Editing The Pen Addict 66/transcript (section)

== Website Redesign ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' I put up a new post on the Pin Addict today. And I just wanted to talk about it really quick.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just want to say you've changed the site again. Haven't you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fidgeter. And we're going to talk about that in kind of our main topic today. How much of a fidgeter I am. I was getting really tired of that banner. I was getting tired of not reading, being able to read it. I was getting tired of the size of it. I thought it was too wide. It pushed the text of the, pushed the content of the page too far down the page. So I just changed it to a basic text until I can figure out. I'll eventually have some type of image or logo image up there again. So I just changed it. I just found like a font that I liked that I thought made a good title, a good header. So I've put that up there. So it's just very simplistic. But I think it looks good. It's gotten me off the ledge a little bit about that image because it was starting to wear on me. I was starting to not like how it looked. I didn't care for it that much when I did it. And then I've just never done anything with it. So I wanted to take it down and just make it simple. Does it look okay to you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like it. I really like the font you've chosen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I hadn't really seen that font. And I'll have to go look it up again and get the name of it. But I was very pleased with this font. And I said, okay, I think that'll fit for what I'm trying to do. Just kind of have a simple header. So we'll see. It'll change again. There's no doubt.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, yeah, if you look on the top post on my page right now because it was the post I did this morning, I did a post titled Help Wanted. And I've always had kind of an open-door policy for guest posts. It hasn't been wide open where anyone can post anything that they want at any time. It's just been if I've had someone who's interested in reviewing some pens and we have a good conversation and I think it's going to be a good fit, we do some guest posting. Well, I want to get someone who can do something on a more regular schedule, a more defined schedule. Because I don't – any of the guest posters that I've used have been fantastic. And I just – when they get a post done and they want to post it, they'll send it to me. No set schedule, no time constraints or anything. But now I want to do something where I can get someone to do at least one review a week. And I'll put all the details in the post. We'll have the link in the show notes. But you can go to penaddict.com and you'll see it. So I just wanted to throw that out there to anyone who might be interested in writing for the penaddict. The details are on the page. And I made a fatal error this morning when I launched the post, didn't I, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm not talking to you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the issue, I forgot. And I knew it when I was writing it. And I said, okay, I need to put this in there. And then for some reason I hit publish and left and went and ran some errands. And I wasn't around to change it. I need this person to be U.S. based. And the reason I need that is because shipping is going to – You hate everyone else. That's the problem. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I just – I really don't like you, Myke. I didn't want you applying. Understood. Yeah. But I just – I don't have that much money to allocate to this position. And shipping will eat into that very, very much. So that's the only reason why I'm doing it. But, you know, the shipping cost of products will be too high for what I have available to allocate to this person who will be hopefully writing and writing very well for Pen Addict. So that was my reasoning behind it. So U.S. base is really going to help me out a lot. So that's all. Does that get you off the ledge a little bit, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Mm-hmm. So basically they are like the Pen Addict's apprentice.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That would be great. I didn't think of it that way. But, yeah. Yeah. I would just love to have something firm and regular and scheduled and just that I can count on.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sorry. Hey, Myke. Who is our sponsor today?

'''Myke Hurley:''' We are joined today, of course, by the fine folks over at Squarespace, Mr. Dowdy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. They make changing the banner on my site very easy.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. You're able to – the reason Brad can change his site design so fast and so quickly and so often is because he has Squarespace's amazing design tools to do that. So Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own website. Sign up for a free trial when you come to get 10% off. Go to squarespace.com. That's S-Q-U-A-R-S. Oh, A-R-E. Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me try again. Now, squarespace.com, that's S-Q-U-A-R-E-S-P-A-C-E.com and use the offer code TALLYHO8. So Squarespace are constantly updating their platform with great new features, new designs, and great support. As I said, Brad was able to go in. He's able to easily change the themes if he wants to. He can change the images if he wants one in the top header. He has access to loads of great fonts like the Google Fonts Library. There's some Typekit fonts in there as well so he can make his site look and read. Fantastic. Squarespace take care of all of the hosting, SEO, and they even make sure that your great design looks fantastic on any device. It's so easy to use, but if you need any help, they have an amazing support team that work 24-7 to get that done. Go over to squarespace.com now and you can sign up for a free trial, no credit card needed. There are some great videos on the site as well which show you how different people are using Squarespace for their business, for their band, for their love, whatever. If you've got a restaurant, you want to start a blog, Squarespace has all of the tools that you need. For me personally, my own website, mikehurley.net, is on Squarespace. I would never put a website anywhere else other than Squarespace now. It just makes it so easy for me. I've been a customer of theirs for about three years. There's nowhere else that I would go. Squarespace gives me everything that I need. Their plans start at $8 a month and they include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. Don't forget you'll get 10% off and you'll support this show if you use the offer code Tallyho8. So go check out Squarespace, everything that you need to create an exceptional website. I've got another couple of examples.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We mentioned this previously that I wanted you to send in and to tweet me and Brad or just me and at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and at Squarespace if you have set up a site. So we can see some examples. I've got one, it's eastlandoil.com, it's the Eastland Oil Company, which is a very interesting one. They're based in Texas and they've set up their website on Squarespace. So you'll find that in the show notes. So you can see an example there. It's a very cool one. It's a nice full bleed imagery. I like that one a lot. And I have also ionsomnia.com, which is I-O-N-S-O-M-N-I-A.com. Ion's blog is really interesting. He's used a really cool template which shows images and they like zoom in when you scroll over them, which is really cool. And he's got a bunch of pen reviews and pen images here as well. So it's really cool. He's got a Twisby ROC I can see there. He obviously must have posted some images. Of a Twisby ROC edition, which we're big fans of. So, yeah, you can see those over in the show notes as well. So that's at 5x5.tv slash penaddict slash 6d6. Thanks to everyone for sending those in. If you have a Squarespace site, just tweet me at imike and throw at Squarespace in there as well. If you've set up a site and you are a penaddict listener, send it in because we'd love to feature on the show. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Yeah, those sites look great. And Squarespace makes it so easy. So thank you, Squarespace, for continuing to sponsor us. We're very, very pleased and very happy customers ourselves.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Indeed we are.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I talked before about how I think it's a known thing that I have issues as far as fidgeting and messing with stuff and kind of having too much of a good thing and then having to rip it all down because I get frustrated because I've got so much going on and things like that. So my latest venture into the complete pen addiction problem that I'll need an intervention or at least a meeting or two on is I'm having an issue with how many fountain pens I have inked up. But I know this is not something you necessarily – you're very, very much more calm and tame compared to me as far as how many pens have inked up or using at a time kind of in a rotation that you're taking with you and using to – I'm not talking about the stocks of pens you have at home or things like that but like the things you're actively using, taking to work or using at your desk and things like that. So you don't – you're a big fountain pen fan. You have lots of fountain pens but you don't necessarily keep too many inked up at once, right? Like how many – we've talked about this before. We've talked about it several times. But like how many do you keep? I'm thinking it's only like two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I mean I only really use like two at a time max. I mean I have some that have ink in them. Like I was sort of just playing around with some stuff here a couple of days ago and I've got a bunch of pens lying around like the Kaweka stuff that's still got a cartridge in. I'm maybe not that OCD that I remove the cartridges and clean them out. Sure. I don't really do that but they still work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I get into this cycle of where I try to keep just the few pens inked that I want to use at work or carry with me in my backpack and want to have inked up and available to use because I enjoy using them. And then I end up either trying new things or making changes or get a new ink and I'll ink up a different pen. And the next thing you know I've got somewhere between 10 or 15 pens inked at one time. Well in my situation I'm not going to say no human being can use all those inks because there's certainly people that can. But in my situation that ends up just being a waste and fountain pens just sit. It starts to bother me when I've inked a pen and then it sits there for weeks at a time and I've never used it. But I inked it up for a reason to test something out or try something out or to use it for a day and filed it back and didn't like it as much as my other pens and set it back down. So I got into that cycle again where I'd gotten myself down to using just a handful of pens and all of a sudden I was back up to a dozen. So I've tried to make a hard line this time to where I'm limiting myself to five fountain pens and five inks obviously to have inked at one time. And I'm trying to not have more than that. Like if I need to change something or have a new pen or a new ink, one of the five that I currently have inked gets cleaned, put a what's stored, and then I get to use a different pen. So I decided that this weekend when I had some spare time that five was my number. One, because I think it's a good amount, and two, because it fits in my pen case really good. The roll pen case that I use has five slots and I just think it's a good amount. It gives me a good amount of variety and things like that. So there were two kind of two phases to putting this list of five pens together. And I had a hard time with it and I actually picked out the pens, didn't ink them, and slept on it overnight just to make sure that these were actually the pens that I wanted to commit to. For a good period of time, I'm not setting a period of time that I have to use these pens for, but I've just set more of a number to be more manageable. So how crazy do I sound so far, Myke? A little crazy? A lot crazy? Just a tad. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And the real crazy part is that I could talk about this passionately for like an hour on how I decided to pick what pens and inks I'm using. But anyway, I digress.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That might be a follow-up.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, definitely need a pen intervention.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think maybe, what do you think maybe next week talking about the five and why?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because they're not necessarily, especially when I saw that image of the pens, they weren't the five that I expected.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, and there's a definite reason for that. So we're going to tease that, you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Next week.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's a clear reason for that. So you can see the five.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The image will be in the show notes. I've been really active on Instagram. I've been really having fun since I didn't think I'd miss Instagram so much, but I've been really having fun. Lots of good conversation on there and seeing some good stuff. So you can see the five pens that I picked.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're all really great, great pens. So I picked them out like on a Saturday night or something, slept on it, and woke up, looked at the pens again, looked at the pens I didn't have chosen. I said, yeah, okay, this is a good group of pens. And then I had to pick inks for each of those pens, and that's equally as challenging in my situation because I have, I don't know, 15 bottles of ink and who knows how many sample vials of ink. Just crazy amount of ink.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Heavily leaning towards the blue-black color. That's my favorite fountain pen ink color by far. So that took me a little while, and I had the pens laid out on my desk, and I knew like for the Namiki Falcon, which is a flex nib pen, I wanted a brighter ink. So I picked out the Edelstein Topaz, which is a real bright blue, turquoise-y looking ink. So that was easy. So I'd set the bottle in front of the pen and say, okay, that one's committed to it. And then I would just, I did that for all the pens, and I'd have all these bottles of ink sitting on my desk, and I'd take the bottle, and I'd like, look at this color, okay, lamy blue-black, and I'd set it down in front of this one. Oh, no, that's just not right, and I'd pull it off and back and forth with ink sample vials and bottles. I mean, this was like an ordeal for me. But I finally got the inks matched up into the pens. So I got them all inked up on Sunday night, took them to work with me the first night, and I had problems with two of the pens, or one pen and one ink. So after one day, I've already swapped out one of the pens and swapped out one of the inks that the pen uses. And you can see kind of this trail through my Instagram feed of the issues that I'm having. But you know what? After I made those first changes, I'm pretty content. Like, I'm not, like, panicking or shaking. I don't have, like, the shakes that I need to go clean a fountain pen and use something else. So I think I'm, I might can make it through the end of the week, Myke. I think that's a, I think that's a big, that's a goal I have. Wow. I'm not going to change any or ink up any fountain pens more than the five I have or swap any inks, at least through Friday. Woo-hoo!

'''Myke Hurley:''' So do you know what's coming around soon? What? The 6th of October, the London Pen Show. Oh, nice. Thinking about, thinking about going down.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You have to, man.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm thinking about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That'll be cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.