Alex Fraiser is responsible for Asnio, Blogussion, and Kolakube. He is a leading mind in Thesis customization and Wordpress. Despite his age, he is a respected force in the blogging industry. Recently, I had the privilege of talking to him about blogging, design, and football.
1. How do you get to the point where you run multiple blogs and a freelancing site? What else do you do?
I have actually just put together my second blog, Asnio around the same time I put together the splash page for my soon-to-be freelancing website, Kolakube.
With everything I have going on in my life, school taking the most time, I am trying to balance out a small number of sites I can manage together without getting bored with them. I wouldn’t start up a site that I wouldn’t be able to dedicate my time to while managing my other sites, and I think that my main blog, Blogussion wouldn’t be around without a partner to help me and cut the time I would have to spend on the site in half.
I think if it weren’t for the people who have kept me motivated to keep going along the way, I wouldn’t still be doing what I am doing now. I am always looking at the positive side of things, and very often do I look at the negatives. As you and any other webmaster knows, creating a successful blog or website has a lot of negatives. I try to stay as motivated, and as happy as possible at all times to keep me aspiring to do greater things – whether that be on or offline.
2. At 15, you seem to know far too much about blogs, design, coding, and the like. Are you self-taught or have you taken classes in school?
It’s all self-taught. I have been designing since I was about 13, and coding a year later. I took a graphics Design class in my Freshmen year of High School, but it was a waste of time as I was pretty fluent in Photoshop. :p
3. What got you interested in all of the above?
It’s kind of a long story, but I can sum it up.
There was this gaming website that had 3 multiplayer games, and a massive community forum for supporting the users and allowing everyone to talk with each other, starting up clans for the game, etc. I stumbled into the Graphics Design forum where all of the users would show off their forum signatures. I saw a couple, and wanted to make some of my own. So that’s where it all started – making forum signatures for a Gaming forum.
A few months later, the site was sold out to the game company, Atari, and the games and the community died. A new forum was built by a users who wanted to bring the site back to life, and I joined up there and participated there for a while. It was hosted by a free service called “InvisionFree” where you could sign up for free forums. That was my next stage – free hosted forums.
I made forum skins on this host, and that got me started into web design. I jumped around from free forum host to free forum host, but I eventually signed up for my first free hosting account, created a very simple portfolio of some forum skins and got started in designing and coding for a real website.
I just moved up from there. From Static Pages to a vBulletin forum, and then WordPress blogs. I love working with WordPress, and plan to stick with it for a long time.
4. What are your work methods like? Are you organized or are you more random and off-the-cuff with your work?
When I do work for other people (like freelance projects), I will take note of everything I do. I am very organized when it comes to handling other peoples work.
When I redesigned my blog, Blogussion – that was the most organized I have ever been with a site of my own. I took notes on pen and paper, sketched out design ideas, created a complete design (you know, with written content on the PSD for example).
Usually when I do stuff for my own use, I will just kind of go by whatever pops into my head. On the latest blog I have launched, Asnio, the edits I made to the Thesis theme were just done as ideas came into my head. There was no designing or sketches done in Photoshop for it, and that’s how a lot of my websites start out.
5. What is the most important aspect of a blog post: Title, Readability, Grammar, Graphics, or Content? Why?
All of that stuff is definitely important. But when it comes down to it the most, the title has to be the most important thing.
While the content is the thing you should spend the most time on to make it as perfect as you can – the title of the blog post needs to be as catchy as you can.
It’s not really so easy to get the content we write read. The title is usually the one thing that determines whether or not the post will be read. If you have an awesome, catchy title, then the other aspects of a blog post (readability, grammar, graphics, etc.) will come into play. But if not, then all of those things won’t matter much because your content will not be read, right?
6. When publicizing your blog (or a particular blog post), how much emphasis do you put on each of these: Twitter, Digg/Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Technorati, Others?
The only sites above I use are Twitter and StumbleUpon. I tweet about my blog posts on my own personal account (@AlexFraiser) and on my account dedicated to Blogussion (@Blogussion).
I have the StumbleUpon toolbar in Firefox, and I will use it from time to time whenever I find something I really like.
Shameless Plug: You can also follow me on Twitter (@Matt425) for updates from MattFlies and my random personal thoughts.
7. You are an avid user of Wordpress and Thesis. Why did you choose these two as opposed to the alternatives?
I use WordPress, because it was the first blog software I hear of when I first started blogging. After I have been using WordPress for a few months, I tried out other stuff. Nothing is as good as WordPress, and nothing ever will be.
The thing that got me to buy Thesis was how good for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I have heard it was for your blog. I am not that strong in SEO, so the idea of having a theme that will do much of the SEO work for me was awesome.
About Thesis, there’s a little story I have with it. I bought Thesis in like March, but I didn’t like it. As a matter of fact, I friggen’ hated Thesis because I couldn’t figure out the Hooks system at first. I was so used to the standard way of creating a theme, that I wanted Thesis to do the same too. I hated it so much, I looked for somewhere to get my money back! I knew I wouldn’t find one, but I was just not liking it at all.
Obviously I don’t think that now, because I have upgraded to the Developers Option and have it on all of my blogs. If Thesis isn’t running the blogs design, then I doubt I would be willing to even work on the blog.
8. Besides Thesis, what are a few important things Wordpress users should know or have? (Certain plugins to have or avoid, common mistakes, etc.)
There’s just so much I could talk about as to what people should know, but my top 5 things that all WordPress bloggers should know are:
- Don’t expect to make money from your blog for a long time.
- Expect to do more than you will get in return.
- Focus on building a community of all different kinds of readers on your blog.
- Just because something has worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. Take advice you get from “successful bloggers” and use it to do something that works for you.
- You have to be assertive, and competitive if you want your blog to get somewhere. You will never make everyone happy, and if you try to then you are headed down the wrong path. Do what you have to do, even if it pisses off a few people.
As for plugins, my top 10 would be:
- Akismet
- Stats Tracker (I prefer StatPress)
- CommentLuv
- Google XML Sitemaps
- All in One SEO Pack (unless you use Thesis)
- WP-Polls
- Any widget that will display Twitter updates
- WP Greet Box
- WP Super Cache
- Contact Form 7
9. What are the top 5 blogs you read or subscribe to?
10. What is the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome as a blogger/designer?
My age. Usually I get comments like “wow, a 15 year old kid did that?” which is awesome, but when I first started my age kept me from doing too much designing for the “real web” (outside of those free forum hosting places, which were full of 13-16 year olds).
I know at one time that I posted on a forum about a blog post I just wrote on Blogussion, and I got a few comments basically them laughing me off because I was 15 and they were older. They probably didn’t even read the post, because they saw in my profile I was only 15.
That was the hardest thing for me, and I still have some things that hold me back because of my age which is kind of annoying, but I am extremely lucky to have parents who have my back in this.
11. What software do you use to develop sites? And are you a Mac or PC?
Former PC user, now I’m all Mac!
Some software I use on my Mac is Coda, Photoshop CS4 and TextMate.
12. Given the option, why would a rational human being choose to cheer for the New England Patriots?
Ha, what can I say? Been with the Pats since I was 6, even before I understood football. My parents have tried their hardest to convert me to a Dolphins fan, and even a Jets fan!
My whole family revolves around the AFC East, and I am the only one who roots for the Patriots. Being that they play the Jets, Bills and Dolphins twice a season – it becomes quite an intense game in my own house.
Interviewer’s Opinion: Any person who voluntarily cheers for any team other than the Dallas Cowboys has serious mental problems. And I have the authority to delete/edit any comment on this blog that says otherwise!
I would like to personally thank Alex Fraiser for allowing me to interview him. If you have more questions you would like to ask Alex, leave them in the comments and I’ll make sure he gets them! Also, let me know if there is someone else you would like to see interviewed on MattFlies!
