I started tweeting ‘free daily edits’ for a laugh. To my surprise and delight, they generated enormous interest. To help you honour audience members who care about good English, here are my top tips to date:

1. [ ] = Delete. Ditch redundant words [in order] to clarify your message [in order] to take and hold reader attention.
2. Change 'revert back' to 'revert'. It's a tautology.
3. Next time you write something, remove every 'that'. I guarantee [that] you won't put more than 25% back!
4. However vital they may seem, corporate words like Client, Company, Project and Team rarely need capital letters.
5. You're = You are. Your means ownership. Avoid 'Thanks for you're email' and you'll be ahead of the pack!
6. Change 'utilisation' (or 'utilization') to 'use'. One syllable good, five syllables BAD!

Enjoy!

I can be a little lazy when it comes to typing apostrophes. In fact it's a regular occurrence for me to receive emails from readers who notice that I've either used one incorrectly, placed it in the wrong position or even missed it completely.

The following is Paul Hassing's definitive explanation of when and how to use apostrophes in your website copy. Try not to be alarmed by the language in the examples, they are couched in classic "Aussie" vernacular just to make sure the rules stay firmly implanted in your hippocampus.

Rule 1

If you join words, the apostrophe replaces the missing letters.

• It's crap = It is crap
• You're dead = You are dead
• I've spewed = I have spewed

I just recently came across this faq on the Joomla.org forum from RussW that sums up the often troubling subject of Joomla and server permissions. Its amazing how many issues arise due to poor or incorrect server setups. This issue tends to mainly affect new users since once you've lost a day or a week of your time troubleshooting, you tend not to make the same mistake again.

For new users or old I think this post is certainly well worth taking the time to read, it might end up saving you or your clients a few headaches.

Yesterday I posted about my Joomla template toolkit and so I thought I would put together a list of Joomla extensions that I think are essential to developing a Joomla site. I know there have been plenty of posts like this made in the past and I always enjoy reading other people's personal favourite Joomla extensions for using when developing Joomla sites, so I thought I would add my 2 cents to the discussion.

The following is a list of components, modules and (cough) Joomla admin templates that I think are crucial for putting together a foundation for your next Joomla site. It doesnt include any specific slideshow, rotator or any other fancy content display extensions since their use varies depending on the type of site you are putting together, but moreover the extensions in the list below are used to augment the Joomla core ... in other words, I install these components before doing anything else. 

When running your own design business there are many business skills required over and above the ability to create beautiful work.  Keeping clients up to date with progress, informing co-workers of any alterations to their work, invoicing clients etc.  For many designers or arty types the day-to-day running of a project or their office in general is their weakest skill.

This weakness will become more apparent the more successful a freelancer becomes and the more projects they work at the same time.

Remember Paul Hassing, Founder & Senior Writer of  The Feisty Empire? We met him in Feb 2009 and when he also gave us ten tips for writing on the web. Paul talked then about the decline of his writing specialty – recruitment advertisements (job ads). Little did he know the worst recession for 80 years was set to "torpedo his primary income stream".

Fortunately, Paul had long been crafting another string to his bow: blogging. That string is now starting to twang.

Here’s what Paul says about a new service.

As the seminal book Groundswell predicted, the popularity of blogging has exploded. Soon there’ll be two types of organisation:

1. Those who get carted from pillar to post by a horde of angry / unreasonable /
   ill-informed Web 2.0 (social media) commentators.
2. Those who, while they can’t control online discussions about them and their products, participate for best results.

This is a great blog post from DevLounge about the perils of redesign. When to launch? Why redesign your website? Dont get caught in fads ... I think we may be guilty of a few of the points onthe list :)