Closing Up Shop

Four days from now we’ll be on our way to the Sunshine State, so that we can embark on a much-needed trip down to the Caribbean. Many of you know that my wife Shelly and I love cruises, so this should come as no surprise to you. The past few months have been among the busiest for our us, so it’s time to take a break!

I thought it would be fun to show you where we are headed – I’ll be thinking of you all while we’re away! In fact, knowing me, I’ll probably post a time or two just updating you on the weather!

This might be the last post I write before we leave on Saturday, but I’ll be checking to see what’s going on around the blogosphere while we’re onboard. Darn Royal Caribbean has internet access on the boat – the nerve, huh? I can’t resist checking email, and doing a little work even on vacation.

Another piece of news, is that I am currently constructing what will become the new theme here on my site, but who knows when it will actually go live. With supporting the Revolution themes, creating the new business, the holidays, etc, there’s little time to do fun stuff like reboot my own site! Settle down, this won’t be happening tomorrow!

Here’s a little preview of the new look. Yes, it’s my typical style, simple, contemporary, but should have some fun concepts as I move closer to going solo with my own business. A few things that will start to be on my site… video blogging, a WordPress resource center, and a better theme/portfolio section.

They Say It Means Nothing…

But it appears that Google just updated it’s page rank, and all over the world Digital Pointers are going nuts. I know that in the grand scheme of things, page rank means nothing, and it’s simply an arbitrary number.

However, it is nice to see a 7 here on this website, a 6 on the Revolution theme site and another 6 on the Revolution News theme site.

For grins, post your new page rank by leaving a comment!

Sex, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

A few weeks ago I received an email from a couple wanting to customize my Revolution News theme for their website Ask Dan and Jennifer. After reviewing what they were currently doing with their site, I knew that Revolution would be ideal for the things they wanted to accomplish on their site.

We exchanged emails for a few days, and finally decided that the Revolution Magazine theme would work best – after all, it was set up for videos, advertising and had options to make page layouts flexible. We had to take into consideration the amount of content they have, and this was exactly what they were looking for!

The past few weeks we’ve collectively been customizing and enhancing the theme – and yesterday, their website officially went live with the new design!

I have done and seen many customizations to the Revolution theme, but their site by far takes the cake in regards to how far the theme can actually go. I’m very proud of what we’ve done with it, and their website is a great example of how much the theme can be customized.

I really enjoyed working with Dan and Jennifer – they were both very knowledgeable with WordPress/PHP coding, so I can’t take all of the credit here. They knew exactly what they wanted, and that is one thing that is really important when trying to do a site redesign. With the amount traffic they are getting, making sure everything is right was vital, and at the moment, things seem to be working just fine!

Be Careful What You Offer

A few months ago, I wrote a post called 5 Things About Design and Me. I was bored one day, so I came up with some questions that I thought would be fun to answer, but didn’t realize that 2 months later it would come back to haunt me.

I will refresh your memory by posting an excerpt from that:

If you could design one blogger’s site for free, who would it be?
A while back I stumbled across Whoorl, and have loved reading it ever since. Last year her blog was basically prego mommy meets the OC – Sarah spent a majority of 2006 pregnant with her adorable little baby Anders. Whoorl is a witty depiction of motherhood, the pains of parenting and living in Southern California. I have even mentioned to her that if she ever wanted a blog redesign, I would do it for free. (Sarah, the offer still stands, even if you are Jayhawk fan!)

Well if you scroll down to the bottom of the comments, you’ll see one dated October 21st. I wasn’t quite sure if she was joking, so I took a spin over to Whoorl’s website and saw a “This blog is in Maintence Mode right now” splash page. Now I knew she was serious.

Those who have been reading my blog for some time now know that Whoorl is one of my favorite blogs, as seen in this post I made at the beginning of the year.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Sarah’s blog, and knew that I needed to act immediately – after all, she literally gets thousands of visits a day, so I knew I needed to respond pronto.

We ended up having a great phone conversation about what she was looking for, and thankfully she’s tech-geek enough to have been able to supply me a PSD. Although knowing she’s a mega pixel nazi set the bar high for me, because she’s been know to obsess over things being perfect, down to the very pixel.

Anyway, over the past 24 hours, we successfully made it happen – the brand new theme is live, and her visitors seem to like the design. The moral of the story here is simple. Be careful what you offer to people, you never know, one day they may take you up on it!

Short and Sweet

I have to apologize in advance that this post will be short. We’ve been gone for the weekend – spent a glorious 75 degree sunny afternoon yesterday at the Purdue football game, then went down to Indianpolis to spend time with family.

Anyway, I don’t know how I’ve managed to stay afloat these past few months. Many of you don’t know that in addition to design, I have a dayjob, which takes up 40 hours a week of my life.

This explains why I am unable to answer every email or in the detail in which people sometimes wish from me. It also explains the bags under my eyes, the reason my contact form has been down for months and why I continually talk about how much I’d love to spend my days sitting at Panera or Starbucks with laptop in hand.

On Monday, I will be making a huge step – I will be incorporating as Brian Gardner Media, LLC. I know that officially becoming a company in itself isn’t a big deal, but in my life it signifies movement that has really needed to happen for some time now.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was built. And for those who are looking for custom blog design, WordPress tips or more Revolution themes, tomorrow will be a step closer in me taking the giant leap of faith that I’ve been dreaming of. More time = more ability to work with you all.

Just bare with me as I focus on things that I need to right now, because it will undoubtedly open up the possibilities that will make us all happy!