List

WordPress – Useful Plugins

I’ve had this blog for a few months now, and during that time I installed and uninstalled a lot of plugins. I am sharing here a list of plugins that I found useful.

Jetpack
I use it to monitor if my website is working. Any time it’s down, I get an email. That’s how I knew that there were some issues with memory.
Site Kit by Google
For insights on how well my website is performing and what are people searching for when they visit my website.
Simple Social Icons
The simplest plugin to add social icons: Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.
Taxonomy List Widget
On the right side of this website, you see a list of my most popular tags. This is displayed by Taxonomy List Widget.
UpdraftPlust – Backup/Restore
I use it for backups before any major changes on my website.
WordPress Popular Posts
To show my 10 most popular posts in the side panel.
Akismet Anti-Spam
Even my website has a problem with spam — mostly people posting links to their online stores. This plugin stops all that.
FooGallery
For when I need to show a gallery of images. I tested many gallery plugins and this is the only one that worked how I wanted.
Really Simple SSL
Awesome plugin, saved me hours of work. I was trying to fix SSL by editing files on the server — I really didn’t know what I was doing. This plugin fixed everything automatically.
Jetpack: Related Posts
I wanted to show related posts under each entry. I thought it was going to be complicated, but with this plugin, it took all of 15 seconds.

July 12, 2021 Tagged With: List, Plugins, WordPress

The designs I am most proud of

Over the years, I’ve created hundreds of designs. A few days ago, I went through them all and selected my 10 favorites. Even I was surprised by the results, but more on that later. First, the designs:

Space Botanica

Black Sands

Zen Maze

Space Painted

Wild Flowers At Night

Among Trees

Dark Woods

Get Your Own Pizza, Human!

Saturn the Cat

Galaxy

Conclusion

One thing that you probably noticed immediately is that they are all rather dark. My store is full of funny designs with ridiculous cats, but the designs which I consider my best are not like that at all. Most are either about space or nature. 9 out of 10 are on black backgrounds.

Recently, I opened a new store with cute designs because I had a lot of ideas for designs like that, and I didn’t want to add them all to my main store, which already has a bit of everything. But now I think, maybe I should create a store with nature or space designs since it looks like those kinds of designs I like best?

Fun fact: only 3 of my favorite designs are in my top 10 bestselling designs.

June 22, 2021 Tagged With: Design, List, TOP 10

Weekly notes — all the links

I’ve been going to the gym every day and listening to the Tim Ferriss Show. In total I listened to 23 episodes during this week — it’s because I listen at double speed and some of the episodes weren’t even interviews but just short summaries or Seneca letters.

Many episodes were amazing, but these were my favorite:
— How Renegade Filmmaker Casey Neistat Breaks Rules, Reinvents Himself, and Gets Thanked For It (#116)
— Derek Sivers on Developing Confidence, Finding Happiness, and Saying “No” to Millions (#125)
— Amelia Boone on Beating 99% of Men and Suffering for High Performance (#127)

Go listen to them if you want to feel inspired!

After listening to the interview with Derek Sivers, I visited his website and signed up for his mailing list. And then I also bought his new book. It’s short, so I thought I was going to read it quickly. I was wrong — I started to read, and already the first page made me stop and consider how it applied to my life.

Derek has a “now” page on his website. It’s a page where he lists what’s happening in his life right now and what he is working on. Inspired by it, I created my own “now” page — it’s a work-in-progress, I plan to add more. A lot of people followed Derek’s example too and created their own “now” pages.

Casey Neistat recommended the book “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be”. I checked archive.org, and it was available there. I read it and liked it. You can read it for free here.

That’s it for now. I will continue going to the gym and listening to podcasts so you can expect another bunch of interesting links next week.

June 21, 2021 Tagged With: Derek Sivers, Inspiring, Links, List, Miscellaneous, Tim Ferriss, Weekly Notes

My designs continue to surprise me

The image below shows my best-selling designs this past month. Not Today continues to be on top:

Top Pending Sales on Threadless this month. — My top designs on Threadless this month

Not Today
Space Botanica
Among Trees
Inconceivably Vast
Adequate Expression of Feelings
Jump – that’s a surprise!
Not Today (Black Variant) — remember to add inverted designs when it makes sense!
Let’s Make Trouble — I did not expect it to be in the top 10. But then — you never know what’s going to be popular.
Vaguely Aware of Social Norms
Dark Red — this one I made for myself because I wanted leggings with it. Looks like others like it too.

As usual, 6 out of 10 best designs are about cats.

March 1, 2021 Tagged With: Income, List, TOP 10

My Top 10 Designs

I sorted my designs by how much money they’ve earned me so far.

Some fun facts:

My top 4 designs have cats!
8 out of 10 are black and white designs.
I hesitated to send 5 of those 10 designs to Threadless and to my store. I thought no one would like them. And yet, here they are, in the top 10.
My most popular design “Not Today” is responsible for half my total income.