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A number of bloggers (RE: YOU GUYS IN THE BLOG AZEROTH CHATROOM) seem to have hit a wall recently in blogging. I count myself extremely lucky that I’m able to come up with stuff that’s fresh, relevant, and original as much as I possibly can. But that doesn’t mean I don’t hit a patch of ice once in a while and go skidding. WoW bloggers want to get that kick ass post out and attract attention but nothing seems to be working and they’re stuck with almost no good ideas!
In school, we are taught to write our thesis statement first as it helps direct the focus of our paper. Blogging is no different other then the fact that we don’t really have a thesis.

But we have a headline.

And the heading is the first thing that everyone reads whether they go to your blog or read from a reader.

One method that could work for you (and has worked for me) comes from a little well known women’s magazine called Cosmopolitan. Like a thesis, it can be difficult to write a headline first before your actual post. The premise here is that your headline looks intriguing enough to attract attention. Anyway, by looking at headlines of other publications you might be able to take those headlines and apply it to your area.

Obviously, any other magazine can work as well. THe next time you’re at the check out counter at your local super market, instead of staring ahead at the guy in front of you or contemplating all those chocolate bars on the side, direct your eyes to the magazine stands instead and see what jumps out at you and catches your attention.

So just for kicks and giggles, I’m going to take the page of the April 2007 edition of Cosmopolitan and “encourage” WoW bloggers to see if they can come up with the corresponding post. It’ll be fun to see if I actually get taken up on my offer =).

Cosmo’s Headline: 50 Things Guys Wish You Knew

Siha, I’m looking right at you as you’re one of the few GM’ing bloggers I know.

“50 Things Guildmasters Wish You Knew”

By all means, the number there is arbitrary. Use whatever value you like, although I have a sneaking suspicion that you can come up with 50 in no time.

Cosmo’s Headline: The “Friendly” Health Advice You Should Never Take

I know Megan’s a big time PvP enthusiast. You willing to try your hand on this one?

“The ‘Friendly’ Arena Advice You Should Never Take”

I know I’ve heard all manners of bad arena tips that were made with good intentions.

Cosmo’s Headline: The Silent Way He Shows He’s Whipped

Okay, Kestrel. I know you’re also a GM with your own flock of geese. How’s this?

“The Silent Way Guildies Show They’re Whipped”

We want raiders to be whipped, don’t we? Who wants a bunch of uncontrollable DPSing players anyway? Surely there must be some obvious signs.

Cosmo’s Headline: Be a Sex Genius!

Oh Anna, this one has your name written all over it.

“Be A Shamanistic Genius”

Surely there must be some tips, tricks, and techniques that you might know of that new, budding Shamans might not. I only found out the other day that Ghost Wolf Shamans can’t be sapped. Or perhaps some quick thoughts on attributes to push for gearwise in Elemental, Enhancement, and Resto as a part of the ingenuity?

Cosmo’s Headline: 16 New and Sexy Hairstyles

Big Bear Butt, I think we could all benefit from your thoughts on this.

16 New and Sexy Additions in 2.4

This is the last patch before Wrath, supposedly. There’s obviously a ton of good things coming out. Let’s narrow it down some and make it interesting, shall we?

Challenge Yourself

What about the rest of you WoW bloggers? Can you borrow one of these headlines courtesy of Cosmo and use them for your own blog? If you can, post it here and I’ll see if I can do a follow up post with links later on in the month.

Image courtesy of lusi
For some bloggers, one of the hardest things anyone can do is find a theme for their site that they like and enjoy. WPDesigner’s Small Potato has formed a $5 Themes Club. Out on the web, you’ll find a ton of premium WordPress themes that cost an arm and a leg to download and use. Some of them are indeed membership based where you have to pay some kind of a subscription in order to access them.

In any case, the $5 will grant you an all access one year pass to all the club themes that get produced as well as the themes that have been made. Just don’t sell them or give them away. Feel free to use it for your own blogs and such. You can expect at least 12 WordPress themes throughout the year.

20000 accounts are being given out and Small Potato was awesome enough to sponsor a non-blogging and non-wordpress blog with 50 free accounts for readers of World of Matticus. So if you’re struggling with the idea of starting a blog because you need a look to go with it, never fear! Blogging may not be for everybody, but it shouldn’t be because of a lack of design. Also note that 20000 accounts x $5 = $100000 worth of accounts.

Even if you already are satisfied with the way your current blog layout is, can you say that 6 months from now? Well, you probably can.

Here’s how you get in on this deal:

• Leave a comment that says you’d like one (Bonus points if you RP it)
• Double check your email and ensure it is valid
• Check said email in a few hours
• Coupons expire at the end of 2008

I don’t know about you guys, but I like things simple. I think the rules are fairly simple.

My UI is an absolute mess. But somehow, I’m able to make sense of all that information and I’m able to act on it (usually). As a Priest, I spend most of my time with my eyes glued on the raid. With new encounters in Hyjal and BT, situational awareness becomes much more important.

Here’s a sample screenshot of the current state of my UI. It’s a complete and utter mess. There’s a lot of crap on my screen and a lot of it is redundant.

With that in mind, I decided to do a quick 2 parter before and after series about my UI. I figured I’d share my thoughts and my approach in overhauling my interface so that it’s more zentastic. Yup, that’s right. I intend to apply a minimalist zen approach to my UI. I play on a large screen. It’s quite tiring to traverse my eyes from the left side to the right. I want to start compacting information in one area so that I don’t have to scan the entire monitor for it.

Note: The addons I have below are those that can be visually seen.

Text Chat

First, I’m going to write about the non-addon related stuff: Namely, the text chat.

I’ve split up my chat windows from 1 window into 3 separate windows.

Left window: Handles general, trade, LFG, and Say chat.

Middle window: Raid chat, Guild chat, Healer Chat, and Priest Chat

Right window: This is meant for a separate channel that I share with my friends on the server. They’re all in different guilds but we keep in touch in our channel.

Addons

Aloft: This replaces the default nameplates that Blizzard has packaged with the game. You can see it in action over some of my guildmates on the right. Their health bar is colored to reflect their class. It also shows their mana bar below (or rage or energy). It’s very handy for me if I need to find a player and physically get to them.

Omen: Omen has replace KTM as my personal threat meter of choice. At the moment, I’m seriously considering removing it from my screen or disabling it. I’m almost never going to pull aggro. Knowing the threat levels of other players isn’t going to help me much in any way. I will keep the addon activated in order to transmit, however.

Bongos2: I use Bongos in order to manage my bars. As you can see, I’ve reduced my bar size to something fairly smaller than normal. I do most of my spell casting via my keyboard anyway. The alpha (transparency) has been set to 50%. XP bar is disabled, along with my bags, latency, and keyrings. I use Shift B in order to open all of them.

Elkano’s Buffbars: You can see my buffs in action on the right side of the screen. It shows buffs, debuffs, and durations. I’m trying to figure out how to disable that "Blessing of Demonstration" or whatever it is on the bottom.

Recount: I’ve mentioned Recount before but I mainly use it to analyze my own performance and troubleshoot player deaths. Note that the one linked is to Recount (Preservation). It’s meant for use in 2.4 but I believe it should still work for 2.3.

Pitbull: This is what I use for raid management. There’s a lot of options and a lot of flexibility and I need to spend some serious time going through it and messing with it. Those raid windows are large and I need to figure out how to shrink them among other things.

NECB: Natur EnemyCastBar is what I use to help track spell casts of other entities around me. I just need to find a better place to put it. Maybe to the right of the middle.

DoTimer: It can tell me at a glance how long before my HoTs and DoTs expire and when my cooldowns can be used again (Stoneskin, trinkets).

Targets

As you can see, I have target windows all over the place. There’s my player window, my target’s window, my target’s target window, my focus window, etc.

I don’t use focus macros that often, if at all. Therefore I’m considering removing that. I might move my own player window to the far left side. I plan on downloading a HuD eventually. I’m going to do away with Pitbull’s Main Tanks and tank targets window. I’ll probably axe pet targets and party pet targets as well.

You will also notice the raid in various states of transparency. That’s my range finder. If the player is transparent, they are not in range. If they frame isn’t transparent, then I can hit them with a heal.

Check back next week when I post the results of my modifications.