New Features

Re-designed: Before and After

The site has had some major updates over the past year.  The most noticeable is probably the design of the site which was updated in August.  New logo, new color scheme, slightly different layout, other fun features.

There were a few new features added to the Pottery Making Blog.  One, called Pottery Chatter, was short lived in it’s attempt to highlight some of the top pottery discussion from around the web in a weekly fashion.  A good idea, no doubt, but until I acquire some minions or write a program to automate the process, the task is a little too time consuming to accomplish every week.

The other blog feature, which has lasted a little longer, is the Clay Blog Review.  This is a monthly collection of links to useful blog posts by ceramic artists and potters.  Categories include technical or techniques, recent work, deep thoughts, and miscellaneous.  If you know a blog that should be included let me know.

At the very beginning of 2011 an article suggesting the top pottery blogs of 2010 was published.  It became pretty popular and a new article is in the works.  At the end of 2011 the clay tile social media icons were made available.

There have been some great additions in other areas as well.  A Pottery Dictionary was added.  The idea for an encyclopedia was started.  The pottery directory was organized and expanded.  Remember, if you have a pottery or ceramics site, you can add it to the directory (for free!).

Goals for 2011

How did we do?  Goals set at the beginning of 2011 included:  adding more links to the directory, starting a pottery dictionary, informative blog posts, upgrading video tools and a new design for the site.

Three and a half out of five isn’t bad?

Goals for 2012

• Finish the ceramics dictionary.
• Add 5-10 entries into the encyclopedia.
• Write a few original articles.
• Continue the Clay Blog Review.
• Update the Feeds and Search Tools.
• 100 total facebook, friend connect or networked blog followers.
• Try to con someone into guest blogging.
• A few more Site of the Day posts.
• Take over the world?

Stats

Just for fun I thought it might be interesting (to somebody?) to view some stats provided by the Pottery Making Info site analytics.

Top 5 pages of 2011:

1. Top Pottery Blogs of 2010
2. Pottery Making Info Home Page
3. Working Artists and Potters Feed
4. Mixing Pottery Glazes
5. Pottery Making Blog

I guess people REALLY want to find out what the top pottery blogs are.  Other than that, nothing too surprising.

Top 5 countries visiting:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. India
4. United Kingdom
5. Philippines

I was a little surprised to see India ahead of the UK (by 9) but I guess there are a LOT of people in India.  And I didn’t expect Philippines to crack the top 5.  Maybe there are a lot of Philippine potters?

Top 5 Web Browsers:

1. Safari – 34%
2. Internet Explorer – 30%
3. Firefox – 22%
4. Chrome – 12%
5. Android Browser – 1%

This was pretty surprising to me since Safari is generally considered to have the fourth largest market share.

Top 5 Operating Systems:

1. Windows – 58%
2. Mac – 30%
3. iPad – 8%
4. Linux – 2%
5. iPhone – 1%

Top two are unsurprising.  I was surprised to see the iPad so high on the list (especially because I thought it was a device and not an OS!) but I can believe it.  I guess I’ll have to start testing the site on an iPad running Safari to confirm a great user experience!

Thanks

Thank you to all the visitors, contributors, and fans of Pottery Making Info.  I appreciate all the feedback and support.  I hope you had a wonderful 2011 and will have an even better 2012.  Here’s to another great year of making pottery!

pottery making info - burst logo

Welcome to Pottery Making Info: version 2.0!  In my free time over the last few weeks I’ve been working on  re-designing the site.  The original site was functional but I wanted to spend a little more time on the aesthetic value this time.  It still won’t win any awards but it seems to be an improvement.

There are still a few bugs to work out, most notably the site search function in the menu bar.  There are also a few spacing issues and a lot of testing and tweaking to do. If you see anything that looks a little goofy let me know. I haven’t done a lot of testing yet so things that are a little off should be found and fixed soon (relatively speaking due to some other life experiences currently happening).

During this extreme site makeover there have been a number of changes and improvements:

• New homepage – the home page is a good place to start but I thought it could use a little more “texture” so you can view some pottery related social media now.
• New logo and colors – brown and it’s most interesting variations.
• New Menu – a fancy dropdown menu adds a little more structure and navigability.
• Dictionary – the current state is more of a rough draft.  It may or may not become a finished draft.
• Site Search – good idea, clumsy execution. Currently part of the navigation bar but it doesn’t quite fit. Does anyone really use site search anyway?
• New submission forms – furnished by 123 Contact Forms but mostly untested at this point.
• Fancy icons – There are plenty of social media icons out there but not a lot of pottery-specific choices.  Problem solved.
• Networked Blogs – If you like the Pottery Making Blog follow it on Networked Blogs under pottery or ceramics.
• Directory re-organized – The Pottery Directory is still small but has been re-0rganized to prepare for expansion and world domination.
• Updated FAQ – the technical side of the update and a few other questions answered.
• Probably a few other small updates which I forgot about at the moment.

If you have feedback or any good ideas let me know.  Thanks for checking in.

Top Tools

The Potter/Ceramic Artist Blog Feed was the biggest hit of all the tools on the site.  More blogs were added at the end of 2010 which brings the total number of clay blogs to 200!  Yes, you can see the latest posts from 200 blogs in the ceramics and pottery online community.

The Pottery Information Search has slowly gained more pages and should continue to become a more useful tool for finding pottery information.

The Pottery Directory has been improved over the past 12 months.  Now there are pages with specific links.

Top Blog Posts

Mix Your Own Pottery Glazes, Online Clay Communities, Pottery Making Wallpaper

A Look to the Future

There are big plans for 2011.  Some ideas for the site include:

• More links!  The links section will continue to grow with great links to pottery and ceramics sites.
• Pottery Glossary/Dictionary.  This could begin to take shape in the next year.
• Additional informative blog posts.  Topics could include glaze recipes, pottery books, and clay tools.
• Video!  The video tools are in need of an upgrade and pottery videos will soon be a bigger part of the site.
• New design?  Maybe some day everything will look a little better…
• Some user contributed articles or information?  If you’ve got something you would like to share drop me a line.
• Other suggestions?  Don’t be shy.  If there is something you would like to see leave a comment or send an email.
• Also, in the very near future, look for a list of the top blogs of the past year!

Thank you to all the visitors and contributors who made 2010 a good year and who will make 2011 even better!

There were also a few more blogs added to the Working Artist Feed.

As always, if you know about a good pottery site submit it so we can add a link to it on this site.

• The Video feed has some new sources and is running the new Pipes engine.
• The Working Artist/Potter Feed has been drastically improved.  There are now over 170 blogs that are incorporated into the feed.  Initially this caused a very slow load time (at least 40-60 seconds) but after doing a little research I found a helpful hint from Hapdaniel and his idea to use a Google spreadsheet.  This reduced the load time but other options are still being explored to improve the feed.
• A Delicious widget has been added to the left column of the site.  Delicious is a social bookmarking site.  Now it will be much easier to share interesting or useful sites while surfing the ‘net.  When a bookmark is added to the Pottery Making Info Delicious Bookmarks, it will show up automatically on the site.
• There is also a whole new Links page devoted to Delicious Bookmarks.  It should become more interesting as new sites are added.
• An “AddThis” bar has been added to some of the pages on the site.  This was done after the Sociable buttons seemed to stop working.  The blog might also get an upgrade in “share buttons” soon but at least the sociable buttons still appear where they’re supposed to be.
• Two images were added to the home page.  Maybe it’s a little less boring now?
• There were also a few minor design tweaks… probably too minor to notice.

Let me know if there is anything else that can be added or improved!

Pottery Making Info is easing into the world of Social Media.  If everything is working as it should, you will see some links in the top right corner of each page.  There is a link to the Pottery Making Info Blog (or “news section”) and a link for the blog’s RSS Feed.  The other two links will take you to the Facebook and Twitter pages for Pottery Making Info.  One of the goals of this site is to provide information to the pottery making masses and Facebook and Twitter seem to be great tools to help achieve this goal.  So if you already have a Facebook and/or Twitter account you can stay up-to-date with what’s happening at Pottery Making Info.

Pottery and Ceramic Blogs

There is now a list of all the blogs found in the Potter and Ceramic Artist Feed.  There will be more blogs added to the feed and list as they are discovered.  If you know of a ceramic artist or pottery blog you can submit it here.  The only requirement to be included in the feed is that the blog be mostly about potter or the process used to create it.

Pottery Making Info Logo

New logo for Pottery Making Info

A temporary logo has been created for the site.  When there is more time and more important things are finished, it will be improved into a more exciting and attention grabbing image.  Perhaps something with flames?

If you have any suggestions leave a comment below.

Or go to the Facebook or Twitter page!

The initial goal of this “working artists” feature is to provide an easy to access source to show what other artists and potters are doing.  Whether it be for inspiration or to learn a thing or two from other artists and potters, you should be able to find the freshest clay work from around the globe.

If you, or someone you know, work with clay and you would like to add a blog to the feed contact Pottery Making Info.  Include the artist’s name and the blog address.  There aren’t a lot of requirements.  Your blog should be mostly about your process or the finished work you create as a potter or ceramic artist.  Your technique, materials, firing method, post frequency, blog software, experience, skill level, or location do not matter.

Eventually the blogs and artists will be listed on the site so it will be easy to see which blogs are already included.  There are also some Pottery Making Info graphics in the works so be on the lookout…

There is now a Links page with a number of good links to ceramics and pottery sites. In the future more links will be added to this page and more specific link pages will be created. If you have a site that could be added to the link pages contact Pottery Making Info.

A small script has been added to some of the pages and at the bottom of the blog posts called Sociable.  It should make it easier to share interesting things you find here on popular social sites.  For example, if you want to tell all your friends on Facebook that you think this update about Pottery Making Info is really cool, you could click the little Facebook square at the bottom.

There have also been a few small cosmetic changes.  The “greater than” bullets that used to show up in the news section are now gone and the news section looks more like the rest of the site.

More changes are on the way.

After the initial install there was a lot of testing, tweaking, and updating.  Essential plugins were installed and activated, a theme was chosen and the style was changed to look more like the original Pottery Making Info site.  There is still a lot of work to do but so far everything seems functional.  If you have any creative ideas or suggestions for the blog leave a comment.

To find out more you can go to WordPress.org.  The theme that was chosen was F2 by Srini.

• Small design improvements – colors, text size, etc.
• Navigation has been tweaked.
• A few small additions to the search engines and feeds.
• Ebay Tools page added.
• Contact Info has been added.
• A page to submit sites has been added.
• A favicon has been added. Hopefully it shows up in your address bar or bookmark list.
• Related links have been added to each page.
• Text has been moved and pages have been condensed.
• A Sitemap has been added.
• A Links page has been added (but no links as of yet).

There is still a lot of work to do. Next on the list is to install some kind of commenting system or blog software to allow more interaction. There are also some smaller adjustments to be made… Maybe some graphics?