A small micro site launched for PRO AVS (Another project in the making), which is to aim traffic at there plasma screen rental service. The domain name fits the profile for searchable terms when looking for plasma screens.
URL: www.plasmascreenrentals.co.uk
I love free stuff so thought I would contribute.
I recently was asked to design and build a small site for a coach firm based in Hampshire. The initial design I come up with was not really brand friendly so have moved on to the new one.
I must admit I liked the original design, It may not have fit with branding but it was a simple, and easy to build site so thought I would give it away.
The file is a PNG Fireworks CS3 file, so please be aware of that. So why not download it.
Frog CMS seems to be a new player in the market at the moment, and I have to say so far I am reasonably impressed. In my opnion CMS generally are so bloody complicated that you tend to look at them play for a bit and then slag them off because you could not quite get it right.
Well I have been working with Frog recently when I have a spare min (Which to be honest is not often), and have found it to be very nice to work with. It is as is says a lightweight CMS, no libary of a million plugins that could be cut to 10 because they all do the same thing. It is lightweight with a gew developers who have grown to enjoy using and programming with it.
True to most open source solutions, it is a bit buggy and certain improvments could be made but on the whole it works as a nice development platform and also allows a client to create pages really simply. The use of snippets and layouts(templates) makes the whole system feel a lot more controlled from a developer point a view, meaning the user need not worry about wrecking what you have done.
I shall keep on working on it and let you know when I have something produced it in it (See you in 2010 then).
It has really taken off this month – I have work coming out of my ears. My typing arm is a bit knackered from all the hockey I have been playing and falling over a lot and then being spanked by the strikers, consequently I have just invested 500 British pounds of my monet in a new kit, 500 pounds for four bits of foam.
Anyway – I have managed to secure Releif Milkerz, C&F Hockey, DLP Coaches, Showbiz Spy and Mantek as clients and a couple of others on the card. Releif Milkerz is the site I am currently working on and is a big project which in my opnion is going to work really well, very niche!.
C&F Hockey Club Design
Relief Milkerz Concept
Also this month I finally got iwantotworkinoz up and running – you can see it at www.iwanttoworkinoz.com.
Spending time away from my blog has been common practice for me as of late – I could use an excuse of “I’m too busy” but that is not the case, but I somewhat think it will be very soon.
This month has probably been the most exciting and rewarding for me of late as I have managed to get 4 web projects from my website, Hooray!. One is a static site with wordpress integrated, another a bespoke CMS and Showbiz Spy comes home (Another wordrpress site). I also have some consultancy on a WordPress project and helping implementation from a local to live enviroment. I can wait.
So what else is new, Well I found and finally signed up to carbonmade an online portfolio site which I will be using to showcase designs to clients, it just beats an online secure area which would just be a nightmare to build with all this work going on. I am officaly now a GAWDS member (Guild of Accessible Web Designers, you can see my ugly mug and profile at their website .
In terms of coding I actually sat down and played with Paypal’s sanbox, and got all the IPN crap working. You are probably wondering why not sooner? well to be fair I have not really needed to know it, but now I do I decided to have a play.
Nascar Skins seems to be doing well, I just dont have the time to update it and create more skins and will be releasing a new upload your skin page soon so it is self populated. Also Graphic River was unvailed and I have got to say it is a fantastic website, I love it! – Istock vectors for $20 sod off!, $5 for some awesome work good effort from the envato boys.
I plan to release some new freebies soon, so keep coming back.
You havent heard from me in a while I know a bit slack really from my good self.
I have been really hammering away at wordpress and working with it’s API. I have got to be honest I have learnt so much it is unbeliavble, the best thing was learning about all the bits and pieces that you don’t look into as I normally just use it as a news section for clients sites.
What I have noticed is the abillity to manipulate the way it works and build around the way it works and how easy it is to add the theme options and extended functions to make the site do what you want to do. I finally loooked at the Custom Fields in posts and realised how easy it is to add them to really give your posts an extra dimension instead of just having a list of posts.
Normally with CMS WP installaions what you find is it is just the Pages that end up being used and the posts are applied as News within the site. What I have found is a way of making posts power various parts of the site so you cna have many dynamic CMS pages, its all very good.
At the end of the day I would still favour bespoke builds of CMS over a WP installation any day as in my opnion WordPress is a blogging platform and that is what it should be used for, but then again it is easier to use rather than drupal or joomala in my opnion which to a client you need to have a degree in computer sciences to even comprehend how it all works.
Ok a lack of blogging of late which as been a poor performance by myself. But I have not had a lot to talk about. I am still building a couple of sites and a have a couple of projects coming up.
I have decided to move forward and actually finish a small private project as I still get of hundreds of visits to my Nascar Skins site, so it would make sense to finish it and grab some revenue from it.
Pro Avs and Plasma screen rentals are on hold at the moment while the client gathers content. I have got a couple of projects up my sleeve one of which is simple but could become completely viral (Details to follow).
Well thats a another month over – of programming, twittering and swearing lots at my PC.
Loving spreadshirt and I have just opened my own shop. There is nothing in it yet but I plan to have some Clark Studio’s related fashion soon. Check back.
Oh dear,
It happened. I accidently overwrote this site’s CSS file by accident and buggered it right up. I stupidly against my better judgement worked live for a while and never made a back up of the file.
My tip of the day: upload a second version of your CSS file and rename it to _mycss.css just so you can quickly revert it if you make a fatal error, like I did.
Gutted.
New Clients
Pro Avs and Twinkle Twinkle little bride have entrusted their brands and websites to me. The Pro Avs site is designed and is 50% built, while content is finalised. Expect a mid Feburary launch. Another couple of websites have come in as well, which I have quoted for,
Near completion of my first Flash Game
Nealry done it. Based soley on the arcade game derby day which inolved you betting 10p’s on the horse you wanted to win and then wathcing them move down the track on metal poles. It was legened and many a pound has been lost on it. I am writing it at work to be laumched at April. Still a lot to do but it works nice.
Left 4 Dead
As you will all probably kno, I spend my spare time on my Xbox 360 and I love it. This year brought some stonking titles such as Call of Duty: World at War, Prince Of Perisa, Fall out 3 to name a few but the out and out winner for me had to be Left 4 Dead, simply awesome. Valve have done it again and I would suggest to anyone who owns a PC or 360 to go out and get a copy, Shooting waves of zombies is so fun. Think 28 days later with 4 player co-op online and you will get the picture. Pure legend.
Other Bits
Got me golf handicap down, played my first dj set (badly), Got spoilt at christmas and got my business cards made. Its a winner.
Paypal account getting fleeced
Bastards from Hong Kong managed to get hold of my paypal account details and transfer $1000 2 weeks before christmas, that was all I needed but paypal sorted it. It did take 3 weeks but they sorted it in the end.
Installing a new hard drive
Boo, my trusty old 20 gig filled up so went and bought a new 300gb to tied me over. It took me 2 days to migrate my old hard drive to my new one. Norton Ghost could’nt do it nor could disk image creator. In the end a trip to PC World saw me part with twenty of our English pounds to buy a mickey mouse looking product which in all fairness worked like a charm. My machine is now flying. Hoorah!.
© Clark Studios & Steven Clark 2008 | I Love It.