It’s been a while, I know. But it’s all for the best.

I’ve worked on a lot of things in the past couple of months (mostly offline) and one of those things is a new design/theme and image for this blog. So it’s here and now live, ready to receive your comments. I hope you’ll like, because I really do.

It’s more than a new design, it’s also a new focus and redefined priorities. With this new design, among many other things, I clarified the tagline and purpose of the blog. As you probably noticed, the new tagline is:

The web, what matters, common sense.

It’s very simple and straight forward. No big deal, just common sense. I came up with this tagline after thinking about what’s really important when it comes to web development and websites’ promotion. My conclusion was very simple:

I think most people completely lost the focus when it comes to building and promoting websites. At the end of the day, what’s really important? Is it to rank #1 on Google, to offer the best user interface, to have the best design or to have the best social media strategy?

In the end, what really matters is to build websites worth visiting. That’s it: the web, what matters, common sense.

That’ll be the new focus: through posts about seo, web development, social media, analytics, web business and design, we’ll try to figure out common principles behind great websites, worth visiting.

That’s about it, I wanted to keep this short and let you have a look around. Please let me know what you think in the comments!

It’s so easy to take everything for granted.

I learned today, like most people on twitter, that my friend Meg Porter (@megapixel on twitter) was killed in a car accident last week. She was only 24 : my age. This is a weird feeling as I never met Meg in real life, but we definitely built a friendship online. Social media is all about people and while it is 99% fun, this reminds us that it is not a game: it is all real.

Meg was awesome and there was no reasons for her to go, but it happened. She will be missed.

I offer my deepest sympathies to her family.

Some companies and websites really put a lot of efforts in design to make sure their website provide the best user experience possible. While we should talk about these great companies embracing the Web 2.0 philosophy, there are a lot of websites making huge efforts so that their website remain outdated. It’s Friday, so let’s have some fun and talk about one of these websites.

My Web 0.1 award this week goes to awesomebackgrounds.com that I discovered while searching for some backgrounds. It is a great example of what not to do if you want people to buy your products and before you think it’s an old website last updated in 1999, let me tell you that the page was last updated March 4th 2009.

They sell awesome PowerPoint designs, perfect for professional presentations (?):

And yes, there are some classic Web 0.1 animated gifs:

Visit the site and share your hidden gems.

I plan to do more of these, so feel free to send me your favorite Web 0.1 examples by email ( benoit at bentremblay.com ) or directly here in the comment section.

I am going to make this short. If you’ve visted the blog recently, you probably noticed some big changes, including a domain change, which means I had to change my feed URL (for the early adopters: yes, again). There is currently a Feedburner redirect for 30 days, but make sure you update your feed reader with the new feed URL if you want to receive updates after that 30 days period: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/bentremblay

Thanks guys! (Oh, please comment on the changes! )

There is a trend right now and it’s called lists. In fact, it’s not really a new trend: top lists have always been popular on the web, but they are now getting overly popular in the Internet Marketing/blogging niche. We have all seen a lot of Top 100 or top 500 bloggers lists emerging lately based on a couple of semi-reliable metrics/personal rating and the natural reaction is: “Am I on the list?”.

While it is extremely flattering to be on such lists or can be very tempting to invest time in analyzing the different metrics to rank higher or simply get on the list, here’s my question: “At the end of the day, does such a list pays the bills?” No it doesn’t, but if you pay the bills with your online business, you will get on those lists without even trying.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there are a lot of things out there to get you focused on the wrong things. Getting on lists or getting more twitter followers is nice, but these won’t help you achieve your goals at the end of the day: they are the result of a successful online business.

What do you think?

A common misconception is that if you had more time available, you would achieve so much more. From personal experience (because of school, internships and holidays), I can tell you that more time often mean less things done.

When you have 8 hours in front of you to do what you want, you have plenty of time. Or at least, you think you have. For a lot of people, and this includes me, it’s easy to spend an hour on twitter, an hour on skype, an hour on MSN and an hour on forums when you have a full day in front of you. It is not all wasted time, because during those four hours you might have built connections or your brand a bit more, but let’s admit it: you’re probably procrastinating. (more…)

Most of you guys will be with your family today, celebrating Christmas. I am no different and I would like to take the time to wish you and all the ones you love a Merry Christmas! I know there are probably some of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, but this makes no difference to me, I still want to thank you and wish you at least a very nice day.

This is also a great opportunity for me to say thank you for being part of this. Every single time I wasn’t too sure if what I was writing or talking about was a little bit too much “on the edge”, you guys always gave great feedback and I thank you for this. Or is it because you guys jump to the comment section directly?

Have fun with your family and your friends and enjoy every single moment, because I will too!

Again, happy holidays!

Ben.

It is with a coffee, in this cold and full of snow Monday, that I am reviewing Rarst.net. I feel like this was planned because Rarst always complains about how he hates cold and how winter is usually a very depressing time. I must agree with him as I don’t really enjoy snow/winter and I just think Rarst sent me some snow today to make sure I’m stuck in the house, can’t go out, and write his review. So, after winning the contest the other day, here is my review. (more…)

OK, sarcastic title here, but just to express how I am so not surprised. This week, three Internet Marketing blogs went on sale: The University Kid, LinkersBlog and Slyvisions. To be fully honest with you guys, it’s not true that I wasn’t surprised: I was a little bit surprised. I am expecting major shifts in this business in the coming months and that shift starts to happen as more and more bloggers will realize that blogging about Making Money Online is a freackin’ dead end. The shift is just happening a little faster than I expected. (more…)

I thought I would just drop a line about this: my friend ZK at WebTrafficROI.com asked me if I would be interested by sponsoring the contest going on on his website at the moment. I accepted to sponsor it by offering a 125×125 ad spot here on frogstr for 30 days. It’s a pleasure for me to sponsor the contest and there are some other cool prizes there if you guys are interested. That’s it, head to WebTrafficROI.com if you want to see what this is all about.