For the past little while, (nearly two years actually) I’ve been playing around trying to find the “perfect” WP theme!

I’ve tried several over this time but have been unable to come up with “the best” theme.

I used a lot of themes over that time, and have kept a lot of them while I switched back and forth.

A couple of weeks ago, my business partner Teeg showed me a link to Thesis, by DIYThemes.

I liked it, and moved on to other things, but then started to notice other people using it, like Des Walsh.

The more I saw, the more I liked, so I went ahead and bought it!

Then The Panic Set In

Thesis is so different, that I was completely lost when it came to customizing it!

Being a writer, rather than a coder, I can tell you that I am serious when I say that I panicked! But I was amazed when I went back to the site, and started to read the help pages.

The support is excellent, and the users’ forum is a great place to learn from others, and get help.

Getting help in the forum is as easy as asking, though it does pay to do a search first to see if the topic has been covered before!

You’ll see a lot of changes here over time as I learn more Thesis.

In the meantime, I will be deleting all the old themes from my content folder.

If you want to have a look at Thesis, it’s here!

David Bridger recently wrote post about mining your life for writing material.

The concept really struck me, because there are so many people writing about so many things, that it can be hard to come up with something new.

The best way to do this, is to look to your own life in relation to the subject that you are talking about.

For instance, I wrote a tribute to Australia’s Vietnam war veterans here, but tied it to my decision at that time to run away and join the Foreign Legion after a broken romance.

The most ridiculous thing about my decision at the time was that I had always been a conscientious objector, and although conscription ceased in Australia just as I was coming to that age, I had faced the fact that I was in for a lot of trouble.

Anyway, nothing happened, I never got the girl back, thank heavens, and we all lived on…

When I resigned from my job last year, my intention was to follow my life long passion for writing on a full time basis.

As time moved on though, I realized that when I was working full time, I was achieving a lot more, and was much more organized.

I had also found that I was trying to force my self to write, and it just wasn’t happening for me.

What to do? Something completely different.

Since Christmas, I have made a point of taking on short term work assignments completely unrelated to what I do on line.

For instance, this weekend, I am hosting a group of Japanese students on a tour of the Jenolan caves in the blue mountains, west of Sydney.

I did something similar with a group of Korean students earlier in the year.

As well as that, for the next little while, I am working as a relief school bus driver, collecting country kids from farms and out lying villages, and taking them to school in town.

Up with the birds, and setting out at first light, I’m covering a distance of over 150 miles each day.

It’s already working, with a stack of ideas on paper, and more forming as I go.

This morning, about half an hour out of town, I picked up a couple of students at their farm gate.

As I changed gears heading up the hill, I glanced to the left, and saw two kangaroos hopping alongside the bus.

I slowed down to let them get away, but they slowed as well. So I tried accelerating, but, they just hopped faster as I did so!

I’d had this experience a few years before, in my wife’s new car, and had ended up hitting a huge male kangaroo.

Remembering the damage he had caused, I tried to take evasive action, but having terrible traffic sense, the animals began to veer into the bus.

In desperation, I hit the brakes and the horn at the same time, startling them and causing them to hop off in the opposite direction!

Now, as well as giving the kids on the bus a scare, it gave me something to write about tonight.

Do I want to be a full time bus driver?

Not especially, and when I am finished this ‘assignment’, I will find something else to do.

How do you come up with things to write about?

Do you suffer from writer’s block? How do you overcome it?

One of the most common mistakes we can make with blogs and other websites is to design them according to our own likes and dislikes.

While self expression is fine, if we are hoping to attract people, and keep them there long enough to read what we want them to, we need to build according to what they want.

If the colors on your theme are too gaudy, the text too small, or hard to read against the background, people will lose patience quickly and leave.

The other point to remember is the speed with which your blog, or website loads.

I had troubles with my broadband connection this week, and spent a few days on dial up speed.

It was a maddening experience to say the least.

One of the slowest sites to load was my own, which made me even madder.

Having said that though, it caused me to start working through my blogs, and websites, and start slimming them down,

I’m in the process of working out what’s slowing them down, and what I need to do to fix it.

To summarize, color clashes, and difficult to read text can turn people off.

This is especially true if their eyes are tired, or if they are vision impaired at all.

Slow loading sites are self defeating, especially if you are a marketer.

You can have all the greatest widgets and plugins, but if your site takes so long to load that visitors won’t wait, it’s all to no avail….

I have fallen into the habit of using You Tube videos on my website, and find that they add an extra dimension to my posts.

Up until now though I have resisted the urge to create my own videos because I have a head better suited to radio than television.

Recently though, my partners at Share2Grow and I have decided to start venturing beyond our comfort zones!

Stepping out of your comfort zone can be as simple as being as trying something new, like video, or trekking through the wilds of New Guinea like Ange!

Not liking the idea of freezing at night, baking by day and trekking across hilltops, all the while being eaten by mosquitoes, I decided to make a video!

Uploading stuff to YouTube is quite simple, and you don’t need the latest video camera to create your masterpiece.

I created the video below using a simple webcam.

The quality of the video isn’t great, but at 30 seconds it’s more of a trial than anything else!

I’ve come to the conclusion that using multimedia on my website provides a new means to connect with my visitors, though the change from writing is hard – it is what I enjoy.

My thanks go to Des Walsh for his inspiration – I saw a video that he made almost 12 months ago for the Thirty Day Challenge.

I remember seeing it and thinking, web 2.0 is great, but I couldn’t do THAT!

The rest is history. I’d love your comments though.

What do you think of video on blogs?

Will it ever take the place of writing, or will it simply enhance it?

And, what about search engine optimization with video blogs?