So after many, many years of trying, I managed to finally acquire my very own “dot-com”. As in, MikeVardy.com.
I was kind of caught off guard when I found out that it had become available; the person who had it before had it for what seemed like forever. I put it to Google+ as to what I should’ve done with my new domain – clearly I needed to do something with it because of the sheer value of time I’d been waiting to have it. I offered my own thoughts, and there was one in particular that was supported…so I went with it.
But I went a little bit further with it.
Vardy.me
First off, Vardy.me got a bit of a facelift over the weekend. I gave it a total navigation menu overhaul, with my writing Categories now living up there.1 Joining them is a page that links to my new official website and the Shawn Blanc-inspired Start Here page. Then I moved my advertising and contact information pages to the footer, along with my blogroll (now called Persons of Internet) and a link to the page for my podcast, ProductiVardy. I also tweaked my Creative Commons license placement, updating it to a newer (and international) license in the process.
The sidebar had some work done to it as well, with my Secret Book Project newsletter sign-up widget becoming more pleasing to look at – it’s now a “vardy.book” clickable image.2
MikeVardy.com
My shiny new website is now the new hub for all of my independent work, such as talks, workshops and so on. This allows me to keep Vardy.me as clean as possible in terms of content, freeing me up to promote my other work at the new site.
When you first go to MikeVardy.com, it goes to a bio of yours truly. The navigation menu then allows you to go to my Blog3 (which takes you to Vardy.me), check out my Speaking section or contact me directly using the Contact page. There’s also a page called Products, which will lead you to my store – powered by Shopify, of course – but there’s nothing there. Yet.
I’m also working on getting a Workshops page up in the next few weeks, which will do for my workshops what the Speaking page does for my talks.
MikeVardy.com will be far more static than any other site I operate, with Vardy.me still serving as my place for my independent online writing. I don’t have plans to move it over to the new site anytime soon (if at all), but that may change if anyone with more expertise in matters of SEO and the like advise me to consider it.
Much-Needed Housecleaning
The cleaning up of Vardy.me was sped up considerably by the acquisition of my new website, and I feel really good about the changes. Vardy.me looks and feels a lot better to me; I wanted to do what I could to improve the reading experience. I think I’ve done that, and would love to hear feedback – on both of my sites.
1 Every category used on Vardy.me is up there; I’ve culled two of the older ones: Information and Innovation. You’ll get no more than 5 article titles for each when you first click on a category, but can go to previous entries as you usually would with articles.
2 Go ahead, click it and see.
3 If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you know that I do not like using that word. But in this case, I think it’s the most universally recognizable term to use. Sigh.
