I am blowing my vuvuzela too. Not for the world cup, but rather to give it up to the 200+ contributors who saw to it that wordpress 3.0 would see the day. My excitement is that today, June 17th 2010 the wordpress MU doesn’t exist “officially”  anymore, though it lives on via regular wordpress thanks to the 3.0 release of the world’s best Open source software!

That’s the excitement actually. As of the new release, the wordpress Multi blogging functionalities are included with regular wordpress. There is a whole lot more about this major breakthrough as you can read from wordpress.org , I just wanted to share with you the exciting news!

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For those of you who have followed my movements recently, you probably realized I mention “wordpress 3.0″  more often than necessary probably. The excitement stems both from my love for the world’s best Open Source CMS , and that of new features to be added  to it. The beta 1 came out  but I did not test. Then did beta 2 and still I refrained from rushing, but now that the  release candidate is out, I can’t help it. Usually, it was set  for May 2010 and we are on the 29th. You can imagine how tough a month  it has been because every morning before I opened  my email I had to make sure the release is not out yet. I know. . .hein. . .I love wordpress that  much!

I was just sharing the news and hope we get to merge WP mu and regular WP soon. Meanwhile, enjoy!

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Before jumping to conclusions, allow me to make it clear that I do not teach mothers anything. After all, my motherhood abilities are 100% challenged. However, I work with someone who teaches mothers stuff. For instance, how to practice better self care. Her name is Mia Redrick. She is the founder of Finding Definitions , a company based in Baltimore, MD – USA. She does a lot of things  but web design and develoment is certain one of those. That’s why she decided to let me take over just about a month or so ago.

The thing is, she has a network of moms she wants to bring together via http://timeformom-me.com to help them practice better self care. Do I understand everything there? You bet I don’t. However, I make sure they can do what they want with the website, and that the site looks as they want it to. That’s the job of a web designer anyhow.

It is now my second week managing the site on a part time basis, but the experience is very rewarding. With more than fifty blogs already, you can look and imagine what it will be within the next few months. I am excited and challenged to come up with new solutions to make the experience of the users even more rewarding!

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LegallySpeakingOnline is based on a simple wordpress theme designed by JanvierDesigns.com  from scratch. The task was to change an existing website to wordpress, which we did!

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Brian Gardner may be a hopless Starbucks addict, but he is not  a society junky. Not as yet anyway… He’s actually one of the most achieved Internet designers there’s. Well, as far as wordpress is concerned, because of the amazing StudioPress themes. They are the most widely recommended wordpress themes and used  by important people like   Rosalind Gardner and other “big fish in the Internet marketing pond. He is also a web consultant charging a whopping $125/hr, but that’s not the point. The main reason I write this post is to discuss the StudioPress Themes. I recommend  them because I have worked with them on more than one occasion and they are just  great. Let me detail some more.

1. Highly Customizable.

   Studio Press themes are highly customizable because they are designed with the blog owner in mind and come in different varieties and  forms. Agent theme, Album theme, Allure wordpres, Black canvas, Chrome wordpress, Church wordpress, Corporate (my favourite), Lifestyle, Metro wordpress, Shades, Streamline,… or you can have them all and choose which one suits your needs. In other words, whatever your website needs, there is  a studiopress theme ready. Another intersting feature they have is the article image and gallery image custom files. You can imbed image in a sliding gallery and place small (or large) thumbnails on each post in a given category. Absolutely fantastic!!

2. Incredibly Beautiful.

   The Only reason that makes the Studio Press themes  stand out is their professional look. Simply the best, both  by the way the content is spread over the page and by the overall layout of 960 width pixels.

3. Affordable

   Designing a well structured wordpress theme to impress is not a one day task. Studio press come at a reasonable price individually( Agent theme, Album theme, Allure wordpres, Black canvas, Chrome wordpress, Church wordpress, Corporate , Lifestyle, Metro wordpress, Shades, Streamline ) or in a pack.

4. Very simple (Front and Back ends)
   

   I have been working with StudioPress themes (from the time they were revolution themes) for a little over a year now. The php code that generate them is pretty simple and straightforward, especially Brian provides support remarkably well. Customizing them is as simple as can possibly be for a rather professional wordpress  theme.  The CSS for the themes is also well structured and most importantly, very well documented! I love them.

If you are looking for a professional looking website without having to srill a hole in your wall, Studio Press is a good choice. Not only are these themes pretty simple  to install, you can also get a lot of help should things become hard for you. At Janvierdesigns.com we can help customize the theme for you starting from $65 and delivered within no more than three days.  Please contact Janvier for more information on this and a free quote.

Get Professional Studio Press themes.

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When am used to working with wordpress so much that I tend not to think about any other CMS out there. Well, it’s my weakness and I am not alone in the basket. Visit CNN.com, reuters.com , Yahoo! , about.com , techcrunch.com and many more It sure could be a coincidence that we all are weirdos, with no sense of reason, but I don’t think so! WordPress is simply irresistible and so powerfully tailored to making  Publishing easy, practical and secure.

Ignatianspirituality.com became another addition to the wordpress family. When Denise contacted me to customize their thesis theme I wasn’t pretty sure where to start from given I had not worked with thesis before, but it’s a wordpress theme. How more complicated could it be? To my surprise, it  turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought. It’s entirely  on hooks. I won’t  go into details about the whole ordeal of editing php to generate CSS, but the most important part is that  it’s now live and running!!

PS: It has injected some more history as far as the Janvier – Sprtiality duo is concerned!

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When it comes to making a website presence, don’t make any mistake about it, the looks matter. The look of your site shouldn’t be the main focus of your site, but shouldn’t be the last one either. Some webmasters struggle with the idea, but here’s why… It’s all about how a particular visitor feels about your service. Consumer behavior at its best. So, for a customer shopping for a pair of shoes online, a site that seems to be shacked together in MS frontpage with some clearly “whatever” pages will certainly not perform better than one with a well organized and OSCART backed one. Because the latter will give a sense of more security to the user than the former.This is why some designers charge so much for their service if they are to design a custom template for you. Take Brian Gardner for instance. He charges $2500 / theme for a custom wordpress theme. That’s right, $2.5 K /Theme. Obviously this is far much more expensive than the $79/theme regular price for already complete revolution templates.

As far as I am concerned, I can design custom wordpress and joomla themes for your website. The one condition I require is that you know exactly what you want you template to be. In other words, I need a clear picture of what you expect from your theme. This is because once I start working on your theme, I can not add any new features or change those that are already present. The Price for a custom theme is $255 guaranteed delivery in a week from the time the quote is approved. For more info, check the pricing page.

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“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”.

I have had my share of absurd ideas from my early childhood, but the one to become my own boss as a web designer was probably the most profound. At least in the eyes of certain people. I decided to leave it all behind, to look  nowhere else but inside and unleash the designer in me. The truth is, I have fallen in love with php Programming since 2005 when I was trying to “automate”  my then static  website. I wanted to store information in a “table” of some kind instead of having to edit the page every time I need  to carry out a change. With a little search on google, almost accidentally I realized what I was trying to do was exactly what server-side programming is all about. PHP became  my language of choice and I haven’t looked  back ever since. In September 2006, I was “playing” in the CPANEL of  bluehost (my host)  and I realized they had a fantastico  icon. I followed the link and landed on a bunch of applications that could be installed on a mouse click. In the days that followed I targeted wordpress because it was  different from what I was used to. It turned out that wordpress is undoubtedly the best content management system  for publishing on the Internet  today! Since then, I have developed some skills  and a better understanding of programming generally and the Internet in particular.

I have a few  reasons I chose to be a designer and I will detail them shortly below.

1. A skill in demand.

   Today millions of websites and blogs are create every single day for various reasons. You will be surprised  how many people lack the skills to maintain their own websites and blogs and yet want an “Online presence”. That’s where designers like me come in. Designing  a  functionally professional website requires to create a database that stores the info, interactive scripts  that fetch the info from the database and populate the pages and/or the other way around, design the pages to give them an acceptably attractive look, optimize the site for Search engines, and collect relevant  information from visitors for analysis or other purposes.  These are skills I acquired over the years and that may be useful to someone.

2. I love it!

   Usually I refer to it as “web programming”. That is, designing and maintaining applications that interact to make websites more interesting. This may be in server-side languages such as PHP or ASP, or client side in Java, javascipt or any other. I almost don’t play with “basic html” anymore because I am more interested in generating it dynamically.

3. Flexibility.

   One other reason I am so sold to web design and web development  is the flexibility to do things as they make sense. So, in the morning if I am not pretty sure about a script A that requires a little more thinking I can do graphics or the other way around. I can work from 7Am to 7 pm or 2 Am to 11 Am. This enhances my creativity and relieves a lot of pressure and stress off my shoulders. I love web design as a job!

4. IT’S AN ART

   Of course it is! From my early childhood I loved drawing, singing and “making things”.  I have an artistically creative mind  I did not get to develop fully because I focused more on learning Science and mathematics.  When I am designing, I let my mind wonder, explore, experiment. I change things around, add, remove, join,.. It allows me to unleash the artist in me, not necessarily in the traditional sense of the word, and that’s what I love about it.

I have a few other reasons I choose to bring my web design skills out, but I will limit myself to letting you explore the site. If you have any question, use the contact me page and let me know. I will answer all the questions personally as accurately as possible.

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