This is a bit old - you may or may not notice the date on this post but it's over a year old. That doesn't mean it's not useful but we all know how fast things chance on the web so there's a chance that techniques and technologies described here could be a little dated.

5 things I’ve learnt this month whilst blogging

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Well I’ve been doing this web design blogging for a month now. Sure I’ve been working in web design and development for years and I’ve blogged before occasionally keeping fifthandlast.com updated but this is my first time blogging about web related topics. So what have a learnt? A few things actually but here’s 5, mostly learnt from buggering something up.

1. Practice what you preach

It’s very easy to get on the high horse whilst you’re writing a blog and evangelising about topics so it helps if you carry out what you’re writing about. For instance don’t tell everyone they should still be making stuff useable in IE6 when your blog has a dud link to an IE6 stylesheet.

2. Check things before you publish them

It doesn’t really matter if it was working this morning make sure it’s working now, before you click publish, just check. Again I learnt this by messing something up and publishing the CSS Hover tabs tutorial but before I put it online I changed a few things on the demo and forget to check it over in IE.

3. Don’t click publish straight away

This is one thing that’s quite often easy to do, finish your article give it a quick read over and then click publish. Personally I’ve found it’s better to write something and leave it, at least a few hours, then re-read it. You’ll no doubt have a different view and maybe change a few things, notice some stuff that doesn’t read so well.

I think this is true of most work, not just blogging, I now always make sure especially when designing, that I leave something overnight or at least a few hours before sending it to a client for example.

4. Take the time to prepare

Good preparation can lead to much better articles. I’ve started to carry around a little notebook and jot down ideas and keep brainstorming around them, all the time keeping an eye out for examples that will help reinforce my articles. Taking time and putting in preparation leads to a much more satisfying and higher quality article.

5. Enjoy it

I have, thankfully! It’s been great fun writing and getting comments and seeing retweets of my content, hugely satisfying. I’m sure there’ll come a point where I get a bit fed up of it, but for now it’s enjoyable. I’ll bring you a nice article about getting over a slump if I ever get there!

But for now thanks to all those who have visited the blog, left comments, tweeted content or linked to here. I hope to continue writing on here and growing the readership and I’m sure I’ll have another 5 things to tell you next month.