first homepage I am happy with

Here is the first layout of the homepage that I like, it features an image i took from a photo I took years ago in Madrid. It is from the tiles on the wall of an old tapas bar.

if content is king then it has left the building

I have begun stripping down the content of my site, the brains behind new york, so I can focus on the design more. This was not difficult as there was not much content to begin with but I figure it will be easier to build up the content in the right format rather than to continue adding it on in an ad hoc manner. So if content is king, like elvis the king has left the building.

how long to you have to wait for a link to be counted

I submitted my website, the brains behind new york, to over a 100 free directories that I felt were not covered in spam and had a good enough level of Google PR, and I am starting to wonder how long it will take before this begins to take affect?

I have had a look at these directories and the majority of them have yet to review my link or have reviewed my link and binned it, but there are some who have accepted and displayed the listing in their directory. I am looking at the links listed in the Google webmaster tools and they have yet to grow, so I am wondering how long will I have to wait

uploaded sitemap.xml to Google and ranking went down

I created and uploaded a sitemap.xml for Google and my search engine listing on Google for the term 'the brains behind new york' went down!!
I moved from number 85 to 93.

mood board - source of web design

I have decided to create a mood board for my source of design ideas for my website and the first tear sheet I want to use is this photo of syd barrett which I keep coming back to. I think it not only manages to tell the story of his downward spiral but still managed to look amazing in an anton corbjin way. Maybe it is justed the muted grey.

new results and web design footer links

I have just noticed that I have moved up on my brand search and also up on my keyword search:
brand: 87 (up 8)
keyword: 521 (down 3)

More importantly I have started to list the edinburgh web design companies that use the webs ite of their client as SEO back links to their own websites, edinburgh web design companies who have back links of their client websites

google count - where it counts

I am starting to track my brand search 'the brains behind new york' and my keyword search 'web design edinburgh' and here are the results:
brand: 95
keyword: 518
Yes, that is me coming up link number 95 for a website that has the same name as the keywords and that is me coming up number 518 for the term 'web design edinburgh'.

how to design the name for a web design website

When I came to register the name of my website, the brains behind new york, I was faced with the daunting task of designing a name which would reflect the type of design that I was interested in promoting. So after much research and more than a little writers block I came up with a list of possible names. I was working of the theory that the first ten names that I came up with were going t be a little to obvious and so I drew a line through them right away.

The remaining names I began to strip away due to association, testing to see if there was any negative connotations with the title, any reason why somebody would be put off. I thought in my head that if websites exist in verticals what vertical would my website go in purely on the name alone.

I then began to look at keywords, did I want to call the website 'edinburgh web design' and try and get traffic that way but what kind of effect would that have on the perception of the site by the outside world? How high design would that be?

In the end I went for the name I have because I liked what it drew up in your mind

web design edinburgh - the brains behind new york #314

my website has now entered the Google search results for the term 'web design edinburgh' and am currently coming up 314 place in the search results. I hope to keep this going and mark my rise and fall in the search engines to see how I fair.

about us - the brains behind new york

I have added the all important 'about us' page to my website and remembered to use the term 'us' and 'we' in the description rather than just 'i'. I think all sites should have some form of about us page and maybe even sticking to the page name 'about us' as it is such an established web convention. I filled my about us page with a brief description of who we are and what we do.

wait a minute, i managed to get a title!!!

blogger post title still not working, is this still not working?

After reading this post from blogger:
http://blogger-status.blogspot.com/2007/07/some-users-are-reporting-that-they-are.html

am unable to create a title for my post? is anyone else having this problem with blogger?

However, my site did enter the first 100 search results for the title of my website, so if you do a search for 'the brains behind new york' and go down ten pages in your Google search , my site will show up. I guess you have to start somewhere

start again

I have taken down the start that I have made on the website and started again with the black outline of a white box. It will be a clear sign that I have started again with no design and will start a new approach to web design.

flickr for my website

I am thinking about adding a flickr photo sharing account to my website, not sure how it will add to the design but I will try it out and see what happens

brand search and the name of my website

I am beginning to realise that when you are doing a Google search for my website, the brains behind new york, you get millions of search results before mine. The majority of these results have to do with the two main keywords in the URL, 'brain' and 'new york', which are obviously major keywords. I then thought of BBNY as a URL but of course that is taken and then maybe tbbny but doesn't seem as approppriate. I will just have to continue to hammer away at the brains behind new york.

the brian behind new york - the anniversary of the death of brian jones

Today is the anniversary of the death of Brian Jones, of the rock band the rolling stones, on 3rd July 1969. He always seemed to me the source of style for the band at the time, very much the trail blazer, as well as mick and keith. I would like to use this photo of Brian as a source of design as it seems a very populat look at the moment

myspace error

i keep getting an error from my myspace account:
Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred.
This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group.

archive of logo design

I am still playing around with the log for the website, which I think I will continue to do for a long time to come. Perhaps I am getting stuck on the idea of the brain and maybe the x-ray isn't the way to go about this. I have an idea to actually sketch out what I have in my mind rather than playing around in photoshop but at the moment I don't have the time.

I think I started off on the right foot when I tried to stick in SEO into the site before I had any content or reason for a web presence