Back in August I wrote about how I created a theme for the site called Individual System: Nexus.  Since October of 2009 I have been working on the next version of that theme, which I recently released.  You can call this version 1.2.  Since the release of my first Nexus theme I have been thinking of ways to improve it, which is part of the reason for the scarce updates towards the end of 2009.  Not that its been all work, the other part is I can be a bit distracted with other things also (only when it comes to personal projects though ^^;;).

Decided to use WordPress’s Sticky Post function to create a new feature content section on the front page.  On the old theme, I only featured photo articles.  But sometimes I wanted to have a why to put regular post up there as well.  The sticky function was the perfect tool for doing that, as any post tagged as sticky could be featured now on the home page.  Limited it to the latest three post tagged.

Also display the latest twitter update as well ways on connect with me through RSS, Twitter, Flickr, or Facebook.

Added a jquery panel to the navigation containing my connection links.  Also where I put the search box.  Then there is an area for members to login and (if enabled) a registration area.  These were part of the original code sample and could contain anything you wish to put up. I chose to leave it close to the original sample for now.

If you are a member (and logged in) then you are greeted with another panel contain various options you have access to.  For the panel to work, Javascript does have to be enabled on your browser.  Probably stating the obvious there, but just in case.

If you recall one of the things I that I was proud of on the last Nexus theme was the blogroll/rss script I wrote out. It was inspired by Danny Choo’s featured feed section he created to share his traffic with his community.  I figured I would create a similar section using the script I wrote.  I will post more information regarding some sort of link exchangesoon.

Did a few back-end changes as well.  Things that won’t really see but did factor into the new theme.  These small back-end fixes shouldn’t really impact the user (hopefully) but does assist me greatly.

Overall I am happy with the new site design.  One thing I am still working on is the comment system, as I just copied my old one from the first Nexus theme.  Also want to implement a few other things on this theme in the feature.  Again, this is just as much a learning experience for me as it is a way to improve site usability.  I do plan on doing more to improve both this site and my skills.

Also, if you experience any sort of bugs while using the site please comment here and I will look into it.

Time once again for Site Stats!  Even with my absence the last couple of months, still received a steady stream of visits.  So just a brief look at the stats for June and July:

June

911 visits / 700 Unique Visitors / 1,591 pageviews

Top Keywords were Anime Hotties, K-on Nendoroid, Yoko Littner, Black Rocker Shooter, and Eureka Seven movie

Top Traffic Sources were Google, Twitter, and Flickr

July

1,065 visits / 848 Unique Visitors / 1,815 pageviews

Keywords pretty much stayed the same, with the addition of Dollfie Dream.

Top Traffic Sources also stayed the same.

Not to bad (for me) considering total lack of activity on my part.

In August I got back to business, launching my first revision of IS:Nexus (which I am already tweaking a few design changes on ^^).  And I managed to produce seven articles as well.

During August, Ultima-i received 1,522 visits from 1,177 unique visitors.  Pretty pleased with breaking 1000 visitors, for that I say thank you to all my readers ^^

Pageviews were 2,718 with top referrals coming from Google, Flickr, Otaku.fm, and Figure.fm (Miss Dollfie Summer 2009 Contest really played a big factor in this ^0^).  Top keywords being “Dollfie Dream Rin Tohsaka,” “Unlimited Blade Works Trailer,” and “Eureka Seven Movie Trailer.”  In fact, I have been holding number 1 search position on Google for “Dollfie Dream Rin Tohsaka” for the last couple weeks.  Similar searches like “Dollfie Rin” or “Rin Tohsaka Dollfie” usually rank on first page of searches too.

Ultima-i ranks 75,314 of the 1,423,887 websites that have been ranked on websitegrader.com, scoring a 95% in marketing effectiveness (like I’m really marketing my site=p).  Also have an Alexa rank of 3,404,626 which is in the top 12.16 % of all websites and a Technorati rank of 1,112,328, which puts it in the top 1.59% of blogs tracked by Technorati.

That’s enough of the stats.  Now for a wrap-up reflection.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how the site is growing. I have a lot of hopes tied into this project, as such I have a lot of expectations on myself to get things where I envision them.  The two month hiatus rekindled my drive to follow my dream and to not let anything deter me from doing what I enjoy.  I plan to share more of the things I enjoy as our journey continues

Like a lot of people, I use WordPress for my blogging platform.  It is a pretty powerful platform and from what I read it could be adapted to do just about anything.  Perfect for a guy like me who wouldn’t even know where to begin in terms of creating my own platform.  But the creators of WordPress understand that and give users the option to create their own look with the use of a theme system.  When I first started Ultima-i, I tried a lot of pre-made themes; but never stuck with one for long.  Plus none of them represented me very well.  That’s when I decided I would learn how to create my own, which I did and christened it “Individual System.”  This version is actually the third version of my Individual System theme.

So for the last month I have been working on updating the design of the site a bit.  Not really a major overhaul, as I kept quite a few elements from the previous design.  But there were a few things about the old design that I felt needed to be changed, either because of look or function.  There was two big things I wanted to address: automating tasks I used to do manually and connecting Ultima-i to the social websites I frequent.

So I turned to Google-sensei to help me learn a little more about PHP so I could make some improvements.  Thanks to various sources, I was able to do the following:

1. Automated the thumbnail creation process of posts.  Before I was having to manually do this using custom fields.  After consulting the sensei I learned of a script called PhpThumb and began work on a function that would take the first image from every post and create a thumbnail.  It took quite a bit of work to get this little thing working, but after going over the documentation and other sources I was able to get it working.
2. Twitter support.  I wanted to do more than just listing my twitter status on my website.  I wanted to enable people to share things they find here with their followers without a lot of hassle.  So I found a tutorial on how to create a function that would allow an user to click a link and have it post to twitter.  But I wanted to go further!  Because I use twitter a lot, I noticed that they went from tinyurl to bit.ly for their URL shortening.  The beauty of bit.ly is that it tracks analytic data for the links it creates, which is something I didn’t see tinyurl doing.  So after a lot of headaches and tweaking, I was able to build a function posted the post title and bit.ly created link to user’s twitter status field to share with their followers.
3. Blogroll (link lists) and RSS combined!  Wordpress has two plugins / widgets built in that allow users to add a blogroll and RSS to their sidebar.  But oddly enough, they don’t have one that can do both together.  So I decided to write up a piece of PHP that does!  Reason I wanted to do this is because I wanted to put a image banner with my RSS feeds that linked back to site that feed was pulled from.  Plus, I am of the opinion that if you are going to link exchange with another site then posting some of their content will help get some link love to them over just having a banner sitting there.  And it was rather simple to build this little gem once I learned about PHP’s foreach function and about how SimplePie worked.  It gave me a few problems, the biggest one I didn’t catch until I updated the site.  But I found it and now it works like a charm.  If you follow me on twitter, then you know I had to give myself a self high five when I figured out why it wasn’t working =D
4. Just some minor site design changes.  Basically changing the look of a few things on the site.

All of this was done because I felt that my site didn’t quite represent what I felt was my best work.  I mentioned it in both Content is King and Reflections, that this site is a journey for me.  Blogging is something that is still new to me, but I want Ultima-i to reflect my personality and express my voice.  And really, that is the key thing about blogging – expressing and sharing yourself with the world.  Connect with others through shared interests or knowledge (hopefully ^^;).

It is for that reason I decided that I would call this version of my site “Individual System: Nexus.”  Nexus being a connection (or series of connections) that link two or more things.  Ultima-i is my nexus, linking this site to the various social sites I frequent and those users, as well as users across the web through connections I make with other sites.

Working on this has been the first time and a long time that I have felt like I have truly accomplished anything, motivated by the new things I was learning.  But I don’t plan on stopping here, I plan on learning more.  There are a few APIs I am looking into learning, want to learn JQuery (been a long time since I done any Javascript), as well as advancing my PHP skills further.  I have a vision of where I see my site going and I plan on continuing to work to get it there!

Image source (slightly modified to enhance the color) : Moe Imouto

Its that time again to share a few stats for the month of April!  Still have a long way to go before “the big time” but I’m happy that things held pretty steady for the month.

877 Visits
1701 Pageviews
687 Absolute Unique Vistors
1: 27 Average Time on Site
76.51 % New Visits

Pretty close to last month, some way a small increass while some saw small decrease.  Top site referrals came from Flickr, Twitter, Danny Choo, and Otaku.fm.  My increased use of Flickr and Twitter helped boost referrals from these two sources.  Referrals from Otaku.fm wasn’t as high this month mainly because I didn’t make as many post as I did last month.  Lesson here – Regular updates means more opportunities to attract more traffic.  Not only for an aggregator like Otaku.fm, but to help increase exposure through other channels too (like search engines).

In terms of search engines, a lot of traffic was generated from people looking for information on the Yoko Dollie Dream.  Various searches for Yoko generated quite a few page views for April.  I’ll be posting a lot more Dollfie related entries in the coming months (depending on the results of a few things ^^;).  I’m guaranteed a Yoko because I made it in time to secure her during preorder, but if the product page is correct I won’t see her until September.  But may other Dollfie related news until then ^^

HubSpot’s Website Grader currently grades Ultima-i as 92/100, ranking 73,090 out of 956,831 websites that have been ranked by the service thus far.

Google Indexed Pages are 135 with a PageRank of 2.  Last crawl date was May 9th, 2009.

Alexa rank currently 3,692,305 which is in the top13.19 % of all websites.

Technorati currently ranks Ultima-i 1,098,198 which is in the top 1.57% of blogs tracked by the service.

We have 2 del.icio.us bookmark submitted and 1 Digg.com submission.

The main reason I like to share these stats is because I want a record of where this site was at a certain moment in time.  As I have mention before, this site is an ongoing learning experience for me .  The stats I collect on this site from the various sources I use help to gain a better understanding of different aspects of operating this site.  For instance, just increasing my use of two social networking sites has helped generate a few new visits this month.

Image of Code Geass’s Kallen Stadtfeld courtesy of Satoshi Urusihara.  Source:  Moe Imouto

I want to first start by apologizing for the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks.  Been working on trying to make the site look good, and been neglecting the one thing that really matters…the content.  What makes this especially sad is that I have four entries in my queue to post if I would only finish them.  Also been reading my latest book, trying to learn how to be better with Photoshop ^^;

What I want to talk about this time is social networking.  I think its safe to say that most online savvy people have heard of sites like Myspace, Facebook, or Twitter.  And it is probably also safe to say that those same folks have accounts with one of them (or not more).  I know I do!  ^^

The main reason I am really focusing on these services now is because I want to network out some.  Meet new people with similar interests or I can learn from.

My two “weapons of choice” happen to be Facebook and Twitter.  What I like about these two is that they allow me to do two very specific things.

I have had this account for a while and posted to it often.  But after a while I deleted all of the updates I had posted to it, mainly because I thought it had a lot of pointless rambling in it.  Looking back I regret that decision, because it was really a silly reason to it.  But I am planning to use it more so that I can at least give people “mini” updates in the event I don’t post here.

How often do you “twitter”?  Several times a day?  More?  Less?

Facebook…boy do I love Facebook.  It allows me to link up everything I am doing across the internet into my profile page.  If you look at my Facebook, you’ll know when I make a post to Ultima-i, when I upload a photo to Flickr, or when I favorite a video on YouTube.  I think that its pretty cool because it allows people to know what I am doing without having to actually input anything into the site.  In fact, really only go to Facebook if a notice shows up in my inbox or if I want to see what friends are up to.

How many of you use Facebook?  Do you have it linked up with other sites you visit like I do?

Thought I would share some blog stats for March 2009.  This March actually marked one year of the site being in operation since I relaunched it.  But I didn’t really do much work / updates to it 2008 and pretty much let it sit dead.  And when I did update it, most of my post were about Code Geass R2.  I decided to again start over in 2009 spending January redesigning the site and February doing some posts.  But it wasn’t until March that I really started to try and be more dedicated to updates here.

March 2009 Stat Overview:

870 Visits
2,089 Pageviews
548 Absolute Unique Vistors
2:51 Average Time on Site
62.18% New Visits

March was a good month because I got accepted into Danny Choo‘s Otaku.fm!  And it really helped boost traffic to the site.  Danny spent years developing his site into what it is today, and to share his traffic with other anime fans / bloggers is really gracious of him.  I am certainly grateful to him for it as linkage from his sites contributed to most of my referrals in traffic for March.  Dannychoo.com referred 130 visits and Otaku.fm referred 142 visitors.  163 were direct visits, which is certainly nice.

144 visits were from search engine inquiries.  The top inquiry was about the Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced limited edition game.  I’m guessing talking about the special Nendoroid that was included helped considering the game was released in late March.  Still wish I could have got the game because I wanted that figurine.  Sadly it is out of stock now.  The second inquiry was the Black Rock Shooter figure GoodSmile Company announced.  Third top was Yoko Littner with various other keywords attached.

There were a few inquires that I have to wonder about.  For instance, number 4 top referred inquiry was aa867.  This appeared to be an image attached to my Utena Kissed a Girl post and somehow lead people to Ultima-i in search engine inquires.  Other inquires that lead to some ‘stray’ visits included the word “ultima” in them.  I suppose that should be expected considering what I decided to name this site.  But for me naming this site Ultima-i was a logical choice, which you can read more about in my profile page.

HubSpot’s Website Grader currently grades Ultima-i as 89/100, ranking 62,681 out of 878,393 websites that have been ranked by the service thus far.

Google Indexed Pages are 171 with a PageRank of 2.  Last crawl date was April 1st, 2009.

Alexa rank currently 5,737,940 which is in the top 20.49 % of all websites.

Technorati currently ranks Ultima-i 1,357,989 which is in the top 1.94% of blogs tracked by the service.

We have 1 del.icio.us bookmark submitted and 1 Digg.com submission.

As I mentioned before, Ultima-i is powered by WordPress using a theme I created called Individual System.  It is a work in progress and there are things that do need to be fixed on it.  I am working on the next revision to the theme and it should address some minor issues as well has show more of my own style in it.  Since relaunching Ultima-i I decided that I would make it a point to use my own theme creations and not themes created by others, because I want this blog to express who I am.  Its not perfect so please if you experience any kind of problem with it I would like to know so I can approve the user experience.

I also want to take this moment to say Thank You to everyone for visiting my site.  870 visits probably seem like nothing to experienced blogger but for me it is a great achievement.  In just March 2009 I exceeded the visits to this site from March 2008 to February 2009, so that’s a big step for me.  And I couldn’t have had that without each one of you that thought there was something interesting here to check out.  So again, Thank You!

I look forward to what April has to bring and promise that I will try and provide you with more updates!

Working on a few site updates and thought I would share!  As you may or may not know by reading my brief About page, this theme of mine is a custom build I put together.  I am happy with how it came out, but certainly looking to improve it.

For starters, I still haven’t finished the style sheet for printing.  So if you try to print anything here, you’re going to get a mess ^^;  Plan is to get that worked up and loaded by the end of the week.

My comments section is a bit ugly.  I want to clean that up and looking better as soon as possible.  If anyone knows of any resources for styling comments please let me know.

There are also a few tweaks I want to do with the footer and a few other places on the site.  Just little things to make things look a little better.

Also working on better integrating Flickr into my site.  I really plan on putting my Flickr account to use and want it to integrate well into Ultima-i.

Been doing a little research on a project I would like to do later this year. Can’t really talk much about that yet, because its still in the planning stages and I still have a few things I need to look at and do before I decide to take it on or not.

Not trying to be secretive, just doing what they call in the world of business a feasibility study. Measuring pros and cons basically.

But enough on that, here are a few things I do know will be making it to Ultima-i in the near future!

1) Babes of Anime – Back when I ran Studiotaku, I began compiling a list of anime characters that appealed to me. Now don’t let the name fool you, I’m not talking about being just visually attractive. Though being super cute doesn’t hurt ^^

2) Figure Moe – Based on the concept of Figure Moe Zoku, this series mainly focus on a new hobby of mine: Figurine collecting. I recently started learning how to set up a mini studio for shooting them. Also a good opportunity to get my money’s worth out my Canon DSLR

3) Anime Analysis – A logical, in-depth look at various anime series and characters. Believe I am going to start this series of articles looking at Code Geass. This was one of the few shows I had to watch every week on fansub because I was hooked. The show evoked a lot of different emotions in me (as a good show should) and I think it deserves a look at what makes it tick. I think a lot of reviews analysis the story…I want to analysis everything! What makes a show good or bad, what drives the character’s actions, etc.

4) The Otaku – I consider myself an otaku. But what does that mean? What separates someone who likes anime from an otaku (there is a difference…watching anime or reading manga and being otaku aren’t the same thing). A look at the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of being otaku.

That’s just some of the ideas I am working on adding to the site. I am excited about each of these, mainly because each of them allows me to share a bit more about me with each of you.

Is there anything you would like to see on Ultima-i?

I’m going to end with a pic related to two things I talked about this post…an anime babe…and Code Geass…

(Yes, C.C. is a character I plan to talk about more in-depth here in coming posts)

I have made 3 resolutions for 2009 regarding this site.

1) Regular updates. One of the issues I had in 2008 is I let this site go for weeks…even months without an update. That’s just not good. I am making it a point to make updates every day or at least every other day. But to be honest, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to keep you all updated everyday.

2) Quality content. I really want this site to reflect what I am about. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and probably my own worst critic. I also don’t want to waste anyone’s time. If you are coming here, I would like for you to at least have something good to come to.

3) Continued site improvements. This theme is a bit rough around the edges…meaning I know it may be a bit buggy. Its been a few years since I have done this and its my first time working with PHP and WordPress. But I promise that I am always working on making the user experience here better. This is a prototype, but I am refining it to serve you all better ^^

I feel that my biggest problem of 2008 was that I didn’t focus and commit to this site as I should. It reflected in lack of updates and the few I did not being very engaging. I want this site to really show what I am about. I let other things distract me and wasted a lot of time. But I plan on doing better for 2009. Its a new year, time to step forward…the future begins NOW!

(because I didn’t take the time to say it earlier…Happy Holidays everyone!)

So, what resolutions did you make for 2009?