We all know what business cards are. “TopicCard” is a word I came up with for something I’ve been making. Do you see the image to the right? It gives a brief description of RSS, and an URL to learn more. The URL, in this case, isn’t a page on my site, but a video. Of course, it could point to a blog post on my site if I wanted, which would arguably be better.
A TopicCard is basically a business card, but instead of telling people about your business (or website), it tells them about a topic. You don’t even have to pay a printing house for your cards. If you have Photoshop and a printer, you can easily make your own business cards.
A TopicCard should ideally include
- Your logo
- The URL to your site
- A header explaining what the card is about (i.e. “What is RSS?”)
- A short text blurb explaining the general idea of the topic
- An URL pointing to a resource that teaches more about the topic. This could be a post on your blog, a category page, another website, or virtually anything on the web.
I used TinyURL for the “What is RSS?” card, as it was the first time I tried something like this (try fitting http://www.videojug.com/film/rss-in-plain-english on a 2-inch-wide piece of cardstock!). If you don’t want to use TinyURL, you can use your own redirection system if you prefer. You can either write your own PHP/MySQL/mod_rewrite system for redirection, or install a pre-made redirection script like Shorty. Shorty works great when it’s installed in a directory like “go,” so your redirects look like www.you.com/go/here.
Continue reading →
