Posted on May 05, 2009 by Ashleigh

A blog needs to have a clear vision in regards to what it’s about. The Blog of a Freelance Web Designer, hosted on a subdomain of ashleighjames.com, whilst specific in it’s topic, didn’t have it’s own identity away from my web design portfolio. Using Google Analytics to gauge my traffic and readership, it occurred to me that I wanted a lot more from my blog than what a subdomain would allow. My blog needed it’s own identity.

First things first..
The first steps in the re-branding of a blog process come surprisingly before deciding on your blogs new name. You need an idea of what you want to portray. You need to know what your blog is about, it’s evolutionary path for the future (if any) and you need to discern your target audience. Only after those steps should you start thinking about a name.

What’s in a name?
The name of your re-branded blog should:

• Portray your vision within 10 seconds of a visitor landing on a page.
• Be rememberable.
• Be easy to spell and pronounceable.
• Be relatively short and to the point.
• And most importantly, be unique.

Choosing a name..
When considering names for your new blog there are a number of things that should be taken into consideration. To make the process easier – ask yourself the following questions to get yourself started.

• Who is your blog for?
• Why will people read your blog?
• What sort of tone will the blog take?
• Is there competition for a particular name?
• Will your new blog name limit your future growth?

The Blog of a Freelance Web Designer Re-Branded
The Blog of a Freelance Web Designer – previously located at http://blog.ashleighjames.com – received a significant amount of interest. So much in fact that the decision was made to undertake a considerable overhaul and move the blog to it’s own domain. The result – Happy Plastic – a web design and entrepreneurial blog dedicated to website design and online entrepreneurial endeavours.

Why ‘Happy Plastic’?
The name Happy Plastic jumped out at me from the beginning. Infact, once I’d thought of the name, I decided it was perfect and launched straight into the re-branding process. I bought the domain name, created a new hosting account and installed WordPress. The next week was spent on the blog design and then I had the joy of exporting and importing all of my old posts and setting up a SEO friendly redirect from my old posts to my new ones. I chose the name Happy Plastic because it was a term that I had used to describe my web design style in the past when I’d been asked what kind of websites I design. The name Happy Plastic exudes bright, colorful and Web 2.0 design. Happy Plastic is me.