While I wouldn’t want anyone to go and brand on the same theme, I do like the idea of showing folks how top flight products can take hold on little more than a template. Below, I share a handful of WordPress themes I’ve seen used and used well.

Take it as motivation to find your own. Let me know some others you dig, by sharing in the comments. I won’t use yours, if you don’t use mine!

Typebased Theme used by Technically Philly

Source/Demo | Download

From here.

Freemium [Demo] used by NEast Philly

StudioPress Theme by My PICC Line

Source | Download | Demo

Premium News Theme by The Temple News

Source | Download | Demo

One Room [Demo] by, well, by me here

Earlier this month, I bought another year on this domain and began a third year posting here. Back in February, I had my 500th post and am just shy of my 700th now. In July, I launched the self-hosted version of this site, which has left quite a bit of Google juice over at the free version here.

Anniversaries abound, so why not celebrate the end of another calendar year by noting the 10 best read posts I had of the past 12 months.

In order of most trafficked, including views from this site’s previous incarnation when relevant.

1. Journalism classes that aren’t regularly available but should be 22Apr09
2. Advertising with @TechnicallyPHL and what other Web startups can learn 05Jun09
3. Your new journalism job: what do reporters, editors get paid? 14Jan09
4. Hyperlocal news sites worth following 23Dec09
5. PW: College rapper Asher Roth from Bucks County to hip hop star 15Apr09
6. The Temple News: my four-years with the college newspaper of Temple University 15May09
7. What was lost in the coverage of a student journalist and a Philadelphia cop 17Apr09
8. Inquirer: How unemployment affects men 04Feb09
9. Hyperlocal news: a definition 29Sep09
10. How to start a freelance writing career without writing samples 09Mar09

In the interest of disclosure and so it doesn’t seem as though I’m posturing, let’s keep in mind that because of my particularly modest traffic, the top handful only account for a thousand views or so.

And because traffic isn’t everything — right? — here are five others I liked but didn’t get the most eyeballs.

1. Content breakdown of a healthy, efficient hyperlocal news site 07Dec09
2. First to report Rendell named Obama’s vice presidential running mate: how an entire newsroom tricked me 23Jan09
3. How some established journalists see the rest of us 26Oct09
4. Seven habits of highly effective freelance journalists 02Mar09
5. Reflections on CUNY graduate school New Journalism Models Hyperlocal camp 25Nov09

You can now via e-mail, receive updates to this outlet for my professional work, experience as a young freelance writer and thoughts on what my future in news, writing and journalism might look like.

Also, you can submit your e-mail address to the box on the right sidebar and receive in your e-mail inbox what I post here. No spam, no clutter, no cost. Just these posts.

That is, of course, an alternative to subscribing to my RSS feed, which you can do here.

In case this RSS thing is still crazy and confusing, dig its explanation In Plain English below.

For more than eight months, NEast Philly, the online hub for Northeast Philadelphia news I introduced back in May, grew to a small, but targeted, 6,000 monthly page views, housed on a free template from WordPress.com.

Finally we have broken free. Yesterday we launched the brand new redesign of our neighborhood news site for the future.

No longer just a forwarding domain, NEastPhilly.com now aims to be the Web portal for content creation, aggregation and dissemination of news, views, information and events happening in Northeast Philadelphia, a middle-class, still print-reliant community. We hope to recapture our traffic numbers from the old site quickly and move far beyond them.

If you’re interested in the geography or another online news startup find a voice, audience and value, grab the RSS feed here.

What’s more, it’ll also be another experiment in establishing a small, self-supporting local news product. Unlike the Technically Philly product I co-founded that is a swing at a high-end, double niche, NEast is a decidedly more modest proposal.

Aggregate all the news on the Web, build on it with perspective and original reporting to create a one-of-a-kind audience based around a geographic locale, just like the small-town newspapers are that are faring a bit better than their big metro counterparts. The work is spearheaded by Shannon McDonald, while I (try to) handle its Web faculties and write occasionally, like other weekly contributors. We are a fine beginning to a product built for the coming years, I think.

This new incarnation of NEast carries the same content and the neighborhood-centric organization of the old, with the greater versatility of a self-hosted product, in addition to, yes, the very purposefuly chosen advertising space of this altered-Wordpress theme.

This industry needs experimentation, no? So, we launched TPhilly.com, and NEast and, as I introduced last month, health-care-related personal story site MyPICCLine.com.

We hope to keep overhead low, rely on user generated content, automation and occasional contributors to abut our professional reporting, and slowly build out from advertising beginnings to other revenue models.

But first, we need to build traffic and further brand recognition in the Northeast, bootstrapping all the way. It’s a long build, but I look forward to being a part of it. This is fine part-time work for now.

I am quite young, as are almost all of the others with whom I conspire in projects like this. But we’re in a period of great change in the news and information business. So, while I pay the bills by freelancing, I see no better obsession than trying to create additional work opportunities with small, niche media organizations for the future. Get the business plans out.

We can at least admit that the new version of NEast is a big step from the old one depicted below, right?

Any advice? Any likes or dislikes?

One of the very obvious and very frustrating results of transitioning from my WordPress.com hosted professional site to this beauty is the loss of all that Google juice.

While it is certainly nothing for the record books, the old version of this site was very steadily growing its traffic, at a healthy 7,259 page views in May (as seen above), the last full month I operated that version.

Once I directed my ChristopherWink.com domain to my own servers, the archives that I migrated from my old WordPress.com version to here are without any links. Instead, their WordPress.com cousins continue to have the priority in search engines and in incoming links (which, because I didn’t use domain mapping, almost surely directed to christopherwink.wordpress.com, instead of just christopherwink.com).

So right now, my old site is still pulling 150 or more page views a day, currently more than I am here. Of course, that traffic will continue to wane there and, the hope is, slowly build here, even though I managed to lose quite a few RSS subscribers in the transition too.

While it was long overdue to become self-hosted and fully launched under my domain, I’m not going to get entirely over the loss of traffic to archived posts, which still get actual meaningful comments from time to time.

I have a lot going on, far beyond the transition here, but I do expect to post more about the transition from a WordPress.com hosted site to a self-hosted WordPress.org-style version. I think it’s a fairly common practice that is under discussed on the interwebs and I now have some thoughts on.

At the very least, I have a new project: to follow that nice arc of growth from my old site and well surpass it.

Finding an audience, a focus and a voice involves place, time and circumstances.

So, I knew what I’d talk about when I arrived at Hackensack University Medical Center the first week of July to see Matthew C. Sheehan, my best friend from growing up in northwest New Jersey who had long been looking for something meaningful to write about and had just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease.

Let’s get you to write about enduring the often-maligned U.S. healthcare industry at a time of great national interest. Of course, Matt, who graduated in May 2008 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with dual biology and journalism degrees, already had it in mind.

With graciously offered hosting space from my Philadelphia partner in media obsession Sean Blanda, a WordPress template and a few hours of my tinkering and Matt’s first couple weeks writing, I present MyPICCLine.com, his personal journey through the healthcare industry.

He’s tried before. My blogroll is stuffed with aborted attempts by Matt to be passionate about something. The kid can write, but writing about media or his native and beloved New Jersey or coupling such Garden State thinking with his freelance writing, never seemed to excite him enough to keep him motivated.

Thus far, he curates healthcare news, updates followers on his personal whereabouts (in of hospital, out of hospital, at the clinic, holed up in his parents’ Sussex County abode or his Weehawken walkup) and, most passionately, will share the mental state of a 23 year old who just this month was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a blood disease that less than a 1,000 Americans are afflicted with annually.

His traffic, which in just the first week without promotion and fanfare has fanned around 200-250 hits a day, blew higher, and he saw an outpouring of comments and e-mails after he wrote just such a post last week.

Just last night, right before bed my mother filed my toe nails. Nurses my age walk by, I just smile and nod as mother rounds off the edges.
“Much better,” she adds, gently wipings my feet down with alcohol,  we have to be cautious, I can’t afford any infections.

“Thanks mom,” I return in a tone she hardly deserves.

I’m a 23-year-old, who was working full-time less than three weeks ago, living in my own apartment, filing my own nails. [Read the rest here]

He’s also tweeting and joined Facebook — big steps if you know Matt — just to promote the site and help find people discover the story he’s trying to sell.

In fact, even earlier than I wanted, our hometown newspaper the N.J. Herald reached out and ran a big, front-page story on Matt and his condition. It was before Matt found his voice on My PICC Line and too early on in the process for the promotion, frankly, but there’s no turning down some good press. I hope very much to help him get larger publications to cover the site, too, and otherwise build his traffic.

Matt is passionate about writing consistently and meaningfully, developing a larger audience with whom he can share the story he and so many others have to tell and, more specifically, of trying to increase bone marrow and even blood donations — two things that will, yes, ultimately save his life.

There is a great emotional value to writing. This we’ve known for generations. The worst result of doing this, I told Matt, would be that no one reads it and in the coming years he’ll be able to look back and see his state of mind (and of blogging) at the beginning.

The best result, and something I think is entirely possible, is that he’ll develop a real readership, increase bone marrow donors (even by a very small number) find his own writing voice and niche and, really, keep him active and with purpose.

It’s too compelling a story to not follow and enjoy — whether you know him, or perhaps even more so — if you don’t.

I hope you will. You can subscribe via RSS here. If you have any questions, comments or criticisms post them below or contact me… or contact Matt here.

Finding an audience, a focus and a voice involves place, time and circumstances.

So, I knew what I’d talk about when I arrived at Hackensack University Medical Center the first week of July to see Matthew C. Sheehan, my best friend from growing up in northwest New Jersey who had long been looking for something meaningful to write about and had just been diagnosed with a rare blood disease.

Let’s get you to write about enduring the often-maligned U.S. healthcare industry at a time of great national interest. Of course, Matt, who graduated in May 2008 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with dual biology and journalism degrees, already had it in mind.

With graciously offered hosting space from my Philadelphia partner in media obsession Sean Blanda, a WordPress template and a few hours of my tinkering and Matt’s first couple weeks writing, I present MyPICCLine.com, his personal journey through the healthcare industry.

He’s tried before. My blogroll is stuffed with aborted attempts by Matt to be passionate about something. The kid can write, but writing about media or his native and beloved New Jersey or coupling such Garden State thinking with his freelance writing, never seemed to excite him enough to keep him motivated.

Thus far, he curates healthcare news, updates followers on his personal whereabouts (in of hospital, out of hospital, at the clinic, holed up in his parents’ Sussex County abode or his Weehawken walkup) and, most passionately, will share the mental state of a 23 year old who just this month was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a blood disease that less than a 1,000 Americans are afflicted with annually.

His traffic, which in just the first week without promotion and fanfare has fanned around 200-250 hits a day, blew higher, and he saw an outpouring of comments and e-mails after he wrote just such a post last week.

Just last night, right before bed my mother filed my toe nails. Nurses my age walk by, I just smile and nod as mother rounds off the edges.
“Much better,” she adds, gently wipings my feet down with alcohol,  we have to be cautious, I can’t afford any infections.

“Thanks mom,” I return in a tone she hardly deserves.

I’m a 23-year-old, who was working full-time less than three weeks ago, living in my own apartment, filing my own nails. [Read the rest here]

He’s also tweeting and joined Facebook — big steps if you know Matt — just to promote the site and help find people discover the story he’s trying to sell.

In fact, even earlier than I wanted, our hometown newspaper the N.J. Herald reached out and ran a big, front-page story on Matt and his condition. It was before Matt found his voice on My PICC Line and too early on in the process for the promotion, frankly, but there’s no turning down some good press. I hope very much to help him get larger publications to cover the site, too, and otherwise build his traffic.

Matt is passionate about writing consistently and meaningfully, developing a larger audience with whom he can share the story he and so many others have to tell and, more specifically, of trying to increase bone marrow and even blood donations — two things that will, yes, ultimately save his life.

There is a great emotional value to writing. This we’ve known for generations. The worst result of doing this, I told Matt, would be that no one reads it and in the coming years he’ll be able to look back and see his state of mind (and of blogging) at the beginning.

The best result, and something I think is entirely possible, is that he’ll develop a real readership, increase bone marrow donors (even by a very small number) find his own writing voice and niche and, really, keep him active and with purpose.

It’s too compelling a story to not follow and enjoy — whether you know him, or perhaps even more so — if you don’t.

I hope you will. You can subscribe via RSS here. If you have any questions, comments or criticisms post them below or contact me… or contact Matt here.

That’s why having a feature interview with the new president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce was another in  a continuously more consistent stream of serious, originally-reported material for Technically Philly.

Rob Wonderling is losing his office in the Harrisburg State Capitol complex.

On Aug. 1, the two-term Republican state senator from Delaware County will report to the Avenue of the Arts as the new president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, as the private, 5,000-member organization announced last month.

By taking the helm of the region’s largest business advocacy organization, he says he’s eager to rebolden the region’s new business community.

“We’ve really lost the language of entrepreneurship [in the region],” Wonderling, 47, says. “Risk taking and capital and job creation are almost scurrilous terms in some political quarters. I feel very passionately that for a free democratic society, we need all of that.” Read the rest here.

After the jump, see some quotations that didn’t make it into the story, in addition to what helped me grab the interview.

I spent last summer serving an enlightening internship with the historical Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association. While there, I pitched and wrote a story for the Allentown Morning Call on legislators using the BlackBerry and other handheld smart phones as legislative tools.

When Wonderling won his state Senate seat in 2002, the same year the BlackBerry came out, he became Pennsylvania’s first legislator to use the mobile device as a legislative tool. Yes, he was capitvated by technology, I learned during my interview with him then.

So when I heard he was named the GPCC CEO, I knew it was a good angle for TP. I called his office, dropped a name or three and scheduled the conference call a full month in advance. Then, TP had a strong, serious piece on a major player in the city’s business community.

Some meaningful content that was dropped from my story and Q&A transcript:

• “The life sciences in this region are, of course, vibrant.  But we need to have even more of a startup economy. We want to work on that, to create a broad civic manner that supports and promotes entrepreneurship.”
• “If you look at the statistics, really, 50 percent of jobs in Pennsylvania will be created by one person with an idea. Increasingly in the future, the more likely that startup will be driven by technology. So, we need to be more vibrant. We’d be foolish to not provide services for technology to that startup.”
• “That’s important for entrepreneurship.
• He didn’t pass up an opportunity to take a swing at Rendell. “That’s why I’m opposed to Gov. Rendell’s plan to increase the personal income tax. The PIT is the startup entrepreneur’s business tax.”
• “I lose patience with people who tend to wallow in mediocrity.
• “We’re really just scratching the surface with using technology.
• “We need to keep recruiting companies and growing what is unique to our region. It’s not only our economic mix, but also our geogeraphic proximity in mid-Atlantic region. …I would also say we have one of the greatest qualities of life, really, this region is one of the best places to live in the world. That goes for business, too.
• “We must have a vibrant technology business community to invest capital and create capital to grow the economy. Fortunately, the Greater Philadelphia region is blessed with a diverse economy. But we cannot spend time on our laurels.

The older, WordPress.com version of this site.

Well this is overdue.

Exactly 575 days after my first post on this incarnation of ChristopherWink.com, I’ve done a massive redesign. If you’re in a feed reader, come on over and browse.

There is so much left for me to do, though. A lot of usability, design and organization elements remain janky. We’ll get to that. For now, I wanted to get over the big introduction hurdle of the redesign.

Of course, when I say redesign, I mean I switched from a free WordPress.com theme to using a free, self-hosted WordPress theme, but, hey, I’m tweaking this baby up.

It’s a slightly bold step forward.

Thanks to Sean Blanda, my friend, colleague and fellow co-founder of Technically Philly, who offered a good deal on hosting. There’s a lot of work left to be done for the transition, but for now it sure looks a bit more professional, no? I’ll be going through an overhaul of my portfolio, some of my site’s organization and certainly delving into greater, more detailed metrics. I also look forward to all the normal fun you can have on a normal, self-hosted site. All that said, I don’t intend on straying from my usual focus here, writing on being a young freelance journalist and (very) small time Web entrepreneur.

More to follow on the transition. But, for now, let me know what you think about the theme, called OneRoom. But yeah, please, don’t go and take it.

It started with a call about ezLandlord Forms, an e-commerce site with meaningful traffic that was based in Philadelphia.

I interviewed Kevin Kiene, the CEO and founder of the online provider of property-management legal documents with 300,000 members nationally, for a story for Technically Philly. During our conversation, I found out he was a Fox Chase native who now lives in Frankford, the same neighborhood I now call home, so I wrote a story about him for NEast Philly, too.

That got picked up by the father and son team at Frankford Gazette, who do a great job of chronicling the bad and more importantly the good of their native ‘hood. Suddenly, a few hundred new eyeballs know about Kiene and his product.

After the jump links to both stories I wrote, a couple quotations that didn’t make it into either and the video that prompted it all.

It isn’t the mass appeal of a story in the Inquirer or another major newspaper or magazine, but, rather it’s a smaller, more loyal brood who are invested him because of his ties to the region. That’s something to think about for the future, young marketers. I don’t believe you can undervalue smaller niche coverage.

• “Technically Not Tech: Kevin Kiene CEO of EZ Landlord Forms” for Technically Philly
• Fox Chase native and Frankford resident behind ezLandlord Forms” for NEast Philly
• “Web Entrepreneur Calls Frankford Home” by Frankford Gazette

It was only after I questioned Kiene about his Philly roots that we found we both lived in the same neighborhood — Frankford — and he raved about his ties to the city.

• “There are endless ideas and reasons why I’m here but, really, everything in Philly is the food. I have not had a better food selection anywhere.”
• “There’s a lot of great people in Philly.”

All this came because a friend forwarded me a link to a Phillyblog thread that mentioned a video produced by a landlord form company. The video was a little silly, but I was intrigued by the swing at viral marketing by a relatively small e-commerce company.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dduHgo95JaA]