Blog

Writings on design, content management, client relations and the web. Since 2005.

Mon 12^th

Improved Guidelines for Clients

I’ve changed gears to focus on freelance design and development this past year and I’m happy to say that in terms of client relations, there have been fewer misunderstandings and [...]

Fri 31^st

An Unobtrusive ‘Edit’ Link

For WordPress projects, I prefer to keep admin views totally separate from public views, which is why some users dislike the admin toolbar. I usually disable the toolbar, but still [...]

Tue 17^th

Mimbo Pro Now Available from WordPress.com

Mimbo Pro was released way back in March of 2008 and I’m still proud to look back on it as one of the very first paid open-source themes and the [...]

Fri 17^th

Introducing Mimbo Pro 3.0

It’s been almost 4 years since Mimbo Pro first hit the WordPress themes market. Since then we’ve made numerous enhancements to keep up with changes to the WordPress core…

Thu 15^th

Wireless Void

My favorite piece of writing in the last year was “Sad as Hell”, published by n+1. Officially it’s a book review for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. Unofficially it’s a portrait of the reviewer’s addiction to media and the struggle to prevent it from derailing her life.

Tue 1^st

Designing Readability

The original Readability bookmarklet took on such a life of its own between 2009-2010, it made this week’s launch of Readability.com inevitable.

Thu 9^th

Current Status

A year ago I started collaborating with my friend Lawrence to develop custom software that hooked up technical experts with people in need. We launched WPQuestions first, and later, PHP Emergency, Symfony Experts, Javascript Questions and MYSQL Emergency which are aggregated at our umbrella site CodeWise.

Mon 30^th

Moving Target

My favorite book on the film industry is William Goldman’s (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) “Adventures in the Screen Trade”. What I love is there are no specific conclusions about filmmaking…

Sun 9^th

Community Expectations

Dribbble opened to the public last month while generating a lot of discussion about community and exclusivity. Drawar runs a great community of its own where this week users discussed what disappointed them about Dribbble.

Tue 20^th

Designing with Social Skills

Raise your hand if you never went to art school. For better or worse I jumped into interactive design without learning design fundamentals. Instead I worked backwards, self-educating intensely, even now.
Wed 7^th

Introducing CodeWise

As WPQuestions has continued gaining users, we’ve also expanded our family of sites to include Javascript, the Symfony framework and PHP, all using a single installation of the custom Q&A software we’ve built.

Sun 14^th

Tweets to Remember

Specific blog posts can be credited with widespread influence of opinion. Can microblogging’s limited format accomplish the same thing?
Wed 10^th

Obama Theme, Republican Candidate

Today Geoff Fox tipped me off to something ironic: the website for Republican congressional candidate Daria Novak is using a WordPress theme I designed back in 2008 for Obama supporters.
Tue 9^th

Dribbble, Meritocracy and the Open Web

Last month I was lucky to be drafted into Dribbble by a fellow designer. It’s a private beta site with a lot of buzz. It will eventually grow and go public which got me thinking about the ramifications.

Thu 7^th

Design Versatility

At the beginning of each new year, I do some navel-gazing about where I should be career-wise. I look over my portfolio and take note of things I could have done differently.

Tue 22^nd

Creating Custom WordPress Widgets

With each new version of WordPress, the argument whether or not it qualifies as a CMS gets a little quieter. In the WordPress core we have widgets, custom fields, custom [...]
Fri 11^th

Feature Suggestions for Gravy

I released a baseline theme and PSD set called Gravy back in August and am happy sales have exceeded expectations. Just as important, user feedback has shown that the theme speeds up development time and can be used for diverse projects.
Tue 8^th

Introducing WPQuestions

This week, my development partner and I launched WPQuestions.com, a new problem-solving site for the WordPress community, and the response so far has been incredible.

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