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But I took the writing for the web course in stride and had to sign up for a WordPress.com account. I decided to write on coffee as it was close to home, easy to write about and a popular topic. My class only required me to write 12 posts, but after those 12 posts I saw the power of blogging and had 1,200 unique page views and a number of comments about the blog.

So I really started to take the WordPress blog seriously about that time and got a domain name and style that fit and the readership continued to grow. WordPress was growing right along with my own blog, the two seem to feed off each other (no pun intended).

When I started to see other blogs link to mine in some authority I knew I was on to something. So what to do? Well the first thing was to make the blog self hosted and, well, that was the hardest part. But, it was also important to keep the blog looking the same. I picked the Freshy theme by Julien De Luca as it was one of the 16 different themes available to WordPress.com users at the time. While I could make a change when I moved the blog why change? As it works for me and the readers seem to like it. (p.s. the theme I am using here is a highly customized Orange Coffee)

Change is a good thing…I think…

While WordPress had designed a way to take your content with you when I moved it wasn’t that easy. I had three issues with my content moving:

• I wanted to keep my old Freshy theme and while it was still available for download it wasn’t optimized for WordPress 2.7
• My old content from WordPress 2.1 didn’t format that well into WordPress 2.7 So if I wanted to edit any of my old content I essentially had to re-align the entire post.
• All of media, pictures and video had to be manually copied from the wordpress.com site and uploaded to the new server while persevering the perma-links.

Yeah this totally wasn’t that easy and I would never suggest trying to do this and I am sure there are easier ways to go about this but just not to me and not at this time.

When moving call friends

But with any move you need to enlist the help of some good friends and I really couldn’t have done this without the help of:

• CSS guru Jeff Hifner.
• My service provider Site 5.
• Developer Kevin Ganapathy of Second Sites Communications • WordPress Plugin Developer Dylan Kuhn at the Cyber Hobo• And of course my awesome, awesome editor Stefania Seccia

So what is new?

Better Cafe Reviews

Lattes and Laptops

The whole essence of this blog is to pass on the most accurate information I can. I’ve done some minor editing of archived posts but only to keep information current as some of those old posts are damn popular.

Interactive Map

I always liked maps especially when they are interactive so now you can find a visual representation of the great cafes (in my humble opinion) via this map. Just click on the cafe review icon to bring up the review of that café.

Our Mantra

I really like to show people where I am coming from when I write a review or give my opinion. This page is after two years of coffee knowledge, what we at the Indy Coffee Scene and what I rate on. Also a code of ethics for users to see where we’re coming from and what we look for, and once advertising appears on the site, what type will be allowed.

Coffee Terms

Well I decided to stake my claim on this lexicon and collect over 100 coffee terms that are currently used in Vancouver.

Social Media

We have also joined twitter so you can follow us at coffeevancouver. We have a flickr group called (Vancouver Indy Coffee) where we’re posting some awesome coffee photos.

Snicket Park looks out over Georgia Straight

Flickr Stats from March 5

Photo is shown on the right, but actual location on the left

Ever since I got my iPhone, I have really enjoyed the challenge of capturing the image with the camera that is built it. While it has many drawbacks and is certainly no the pro SLR I am use to. The ease of use and the ability to shoot, edit, caption and publish all with in a coupld of key strokes is amazing. I decided to take my “never updated” flickr page the exclusive home of my iPhonography. This also allows me to geo-tag most of the photos with embeded GPS longitude and Lattitude, and I am not alone in this trend.

Can you find me now?

What suprised me the most is when I was visiting the folks on the Sunshine Coast, I went for a walk into Sechelt when I when I took this picture and uploaded it. A couple days later I was checking out my stats and saw that Flickr actually Geotagged me across Georgia Strait and on Vancouver Island. I know GPS doesn’t pinpoint you exactly but I thought Nanaimo was a bit of a stretch.

This little hickup left me with one final question:

If the GPS says I was in Nanimo does that mean I really was there?

Devious Behaviour Website

A number of months ago I was given a domain and server space to experiment with and I built the entire new robertdall.com website using this domain. So what to do when everything moved over to the actual robertdall.com ?

I though I would throw up some cool Graffiti I found around the city. So why not expand this? But how? Through some investigation I found a content management system called Pixel Post, I loved the big photos after downloading the lastest version I had it up and running in about 2 hours. Not bad for a Easter Sunday evening if I do say so.

But here is the deal, this isn’t my web domain so much like graffiti this photo blog could be around for a day, a week, a month, or a year. I don’t really know. But while the google bots find and rank my new content on my new site others won’t get lost along the way.

check it out. . . .

My year of schooling is almost complete and the new robertdall.com incorporates a number of new features which all center around the human body. I hired professional dancer Caitlin Griffin and revisited a studio for the first time in three years.

Visual by Design

Web design has been a big passion of mine since I started to learn it. It is hard to think I barely knew what an FTP was six years ago. In this new web era it is all about what your message is and how you can manage your own content and life online, just in case you don’t want Facebook to do it for you.

Am I blogging?

Yes, I have started a blog. Well, not one, but two, and with some help from the folks at wordpress, I have been able to update my content without having to code that all that server mobojumbo myself. On a whim I started a coffee blog for a class project, and a year later, and having had some 8,000 actual vistors, it is still going strong. I have also have started a flickr blog which shows excepts of my photographic life in Vancouver.

I found that when a client wants to make an impact with their brand you have to include all forms of communication which includes print. I also have an iPhone full of contacts in that can push your brand forward.

with regards

Robert Dall
Vancouver, Canada
www.robertdall.com