Many different people choose to use BlueFur for their web hosting needs. Some are just personal bloggers looking for their own piece of online real estate. Others are professional organizations who need reliable hosting for their sites. And then there are the creative types who need a platform to showcase their work.

Falling into this last category is Coco Love Alcorn. She is a musical artist who has been described by the Vancouver Provice, Canadian Musician, and Star Phoenix as a “sparkling alloy of jazz, soul and contemporary folk.” Her voice is “hailed as extraordinary, beautiful and stunning.”

From her website, you can preview some tracks from her new CD, Joyful. The album is available for sale through Maple Music and iTunes. You can learn more about Coco Love Alcorn through her bio page and check out the available merchandise in the shop.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

Want to add a dash of class to your WordPress blog? Purple, as a color, has always had a connection with prestige and royalty, so it only makes sense that a jewelry-inspired blog theme carries that color scheme through and through.

The PurpleSatin theme was developed by the kind folks at VistaBella, who usually focus on the business of discount diamond engagement rings and other discount jewelry. The theme is relatively simple in its approach, but it does provide a sense of elegance too.

It’s fundamentally a two-column theme, but the main content them is the only one with a white background. The sidebar does a good job of almost blending into the background, while still being clearly visible and accessible. It is fully compatible with WordPress 3.0+ blogs and does not require any additional plug-ins or modifications.

You can find the download link for PurpleSatin on VistaBella and the live demo at Lucky Pendants.

What do the bloggers have to say this week? Let’s go on another tour of the ‘sphere and find out!

Josh Rimer gets us started with a very interesting article on the business prospects of YouTube. It may be a good video sharing service for amateurs, but did you know that you can make a million dollars on YouTube? Some of the most profitable content producers on the site make six figures a month from the ad revenue alone!

Susan Gernhart shares a very powerful lesson that many of us have to learn and accept: skinny does not equal fit. A thin person isn’t necessarily “in good shape” when compared to a person who may be a little heavier. Don’t forget about things like cardiovascular health, muscle strength, flexibility, and even mental health!

Trent Hamm approaches a question posed by one of his readers. When it comes to children, what should allowance pay for? It’s good to give your children an allowance to help them learn about money management, but how should those funds be spent? What should be paid for outside of the allowance?

Darren Barefoot, possibly at the behest of his colleagues and friends, finally got around to watching The Social Network. While he believes that Aaron Sorkin did a fantastic job and it’s an “exceptional piece of movie craftsmanship,” the film ultimately comes up just a hair short. After all, it’s only about a soulless schizoid who makes tons of money.

Susan Johnston has some advice and guidance for all the writers in the audience. She discusses how to beef up or slim down your word counts as needed. Did you just write something and it’s not long enough? Maybe it’s too long? Take her advice and adjust your word counts appropriately without adding too much fluff or losing too much substance.

Nike may tell you that you should just do it, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the case when it comes to your marketing efforts. You may have noticed that an increasing number of companies are taking advantage of social media channels as a means to increase brand presence and reach out to customers, but perhaps you don’t feel comfortable with Facebook and Twitter.

If you, as the company owner, do not want to have anything to do with Facebook and Twitter, but you recognize the potential value that such channels can provide for your business, then you probably shouldn’t partake in these strategies yourself. Instead, you can take one of two suitable alternatives. First, you could hire a freelancer who can handle these tasks for you. Feed this person with the appropriate information and they can manage your Facebook and Twitter company accounts for you.

Alternatively, you can look for someone in-house who can manage them. All too often, these kinds of tasks fall on interns and co-op students, but they may not be the best people for the job. Realize that managing social media is just as important as the “main” jobs that your marketing department may handle. In this way, it is much better to hold an open call among your entire employee base to see if anyone wants to volunteer to do it. The ideal candidate is someone who already has an active personal account, since he or she will already be well-versed in the terminology and how the networks work.

The same idea applies to the various other marketing efforts that you may be exploring, from corporate blogging to podcasting to guerrilla marketing tactics. Don’t assume that these efforts are “secondary” to your primary marketing techniques. They’re just as valuable and can prove to be just as effective… when used appropriately.

Not all blog posts are made alike. That’s why you may have implemented a few plugins or adaptations on your blog to highlight some blog posts in a “featured” area. There are all kinds of ways to grant some special attention to your posts, but what about all of those great comments that your readers provide? There has to be a way to highlight them too, right?

Going beyond plugins like those that display most recent comments or the top commentators, Hikari Featured Comments allows you to add three custom fields to the comments posted on your blog. The three special properties are featured, buried, and children/threaded buried. You can change the semantics, but the default meanings sound like they would work just fine.

When a comment is flagged as “featured,” it will be highlighted above and beyond the other comments. You can add special CSS styles to these featured comments, making them more visible and more likely to be read by people browsing through the comments. By contrast, a “buried” comment is one that isn’t necessarily deleted, but it takes on nearly opposite characteristics of a featured comment. Perhaps the comment is faded out or put into a grey box. These are comments that aren’t really spam, so you don’t want to delete them, but they may be off-topic or not contributing to the conversation. The children/threaded buried comments work in a similar way, except they’re only applied to nested comments of the flagged comment.

Extensive documentation on the plug-in’s implementation and installation can be found at Hikari.ws. This is also where you find the download link to get the plug-in for free.

During the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, one of the most popular souvenir items were the red mittens. These mittens weren’t expensive, at just $10 a pair, and they featured a maple leaf on the palm. It helped to provide a sense of national unity for Canadians and it proved to be very lucrative for HBC, the official store for Olympic merchandise.

It seems that they are now prepared to re-release the mittens, but in a new form. The design is different, with the maple leaf wrapping around the side of the mitten rather than in the palm, but the concept is similar. It’s clear that Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) is trying to capitalize on the existing popularity of the original mittens, which have since been discontinued. The Olympics may have only been earlier this year, but the nostalgia factor is certainly there.

Looking at your own business, did you have a very popular item that you think is worth re-inventing and re-releasing? Some customers may see this as a clear cash grab and, indeed, it really is. However, you still have to consider when you have opportunities to profit and you have to jump on these kinds of chances when you can. There is certainly something to be said about nostalgia.

From vintage sports jerseys to vintage-inspired cars, they can have huge sellers. What products in your lineup are worth re-launching in some renewed form? Would they be just as profitable as when they were first sold?