Planning for 2020

2019 was not the best year for me, so I plan on making 2020 a far better  one. I will put renewed focus on training and food while refocusing this website a bit. The goal for 2020 is to not try to make things happen fast, but to be consistent. Here are my big plans for 2020 in no particular order.

More consistent writing.

The key to all great websites is consistency. As fun it is to play around with the possibilities using Invision Community I also need to be consistent about writing. That means that I need to plan and schedule my output so there will be content written every week. For this reason I am going to have a continuous writing series about how I design and use Jira and Confluence for managing this website.

I want to try to have 15 or so articles each month published, which means around 2/week. With the wide areas I am covering on the website I do not think that will be any problem, but I will need to ensure it does not become a stress factor rather than something that add positive energy to me.

In order to have a good stock of writing ideas I am going to start gathering websites with quality content. There are a few sites that are writing great articles in Swedish that I will contact and ensure they approve if I rewrite some of their articles here in English. These sites are under Licens CC-BY-4.0, which means that they already indicate that this is fine, but I still want to make sure. 

On the topic of Creative Commons I consider adding all my content under CC as well. I think it's a fair and a good thing that others are allowed to build and improve upon my content. I will also add some features to better visualize the sources of my articles and link backs with credit in a more visible way.

Guest Blogging

There are many out there that would welcome a blog post or two so I will try to find some good places where I can write for others. I will also invite people to write on this site for the same reasons. It is a win-win situation for everyone as the writer get more visibility and the website get new good content. I already have some invites in that field and will extend the capabilities here on the site as well.

One of the big benefits with Invision Community is it's great permission system that allow me to open up the site's capability with little risk of getting spammed. It also allow me to highlight people and their content in a great way. I hope I can get good feedback on how to allow others to promote themselves through guest blogging so i can evolve this in 2020.

Adding a links section

There are a ton of great websites out there with all kind of great content. I want to not just collect them for myself, but also share them with you. I will use the power of Invision Community to build this section, which will be pretty easy even if it probably will not have all the bells and whistles on day one.

I aim to have one weekly highlight of links that i think people could find interesting. This could possibly also tie into a weekly or monthly newsletter...

Newsletter

Newsletter is amazing for driving traffic, but it is also a lot of work. I want to try it, but we'll see how much energy it will consume compared to the result from it. 2020 will not be so much about gaining new members as it will be to create a stable platform with consistent content. As the site is pretty wide in content I will start wide and then divide as the content grow. That is if I decide to continue with newsletters in 2020 and beyond.

As I have several colleagues and friends that write as well I hope I can add a spot for them to help promote their hard work as well.

Old Content

I have quite a bit of old content written in Swedish on my Wordpress platform that I want to port over to the new format using Invision Community. This is pretty easy to do, even if it is a bit time consuming. I aim to add 50 or so posts each month to my Swedish blog. I also plan on taking a few old blog posts and recycle by doing some rewrite and translating to English.

Reworking the About Me section

The About Me section is still pretty much a pile of rubble and I plan on changing that. I have several databases such as the Projects and Education databases that I will rework a bit. There will be a bit of focus on SHR where I will create a landing page with information and updates surrounding that since there are very little information about this online.

I will add more information about myself and my background as people seem to find that interesting. For example I do write quite a bit about introvert vs extrovert and personality types, so I will have some information on my own personality as well.

The Gallery will move to About Me as well and I will use that as more of a personal section. I have a ton of designs and photos that I will add there and with the recent change to the gallery it feels much better.

Reorganize and build landing pages

Right now things are a bit all over the place when it comes to content. I want to reorganize things and make sure the structure is consistent. I will divide the personal content from the professional a bit more and start adding focused landing pages. design wise I will make sure that the different sections have a uniform language across the different areas and if time permit i will try to work on a custom set of icons to match.

Buying graphics

I want to buy some additional graphics in 2020 to use in the landing pages. I have a pretty good stock already, but for the site I want to add some isometric graphics that I current don't have that many of. As always I buy my vector graphics from Shutterstock and I will probably buy another  750 package in 2020. Maybe even two if things goes as planned.

For the blog posts I will use some of my stock art and also use the amazing site Pexels for free photographs.

Reviews

This is one area that I feel I need to put some effort into pretty soon. Reviews are very important and I need to get that aspect of the site into several databases. As this will use the database relationship feature in Invision Community it will be a fun project for sure. This way I can have reviews in one database and then bring it into other databases when needed. Due to the way database relations work I can even have different designs based on what database I bring it into.

Movies and TV Series

I love movies and tv series and I have played with the thought of adding a section for it on the site. This is however a specialized interest and I do not think I want to focus on this in 2020. If that changes I will add that to the About Me section most likely as a personal interest site.

It would be pretty much the same setup as for other databases in Invision Community where I would add a database for the movies, one for TV shows and one for actors/actresses. I could add one for studios and directors and so on as well of course, but we'll see once I start tinkering with it.

In theory it would be like a mix of IMDB and Trakt and I would need some custom development for lists. It is in the back of my mind, but for now I'll settle for a club for this.

Fonts and downloads in general

The downloads section have great potential and I have not really started to look at that yet.  I have a thought on adding a section for fonts, but the competition is pretty bad in that space. I did go to school with an amazing font designer that has already given permission to add his free fonts and I know some people that have amazing websites dedicated to fonts.

So maybe it can be a slow process of building up a collection of quality fonts rather than trying to compete with the big font archives. This can be tied into the commerce function in Invision Community as well so I can offer a platform for selling fonts if anyone want that. I will also organize this downloads section a bit more to make it match the overall organization.

Jobs and events

Another potential area that I can build upon. It would be easy to add a jobs section by adding a new database and I could connect with sites that promote jobs already to build up the database. The same with events that I can easily add to the calendar feature, or build a new feature for using databases.

The thing is just that it require a lot of work to do this and I would need to focus a lot of attention and energy to make this work. I am not sure that will be possible with all the other plans going on in 2020. I will add events that I feel is relevant and interesting, but that is pretty much all I will do in 2020 I think.

For jobs I am just going to add a section in the forums for job searching and job advertising.

Hosting and Domains

As some of you might know I used to have a hosting business and I am still keeping track of the hosting industry. This is a pretty big area and it moves quite a bit, even if it is a bit slow and sometimes hard to wrap your head around. I have this thought in my head to add a section for hosting companies that goes way back to 2009.

I will probably look at this and plan for it in 2020, but will wait until 2021 for actually building it. You can probably expect a few articles about it however in 2020.

Atlassian

Atlassian will not go away anytime soon from this site. Besides the series on building a task management system for the site using Jira I will also build up common questions and of course provide news about Atlassian. During my time as Atlassian Group Leader I did get in touch with several companies that have services and apps for Atlassian products. I consider adding a few features around that network, but it all depends on how much time I have available.

I will absolutely pick a few apps to follow and write about and it might turn into something more focused later on. I'll probably will pick up a certification or two as well in 2020 or 2021. I have planned for it before, but work came in the way and I am not really that impressed with certifications anyway since it's so easy for anyone to get without any real skill or knowledge (generally speaking, not Atlassian specifically).

Methods and Processes

This is a big part of my daily work so I will add a database with the most common methods and processes. There I will write about them and my view on how they work in reality as well as articles related to them. I have a colleague that is a master of these things so hopefully I can pick his brain on some of these. I will of course talk to other colleagues and friends as well on their experience and thoughts on the various methods and processes.

Training and food

A new section on my personal section will be dedicated to training and food. I have not been training for a long time now and it's time to get back into the gym and get that pump going again. My son is also eager to get his training going so we will join up and dedicate 2020 to learning more about our physical selves.

I will go back to log my training at exercise.com again as i like the simplicity of the site. I will also use Runkeeper again after putting it on the back burner for a while.

Food is an important part of actually getting into shape, so I will probably add a database for good food and some discussion areas for others to suggest food as well. There will be more focus on nutrition than calories probably, but we will see.

People

This new section was added just recently and I got a real energy boost from it. Nothing make me feel as good as promoting amazing people and give them some positive reviews. This will be a big focus area for 2020 and I expect at least 100 new profiles to be added here in 2020.

I have a ton of people lined up and waiting for me to add them to the database and I will reach out to more awesome people in 2020 to get their approval so I can add them to the site.

Invision Community 4.5 and more

Invision Community will release 4.5 sometime next year and with that comes some enhancements that will be nice. There are also a ton of great applications that I can add to extend functionalities if I want to do that. I already have things like classifieds and quizzes that I am playing around with, but there are many, many other features that can be of use in 2020 and beyond.

2020 will be a great year

As you can tell there is no shortage of plans for next year. Ever since I switched over to Invision Community I have seen an increase not just in my activities, but also an increase in traffic. Even without actually trying I have increased page views with a whooping 1400%, which is not saying much considering the low values before. I did however peak at 1399 views in one day, which to me is not half bad for a site like mine.

Next year I hope to increase this a lot, but it will require me to continue being consistent with content and provide good content that people find interesting.  I will do my best to live up to that, but I will not stress out if the traffic does not improve. It's a marathon, not a sprint after all and I just started this new journey with Invision Community.