborn baby–but that is really not the case.

After graduating from college and tiring of my job as a medical writer, I moved into freelance copywriting for a little extra income. The pay was OK, but I wanted more, so I came up with the original idea for Contented Niche. The site was designed to be a place for people who needed content for their niche sites.

The site went live in 2006 and my small team of writers and I worked on creating numerous article packs, ebooks, and other goodies for the would-be internet entrepreneur. Over time, we branched out to other projects, mainly custom content as opposed to pre-written niche packs. The name stayed the same, but the idea behind it began to morph into something different.

And that leaves us where we are today. The old Contented Niche has passed on to make way for something new. Instead of a small team, it’s now a one man show. Instead of pages filled with pre-written articles, I’ve come back to the roots of what I wanted Contented Niche to be. A site designed to help make the internet a more interesting place.