2013 has started off strong for Splashpress Media and we have all been hectically busy since our New Year’s hangovers wore off! We started with 2 additions to the network:

TheAppReviewer.com

Moving into mobile properties and projects is something that we will be focusing on mainly this year, we kicked this off by acquiring TheAppReviewer  in mid December. We are now offering reviews of apps for iOS  and Android along with a variety of exposure options on the Facebook and Twitter account too.

ITevent.net

Our next acquisition was ITevent, a leading source for IT & tech events, conferences, trade shows and seminars across the globe. Since then we have revised and revamped the placements for event organisers who are looking to get more exposure, introduced more advertising options  and just recently started a jobs board .

We also have two other projects in the pipeline, one that has been in the planning stage since the start of the year and we will be moving into development soon. Unfortunately we have to keep it under wraps for now but we all have high hopes for this project and once its revealed things will be moving very quickly! We hope to be able to announce this in the ext 2-3 months

Another eventful year is drawing to a close. A look back at some of the biggest stories and the winners and losers, the joy and the tears, the highs and the lows of 2012 all covered across the Splashpress Media network.

Obama Wins Second Term, Celebratory Image Smashes Records. Celebrities Show Their Support

Barack Obama won a second term in office and shared a celebratory image of him and Michelle hugging. The image became a huge hit as the most liked image on Facebook to date along with the highest amount of re-tweets.

Celebrities around the world also celebrated his victory with images of support across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Apple Gazette Captures A Peek Inside Appple HQ

In April Robin Parish, editor of The Apple Gazette put together a fantastic set of unseen images from inside Apple’s secretive HQ or the ‘Mothership’ as its referred to by Apple fans. Robin has been busy updating the post with any new images he has gleaned over the year and it now boasts a whopping 156 shots!

 How Instagram Got to $1 Billion

Instagram has accelerated faster than anyone could have expected and was snapped up by Facebook for a measly one billion USD, Infographiclabs took a look at its path from the early beginnings only 2 years ago in 2010.

London Olympics via Instagram

Instagram was the biggest hits of the year for the tech industry and during the summer Olympics held in London it proved it self to be the main platform for capturing and sharing images from the events with over 64,000 images taken in total.

Samsung Loses Landmark Case Against Apple

In the case of ‘did they or didnt they copy Apple’ the jury final ruled that Samsung had infringed copyright laws. Samsung were then forced to payout $1 billion dollars to their rivals with Samsung issuing a statement that it was “a loss for the American consumer” and Google certainly sitting up and taking note.

Kristen Stewart & Rupert Sanders – Celebrity Scandal Of The Year

In July Twilight star Kristen Stewart was caught by US Weekly cuddling and being intimate with Rupert Sanders the director of the movie she was starring in ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’. Twilight fans couldn’t believe it with many of them losing it on YouTube (for a change). RPatz was humiliated and soon moved out of their home only to take KStew back conveniently in time for the release of their latest Breaking Dawn movie.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year from everyone at Splashpress Media!

Obama Photo Makes History

Barack and Michelle Obama’s 2012 Election celebration photo broke social media  records the morning after the US 2012 election by becoming the most Liked in Facebook history. It also went on to break the Biebs Twitter record with the photo generating 649,575 retweets.

Read on…

A Mixed Month for Apple

The last few weeks have seen several ups and downs for the technology giants. On October 23rd they launched the anticipated iPad mini at their media event at the California Theatre in San Jose. The iPad mini has been an instant success going on to sell 3 million units in the first week of November alone. However this was then followed by some iPad 3 owners feeling a little disgruntled over the launch of yet another iPad so close after the 3rd gen model had been released.  Apple were then forced put up the court-mandated apology page on their website to Samsung after losing their appeal against the UK court’s ruling over the legal claim that Samsung had copied their tablet technology.

Hurricane Sandy And How You Can Help

Hurricane Sandy devastated large portions of the East coast US at the end of October almost delaying the presdidential elections and killing over 200 hundred people. Thousands of homes were destroyed by the hurricane which spanned over 1,000 miles and many families are still homeless. If you are looking for easy ways to contribute to charities who are assisting with the clean up then Noemi’s fundraising apps review is an excellent place to start.

Read on…

For those of you who follow our blogging and freelance writing sites such as Freelancewritinggigs.com and Bloggingpro.com you may have experienced some difficulty in accessing these pages for the last week or so, this was due to some technical hiccups on one of our main servers, we’d just like to apologise to anyone who wasn’t able to access the sites during these periods and also say thank you to all our followers at FWJ and Blogging Pro who kept patient and also sent us all the concerned emails, Tweets and FB messages! Thank fully we are now back and have everything up and running again.

I would also like to say thank you to Noemi who is our community manager at FWJ and also handles the jobs section at Bloggingpro who has been manning the fort and social media profiles throughout the last week or so!

The Future of SEO

With another huge Google update in the form of Penguin having rippling affects earlier in the year many people have been both questioning the future of SEO and some even saying that  as an industry and skill set it is on its way out. Rajeen Shah from Marketappeal.com guest posted on the future of SEO and where he sees it going in the future.

Read on….

Social Media A Distraction?

So apparently social media is a distraction……..no seriously, some institutions are getting round to telling us this. In a visualised report by Red e app employees are being distracted at work at least every 10 minutes and costing US companies almost $650 billion.

Read on….

How Cinema Loves the Internet

Social media made it to the silver screen in 2010 with the Academy award winning movie ‘The Social Network’ and suddenly being a tech nerd was cool and the Facebook founder Mark Zukerburg is on the front of Time magazine and later is impersonated by SNL star Andy Samberg. We are still waiting on Hollywood to make a blogging related movie but in the meantime we took a look back at some tech related Hollywood movies

 Read on….

Being a Great Blogger is Easy. Wrong.

If you have been blogging for a while now you will know its not easy, many people start off brimming with enthusiasm and expectations only to become discouraged when they realise its a full on up-hill battle. Jonathan Bailey takes a look at how this can be done but without any short cuts.

Read on….

 Other posts of interest from the New Media Channel

How to Combine Real-World and Social Media Marketing

5 Restaurants That Got Pinterest Right (And How They Did It)

5 Ways to Go Pro With Your Blog

The content will continue to be headed by Jake Rocheleau, a young yet highly experienced designer and writer who has been coding and building sites since 2006.

For current readers and followers of SpyreStudios do keep a close eye on the site as you are going to see some exciting additions to the community in the next few weeks and months!

SpyreStudios is an excellent addition to our design channel of sites that already consists of Devlounge and our premium blog consultation and design wing at Businesslogs.

Blogsearchengine.com redesign and relaunch

As announced back in September Blog SearchEngine would be undergoing a major design revamp and a relaunch with new offerings and packages for bloggers. The new design was relaunched back in early November and after testing and tweaking the system and new packages we officially launched it and began marketing efforts at the end of that month. A infographic created by our sister company Infographiclabs ‘Google – Under The Hood’ and sponsored by Blog Searchengine was featured on Searchenginejournal.com



Our friends at Business Pundit also contributed to our marketing efforts.

If you haven’t already signed up and are looking to promote your blog then head over there now.

Check out the Japanese version here as the part of IOIX’s impressive Japanese infographic service portfolio.

This design was published on our tech site ForeverGeek

New Community Manager – Mel Panabi

At the crossroads where old school journalism and new media stickiness collide is where you will find Mel. Using over 15 years of online experience, Mel manages communities with thousands of members who have grown to appreciate his tenacity, reliability, dynamism and wit.

Mel has been working as a blogger for several years now and has had writing stints at Splashpress Media blogs such as Forevergeek in the past. He has now rejoined us as a full time team member and will be covering a variety of blogs in the tech and entertianment channles such as Apple Gazette, 901am, Celebrific and Filmsy. He will also be account manager for our MyBlogGuest profile and responsible for all guest posts on SPM properties.

New Look Network Page

We have decided to revamp our network page and give it a new look. The network will now consist of 6 main channels:

New And Social Media

Technology And Multimedia

Business & Web Development

Lifestyle & Entertainment

Services & Communities

Products & Applications

Several sites within these channels will be redesigned and re-launched in the next 6 months so stay tuned to this blog for updates!

ManangeWP Partnership

During September we have been moving forwards with our partnership with ManageWP. This allows one to manage multiple wordpress sites from a central location. This is a must have for all publishers operating multiple blogs as it has time saving functions such as upgrading plugins and themes with a single click. The entire umbrella of Splashpress Media covers well over 700 blogs so this will a crucial time saver for us!

Some of the features include:

Automatic blog upgrades to the latest version of WordPress
Centralised plugin and theme upgrades.
Bulk installations on multiple blogs.
Add new content
Comment management
Managing categories and tags

If you’re interested in trying out ManageWP on your blog and want to learn more then check out their guide video here:

ManageWP Tour from ManageWP on Vimeo.

Forums Coming To Forevergeek.com

We are currently working on a brand new forum for our tech/geek site Forevergeek. This will be a board to bring together our readers in one place where they can share their geeky finds on the web, argue over who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman and moan about George Lucas’ latest edits to the Star Wars saga.

The forum will be launched in early October with a competition and some great prizes for the readers that create the best new threads, stay tuned to the site!

Blog Search Engine Redesign

Blog Search Engine has been running with a paid membership model for around 18 months now and we are going to be revamping its design and also announcing some new packages for bloggers to get even more exposure for their blogs. Expect to see this launched around the first week of October.

After the compulsory redesign of our new webdesign studio BusinessLogs, the second half of 2010 kicked off a major design overhaul, under the supervision of the talented Ia Sofimi at Businesslogs. Amid work on several joint ventures, we immediately started with some of the most popular sites in our rolodex and tackled the popular ForeverGeek and Freelance Writing Jobs.

ForeverGeek

ForeverGeek’s former design by Design Disease was a very popular design and widely recognized. When we started we wanted to maintain as many elements as possible, preserving the brand’s identity.

Next up on our roster was a realignment of ForeverGeek. A realignment, you say? If you’re familiar with the old design, this new iteration still carries a similar look and layout, but with a few new touches.

There are now four main sections on the homepage: Features, Games, Anime & Comics, and the Rest—color-coded so they’re easy to distinguish. At the top, the latest post is featured in each box. In the content area, each section dynamically cycles through each post.

Freelance Writing Jobs

Next on the list was the number one community for Freelance writers, Freelance Writing Jobs, which we acquired mid-2010. Also at FWJ a lot of work went in to the reorganization of the home page, reducing clutter and optimizing the traffic flow, while highlighting the editorial content more.

Much of the work went into reorganizing the homepage such that everything is at your fingertips. From the introductory message about FWJ to the equal height boxes and aligned headings (with a little help from jQuery of course), everything is neatly arranged so you don’t get overwhelmed by the information this massive site has to offer. The grid is your friend.

FWJ’s new logo uses the Philosopher web font, which is designed by Jovanny Lemonad and available for embedding through the Google Font Directory. Under the hood, we’ve turned once again to the trusty by StudioPress.

The next heavy hitter which underwent a redesign was Apple Gazette, our Apple and iOS news site.

Redesigning AppleGazette was no small feat, even though the design remains familiar to its regular customers. Visually, we had to strike a balance between paying homage to Apple’s design influence and maintaining the site’s own identity. The result is a cleaner, lighter, more streamlined, more modern approach to blog design. If there ever was a site to take advantage of CSS shadows, gradients, and rounded corners, AG was certainly the place to do it!

Like what we did with ForeverGeek, browsing through image attachments was another mandatory feature for our network blog—more sites should do this.

In the mean time we also refreshed Erati, under the lead of Ali Hussain. Our TV series blog, edited by Robin Parish, was totally refreshed and reorganized in order to move away from the popular blog news stream design concept.
The BusinessLogs crew also designed the Splashpress Media/IOIX joint ventures that are Recipe Finder blog, Search Plugins and Infographiclabs.
Ia and Ali Hussain have also worked at the redesign of IndyPosted and work is ongoing for the redesign of a major geek news site (which we sadly can not reveal yet!).

Galleries

Lots of our redesign attention was paid to the creation of galleries, on the WordPress attachment pages. Sadly the media pages within WordPress are often underused, almost forgotten and writers internet-wide tend to leave the link to the images in place when being inattentive for a fraction of a second. When licking an image link the reader is forwarded to a page, often with only the medium sized image shown. A completely poor and unfinished implementation of what could be a useful feature, by the creators of WordPress. We decided to take the attachment pages one level further: not only do we show the large sized image on our attachment pages but we also included thumbnails of all the
images in a post. Examples are abundant and can be seen here on ForeverGeek and Apple Gazette.

Focusing on the galleries and getting WordPress and GenesisWP play together wasn’t always easy, but for those wanting to know how we did get WordPress to display the larger images in GenesisWP read Ia’s tutorial How to change the image size on attachment pages in GenesisWP.

Designing WordPress with GenesisWP

One of the major changes in our work and design flow has been the introduction of the GenesisWP framework by StudioPress. Much has been written about frameworks and the voyage wasn’t always easy, but we love the ease of maintenance and update features coming with the use of the excellent framework created by Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice.

More Redesigns Upcoming

Over the next months we are going to introduce many more redesigns, starting with bFeedme, Performancing and Blog Search Engine. Keep an eye on our news and don’t forget to follow the BusinessLogs Blog to discover the latest design launches!