Those are two traits I love to look for in web site or template design.

Biruality, which actually means “blue” (first thought was it was some sort of Mortal Kombat finisher) is a lightweight WordPress template with support for 2 columns, widgets, has a fixed width, and is SEO friendly.  Clean, simple and well worth your time – go download Biruality at Clickfire.com.

How did you get your start on the Web?

Emory: My path into the web began in the mid 1990′s. I was a fairly uninspired surfer and email user until I discovered online multiplayer gaming. Meeting others and competing with them in a virtual world fascinated me. I spent a lot of time gaming back then when I should have been reserving domains like games.com. Looking back, I guess you could say that playing multiplayer games was my first online social networking experience. But, instead of the polite introductions we have with today’s social networking sites, you broke the ice by joining a game and chasing people around, taunting and blowing each other up.

Soon, I started building my own user maps. The next thing I knew I was learning to create graphics, then my first Web site which was a Duke Nukem fan site that had an address of something like someurl.com/~emory/dukenukem/, then writing PC game reviews for Gamezilla and UGO and just generally enjoying the whole Internet experience.

Who is the bigger star, Emory or Clickfire?

Emory: The best way to answer that question is by comparing the number of people who stop by my place to visit (friends, magazine salesmen, mailmen, etc) with the number of people who stop by Clickfire to visit. Emory might get one visitor per month. Clickfire gets many thousands. Clickfire can serve a lot more people than Emory ever could. It really makes you think about the leveraging power of the Internet. I could be standing on the street outside my home with a sign that said “Free 100 dollar bills” and I’d never get as many visitors, solve as many problems or meet as many cool people as Clickfire allows. Creating and maintaining my own Web site has has been one of the most enriching of life experiences.

Across Clickfire.com you cover lots of different web developer topics and discussions. What is your favorite area of the massive tent of web development and why?

Emory: I am still having a great time playing around with RSS/XML. Every major social site these days has a feed for the mashing. WordPress has individual category, post and comments feeds. I like to pull pieces of them from my own site and present them on a static page. Then, there is the mobile side, which I haven’t even begun to experiment with yet.

I would say you’re one of the longest running webmaster resources, with your roots going all the way back to 1997. What has made you want to stay in the game so long?

Emory: I enjoy it. Why I enjoy it is something I’ve thought about a great deal. I like having my own “place” online where I can do creative stuff like writing reviews and building free tools. Visitors read the reviews and use the tools and comment; that makes me like doing it more. I can earn revenue by adding affiliate marketing into the mix. So I enjoy it even more. I can increase that revenue with SEO. Now my career is in search marketing and I’m having fun and getting in even deeper. So, I meet even more interesting people like yourself who inspire me to be creative–the cycle starts again.

Are you afraid your going to wake up one day and have the sudden urge to quit and sell shoes at the mall?

Emory: I have no talent outside the Web, so I am sure that will never happen. Besides I can’t sell. I’d probably offer the customer an objective review of the shoes and then give him a pair for free. If I had to make money the brick and mortar way, I’d be broke. Being a webmaster is too much fun.

As far as web hosting goes, which two web hosts out there impress you the most and why?

Emory: You saved the toughest question for last . It seems that all the big shared hosts are offering more bandwidth than you can shake a pipe at. As I’m sure you are well aware, webmastering can be a lonely job and often keeps you up late into the night. If your site goes down at 3:00 AM, you can’t scream. Opening a support ticket online doesn’t seem to satisfy the human need to know that someone is listening and just might care. It’s probably no coincidence that the only two web hosts that have ever won 5 out of 5 Clickfire stars both have 24 hour phone support lines, BlueHost and HostGator. I will say that Lunarpages was the highest rated host we reviewed last year and I really like LP’s pro customer attitude. I am also hosting some sites on HostDime, which I like so far. And HostICan seems intriguing, which we are reviewing now. I think that’s more than two so I’ll stop and bid farewell before I get carried away.

Thanks, Mitch, for giving me the opportunity to share with your readers. And thanks for the free therapy because I have learned some new things about myself now. Keep up the great work with the Web Hosting Show and Mitchelaneous.

Asa Dotzler – Known as the community coordinator for several Mozilla projects, Asa is a guy that we can all relate to. Love Firefox or hate it, I would suggest you subscribe either way. You are always bound to find something of interest here.

Worthy Example Post: IE8

bLaugh – The un-official comic of the blogosphere has gotten a little less busy in the past few months, but there is still plenty of awesome comics if your are a tech or Internet fan. One of the few Online comics I actually subscribe to, just wish there were more updates.

Worthy Example Post: Huge Software Sale

Blog on a Stick – This blog belongs to one of the best Firefox theme designers out there today, TwisterMC. Past covering some of his Firefox theme updates, he does talk about plenty of interesting tech and Web related content.

Worthy Example Post: iPox Remix

Chris Pirillo – How could you not have much geeky love for Chris Pirillo? I still have to thank my time over at Lockergnome to much of the success I have now in my professional life. I’ve been a fan of Chris’s ever since the TechTV days and it was awesome to work with him on a few projects here and there.

Worthy Example Post: Thank You, Thank You – Note: Ok, example post only included because my name was in there.

Clickfire – If you consider yourself a webmaster, which I know many of you do – subscribe to Clickfire. From web dev ideas to web hosting help, they have a lot of content well worth diving into. Emory Rowland has done a great job at producing grade A content for 10 years now.

Worthy Example Post: How to Lose a SEO Contest

As I work my way down my feeds I subscribe to I am sure more suggestions and praise will be coming along the way. A list, B list or no list at all – I don’t care where your blogging from as long as I can get something out of the experience.

Checkout the Entire Feed Suggestion Series!

• Feed Suggestions from A to C
• Feed Suggestions from D to F
• Feed Suggestions from G to K
• Feed Suggestions from L to O
• Feed Suggestions from P to S
• Feed Suggestions from T to Z