Last year, I announced a site reboot with this post, but this time around I’m letting you all down and keeping the same site design. (Sorry, I’ve promised to reboot less this year than I did last year!)

Anyway, I wanted to make an announcement that I’ll be heading out on vacation towards the end of this week, and am taking another round of “time off.” (Although I will say that it’s not fully time off, since Royal Caribbean provides internet access onboard!)

If you’ve read my about page, you already know that my wife Shelly and I love to cruise, so yes, we’re heading out on another one. This time around, we are celebrating the fact that this Thursday is her last day of employment, and when we return, she’ll be taking care of our son Zach full time. Very cool news for our family, something I’ve been wanting for a long time!

Her newfound venture as a mommy means a few things for me and my business - it will provide me more time to focus on my work. Which translates to more blogging here, more support (from me, personally) on the support forums, more free themes, further Revolution development, etc.

I actually am pretty excited to get back from vacation, since her and I were both trying to work from home and watch Zach at the same time. So that pretty much explains the part time blog/design thing that I’ve been doing the past few months.

I have a number of things that I will be doing upon my return, one of which is the continued brainstorming of an idea I had a while back, and more importantly a line of Revolution theme concepts that I think will be a big hit. So until then, let’s hope the boat doesn’t sink, and that I get back in one piece!

Recently I was asked by a friend of mine named Mike Sigers of Simplenomics if I’d be interested in collaborating with him to do a live teleseminar on the subject of premium WordPress themes.

I decided it would be a fun, interactive way to share some of my thoughts about premium themes and their place in the WordPress community.

You can go there and ask any question you have and we’ll get as many as we can answered on March 25th at 10 PM Eastern, 9 PM Central and 7 PM Pacific time.

You’ll be able to phone in or use a web player to listen thru your computer. Your choice because we want as many live participants as possible. I will also be announcing a special Revolution discount during the seminar which you will be able to use on any upcoming Revolution theme purchases.

As Revolution celebrates it’s 6-month anniversary, I wanted to take some time and recognize a few sites that have really taken the themes to a higher level. The sites listed below pretty much leave me speechless.

All I can do is post links and let you see for yourself - consider this the best of the best of the Revolution showcase. A very special congratulations goes out the the developers and owners of these sites, for a job well done. Superb work!

A Visual Guide to the Online Bride
Chassy Studios
Forest for Trees
The Art of Jacob Charles Dietz
Quarterlives
Womenfolk

Many of you know that I recently announced that I will be re-releasing all of my free WordPress themes. Well the first theme is done, and is now ready for you to download. (2-column re-release coming next!)

You can view the demo to see the Vertigo 3-Column theme in action and can download on the theme page. Please let me know if you see any bugs or layout issues.

A few things that I want to point out that are different:

• The overall style (fonts/colors) have changed a bit
• The navbar has now been coded to accommodate a 2-level dropdown menu
• The sidebars on the demo site are using widgets
• There are now sidebar icons that come with the theme
• Google AdSense can easily be added through a text widget

Over the past six months I have spent a lot of time developing and supporting my Revolution themes. Even though it’s been a really fun and interesting period of time, I haven’t forgotten about those of you who use my free WordPress themes.

Throughout the next few weeks, I will be re-releasing my free themes - primarily the ones that have been the most popular. I have learned a lot throughout the course of Revolution, and would like to update the code on all of the free themes that I have made available to the public.

I want to make sure that all of these themes will validate and be XHTML compliant, as well as ensure that all of the themes will be Widget ready. Here’s a list of the free themes that I will go through and update the code on:

• Blue Zinfandel
• Downtown Java
• Dropshadow
• Silhouette
• Tapestry
• Vertigo
• Whitespace

As part of this process, I will also be updating the way that my WordPress themes page looks, and updating the demo site as well. Oh, and by the way, this also means that there will be a few more free WordPress themes coming - I already have one in the works, and have ideas on a few others.