Blog Design
Saying goodbye to 2008
I loved 2008…and I hated it. Professionally, it was really a phenomenal year. E.Webscapes did 409 projects in 2008 – that’s more than a project a day. It’s almost exactly double what we did in 2007 – and the profit margins tripled. I also finished another book in 2008 and have another (different) one in the works for 2009 (more about that another day!) I would have to say that professionally speaking, 2008 was my most productive year, to date, since I quit my nursing job and became self-employed back in 2004. I’m pretty proud of that – and proud […]
BuddyPress
As this week is winding down, I’m feeling like I’ve finally come in from the rain (or the snow, since I’m in Wisconsin). Work has been crazy nuts over the past two weeks and I’ve been pushing myself harder than usual to meet deadlines and get things done. Some of it goes rather smoothly, while other bits are somewhat of a struggle, but at the end of the day – it comes together nicely. Speaking of something that has come together nicely – have you hear of BuddyPress? I discovered BuddyPress back in July of this year when a new […]
post_class(); … Take advantage of the new "Sticky Post" feature in WordPress 2.7
Of the many excellent new features coming in WordPress 2.7, some are applauding the arrival of sticky posts. First – what are they? Sticky posts are posts that you can “stick” to your front page. For instance, if you have a post that you published a year ago and would like to republish it to the front page of your site for a time – you can edit that post and select “Stick this post to the front page” in the Edit Post page in your WordPress admin panel. Just doing that will stick it to your front page, ahead […]
This week I. . .
It’s been a WEEK! I’m happy that it’s over and the weekend is finally here . . . seems like it took forever. This week I… …Finally have an answer after a somewhat worrisome week..and without too much detail, I’ll just say this: The pathology test, mammogram and ultrasound came back completely NORMAL. They didn’t show up with anything that is not supposed to be there. So, I guess you guys are stuck with me for awhile! …Flooded the kitchen and, subsequently, the garage that sits underneath it. What? Anyone could make the same mistake I did: I turned on […]
FreshBooks and Other Tools I Use
It was about a year ago that I started hearing about colleagues of mine using FreshBooks for their invoicing and time tracking needs. At the time, I wasn’t ready to move away from my tried and true practice of manual invoicing per project. Hey, I’m a creature of habit and it’s what I knew, and was comfortable with, at the time. I am an early adopter of some things…but not all. I started using FreshBooks a little over a month ago and I just can’t even begin to describe how excellent this service is and how much time it has […]
SmartLife – Decision Making Process on Outsourcing Design
One of our recent clients at E.Webscapes, Chris Cairns from SmartLife, recently wrote about his experience with outsourcing and documented his decision making process regarding who to outsource with. In his post, Automatically Make Money Online Through Monetized Blogging: A Guide To Outsourcing Your Professional Blog’s Design (Plus: Actual Statement Of Work For Your Reuse), Chris takes you through his entire SOW (Statement of Work) and the ratings system he used to narrow down which design company he ended up using for his WordPress design and development project. Obviously, I stated that he is a client of ours – that […]
Redesign, Finally!
The redesign of this site has been in the works forEVER! And when I say forever..I really mean about 6-8 months of putting it on the back burner until my schedule opened up enough for me to be able to sit down and really figure out what I wanted to do. The redesign of this site went through about 6-8 different visual looks until I finally settled on what I wanted…and it took that long for me to settle. It wasn’t until my last attempt that I realized what I wanted here (at least for now): simple. clean. light. minimal. […]
Forgot to mention: Web414 June Meet Up
Tonight is my presentation at the Web414 June Meet Up – I blogged about it earlier this month. They had announced (and I had announced here on my own blog) that the Meet Up would be held at Bucketworks in Milwaukee. Since then, Southeastern Wisconsin has experienced some major storms and flooding and Bucketworks had their share of the flooding, so bad, that they had to shut down for business in order to repair. The Meet Up has been moved to: MSOE (Milwaukee School of Engineering) Rosenberg Hall 1235 N. Milwaukee St, room 201 It starts at 7pm and I […]
Web414 – Milwaukee's Web Community
I’m really excited to have been asked to speak at a local web development/design group in Milwaukee this June. The group is called Web414 – Milwaukee’s Web Development Community, and from what I understand – it’s a group of Drupal fans, mostly – – though Mike tells me that they all appreciate WordPress. (Or maybe he just said that to make me feel more at ease??). The group is made up of mostly developers, with a smattering of designers here and there in the crowd and when I talked to Mike about what topic would be best for this crowd […]
Tighten Up Those Terms and keep copies of EVERYTHING.. forever
Many times in dealing with my clients, I fear I repeat myself too often. When a client submits their order to us, they get treated to our terms of service statement not once… not twice… not three, but four different times during the order process. Plus, I refer them to the terms of service several times throughout their browsing experience on my site. In addition, their order will not be submitted to us unless they have checked the box that says “Yes, I have read your terms of service”. They are also presented with our terms within the project quote.. […]