#i hate doing the html color code thing on the text though.. it makes me lose 1% of my already crippling sanity

[luvuomi]

chat.. did the new theme cook or not :3c

[divineerdrick]

Warhammer 40,000 Balance Update for October 16, 2024 - Munitorum Field Manual and Errata for Imperium Factions

After writing, I decided to split this document up into the super factions for ease of use. I've also changed how I format rules changes. Let me know what you think! Is this more readable, would you prefer a single post, or should I do a post for each faction?

Edit: The color coding for points changes breaks every time I edit it. To fix it, I have to go into the HTML and correct where it's marking things. I just don't have the spoons for manually correcting that much text.

Adepta Sororitas

Sisters are one of the armies to be feared right now, though not even close to having complete dominance in games. Of their detachments, Bringers of Flame is the clear choice. Though some players have had success with Hallowed Martyrs. They were justly directly called out for nerfs.

First, we get a fun little change that basically makes it that only one part of a unit in an Immolator gets to take the cherub with them. Technically a nerf, but it kinda makes sense. After all, the unit only comes with one cherub to begin with. It's hard to imagine the little one can perform double duty.

We also get a clarification that Imagifiers and Saintly Example do combo together, that Vow of Atonement only really affects the first three Battle Rounds, and that Verse of Holy Piety does persist for the Battle Round on death.

Battle Sisters Squad: -10 pts Castigator: +10 pts Dialogus: +10 pts Dominion Squad: +10 pts Immolator: +10 pts Morvenn Vahl: +10 pts Paragon Warsuits: +10 pts Seraphim Squad (5 models): +5 pts Seraphim Squad (10 models): +20 pts Triump of St. Katherine: +60 pts!!! Zephyrim: -1 pts/model Bringers of Flame - Fire and Fury: +10 pts Bringers of Flame - Iron Surplice of Saint Istalela: +5 pts Bringers of Flame - Manual of Saint Griselda: +5 pts Bringers of Flame - Righteous Rage: +5 pts

Despite their position, Sisters gets a couple of buffs to try and make their rank and file more attractive. After that, it's all bad news. Both Morven Vahl and Paragons get a tap, making the whole package 20 pts more expensive. Castigators, Dominions, and Immolators, and the Dialogus all also get hit. Serpahim are our next unit to get a split cost with 5 costing 18 pts/model, but 10 set to 19 pts. All of the Bringers of Flames enhancements have gone up in cost to try to hit them specifically. But the biggest hit by far is to the Triumph, with a massive 60 pts nerf. These changes amount to Bringers of Flame losing a whole unit or more.

However, I still think Bringers of Flame is the play. They will still be perfectly fine with these changes, if no longer S Tier. Meanwhile Hallowed Martyrs is also going to hate some of these nerfs. All and all, pretty fair changes to one of the top armies, but not very good for internal balance.

Adeptus Custodes

While in a rough spot, Custodes have always been a tricky army to balance. Their individual units are just so incredibly good. But when you've got so few on the table, it becomes difficult to actually play objectives. Their detachments also need some love, with Shield Host being the only one that's being played to real success. Let's see what GW has for them.

They've updated the Imperial Armour document! First we have a nerf to Spear Guard and Sagittarum. They can now only be lead by Custodes characters. This means they can no longer combo with Draxys. At the same time, the Telemon gets a buff for when it wields double caestus. I didn't see any mention of this anywhere, so this is kind of hidden. See what I mean about how GW doesn't quite have the handle on these updates? The three new FAQs are all standard stuff that shouldn't have needed clarification or further enforce how GW is ruling Transports.

Trajann Valoris: -10 pts All Contemptor Dreadnoughts: -10 pts Vertus Praetors: -5 pts/model

Points wise it's all good news at least. Trajan and all versions of the Contemptor will be much easier to include. I don't know if this enough to make Vertus Praetors worth playing, but the buffs are still welcome. It's not a lot, but like I said, this is a tough faction to balance.

Adeptus Mechanicus

The Martian Priesthood are currently doing pretty well, though this is likely at least a little bolstered by the dedication and experience of their player base. Both Rad-Zone and Skitarri are well over-represented at top tables. So we might see more nerfs than buffs.

They get their first FAQ question today, and it's a bland order of operations question. While I guess it's better to have common questions solved for everyone to see, it is frustrating when the rules are already there. Still, I guess if the rules are always changing . . .

All Electro-Priests: -1 pts/model Ironstrider Ballistarii: +5 pts/model Onager Dunecrawler: -5 pts All Pteraxii: +1 pts/model Serberys Sulphurhounds: -5 pts/3 models Skitarii Vanguard: +5 pts Sydonian Skatros: -10 pts All Tech-Priests: -5 pts

For buffs, all Electro-priests and Tech-Priests go down. The Sulphur hounds go down, but I'm not sure that's enough. The Onager somehow gets a little buff as well. I think at 50 pts, Stilt-boy becomes a usable Lone Op. In exchange Ballistari, Pteraxi, and Vanguard have all gone up in cost, and those are all commonly used units.

These changes aren't that bad, and only gives top lists a bit of a tap. I don't think this is enough to have anyone trying out new builds, but it's a start.

Astra Militarum

Guard are in a good spot! They're only slightly over the 50% mark, only slightly over-represented at top tables, and they're able to win events. Even better, multiple builds and regiments are working. The only danger is that if GW does succeed in bringing down the big boys, Guard might start to creep up. So maybe a love tap is in order? But gotta be really gentle though. Bit frustrating honestly that you might need to nerf a currently balanced army to keep them balanced for the new meta.

As for Imperial Armour, this looks like a Keyword fix for the Cyclops.

The first Errata feels like a clarification, but technically this is a rules change. I don't know anyone that played with Orders effecting Battle-shocked units, but I'm sure that happened somewhere. The second errata is just clarification and matching. The other two changes are fixes that are long overdue, with Tank Commanders getting Squadron and Rawne going to SUSTAINED HITS 1.

For FAQs, most of this is just common reading of the rules. But the one that needs clarification the most is "Death Befitting an Officer." The clarifications made are that the ability can only trigger if the Tank Commander is killed during an attack. The amusing thing, is this can be the Tank Commander's attack. So if the Tank Commander dies to overcharged plasma, it gets to shoot again.

Bullgryn Squad: +20 pts/3 models Field Ordnance Battery: -10 pts Heavy Weapons Squad: -10 pts Ogryn Squad: -5 pts/3 models Scout Sentinels: -5 pts/model Tank Commander: +20 pts

And the points changes are, indeed, love taps. The Tank Commander and Bullgryn are both heavy hitters in Guard armies, but I'm guessing this will just result in one fewer Bullgryn squad. In exchange, Field Ordinance, Heavy Weapons, and Scout Sentinels of all things have all gone down. Don't think Ogryn will replace Bullgryn, but that drop might help make them a bit more attractive.

Guard will be fine.

Black Templars

The previous kings of the Space Marine Chapters, Black Templars have fallen quite a ways. Many of the previous nerfs to Space Marines have actually been targeted at them, and I theorized that GW was trying to bring the divergent Chapters in line with the Codex Chapters to try and make balance easier. With the nerfs to their vehicles and to Iron Storm, their Crusaders detachment is back to being the best way to play them. Some players are also having luck with the Gladius too. Still, if GW is going to use rules to balance Space Marines, Templars need some love.

FAQ and Errata don't have anything meaningful for Dorn's angriest sons, so we can go straight to points.

Castellan: -5 pts Chaplain Grimaldus: +10 pts Crusader Squad (20 models): +20 pts High Marshal Helbrecht: +10 pts Marshal: -5 pts Primaris Crusader Squad (10 models): +10 pts Primaris Crusader Squad (20 models): +40 pts!!!

Woo boy! Someone didn't like how well Templar horde has done at some recent events! That's all their staples up, with the big brick of Crusaders going up a full 40 pts. For consolation, Castellans and Marshals have gone down 5 pts.

Yeah, Templars are going to be hurting.

Blood Angels

The Sons of Sanguinius have only just gotten their book. By tradition, this usually means they'll get minimum changes, other than having their points come more in line with the current meta. My understanding is the Codex is a bit of a mixed bag, so I'll be guessing a bit here. Before their Codex though, they were doing pretty good and mostly using Sons of Sanguinius. Since that detachment is mostly intact, they should be pretty good to go with minimal changes.

For Errata, the detachments have all been changed to be Blood Angels only. They've changed the timing on Death from the Skies to make you pick your unit in the Movement phase, just after they move. They also fixed wargear on Sanguard so that you can mix and match spears and swords and give two inferno pistols to a 6 man. FAQs clarify that Sanguinor is able to arrive within engagement range of enemy models that didn't trigger it and gets the usual reminder about how reserve rules work. The change to Death from the Skies is interesting, but I'm guessing they might try to unify Advance and Charge rules next.

Liberator Assault Group - Icon of the Angel: +10 pts The Angelic Host - Archangel's Shard: -10 pts Astorath: +20 pts Baal Predator: +10 pts Chief Librarian Mephiston: +25 pts Commander Dante: +10 pts Death Company Marines: -7 pts/model Death Company Marines with Bolt Rifles: +3 pts/model Death Company Marines with Jump Packs: -2 pts/model Sanguinary Guard: +14 pts/model

Points wise, let's start with enhancements. Archangels Shard actually went down 10 pts, while Icon of the Angel went up 10 pts. But then, they all got shuffled around between two detachments too, so their synergies have changed a bit. The new Gleaming Pinions went up from its book cost. Nearly everything else go nerfed. Astorath has gone up 20 pts, which is more than I think he's improved. Despite getting nerfed in the Codex, the Baal Predator has also gone up 10 pts. Mephiston took a sidegrade in the new book, but GW apparently thinks he needs to go up a full 25 pts. By contrast, I think 10 pts is much more in line with Dante's buffs. Basic death Company Marines have gotten a significant buff, with Jump Pack models also getting a nice boost. But Intercessors, now called Death Company Marines with Bolt Rifles, got nerfed. I'm not sure this is inline with their Codex buffs. Sanguinary Guard have are probably the biggest loser of the codex, that extra wound costing them 14 pts per model despite losing striking power. The Sanguinary Priest remains unchanged, despite a small power boost, as does the The Sanguinor.

As for new models, they have to compete with their Codex equivalents. Despite having fewer options, the Blood Angels Captain is the same price as a Codex Captain. I'm definitely not sure about the Dreadnought being 20 pts over a standard Brutalis, especially after losing Frenzied Reprisal. But 70 pts and 85 pts are probably fine for the two Death Company Captains.

That's a lot! And it's hard to grapple with. Honestly, I don't see Blood Angels staying where they are. Liberator is still a good detachment, but I'm thinking there going to struggle to get the same results they did before. I'm more and more getting the feeling that GW is trying to zero out the Space Marine chapters before they do their rules update.

Dark Angels

While not boasting as impressive numbers as Space Wolves, Dark Angels are also in a really good position. While still hovering just above 50% wins, they regularly make it to top tables and have actually brought home more trophies than their rival Chapter has. Again, popularity has a lot to do with this skewed data. Their detachments are struggling though. Most of their success comes from Codex Detachments, especially the Gladius. But that's not getting fixed today. In fact, after seeing the previous divergent chapters, I'm predicting they're in for a bad time.

The Sons of the Lion aren't getting anything new for their FAQ today, so we're moving straight to points.

Azreal +10 pts Deathwing Knights +15 pts Landspeeder Vengeance -20 pts Lion El'Johnson -15 pts Ravenwing Command Squad -10 pts Sammael -15 pts GW . . . Every time I think you've started to understand how the meta works and have got a plan of what to do about it, you pull something like this. Granted, the bump to Azreal and Knights is going to be felt. But Sammael and The Lion were already good.

Dark Angels are in a good spot.

Edit: Okay, I'm coming back having read the Core Codex changes. There's a lot there that hits Dark Angels. Things just got bumpy.

Grey Knights

The Knights of Titan are another faction that's actually in a pretty good spot. Yeah, they're obviously waiting for their full Codex, but they're still performing really steadily. Again, there's the potential they can take advantage of nerfs to the factions above them. But I think they don't have the same ability to do that as Guard does. They're not getting any errata or FAQ, so let's move onto points.

Brotherhood Terminator Squad (5 models): -10 pts Paladin Squad (5 models): -5 pts Purgation Squad: -2 pts/model

Grey Knights exemplify getting the most out of maximum squad sizes. So making their MSU more efficient is a welcome blessing. This will help them get a few more units onto the board without feeling like they're wasting their valuable points. I'm not sure this will really change lists all that much, but they're still welcome changes.

Imperial Agents

As I said in my first post, this isn't really an army. There are a few people who have taken a chance on it, mostly trying to take advantage of the fact that no one really knows what it does yet. The Imperialis Fleet does have some interesting rules in it too, but still suffers from the general lack of an army rule and internal cohesion. We don't have a lot of numbers yet, but what we have doesn't look promising.

For new errata we don't have much either. We've got an errant asterisk that needs to be viciously purged from Imperial records and the obvious clarification that Rhinos can only transport Infantry.

Assigned Agents Subductor Squad: +15 pts

That's it. Just a nerf to one of the more popular units for other Imperium armies to include. It wouldn't surprise me if most of the action we ever see here is in this section of the MFM.

Imperial Knights

As opposed to their Traitor counterparts, Loyalist Households are doing fine. They're another faction putting out solid, steady performance. I know their player base has changes they'd love to see, particularly to Bondsman abilities, but we won't be getting that here.

After a quick FAQ that Sir Hektor cannot complete an action Canus Rex began, we go straight to points.

Canus Rex: +15 pts Knight Castellan: -15 pts Knight Errant: -15 pts Knight Gallant: -20 pts Knight Valiant: -20 pts

And that's all there is here. Canus Rex gets punished for being constantly taken as an ally while some lesser played Knights get some buffs. I think we'll see some players experiment a bit more, but that's all this will amount to.

Space Marines

Oh boy, Space Marines! It sounds like they're getting rules in the next Balance Dataslate, and they need them. There's no reason to play an Iron Hands Ironstorm when Black Templars use it better. There's no reason to play Storm Lance as Whitescars when you can take Dark Angels or Space Wolves. Only Ultramarines seems to be seeing much play, due to how good Calgar and Ventris are, and they've still fallen behind Dark Angels. In short, it's not that Space Marines aren't good, it's that chapters with their own rules and units are so much better. So how do you buff Space Marines without making the other Chapters too strong? The way things currently are, you can't.

For errata, we get a small clarification on Forged in Battle that specifies the die becomes an unmodified 6. Uriel Ventris gets the same treatment Cypher and the Archon got, future proofing them and making sure he doesn't stack with Lord of Deceit. There's a small clarification on the rules for Lieutenants that everyone was playing it as anyway. And Desolation Squads can burn in hell with yet another nerf.

For FAQs, Captains still can't be targeted in transports on the battlefield with a Stratagem, but they can be targeted while on the Battle Barge, in orbit, far away from the battlefield. No I will not stop complaining about that. A Deadly Prize gets the same treatment Nurgle's Gifts got, in that it stays in effect but stop working when controlled by your opponent. And Eradicators get the same treatment Tank Commanders get and can use their rule as long as they were killed by an attack.

Apothecary Biologus +15 pts Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs (5 models) +5 pts Ballistus Dreadnought -10 pts Captain in Phobos Armour -10 pts Eradicator Squad +5 pts/3 models Heavy Intercessor Squad -1 pts/model Invador ATV -10 pts Invictor Tactical Warsuit -15 pts Reiver Squad -1 pts/model Roboute Guilliman -65 pts!!! Storm Speeder Hailstrike -15 pts Storm Speeder Hammerstrike -25 pts Storm Speeder Thunderstrike -10 pts Suppressor Squad -10 pts All Terminators -1 pts/model Vanguard Veterans with Jump Packs +1 pts/model Gladius Task Force: Fire Discipline +10 pts Stormlance Task Force: Feinting Withdrawal -10 pts Stormlance Task Force: Hunter's Instincts +15 pts

Wow! So Guilliman just got the biggest buff of the balance pass! I think we'll be seeing a lot more of him. Other than that, I don't think Space Marine players are going to be very pleased. Those nerfs are to units they've been needing to use to get success, and I don't think the buffs to the other units will help enough. Expect to see Dark Angels players experimenting with Storm Speeders though, and we'll probably start to see Ballistus Dreadnoughts as potential firing platforms.

Space Marine players will be waiting impatiently for December to come around.

Space Wolves

Arguably the top dogs of competitive 40K right now, Space Wolves have been a frustrating faction to face for a while now. The chief culprit is a build called "Wolf Jail", where the Space Wolves player loads their army with Thunderwolves and rushes them up the board at their opponent. The extremely efficient units ties up far more powerful enemies than their points should allow, leaving the opponent pinned in their deployment zone and unable to play the game. Meanwhile, the Space Wolves have the run of the board and can easily mop up any units that manage to escape the jail. By the time the opponent has dealt with the Thunderwolves, the game is basically over.

GW had tried to nerf this build in the Pariah Nexus update, but it was clear even then that they didn't go far enough. I'm wondering if we've got a Desolation Squad level nerf incoming for them.

For errata we just have some keyword fixes. The Stormfang and Stormwolf have apparently managed to escape being under the rule of Imperial law for a while now, but no longer. For FAQs these are more already understood clarifications. Again, not frustrated that GW is answering these. I'm frustrated players were trying to challenge simple rules.

Bjorn the Fell-Handed: +10 pts Hounds of Morkai: -2 pts/model Logan Grimnar +15 pts Longfangs: -6 pts/model Skyclaws (10 models): -15 pts Skyclaws (15 models): -30 pts Thunderwolf Cavalry: +20 pts/3 models Wolfguard: -2 pts/model

That is honeslty a lot of green! Only the key units took hits, with Bjorn the Fell-Handed in particular being one of the best Lord of Deceit platforms in the game right now. I'm pretty sure you still take him. Thunderwolves has gone up a further 20 pts for their basic unit. That's another 20% on top of prior nerfs. But that's still 40 points for a 4 wound model with a 3+ save, 7 anti-infantry attacks, a plasma pistol, and a ton of mobility in Stormlance. This is not even close to a Desolation Squad or Bully Boyz level nerf. I think that actually might just be a good price for them.

Space Wolves are still good, but hopefully they won't be oppressive.

[its-annanguyen]

Final Thoughts on Experience

INTRODUCTION

As a Bachelor of Applied Science candidate, I am more focused on the interface design aspect, mainly dealing with web + mobile design & development. I enjoy creating digital arts with a combination of computer programming in HTML/CSS. My hope is to become a UI/UX developer at a high-tech company like Google, Amazon, or even Yelp. That is why I am thankful to have interned at One Wave Designs during the summer of 2018 from June 1st to August 31st as a Web Design & Development Intern.

INTERNSHIP PROCESS

Learning Experience

As a Yelp Elitist, I searched up the “Best Web Design Company” on Yelp, in which One Wave Designs popped up as the first search with a 5-star rating! I gave it a shot and emailed the President/CEO/Owner of the company, Paul. He responded back asking for my resume and portfolio where I finally got a response a month later that I got the internship position!

During my time as an intern, I was responsible for mainly 3 things: web design & development, layout concepts, and SEOs. I mainly worked on 8 projects in 10 weeks. I learned that SEOs (Search Engine Optimization) is very important in web development because websites with good SEOs will always appear at the top of the search list depending on keywords that you use. For instance, if I were to type “Hawaii Web Design” in Google Search, One Wave Designs will be the first to pop up under all the other Google ads search. I learned how to hyperlink emails (mailto:) and phone numbers (tel:), which are also important factors in SEOs. Hierarchy, or the way you order the sizes of the header and texts, also matters too. When you’re adding images or links, it’s good to add a title or alt texts to increase SEO keyword searches. Lastly, saving/uploading images that are 200K or less is great for websites because it loads a lot faster.

I learned how to use 2 types of content management system (CMS), DNN Software and WordPress. I am very familiar with WordPress, it was my first time hearing about DNN. Unfortunately, though, DNN is not used as often anymore and non-developers are shifting to easy CMS like WordPress.I really liked using DNN because of how much coding is involved, whereas WordPress is almost dragging-and-dropping... this is more ideal for non-coders.

I learned how to use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software called FileZilla. This allows me to be flexible and customize a website through HTML/CSS coding. Basically, I can manipulate a style of the website by changing up the codes - which can only be done by FTPing and coding. It’s very confusing to explain and understand... I never heard anything like it before until I interned here! After taking web design & development course here at UHWO, I learned that it’s always a smart idea to make copies of the original files that I’ll be editing incase I mess up the codings. Don’t want to repeat that mistake again because there was a time where I had to reset the entire website and build it from scratch. :(

Layout concepts were the MOST STRESSFUL projects I had to do when I interned here. I honestly kind of dreaded it. Paul hated doing layout concepts too! Which explains why I always worked on them instead of him. These 4 software helped me a great deal when I had to make layout concepts/drafts for potential clients:

WhatTheFont.com

Google Fonts

Pantone Color Picker

iStockPhoto.com

WhatTheFont.com allowed me to upload a screenshot of a word so that it can identify the font types for me. Once it generates a few options of fonts, I’d download them (for free) using Google Fonts. Fonts that I find on Google Fonts are great for websites because it doesn’t have to be embedded. Another thing with the web is determining the color, so that’s why I always use the color picker on the Pantone website. Lastly, copyrights and permissions on images/videos/etc. are always questionable. That’s why I always look up stock photos on iStock since we have a subscription with them anyways. 

Discoveries

I feel like I’ve grown as a person over the years. I used to be so shy and quiet, never being the first person to speak or raise my hand. Through this internship among other things, I learned how to speak up and ask questions when I needed to. If this is an unpaid internship that I am devoting much of my time to, I EXPECT to learn quite a few things. It never hurts to ask questions because that’s how you learn -- this is my motto. I learned that I am not that great at criticisms or taking in constructive feedback. I want to learn how to be more patient because there were times I’d get super annoyed when my supervisors would tell me what to do when I’m already doing it or will do it. Also, seeing how much projects I’ve done in such a short time span, I discovered that I am a very quick self-learner. As Paul mentioned, every client will have different expectations when it comes to building their website, which is why he couldn’t help/guide me as much as he should’ve. But in a field like web design/development, everything to customizable and flexible, so there’s never just “one way” to work on every single project.

Sample Work

Here’s a GIF image I found that totally speaks to me when it comes to designing layout concepts: the struggle with making the sizes exact. I was able to learn what the difference is between changing an “image size” and a “canvas size” on Photoshop because of this!

CONCLUSION

I wouldn’t mind working in a place similar to my internship~ I mean, I accepted a job position with One Wave Designs after finishing up my internship hours so that says something :D until this day (December) I am still with them. After 6 months, I learned a lot from working at a small yet successful company. There’s sooOoOoOoo much stress that comes with it. There were several times when Paul would dump a handful of projects on me despite my limited schedule and time constraint. I would lose my cool with him at times, and that’s where I reached my boiling point and told him I had enough. That’s when I discovered how much courage I had. Just a few days ago, I turned in a 30-day resignation letter to him, planning to resign by the end of this year since my last semester of college will be a stressful one yet. After Paul received my letter, he decided to give me a freelance position and allowed me to work whenever I can and work from home instead of in the office (lolol). This is what I’ve always wanted!

To conclude, it was a great experience interning here, but it was even better when I actually got paid. Sometimes I would question whether the amount of work I’m doing would even equate to how much I was getting paid by the hour. Ultimately, I was in it for the long run to build my experience and resume. I finally learned when/where to draw the line, which I should’ve done a lot sooner. 

In the end, I learned that it’s good to build relationships with others and never be afraid to ask questions. Since I showed a lot of dedication and commitment when working here, I was able to earn Paul’s trust and was able to get things my way most of the time. I take internship experience very seriously. I’m here to learn so I’m not afraid to ask questions when I need to.

Whoops, forgot to add my presentation slides here: CM 390 Presentation

[xtremedespair3d]

Should I move to WordPress?

This is kind of a sudden thing for me to talk about, but it’s something that I started thinking out of the blue this Thursday afternoon and I think I’m so close to make the final decision to actually do it because it’ll benefit me better for my blogging hobby in a better platform with better features, I might completely switch to WordPress for good.

For starters, the WordPress I’m talking about is the freemium version, WordPress.com, there’s no way I could use WordPress.org because I need to make a domain for it, and I don’t have the money to afford one and I think using WordPress.org might still require some coding to tweak some things, which is a hard pass.

I breifly talked about some things about moving to WordPress on my Twitter, but I think it’s best to explain in more detail as to why I want to move to WordPress.

Why should I move to WordPress?

As much as I like the theme I’m using in Tumblr, there’s this big problem with the pictures where it gets compressed so bad that the pictures look incredibly small. Just look how small it is.

And the worst part is if you click to view the picture, the compression really affected the actual resolution.

I’ve been running a test dummy website in WordPress and I chose this theme that I think it looks really cool, it has the style I like, but it still has the same problem with the image resolution when reading posts.

Although I think it looks somewhat better, it doesn’t look incredibly small compared to how Tumblr looks, but what’s better is that the compression doesn’t affect the resolution of the image when you click “View image” on Firefox (Or “Open tab to view image” in Chrome) and at least the placeholder tier shown here is normal, but when I put other images and I click “view image,” there’s this forced WordPress.com thing with menus all over, and no matter what you do, you can’t look at the bare image in your browser. Let’s just hope for the best that it doesn’t affect the resolution when you save those images.

Basically WordPress offers far better formatting options than Tumblr does if you’re using the Rich Text editor, and that’s what I’ve been using for my whole life, I don’t even bother using the HTML editor because I don’t know anything about coding at all. WordPress has this neat text editor where any item you put, some text or an image and they’re all set in blocks and it gives you some options right off the bat, we all know the basic text features like bold, headline, etc, but the headline is a life saver because I can make headlines at different sizes to balance the topics and stuff and that’s something I wouldn’t do in Tumblr’s rich text editor. I can even put images with no problem and the “Featured Image” option in WordPress works really good if your posts have thumbnails, I always tried to emulate this with Tumblr by just adding the picture on top of the text as if it was a thumbnail, it worked fine but I guaranteed it’s not as good of actually setting up your thumbnail as an option.

There’s also the option to add dividers which is something I really need for Tumblr, Tumblr did use to have dividers but for some reason they removed and I’ll just have to add pictures or something.

I did try a different theme on WordPress and the images look far better than this theme I’m using, but the problem with WordPress as well as Tumblr, is that 99% of the themes aren’t even that good, they just focus way too much on galleries and even the blog focused ones are just very cluttered with junk I don’t even need and defeats the purpose of wanting to make a blog site, this WordPress theme, the Rowling theme, is the kind of style that I like, I like my blogs to be like this classic style with the widgets like search, archive and such on the right while I get the posts and stuff on the left. It may not be as cool as the Tumblr one I’m using and the Rowling theme still has some flaws but it’s still going to do fine.

The other theme I tried was the Penscratch 2 theme which gears towards more blogging and it’s the kind of style that I like, although I used to like the theme but now I grew tired of it because I didn’t like how it looked anymore and the color options are extremely limited. The Rowling theme, on the other hand, allows me to customize 3 out of 5 options, I may not change colors in some areas but for the most part it’s far enough for me to use the theme.

Tumblr is a dead site

Another reason why I want to move on to WordPress is for the potential to get better attention unlike Tumblr which is non-existent (I mostly share links of the posts to some Discord servers I occasionally interact with, but I do wish the posts by themselves would get some tractions, I don’t know if it’s the tags but they should get something), mainly because no one on this day and age uses Tumblr anymore because they nuked all of the NSFW content, and that’s probably what caused people to boycott Tumblr for good.

Another problem Tumblr has is being owned by different companies like Yahoo and Verizon which served no good, especially after the porn content purge, but I COMPLETELY forgot that Tumblr was recently acquired by Automattic, the company that owns WordPress. Well, this post has already become quite the irony considering I want to move to WordPress, although I don’t think they’ll do any favors to Tumblr, and as the title of this category implies, Tumblr is dead at this point.

Despite Tumblr being bought by the owner of WordPress, it doesn’t really do anything for me, they’re not even adding some quality of life improvements to redeem Tumblr, hell, they probably won’t even redeem Tumblr, so might as well switch to WordPress which works far better as a blogging platform.

What about the posts I published throughout the years?

I originally thought I should rewrite every single post I made on the website for archival purposes, but I realized there’s a lot of them and it would be a pain in the ass to copy and paste everything, especially my New Year 2021 post which is probably the longest post I’ve ever made in my life (And nobody even read that, all that effort I put gone to waste).

I think it’s for the best to start from scratch, I was planning to launch the site with the HajiKo Anime Winter 2021 post (The Cells at Work Black + Cells at Work season 2 thing is a teaser), but at the same time I should make the first post being about my move to WordPress and I’ll leave a link to my Tumblr if anyone wants to read all my previous posts.

Conclusion

The more I’m trying to build my website with a dummy domain, the more I feel like I’m close to actually make the decision to actually move to WordPress for good, though it won’t take a while until April where I’ll launch the site with my new anime review post, like I mentioned earlier.

Despite the flaws the Rowling theme has and amongst other things, it just takes time and figure out what pages I’m going to make and other things and I’ll have a nicely polished website to completely move on from Tumblr for good.

By the way, I’m mainly going to use the free plan on WordPress, I don’t think I would like to spend money on upgrades for more features, even though I would like to have a good domain, SEO and even make money, I don’t think it’s going to be worth the investment if I want to pay for the plan religiously (I’m already financially struggling with paying for Netflix, Disney+, Arknights month pack, Ogata Tei’s Fantia and Sky-Freedom’s Subscribestar anyways).

For the moment I still have yet to finish my dummy site to get a better picture for how will the website turn out so I’ll eventually publish the real thing, so please wait patiently until that happens.

UPDATE - February 20th: I’m seriously having a hard time trying to make my website look good because every time I’m making a new page from scratch, the way the titles are formatted and everything just looks god awful! Everything is so narrow and it’s nothing like how the Rowling theme’s live demo is supposed to look like!

Look how gorgeous the live demo of the theme looks!

Compared to the absolute trash from making a page from scratch! Everything is so narrow, I hate this!

This is seriously disappointing me so bad to the point I don’t wanna move to WordPress anymore, there’s no other themes that I like to choose from.

---

My Carrd.

[anonymous-wolf22]

Survey 3

Reblog | Bold what applies to you;

You have a lava lamp in your room. You like dreamcatchers. You have a flower tattoo. You are allergic to pollen. You were born in November. You love hiking in the woods. Your ideal vacation spot is a big city. You own a Snuggie. You were a huge fan of a celebrity when you were twelve. You’ve gotten lost in a big city. You don’t mind sleeping on the floor. You wish you had more money so you could do more shopping. At times you are are lazy. You are a target for bullies. You love music. You have a food allergy. You sing in the shower. You’ve held a baby. You’ve been to a baby shower. You’ve had an embarrassing moment at a school dance. You’ve passed notes in class and gotten caught. You’ve got a grass stain. You own or once owned plaid shorts. You own a button-up plaid shirt. You own skinny jeans. You own sunglasses. You’ve played a tambourine in church. You’ve danced in church. You don’t like mushrooms. You’ve seen a Broadway show. You have natural blonde hair. You have red hair. You know someone with red hair. You have freckles. You’ve had crutches. You’ve had to wear a cast before. You liked playing with scooters in gym class. You own a flip phone. You dislike texting and prefer people would just call you. You like talking in person better than on the phone. ..but you enjoy talking on the phone, too. There is someone in your life that you would like to get to know more. You’ve been keeping a secret, and you would like to tell it. You have a friend who’s just like you whom you love dearly. You’ve made a lot of mistakes that you wish you could undo. You live in an apartment. You have a basement. You own a telescope. You’ve looked through a telescope at night. You’ve seen an eclipse. You’ve seen a shooting star. You enjoy public speaking. …even though you feel nervous before making a speech. You find holding your breath to be a good cure for hiccups. You’ve been told you look like a certain celebrity. You feel like you could have chosen to be gay, but didn’t. You have curly hair. You wish your eyes were a different color. You’ve been told that you should model. You’ve burnt popcorn. There is something on your heart right now. You have an overdue library book. You can’t find your library card right now. You don’t care what your car looks like; you just want something that runs. You’re allergic to pet dander. You’re allergic to dust. You enjoy parades. You enjoy dressing up in costume. You have a younger brother or sister. You’re an only child. You are/were homeschooled. You like coffee shops. You like worship music. You believe in the supernatural. You enjoy church. You believe there is more to life than what we see and know. You love to worship. You feel a sense of calm when looking at the moon. You’ve been on a missions trip. You love someone. You like paisleys. You’ve driven a tractor. You can write in cursive. You’ve written in calligraphy. You can tap dance. You have a food sensitivity. You have a food intolerance. You believe in a higher power. You’re tired. You like taking selfies.

01. I believe in luck. 02. I believe in horoscopes and fortunes, too. 03. I’m fairly superstitious. 04. I’m feeling quite lucky right now. 05. I love entering raffles. 06. I love the song “Last Chance To Lose Your Keys” by Brand New. 07. I’ve never dyed my hair. 08. I use temporary dye all the time. 09. I have made a party cracker before. 10. I like to make treat bags for trick or treaters on Halloween. 11. I have a Christmas playlist. 12. I feel really good right now. 13. I don’t use candles as often as I’d like to. 14. I especially love the scented ones. 15. I read the newspaper daily. 16. There is an item of clothing I really want right now. 17. That item is a jacket. 18. I adore Polaroid cameras. 19. I don’t use Bing. 20. My friend’s birthday was this week. 21. I want to go to a party. 22. I’ve been to a Halloween party before. 23. I believe in the symbolism of numbers. 24. I know who Taylor Momsen is. 25. And I think she’s gorgeous. 26. I hate when people copy me. 27. I’ve used oil pastels before. (possibly..) 28. I like using them. 29. I cry basically daily. (in secret) 30. I get frustrated so damn easily. 31. I’ve never had a swiss roll. 32. They look amazing, though. 33. I’ve only been to one concert in my life. 34. I enjoyed it a lot, though. 35. I like messing with HTML coding. 36. I admit, I can be a greedy person at times. 37. I can also be very selfish. 38. I get impatient easily. 39. I actually enjoy greasy pizza. 40. At my high school, you only have/had to be a junior to leave campus for lunch. 41. I adore typewriter fonts. 42. I’ve been to a dermatologist before. 43. I feel achey right now. 44. I like to be solids more than stripes in pool. 45. I currently need new earphones. 46. I prefer earbuds. 47. I take antacids often. 48. I usually have a spare hair tie around my wrist. 49. I weigh less now than I did at this time last year. 50. I’ve seen how my favorite celebrity looked as a baby.

You’re a chick. You’re a girl’s girl, as well as a guy’s girl. You’re a freshman in college. You can’t decide if you love it or fucking hate it. You are obsessed with weight loss. You have sleeping problems. You miss someone, a lot more than you like to admit. You get along with people easily. You have a lot of secrets. You like books about murder and drug addicts. You drink soda like water. You secretly listen to country. Your shoulders are sore. You’re extremely self destructive. You take vitamins and fish oils. You always have one headphone in. And it annoys the shit out of people. Your hands are freezing. Your room mate thinks you’re a little weird. You’re blonde, but you don’t wanna be. You used to love your body, but now you despise it. You love to dance. You’ve never had any really good relationships. You hate dates. You hate your parents, but not really. You feel sick right now. You’ve drank about 4 liters of water in the past 10 minutes. You drink too much. You smoke too much. You are a vegetarian, sort of. Ha You’re a closet romantic. You can’t sleep, and you don’t know why. You have a thousand things on your mind. You’re spinning out of control. You’re undeclared. Your clothes are weird. You really need to do your nails. You love your sister more than yourself. You smoke a lot of cigarettes. You’re kind of a burn out. You’re very creative, but don’t know how to channel it. You miss the past more than you should. You’re very independent. You have major trust issues. You have anti depressants, but you don’t take them. You adore cheesecake. You wear dark eye makeup for some reason. People don’t take you seriously, and you like it that way. You have a lot of scars. You’ve lied about some pretty big things. You’re kind of a horrible person. You hate skype, but have one anyway. You edit all your pictures. You live for your cigs, chipotle and sitcoms. You go to weheartit.com a billion times a day. You have a secret blog. Hahaaa. You’re extremely insecure, but you’d never show it. You like to make other people happy. Christmas freaks you out. You had a major emo phase. You have no real goals in life. You miss your best friends. You miss your brothers. You miss not counting calories. You miss sleeping. You love watching the stupid news fluff pieces. Your favorite Kardashian is Kourtney because she has no feelings. You like guys who you know will always let you down. You like guys who have issues and addictions. You have daddy issues. You have mommy issues. You have a lot of issues. You don’t know what to say to therapists. You don’t know what to say in general. Your shoulders are really starting to hurt. You’re hungry, but you’re not gonna eat for a while. You love being alone, and hate it at the same time. You’ve had over 10 hamsters. You feel very insignificant and small in this giant world. Ocean water scares you. But you jump in anyway. You always forget to call back. You’ll always sort of be in love with someone from your past. When you get mad, you start yelling and use your hands a lot. You’re not very attractive without makeup. If you met yourself, you think you’d hate yourself. You like older men (ex. George Clooney) You regret eating so much last night. Your neck is in an extremely uncomfortable position. You have very pale skin. You have a very intense stare. You’re basically fuckin blind. You say fuckin a lot. You hate your smile. You spend way too much time thinking. You like weed cuz it makes you numb. you like alcohol cuz it makes you retarded. Alcoholism and drug addiction runs in your family. You do drugs. You come from a very dysfunctional family. You love going on walks. You don’t know how to get through the rest of this week. You love writing songs lyrics and poems. Your computer is making weird noises and you don’t know why. You’re scared no one will ever want to marry you. You don’t even support marriages, but it still scares you. You fucking love chipotle. You like spazzing out to dubstep. You’d never show anyone your art work. You’ve quit everything you’ve tried. You have had a lot of fucking fun. You’ve been really really heartbroken. You’ve gradually become very sarcastic and fierce. You’re scared. You’re exhausted.

[waqasblog2]

SEO Checklist: Never Forget Anything About SEO Ever Again

Original Publish Date: May 8, 2015 Most Recent Update: January 16, 2019

Why You Need An SEO Checklist

Yup, never.

Some 8 years back, when I was just starting to get serious with this SEO thing, I scoured the Web for an SEO checklist that would help me remember all these new things that I was learning.

I found nothing.

Besides a list of linking strategies that included profile links, forum signatures and spamming bookmark sites, I never really did find a good one.

It would’ve made it exponentially easier for me to learn SEO if I could have printed out something and marked it off manually back then. I could review it, internalize it and plan out tasks better.

Time traveling to the present day: I snapped out of my unproductive daydream, I put my glass of wine down and I told myself to stop reminiscing about the past.

Then it dawned on me. Why not make one?

That small epiphany became this blog post and infographic. You can also download a bonus printable version at the end of the post, which includes local SEO checklists that aren’t in the infographic.

Click here to download a free SEO checklist that you can print out and use today, whether you are still learning the ropes or already running an SEO campaign. PLUS, bonus local SEO checklists that are not found in the infographic.

Grow your digital presence to get more leads with this FREE newsletter (and free resources)

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Share The Ultimate SEO Checklist Infographic On Your Site

</p><br /> <p><strong>Please include attribution to LeapFroggr.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /> <p><a href=’https://www.leapfroggr.com/seo-checklist/’><img src=’http://128.199.238.119/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Ultimate-SEO-Checklist.png’ alt=’The Ultimate SEO Checklist’ width=” border=’0′ /></a></p><br /> <p>

I wanted this SEO checklist infographic to be the longest infographic you’ve ever seen… literally.

I know the stats about how it’s not ideal. How it’s not the best thing to do and how stupid an idea that is to make such a long infographic.

Sometimes, you just need to do something different.

Besides wanting this to be remembered as the longest infographic about SEO ever, I wanted it to be REALLY useful.

There are a lot of people out there that can benefit from this, much like I would have if I am starting all over again today.

So, with that said, let’s get started with some quick explanations of why I think each one is important.

Research

Research is arguably the most boring part of SEO for many, but I personally love it. You have to embrace the research part to get a feel of what you are up against and what you will be doing.

Your whole SEO strategy will depend on your depth of understanding so DO NOT ever skip the research phase.

Market Research Market research gives you a feel of the whole landscape.

Chances are, you will be working on a more specific website. By doing market research, you open your mind to what’s out there, what they are doing, what’s working for them and so on.

Look around, vertically and horizontally. The information you learn here will come in handy when you start creating your SEO plan and link building strategy.

Niche Research It’s time to niche it down. Who are you going up against directly? What’s the overall state of the niche when it comes to SEO? What types of results is Google showing you when you search? Local? Maps? Mostly Yelp? Video dominates? Are news sites being shown?

Knowing these will help you prioritize what you need to do to get visibility as soon as possible.

Competitor Research Who are your direct competitors? What are they doing? How aggro are they?

Compile your direct competitors. Search using the keywords you are targeting on Google and list down all your competitors.

Compile their link profiles, identify which site is getting the most links, note down the link types they have and what their audiences are sharing.

Keyword Research Now that you have done your competitor research, you can use the data for this phase.

You’ll be able to see the keywords they are ranking for based on the anchor text from their links and you can use tools like SEMRush to find out what other keywords they are ranking for or bidding for.

Compile those keywords and add your target keywords into a list.

Whip out Google’s Keyword Planner, paste the keywords in and watch the magic happen.

You’ll get a ton of suggestions you would have never thought of in the first place.

Data Gathering Now, it’s time to start compiling the data you’ve researched and gather some actual stats about your website.

Compile the initial keywords and backlinks you’ve acquired from the research you’ve done above. Put them into organized lists.

You also need to answer things like: What’s the current status of your website vs your competitors? How optimized are their websites? How many links do they have now?

You need to activate Google Analytics so you can get data about the site you are working on.

You need to crawl the site you are working so you can have the data by the time you get to the on-page SEO phase.

Google Search Console

We love today’s version of Google Webmaster Tools. You can get a ton of data simply by using this.

You can:

Check for crawl errors

Check for penalties

Check if the sitemap has been submitted already

Check HTML improvements needed

Check for broken links

Grab all the data you can and fix them now or until you get to the on-page SEO phase.

Bonus: You might also want to submit your site to Bing’s Webmaster Center. Just for the sake of it. Just do it.

On-Page SEO

This often gets the most criticism from die-hard link builders but nowadays, a lot of them have come to accept on-page SEO as a major part of the overall SEO process.

Today, a lot of pages can rank purely from relevance and good on-page SEO work so never neglect it.

General

For those that are new to SEO, you might not be aware of some of these.

These are best practices that you must apply early on and throughout the life of your website.

The following items are very basic so if you have questions about any of these, please feel free to ask in the comments area.

Start with these:

Add an XML Sitemap

Add Navigation

Add Menus

Use Breadcrumbs

Add a Robots.txt file

Check for Canonical

No-index thin pages – Tags should definitely be no-indexed. Category pages that don’t have unique content should be as well.

Fix all the problems found in Webmaster Tools

Title – ensure keyword presence / check for H1 tag / use long-tail keywords

Check Meta Tags

Fix all pages missing Meta Titles (Stick to 60 characters)

Fix all pages missing Meta Descriptions (Stick to 150 characters or less)

Fix all images missing Alt Text

Check h# tags (e.g. <h1>, <h2>, etc.)  and order them properly.

Optimize Content

Now it’s time to check your site’s existing content.

For many of you, you will be thrown into a project for big website that’s pretty messed up, with content that has been built over the years.

Do not be afraid to change the content if it will improve it and do not hesitate to cull those worthless pages.

Review Visual Design

Keywords

LSI keywords – Use LSI keywords to make your content more relevant.

Publish the usual static pages (Privacy/Terms/Sitemap/About/Contact/Etc.)

“Try” to keep indexed pages static

Refresh or update your site’s content regularly

Monitor Bounce Rate

Externalize Code (CSS)

Performance Tweaks

The performance of your website is IMPORTANT, especially in today’s SEO landscape.

Though the Mobilegeddon update has been underwhelming so far, it will become more important as time goes by so fix your website today.

Check multi-browser-friendliness

URL Optimization

Your URL structure can be easily neglected but it can have a good impact on your rankings and even user re-call.

The best practice is to keep it as short as possible, aim for below 100 characters.

Incorporate primary keywords into the URL

Use absolute URLs

Simplify dynamic URLs with mod_rewrite (Say no to dynamic URLs when possible)

Use 301 redirects for rewritten URLs

Set up non-www to www redirect (or vice versa)

Using Schema

Less than 30% of the websites out there actually use it. Take advantage of that. Schema is here to stay. It doesn’t mean that it’s useless because Google Authorship is dead.

Though its direct impact to SEO is still not actually “proven” in a concrete way, it’s indirect effects are actually very obvious.

Whatever you believe, like I always say, optimize everything and you will succeed in SEO.

Refine/add markup for possible schema (Official Logo, Articles, etc)

I highly recommend that you check out SEOGadget’s (ok, BuiltVisible, I miss the name…) guide on schema over here.

Off-Page SEO

Clearly the most popular part of SEO is your off-page work, more commonly referred to as link building. It is where you want to spend the bulk of your time besides planning and creating your content.

Some of the strategies below are old-school, some are new and some are really niche specific. If you have question, feel free to ask them in the comments area or you can start a new conversation over here.

Set Up Brand Alerts Setting up Google Alerts, TalkWalker and Mention are practically staples in any SEO campaign today. Moz also has neat built-in tracking tool, so if you are a subscriber, be sure to make use of that.

The reason you’d want to do this is that you want to know immediately when someone mentions your brand (and any other relevant keywords) anywhere in the Internet.

This allows you to track your reviews, negative press, blog mentions, forum questions and more! You’ll have the chance to get a backlinks by jumping in early and you also get to build better brand loyalty by showing that you care enough to respond to their posts or issues.

Find Unlinked URL’s and Brand Mentions If you are working on an established site, then chances are, there will be a ton of unlinked mentions out there for you to take.

Tip: There are a lot of ways but start with the simplest method by using Google

Brand -Brand.com (LeapFroggr -leapfroggr.com)

Competing Company Links Find your competitors, look around vertically and horizontally in your niche and category.

Compile them and check their links. Then go out and get those links. They got it, why can’t you?

Ranking Competitor Links Search for your target keywords and find those direct-ranking competitors. Chances are, you won’t see a lot of them during your competitor research phase.

Now compile these sites and check their backlinks.

Find Important Links Using Link Intersects Basically, you want to find the links that already link to your competitors.

Why? There’s a higher chance that you can get those links quickly.

You can use Excel after you export your competitor backlinks to see which domains link to them but for those rare SEO’s that don’t really like spreadsheets (like me) – then CognitiveSEO has a tool for it, so does Link Research Tools and as well as Moz.

Create Social Media Profiles Create your social properties and make sure to put a link back to your website.

If you can’t use them yet, then treat it mainly for branding purposes and to reserve the name when the time comes that you might actually need them.

Broken Link Building Broken link building is basically a strategy to start a conversation with a webmaster.

You give them something and they might eventually do you a favour. That’s the basic idea.

Knowing that, you can get creative with it. Here’s a great article from Erika about broken link building.

Richard Marriott over at Clambr also put up an awesome tutorial.

Utilizing Relevant Pinterest Boards Join or ask to get invited on Pinterest Group Boards. PinGroupie is a good place to start.

True, Pinterest links are no-follow for the most part but Pinterest can bring you tons of traffic and visibility.

You will get links that you would never get by doing normal link prospecting. You can even take it a step further and check the people that shared your pin and reach out to them. You can message with people directly in Pinterest now, just in case you haven’t been using it lately.

Join Expert Roundups Expert roundups are a dime a dozen nowadays and they are getting bigger and bigger each day just to stand out and squeeze out the most social shares.

You don’t have to join all of them but you should join some of them.

For the most part, these are on blogs with their own readership, so it’s a chance for you to get your brand out there and eventually pull in more links.

Oh, you can also be the one to do expert roundups and offer that as part of your outreach. Lots of people will link to it if you use a proper angle for the roundup.

Guest Posting on Influencer Websites Guest posting is not dead. They should rephrase that.

It’s more like guest posting on blatantly fake blog networks is almost dead.

People keep complaining about it but it really isn’t dead. In fact, it’s more important and more precious now than ever.

Find the right sites, build the right connections and create great content for their audience without over-using anchor text.

Blog Commenting To Build Relationships

Blog comment links are mostly no-follow. The real value is in the relationships that are formed.

I’ve met a ton of people simply by doing guest commenting and I got connected with new people that eventually linked to me because I took a bit of my spare time to build these relationships.

I met Matt Capala through blog commenting and he has sent business my way and exclusive connections. (Blatant Plug: Buy his book.)

Some relationships are started through email, some are started by joining local networking events and some can be started simply by blog commenting.

If you want to learn by example, my friends Adrienne, Donna, Harleena, Sue, Don, Carol and Ryan are great people to learn from.

Utilize Quote Directories Sounds funny, but there are many quote directories out there that can be used for links.

Since we are talking about directories, go ahead and look for blog directories, startup directories and niche specific directories. The links can be acquired easily and for the most part, free.

Get on Sites that Offer Awards If you are running a pet website, then you can find sites that offer awards both locally and internationally. Run a service business? There are plenty of business awards you can join. If you run a blog, go out and find sites that offer blog awards. Run a podcast? There are awards for that, too.

In many cases, being nominated can get you a link already… but do try to win so you can show off the award and get other perks.

Contribute to Newsletters Consider this as a way for you to get your brand out there. It’s also a way to get targeted traffic and acquire loyal readers.

So where does the SEO part come in? You can find sites that would allow you to publish content exclusively for their subscribers. It’s like guest posting but only through an exclusive list of people.

You can also get on newsletter publishers that publish recommended content each month. Many of their subscribers use the newsletter content when publishing their monthly or weekly link roundups on their own blogs. That’s where your link is going to come from!

As a side benefit, believe it or not, some people will copy the newsletter content directly and paste it on their site.

Get on Institution Websites Confused? These are also known as .gov and .edu links.

I could talk about hacking their sites, I could talk about manipulating their Moodle platforms and others but…this is sort of a white-hat blog.

The traditional way is to get on their resource page. You can also offer work to them in exchange for a link. One of my older tricks is to track down the student editor and give him beer money.

The .Gov sites will sometimes have forums that give do-follow links. Sometimes you can be a supplier to a project or event depending on your niche. It can open lots of doors for you if you do it the right way.

Get Links from Local Chamber of Commerce Websites Local CoC websites are plenty but the rules are different for each one.

In most cases, it’s pretty easy to get links from them. Just ask what you want do for them or what their requirements are.

Don’t Overlook New Bloggers New bloggers are going to look for mentors. They look for people that are already where they want to be. They will ask questions and they will need guidance.

If you have people following you or somebody emails you, do not hesitate to help them out. Relationships built out this way can net you links you will never really get by simply doing prospecting.

Also, when building out your prospecting list, you will encounter new blogs. Do not hesitate to reach out to them. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have readers and it doesn’t mean that the link you’ll get is worthless since they are a PR-0 site.

Often, these bloggers have really die-hard followers that jump on any recommendation they make and these followers are usually bloggers too. Imagine the extra links you’ll get.

Oh, and in time, the link you get will become more important as they become more important in the space.

Do Guest Podcasting Podcasting is BIG right now and 99% of the time, these podcasters have their own blogs so they can put the show notes there. You don’t have to even start your own podcast.

The idea here is to get on those podcasts. That’s a 100% sure, high quality link.

Submit to Curating Platforms Curating platforms like Scoop.it can share your content out and link back to you. In many cases, these are no-follow links but they have users of their own. Plus these users that curate have blogs. The things they curate get sent to their blogs and their readers get to find your content because of their referral.

My personal favourite is Flipboard. It has brought me a ton of traffic already and readers actually do stick around.

Use LinkedIN Pulse I only just started with LinkedIN Pulse but it’s pretty good so far.

The reason isn’t really for the link, but for the brand visibility. You can assume that the people that follow you and see your work on LinkedIN already have their own social presence online. They might also have blogs.

With my few articles so far, I have gotten some new links because they found my site from my LinkedIN posts.

Plus, you can republish your content on LinkedIN Pulse so it’s not really duplicate content. I don’t do this but a lot of other people do. Maybe you should try it out.

For tips, Paul Shapiro made the best article about it (ever) over here at Noah Kagan’s blog.

Get on Publisher Websites I consider the top tier publishing sites here, such as Entrepreneur, HuffPo, BusinessInsider and more. Depending on your niche, you will find other really big publishers so make sure to get on them.

I also consider the viral sites, like Buzzfeed, under this category. The normal way to get on these sites is to write on their backend and try hard to get your work on the main site. If not, then it won’t really be indexed.

If you want to be creative, my favorite tactic to get on these viral sites is to start from the smaller blogs and work my way up. I spread news or rumors on smaller blogs that I know these viral sites take news from. Once it’s picked up, you push it again on the next level and things will again, snowball from there.

Find Community Websites Community sites like  and Kingged can give you some good initial traction. You’ll be able to meet new people, share your work, gain visibility and eventually, links.

Don’t Forget StumbleUpon and Reddit If you look at the StumbleUpon idea, it can look so Web1.0 but it can still bring in good traffic. Their Ad platform is also good if you plan it out right and know how to get it to catch on. Once it does, it will snowball. You’ll get links, one way or another. One of the people I’ve been following since forever is Ross Hudgens. They put out this cool guide about SU that you can check out here.

As for Reddit, it is only getting hotter so people can say whatever they want about how worthless it is for SEO but for me, Reddit has brought my sites tons of traffic and netted me links from hardcore, badass sites. Ain’t too shabby. Plus, it can do this…thanks for the spot Dan.

Find Uncredited Images It’s inevitable.

People will steal your images. Steal? Sounds harsh. Well, sometimes bloggers just grab it off Google images. It’s a completely innocent thing to do so I understand.

Good thing we know SEO! That practically means a free link in my eyes.

Use Google’s image search and upload a photo. It’ll show you places where the image was used. You can also use Tineye to do this.

Oh, infographic promotion can fall under this as well.

Submit to Slideshare If you do speaking gigs, present to your company or other groups, then you probably have a collection of slide decks. Simply use sites like Slideshare and share your content there!

Do you create blog posts? Repurpose your blog content into slides!

Need more Slideshare tips and tricks? Then get it from no other but the queen herself, Ana Hoffman from TGC.

Note: You can also submit PDF’s to Slideshare but there are also places to submit PDF’s so you can share your book or whitepaper to the world.

Get on Magazine and News Sites Local ones will tend to be easier to get featured on to but bigger, global news sites are still possible. It will just take a bit more work and patience.

What I do is to find the editor or a connection to the editor. Once I get introduced, it’s easy to submit a piece and get a piece published.

Joining HARO, which will be mentioned shortly, can also help you get on some of these sites.

Find Resource Pages Resource pages is one of the oldest plays in the book and it’s still one of my favorites.

Why? Competitors neglect them and I don’t have to worry about content. Easy, relevant links. Boom.

Join HARO and Participate Help A Reporter Out aka HARO is one of the best ways to get free press.

You get emails with different topics. You reply to the reporter and send an expert direct-to-the-point answer.

HARO isn’t the only game in town, I listed down some of the others here.

Here’s a tip: Use your mail to filter out the daily emails to find relevant phrases or words so you don’t have to check each one.

Use and Monitor Hashtags like #PRRequest Besides HARO type sites, there are hashtags out there that are used by journalists. It’s a way for them to get stories and participants. You can tweet out your topic with the hashtag or just monitor it.

Again, much like HARO, you need to pick your spots and be patient with this. Once it works for you, it’s gold.

Do a Link Bait You basically write about something controversial, something timely, something that’s not the norm. Put it out in front of the right people and BAM! You get links!

I covered it a bit more on this post.

Create Badges This is old school but still effective today, especially for certain niches today.

You create a gimmick badge, you share it to the community with a link back to you to show their support or to brag about their level in the community.

It’s sort of like those blog directories that want you to put their link on your site first to confirm your ownership. Then you forget to remove the badge and you just gave them a free link.

Find Links Pointing to Your Social Media Account but Not Your Website This is simple yet highly neglected.

By doing a simple backlink check on your own social profiles, you can dig out some pretty easy links.

To take this a step further, compile your competitor’s social accounts and check their links.

Use a Service? Submit a Testimonial! If you use a service or bought a course or maybe you are a member of a group/newsletter, then you can try to share your learnings, testimonials and results to the owner.

If you are purely in this for the link, which I know you are, then make sure the site you are contacting has a testimonial area.

For a more extensive process, Bryan Harris, THE poster boy, explains this like no other.

Support Crowd Funding Projects I mentioned it briefly here but I have talked about this on the newsletter pretty extensively in the past.

You basically find crowd funding projects that offer a link from their websites. You support them and get the link when they go live.

Charities to Support There are tons of charities you can support. Look around your local area and find those with websites.

Of course, you need to be aligned with their vision. >_>

Q&A Sites Q&A sites are mostly no-follow links but they bring in relevant traffic. They also rank pretty well and can get you spots in Google’s results.

That way, you can get more visibility, new users and eventually, new links.

Find Forums Forum links are not dead. They are still really nice and they still bring in targeted traffic.

You just need to look for relevant forums and jump into the conversation… or you can manufacture a way to start a conversation and jump in later to pitch your link.

Google removed my fav filter, which is “discussions” so just for you, here’s my secret. This nifty Chrome plugin.

Note: Just don’t go out there buying mass forum signature and profile links.

Research How an Author Did it I love this technique because I can sort of see how someone I look up to got to where he is today.

I could see how hard they worked, how they did it, the creativity they showed and more!

I could then do something similar and set myself apart from what he already did.

I talked about this extensively on the newsletter and I mentioned it on my post over here.

Supplier Websites This is mainly for e-commerce websites where you have suppliers that have sites. Just ask for those links.

If you are a business or a blog and have someone you work with that has a site, then you can also ask for a link from them. Easy, high quality links are always welcome.

Do Successful Content BETTER As mentioned in my previous post, my go-to strategy when it comes to link building is simply just doing better content than what’s already working out there and get all their links!

It basically means that people are interested and you can get those links.

Brian Dean calls this the Skyscraper Technique so if you want to learn more about this, check out his blog post!

Comment Scouting Comment scouting is a way for me to simply get ideas from the comments area (be it in my own blog or another blog) and create content for whatever the need I see there.

Then you contact the commenters and commenters on other blog posts with a similar topic.

I am creating a post about this and I’ll be posting it soon. Signup for our newsletter so you never miss an update!

③⓪① Build Category Specific Sites – 301 Them Category pages on a website are probably the hardest pages to get links for. E-commerce sites will benefit from getting links to these pages greatly so one way of getting links is by creating separate websites.

Cultivate them, get them links and then 301 those domains to your main category. #WIN

Since you read all the way here, here are a few bonus strategies that aren’t in the infographic!

Speaking and Conference Links Volunteer to speak in front of an organization or a conference. That’s almost a guaranteed link.

Does the conference have sponsors? They probably mentioned the conference on their website as well. Ask for a link back to your site!

Management and Sponsor Links Let’s say you are working on a celebrity’s site, then get a link from her agency’s site. Get links from her sponsors and magazines that mention her.

Are you getting paid to show off products? Get links from your sponsor’s website!

WikiPedia There are certainly different ways to get WikiPedia links. Knowing a moderator, sheer luck or WikiGrabber.

Use it and find a way to get a link. Don’t forget your etiquette.

Infographic Links Lastly, infographic promotion. Submit it to directories, reach out to sites that already publish infographic posts or sites that can be granted exclusivity.

It’s really a versatile way to build links so you can get really creative with it.

BTW, if you liked this infographic, please use our embed code that you saw at the bottom of the infographic.

Tell us about it and we’ll help you promote it. We’ll even write a unique intro for you!

Everything Else

Once you get to this point, it’s basically icing on the cake. Most of these are things that can’t be qualified under the categories above.

Some are minor, some are really vital once you start ranking and some are just for maintenance.

Social Media

I had to start it off with this.

When it comes to discussing social media’s direct effect to SEO, it will almost always be controversial. No matter what people say, social media is a part of our online and offline brands moving forward.

For me, social media does not have a direct effect, but a more indirect one. Actually, there are plenty of indirect ones!

The point of this being included here in the checklist is that you need to make sure that your website is set up properly and linked to your brand’s official social platforms.

Create those social media accounts – these basically help with SEO indirectly as they carry your brand name.

Adding social sharing buttons can potentially help you acquire new users and eventually links.

Link these social media accounts to your website – For example, Google+ can ask you to verify your site and page.

Also, you can use Schema to link your official social profiles.

Conversion Rate Optimization

CRO, which is an art on it’s own, does have processes that affect your overall SEO. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to convert more of your existing visitors.

Some of the things you need to do are:

Continue to speed up your website

Check your bounce rates

Be sure you don’t cause duplicate content when A/B testing

Track if you are ranking the correct page (that is converting)

Sound familiar? They should be.

Knowledge Graph

The knowledge graph is still a mystery for many. If your brand is still not an entity within the Knowledge Graph, then you need to start taking some steps to include yourself there.

Start by getting a Freebase account (by the time you read this, Google might have moved over to WikiData)

Check out Andrew Isidoro’s post as well as Krystian Szastok’s post.

Rank Tracking

Rank tracking is not as talked about as it used to be but if you are serious about your SEO work, then it’s still a must.

The Google Webmaster Tools data you get about your rankings are simply an average of where you place.

If you want more accurate data, be it local or country specific, then you need to track it yourself, be it using software (we use Rank Tracker and Advanced Web Ranking) or one of the many cloud hosted rank tracking tools out there.

Just to throw it in here: I get this question a lot. Does it hurt your ranking if you keep checking the rankings daily? I haven’t seen any evidence of it as I track things pretty aggressively.

Reputation Management

Skeptical?

Let’s start by mentioning that you need to claim your brand’s identity everywhere. It will save you a ton of time and headaches in the future when the brand you are working on is big enough.

You also need to monitor mentions about your brands either to stop negative things from escalating or get links.

So, can online reputation management be a part of SEO? Definitely.

Ongoing Server Configuration Checks

Your server will need to be tweaked regularly. Especially as you grow your traffic more and more.

The last thing you want is a slow site or a site that is down for long periods of time.

Things can get misconfigured, it’s just the way it is so doing regular checks are important.

Other Avenues to Improve Branding Online

You can do more besides traditional link building.

You can build up your brands on different ecosystems that are also crawled by Google.

From YouTube, to Apple and even Amazon. These are all major search engines on their own and building your brand within them can add to your SEO… and they take up space in Google’s results so that’s another bonus for you.

Keep Up with New Google Guidelines

Google’s guidelines will keep on changing. It’s just the nature of the game.

If you don’t monitor SEO news regularly, make it a point to pick your favorite SEO websites and subscribe to their newsletter (like ours) or RSS feed. Schedule a time in the month to do quick reading sessions to keep yourself up to date.

Schedule On-Page SEO Checks

As you publish more and more content, things can get lost in the shuffle.

Maybe you don’t have a system in place yet for other authors that publish within your site. Maybe you are just forgetful when it comes to SEO and just want to focus on creating content.

Doing a regular on-page SEO checkup will only help you in the long run so don’t overlook this.

Screaming Frog is our favorite but Google Webmaster Tools can also give you some good data.

Schedule Regular Backlink Profile Checks

This is probably the most ignored thing EVER. I cannot stress the importance of this especially if you are already working on a popular site or a competitive market.

Things can go wrong rather quickly (penalty/de-indexed) or it can be the reason why your site is being held back from improving in the rankings.

Checking your link profile regularly will help you see what’s wrong. Maybe you are over using your anchor text, maybe somebody is sending you spammy links or maybe you just aren’t doing enough.

I would suggest using and even Google Webmaster Tools when doing link profile checks.

Now Here’s How You Can Put It to Use

As I mentioned earlier in the article, we created a FREE SEO checklist that you can download and print out.

It’s basically a group of printable checklists, including 2 checklists for on-page and off-page local SEO.

Here’s where you can download the checklist:

Grow your digital presence to get more leads with this FREE newsletter (and free resources)

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[tomthedev-blog]

Atom Vs. Sublime Vs. Brackets Vs. VS Code

Warning!

This post is absolutely biased and is reflecting 100% of my own opinion on text editors.

When it comes to gearing up for coding there's one choice you should make consciously and carefully and that's your text editor.

   An important choice

Your text editor will have a tremendous impact on:

Your workflow.

The languages you work on.

Your programming style (indenting, syntax, preprocessing, spaces, comments, etc.).

Your productivity.

So it should not be picked lightly and you should even re-consider your choice every once in a while. You're not married to your text editor (sorry Brackets 💔, you made me very happy for a while but I needed some new perspective on things and your syntax highlighting is crap) and you don't have to always work around a missing feature or a crappy CPU usage (you know I'm talking about you Atom).

 Factors

So in order to make that list up, I considered the following factors for each editor:

Performance. How fast is it?

Stability. Can it handle large repos without crashing?

Footprint. How heavy the program is on your hard-drive, on your RAM too?

Built-in features. What comes pre-installed/out-of-the-box?

Customization. How many plugins/themes/packages are available?

Active community. Is there an active community of users/programmers feeding the beast? How often does it get updated?

That's pretty much it.

Again, this post reflects my opinion, so I don't expect everyone to agree.

For each editor, I made:

A list of 'Pros'

A list of 'Cons'

My own personal verdict.  

Here we go!

  DA LIST!

Pros

It’s free!

Very active community or users and lots of resources/tutorials on Github/Medium, etc.

Lots of themes and plugins.

Hackable from top to bottom.

The file-tree-view is really nice and perhaps the best one across all editors.

The package-installer is really neat and easy-to-use.

Best looking one (subjective obviously).

Lots of support from Github crew since they own the thing.

Best Git integration (obviously)

Fuzzy Finder is nice and should be the norm.

Cons

Takes some time to get the right setup.

Has some issues handling large repos/folders and CPU usage can go pretty high. It’s a browser-based app (runs on Electron), and is a bit slow to load and sometimes to respond.

Project manager possibilities are a bit limited but plugins can fix that

Hackable from top to bottom.

Most of the core is written in CoffeeScript, but the Github team is transitioning to ES6.

Has issues handling very large files.

Strange syntax management sometimes, you get a different color for your variable name depending on what you typed before (const, let, var etc.)

My verdict

Although it comes packed with great features and an overall neat layout, Atom is still having lots of difficulties handling large files and keeping a low CPU usage. It’s overall rather slow and unstable (you will notice that if you’re working all day long on your text editor).

The speed/performance factor is really something that comes across most reviews of Atom out there sadly.

I guess the perfect editor would be Atom without any of its flaws but it’s not quite there yet.

  Pros

Very lightweight.

Fast.

Reliable.

Outperforms Atom and Brackets.

Cons

70$ is a lot of money for a text editor. Especially when the other players in the market are free.

As with Atom, you will need to install a handful of plugins before you can benefit from ST’s full potential.

Git integration is somehow a bit shallow compared to other editors.

My verdict on Sublime Text

Obviously, Sublime Text is a reference out there and the editor that has the most mileage under its belt. Is that the reason why it's so stable, maybe. Is that worth $70? Certainly not.  

Pros

Free too!

Built-in live browser preview. When you move the cursor inside an HTML element inside the editor, it will then also be highlighted in the browser. Neat!

Takes about half the size of Atom.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitati

Code completion out of the box.

The split window mode is really easy to use and intuitive.

Quick editing - When you mark any HTML element and press Cmd/Ctrl + E, Brackets opens all CSS associated with this element inline in the current window. From here, you can make any edits you need. Once you close it, any changes will automatically be applied to the stylesheet connected with this element. Nice!

Cons

Needs plugins and packages to really be complete

Supports only web languages out of the box

Some basic features are missing such as indentation guides, automatic matching tags editing.

Can also be slow at times but no big deal (especially compared to Atom)

Not as actively updated as Atom

Smaller community than Atom / fewer extension/plugins.

My verdict on Brackets

Brackets is the editor I started with when I first learned web development so I might not be completely objective here ❤️   

It’s a really nice text editor, more reliable than Atom in my opinion but less hackable. I would use it over Atom just for the Quick Editing and Live Preview that are great. This is something missing in VS Code, a reliable 'live preview' with hot reload just like Brackets can do natively.

Pros

Stable

Fast

Reliable

Great Git integration right out of the box.

Breakpoints debugger built-in.

Cons

Microsoft? 🤔

It doesn't have the polished interface of Atom.

The Navigation system is a bit odd compared to the other 3.  

My verdict on VS Code

I must say that as the full-on Microsoft-hater that I am, I overlooked VS Code for a looooong time. I must say that I was wrong (I hate to admit it though) and what MS accomplished here is rather nice. How come it’s the same people who created the worst web browser(s) and the best text editor? I leave you with that question unanswered. VS Code is fast, reliable and gaining huge momentum this year, moving to the top front-end developement environment according to 2017 Stack Overflow survey.

VIM? 

Vim is a bit too “raw” for me. Vim is like a salad without dressing. You know it’s healthy, and you know you don’t really need more, but you just want more.

Final verdict

Except maybe Vim that’s a bit too extreme in its philosophy and that requires too much commitment in terms of workflow, you should definitely give each one a try.

It hurts my feeling to say it but VS Code feels really, really nice and stable as a daily editor. Atom has too many performance issues to be the top-choice and Brackets does not offer as many possibilities in customization sadly. Sublime Text is probably an overall good pick if you’re Ok in forking out $70 for it. I know I'm not.

Well, that's about it for now. Let me know what you think down below or drop me an email at thomasfaller@gmail.com :)

Edit

I found the following link on Quora and though I would inject a bit of "factuality" into my biased post :D

https://blog.xinhong.me/post/sublime-text-vs-vscode-vs-atom-performance-dec-2016/

You can find the entire discussion here.

[ultralifehackerguru-blog]

New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/bear-is-the-perfect-balance-between-the-bloat-of-evernote-and-the-simplicity-of-plain-text/

Bear Is the Perfect Balance Between the Bloat of Evernote and the Simplicity of Plain Text

When it first launched, Bear was an intriguing alternative to bloated note-taking apps like Evernote and OneNote, but it was still a little too new to dive into. After a couple minor iterations, I’m convinced it’s a worthy alternative for those sick of the bloat of other notes apps and for those who like the take-home simplicity of plain text. Provided you’re in the Apple ecosystem, anyway.

Bear is a notes app for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that also happened to win Apple’s Best Of awards last year. The lack of a Windows, Android, or web client is a bummer in this day and age, but if you’re in the Apple ecosystem this shouldn’t matter much.

Bear sits between plain text and Evernote, between minimalism and bloat. It targets a very specific subset of people, who I’ll call, Plain Text, Organized. I’ve long been an advocate of plain text, but there’s no denying that it’s hard to keep organized or use for complex research. In Bear’s case, it utilizes Markdown so you can format text easily while still maintaining plain text portability. Bear has recently become my notes app of choice to accompany my favorite long-form writing software, Ulysses.

Bear also has an interesting pricing scheme that’s worth talking about up front. It’s free if you don’t need to sync between devices or use custom themes. If you want that syncing, Bear costs $14.99/year. While that’s a turnoff for people who are used to getting software for free, it does mean that Bear has a sustainable business model. This hopefully means Bear will exist and be in development for years to come. You can try Bear out without syncing for free, or get a free month trial of the premium subscription if you’re still not sure about it.

With that, let’s take a look at how Bear holds up, what makes it different, and how I’ve been using it.

Bear Organizes with Hashtags, Not Notebooks

Bear does not use a notebook or folder system to organize notes. Instead, it just uses hashtags. This is great for me because hashtags have long worked better for my workflow.

Instead of creating a notebook, then creating notes inside of that, hashtags are a more flexible—a note can exist in two places at once. Just type a # followed by whatever tag you want, like #potentialcaves , and that’s automatically parsed in Bear’s sidebar as a tag. You can give a note an unlimited number of tags, which is great when you want to a note to appear in multiple places at once.

Even better, you can nest tags using a forward slash. This creates a more traditional looking folder structure. For example, you can do a tag like, #book/research, #book/notes, #book/interviews to create a book tag with three subdirectories, research, notes, and interviews.

Of course, many other notes apps use this system too, including Evernote and OneNote, so this isn’t some crazy new feature. But this is Bear’s only method for organization, so it’s good to learn how to use it and pick an organization method that works for you.

Bear’s Note Linking Is A Feature I Never Realized I Wanted Until I Used It

Bear has a system built into it where you can link notes together. When you do this, you can navigate between notes really easily. For me, it’s essentially a system where I can create my own little Wikipedia.

For example, if I have notes on a subject or a person, I can right-click a note to copy a link to it, then paste that in a new note to create a link. Now, I can simply click on the link in the new note to go back to the original at any point. You can do this for as many notes as you want, creating a massive web of linked notes. It’s sort of like making a little interconnected website that only you can navigate.

I didn’t really understand why I’d use this until I started playing around with it. Now that I have, I’ve found that I use it most for notes about certain contacts or names I might not remember at first, for various code snippets that rely on other scripts, or for slightly complex sets of notes like travel documents where I don’t want everything dumped into a single note. There are likely a lot more ways to use this I haven’t thought of yet.

The one problem with this is that Bear lacks a back button, so getting back to your original note take a more clicks than it feels like it should, but you get used to it after a little while.

Bear Has a Few Clever Formatting Tricks

Since Bear works on a slightly different version of Markdown, it has all those formatting tricks built into it, including the ability to make lists with check boxes, add in quotes, and it supports a variety of heading sizes. Bear has a few of its own little special tricks too.

My favorite of those little tricks is support for code snippets. So if you’re a coder, you can drop in a code snippet and it’s formatted properly with optional syntax highlighting. Just right-click, then select Paste From > Code. This is super useful for people like me who spend most of their time breaking code and then testing out dozens of idiot solutions.

Bear can also recognize certain types of data and format them automatically. It recognizes addresses and turns them into links, it recognizes links and email addresses and makes them clickable, and has inline support for images.

There’s a Web Clipper, If That’s Your Thing

If you use the web clipper to save articles or portions of web pages in OneNote or Evernote, you’ll be happy to know that Bear has that capability as well. Just download the browser extension for your web browser and you’re all set.

This works pretty much as you’d expect. Click the Bear extension to import an entire page into a new note, or highlight a block of text, then click the Bear extension to import a specific selection. It’s nowhere near as robust as Evernote’s web clipper, but it does the job.

Bear Just Looks Really Good

Look, I know this doesn’t matter from a usability point of view, but Bear looks really nice. It’s simple, has a few color theme options to choose from, and just generally goes for a minimal approach.

I’ve always hated Evernote’s awful green and OneNote’s garish purple, and while some oddball color choices certainly aren’t enough to keep me away from a good app, it’s nice that Bear bucks this trend and looks good. Obviously, this doesn’t matter to everyone, nor should it, but it’s still nice.

What Bear Still Needs

Bear isn’t perfect, and it’s missing some features people find essential. The most glaring problem is that it’s Apple-only. A web app is supposedly in the works, but until then Bear’s usefulness will be cut short.

Bear also doesn’t have collaboration or publishing features, which could be a turn off for some. I personally never use either of those features in other notes apps so it doesn’t bother me, but it certainly prevents Bear from being an option in the workplace for a lot of people. It’s also lacking password protection. Again, this is a feature I’d never use, but it’s something to consider if you lock your notes away behind a password.

Bear is also missing the more techy features of Evernote and OneNote like document scanning, voice recording, reminders, and dictation, though based on the general functionality of Bear, I’d argue that most of those don’t really belong here.

If you’re even remotely interested in Bear at this point, I recommend just giving it a spin. Bear supports a ton of import options, including Apple Notes, DayOne, Evernote, Ulysses, and Vesper, so it’s easy to take it for a test drive without starting over from scratch. If you end up wanting to leave Bear at any point, they make it easy. You can export your notes to just about every format you could possibly need, included TXT, RTF, HTML, and DOCX amongst others. It’s a strong alternative when you can’t bear the bloat of other apps.

The Quest for the Perfect Notes App Continues

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