Rarely will I quote text in one of these posts but rarely will you run across a blog that has its own mission statement. Since this is one of those rare occasions I thought I'd share it before going any further.
It is the mission of AjaxNinja to provide quality instruction on how to start a website or blog, develop it using common web development techniques, and then subsequently direct traffic to the website or blog using SEO and Social Media..
I'm really not sure Aaron Stannard's AjaxNinja site fits into the narrow mold of what I would consider a blog but (as in the case of Techmeme earlier in the list) it doesn't really matter to me because of how entertaining it is.
What Aaron does that no one else on the web is doing is to analyze the actual creation of a web site and to treat that creation as an art in itself which is worthy of studying. He's sort of like the Anti-Scoble in that watching Scoble can be instructive but Scoble isn't really instructing you as much as he's simply doing something instinctively well and allowing you to watch. Aaron on the other hand tries to codify what someone like Scoble does and then state it outright which is a much better way for new people to learn.
Aaron concerns himself with actually figuring out and teaching what it takes to make a real successful site from scratch and that is something I haven't seen anywhere else.
Beyond that he does mix the normal blog type posts in. I learned quite a bit about Facebook development just by watching his ups and downs as a developer beginning his first Facebook app. That type of stuff is what makes the blogosphere invaluable and again Aaron is good at instructing about things that he himself has just learned.
Finally, and I debated whether to throw this out there or not but I think its an important point. Aaron is pretty young having not even graduated College yet. Some might consider that a reason to ignore him but I see it as just the opposite. Here is a guy who has shown he has the energy, know-how and leadership skills to create something at a young age and take that thing seriously.
Whenever someone great comes along people always lament the fact that they didn't have the opportunity to watch that person from the start of their career. I suspect that one day Aaron could be someone great in this industry and that alone is reason to subscribe to his feed and that (along with everything else) is why I put Aaron Stannard at #7 on my Blogroll list.