In the past, I have contributed a ton of free resources to various Open Source Communities. Most of my free XHTML and CSS templates, as well as a handful of WordPress themes, have been downloaded hundreds and in some cases tens of thousands of times. I can thank Frank Skettino of OSWD for that. He actually was responsible for helping to put me on the map because he chose my very feminine design, Translucent Fluidity, as his favorite one week. This was back in 2006, and just on his site alone, that one template has been downloaded over 20,000 times.


Yes, “arwen54″ is my handle on quite a few community sites because I’m such a big fan of Tolkien’s work.

So what that does this all have to do with Google? Well, Google has penalized some free template sites in it’s latest Penguin update because of the attribution links that many template users leave in the footer, and that end up on less than savoury sites. Google calls them bad neighborhoods.

I actually know all about bad sites leaving the attribution link intact, because some bad stuff was written about me a while back, and I had to go and publicly proclaim that I was simply the designer of the free template that the porn site, or the scammer had used. And that link in the footer, in those cases, was a liability to me.

But why should a web designer, who generously donates his or her time to give free stuff out to brand themselves and gain exposure, be penalized by Google? After all, when you generously donate stuff to the Public domain, there is no way you should be liable for how your gift to the Internet is used.

It hardly seems fair, does it? Well, it’s happening. I recently read this post and it was a huge eye-opener for me and it was the actions of Google directly affecting a free template site, that made me decide what to do moving forward.

My current free templates are all over the Internet, and however they have been used is not in my control, as 90% of them I donated to the public Domain or as WordPress themes, they fall under the GNU General Public License. Either way, I did not want to put any restrictions on the use of the free gifts I gave. And I benefited enormously from free back-links that were naturally given to me by the users of the templates and themes I distributed, who were kind enough to credit my work. I’m truly grateful for that.

But Google is now punishing us for that, if you read the article I mentioned above, you’ll see how one site lost about 75% or more of their traffic. Businesses have been wiped out over-night by Google’s decisions.

Therefore, any free templates I provide going forward will not be available to the public domain. I’m going to create free and paid versions of a community site and membership will be required if you want my stuff. I’m also creating some paid info products of my own, including a strategy that is anti-Google so that you never have to worry about ranking in Google, because the traffic you get from these sources will make Google traffic insignificant. Yes, really.

Also, as I had mentioned on May 9, I’m phasing out freelancing and consulting in favor of product creation and promotion. I’ve chose a couple of products that are not mine and don’t have anything to do with Internet marketing, that I’m going to promote, because they are superior products and in a niche I’m absolutely passionate about. I will not be taking on any more web development clients, but instead, members of my paid community site will benefit from lots and lots of instructional material for the DIY webmaster and Internet entrepreneur.

That’s the immediate plan and what I will be working on going forward. I will of course, let everyone know when the community site is available for registration. Of course, I will still post here on this blog, and appreciate all the readers who have subscribed. Have a wonderful day, and remember, if you’re running an online business, please don’t just count on one marketing strategy for gaining web traffic. Don’t let any third-party site destroy your business overnight.

Here’s to our mutual success!

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I just completed a project that I thought was never going to end. It started back in August of 2011. A client who is one of my WordPress coaching students, asked me if I could update her employer’s website to an ecommerce site.

It was decided that we would use the OpenCart software as the backend application. I had worked with other ecommerce applications before, but not OpenCart, yet I still felt confident that I could completely customize it based on the client’s specifications. Once you know how to work with one template-driven PHP application, it’s not hard to figure out other ones. Well, I don’t find it hard, that is.

The client’s employer sells about 100 products, so it wasn’t a huge under-taking, but there were lots of delays because of staff shortages at my client’s work, and the project dragged on and on. Finally, this year, we got back on track, updated the store with the recent price changes and then all that was left to do was proofreading. There was a lot of content from the old site to transfer over, so the proofreading took some time.

Then the client’s hosting was completely different from most hosting accounts and a MySQL database and SSL had to be set up before moving the store from the development server to the live one. All went fairly smoothly, though, except for a couple of minor glitches that we fixed, and today, I can finally say it’s complete.

The client is happy, I’m happy, and I think I will celebrate tonight. You see, with this project complete, I can now focus on a plan that I have had on a back burner to progress from a freelancer to a product creator, and I’m just itching to get started.

Being a web design and Internet consultant has it’s pros and cons. The biggest pro is when the client is happy – and the feeling of accomplishment that goes along with it. That makes all the other stuff worthwhile.

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I needed a dose of innocence and child-like joy today. I spent the last few days playing hostess to my roommate’s cousin who has been going through a very difficult time. She left yesterday and now everything is back to normal, but being exposed to so much pain and turmoil, even though it was someone else going through it, still left me feeling a bit drained.

So as I often do when there’s no one around to talk to about how I’m feeling, I searched YouTube for a feel-good fix.

When I was young I loved watching Charlie Brown cartoons. They made me laugh, they made me cry, but mostly they made me feel like the world was sweet and innocent, if only for a while. I was tickled pink when I found this really cute Charlie Brown video called simply “Happiness”.

Yes, I’m in a much better mood now. It doesn’t take much.

Simple things make me happy.

And for that I’m truly grateful.

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