thisismyurl.com
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A personal blog with technology advice and marketing information for small business owners.
Posts Tagged ‘Free Downloads’
26
Nov
2009
Nov
2009
05
Jun
2009
Jun
2009
Free WordPress Theme – One Night in Paris
This is a complete edit of my earlier One Night in Paris theme for WordPress, I build the original theme over a year ago and have spent a lot of hours improving my skills since then, so here’s my latest free WordPress theme release for everybody to download and enjoy.
The theme features a rich, three column layout for the homepage and a large single column for content within the website. I’ve purposely left formating to a minimum on this theme to allow web designers to rapidly introduce their own creative elements to the theme and make changes.
You can preview the theme live here on thisismyurl.com or download and enjoy the theme free of charge on your own website.
11
Mar
2009
Mar
2009
Why Redesign My Website?
a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool.
By definition the web is a fluid medium, it ebbs and flows like a river. In fact, when I formed my first web development company I pondered a wide variety of names and first settled on Eddy as my company name. Eddy is both a persons name (informal for Edward) and also a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool. Exactly what I wanted my company to do. To be honest, the company was ready to be launched, we had brochures designed, logos ready and then one night at dinner I was speaking to my wife about the launch when my five year old son asked “Do I know Eddy?”.
That stopped me dead in my tracks and made me take a step back. I stayed up late that night looking at the company and realized that I had been too close to the problem, I’d become blind to the obvious and my attention was so focussed on the details that I’d not looked at the larger picture. The old expression “you can’t see the forest for the trees” came to mind but in this case, it wasn’t just about some vague concept it was about money. Eddy died that night but Rodonic was born.
Rodonic web design services, Ottawa
Rodonic was a funny company name, it was intentionally designed to mean nothing. In fact, when Rodonic was launched there was no other uses of the word in the Google database. That was great for branding and helped ensure the company was a success.
Where with Eddy I focussed only on my desires for branding, Rodonic was all about others. The name, selected in part for its vagueness was a perfect software company name. We tested the name to ensure it could work with various titles such as Rodonic WordPress, Rodonic DRAW, etc. and it stacked up as well as Corel, Microsoft or Adobe (I was young and had big dreams). What it lacked however was a passionate team behind it and eventually the business closed.
Why Redesign thisismyurl.com?
Just like Eddy, I was so close to the old design that I’d forgotten to check if the visiting public could find things easily on the website and just like Rodonic sometimes you have to take a deep breath and accept that changes are needed. The top navigation of the old design had bugged me for some time but more importantly, I had to ask myself what the purpose of my website is (remember, that’s one of the ways to make a successful website). This is what I came up with:
- Provide quality, informative posts related to the space between design and technology.
- Provide easy access to downloads.
- Inform the public about my technical and creative skills.
Oddly, my website structure of the old site was too cluttered and confusing for most people to find my most popular WordPress plugins easily. So I took a bit of time and redesigned the layout. Some of the new features of the site are just to show off but others are designed to make using the website much easier to use.
Automatic highlighting of key posts
Key posts are now highlighted
One of the big improvements to the website is for navigation and highlighting of critical posts. Throughout the website downloads are now automatically highlighted in the listings with icons to represent the categories they belong to. So far, I’ve highlighted:
- Free downloads
- WordPress downloads (as well as Plugins and Themes)
- osCommerce downloads
- Macintosh downloads
- Windows downloads
Automated content additions
To further assist users to find key content such as downloads, I’ve added an automated piece of text at the bottom of key articles, designed to help users find other related downloads much faster.
These new additions to each page are found on all pages that share a common category. For example, if a post is included in the Free downloads category, a paragraph and link to free downloads is included on the bottom of each post. The text is automatically applied from a central repository and increased the displayed count as I add downloads to the specific category.
Improved header
By far the biggest addition to the website is a new, cleaner header. The new header is designed to show the key navigation and highlight sub navigation quickly.
I’ve used standard CSS layers to highlight the active page as well as to focus attention on mouseover states. The key advantage over previous designs is that I can now help surfers find downloads and blog posts much faster.
Ongoing changes
There’s a lot more to come over the next few weeks, and as always I would love to hear back from you so if you’re having a problem finding content on my site, confused by navigation or just want to say hi, I’d love to hear from you. – Chris
27
Jan
2009
Jan
2009
10 Free WordPress Theme’s for Your Web Site
This weekend I was updating my category list here on thisismyurl.com and I was really surprised to find that I have 10 free WordPress themes for people to download. My partner Chris Bavota has another handful of awesome free downloads over on his website as well, so take a look and let me know what you think:
- Free WordPress Theme – Pink Flowers
- Bloody Mess of a WordPress Theme
- Free Community Friendly Theme
- Free WordPress Theme – One Night in Paris
- Free SEO WordPress Theme for Small Business Web Sites
- WordPress Magazine Theme – Free Dark Version
- Smashingly Good Free Magazine Theme for WordPress
- Free Magazine WordPress Theme
- Free WordPress Theme – a Night in Paris
- Minimalist Fixed Free WordPress Theme
Do you like what you see? Let me know, leave me a comment or tell me what you think is wrong with the themes and I’ll be sure to tweak them in the coming months.
26
Dec
2008
Dec
2008
Fundraising Thermometer Plugin for Wordpress
Features
The fund raising tool is a true WordPress plug-in, testing with WordPress 2.7 and fully functional. It features:
- W3C compliant Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- Dynamically updated text including target and current fund status
- Money formating options for use internationally
- Theme options, allowing designers to customize the look of the thermometer
- Call either the graphic or a formated number to display in text.
Admin Features
The new interface allows uses to set both the current amount (what has been raised) as well as the target amount (what you want to raise). The script automatically generates the ten steps in between and displays them for the user.
The plugin auto detects if the money_format() function is present and will use it automatically if found, otherwise it will display the currency using the number format function automatically.
How It Works
To display the current amount of money raised (in currently format) place the following code in your theme:
<?php echo show_ourprogress();?>
For a graphical version (by default the thermometer), include the following code:
<?php show_ourprogress_graphic();?>
Where to Get It
The plugin can be downloaded from the official WordPress repository:
How You Can Help
I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.
Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.
12
Dec
2008
Dec
2008
Five more free social networking icons for you to digg on.
So the other day I uploaded a series of icons for social networking websites, here’s five more for you to enjoy. I’ve included new ones for FriendFeed, Blogger, Twitter, Skype and LiveJournal.
11
Dec
2008
Dec
2008
Nine Free Christmas Icons for your website (and Yan)
Yan’s totally right, it’s crazy of me to use this new found talent for icon design to just create social networking icons, so thanks to Randy Robertson’s awesome family Christmas tree photo’s I’ve uploaded nine new festive holiday icons to warm the cockles of your heart.
If you don’t have cockles, maybe tomorrow I’ll do something more sinister for you.
By the way, you can visit Yan’s blog and read about the seven deadly sins (sorta Christmasish) or subscribe to my RSS feed for get more free, cool icons later.
10
Nov
2008
Nov
2008
Looking to win a premium WordPress theme?
Blog-Oh-Blog is running a free giveaway contest for premium themes, if you’re looking to win a premium theme for your WordPress blog.
http://www.blogohblog.com/mega-contest-win-10-premium-themes-worth-700/
30
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
WordPress from contests to templates, and a cool pumpkin to boot.
I found a couple of interesting WordPress websites today, there’s an ongoing competition going on but I think Eric has to win for the best WordPress website today, he’s done a great Pumpkin carving that is sure to amuse even Matt. Speaking of WordPress, if you’re looking for a WordPress expert for your next job you’re looking for some freelance WordPress work, you should take a look at http://jobs.wordpress.net.
On a more technical note, there was an interesting piece about stripping classnames in WordPress which pointed to a couple of great sources to how to fix this problem at MaisonBisson.com. And of course, a lot more press about the LinkedIn plugin here and here.
To wrap it up today … 21 WordPress themes:
20
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Free SEO WordPress Theme for Small Business Web Sites
As part of my goal to create and upload five WordPress themes that are Search Engine Optimized, I’ve finished my second theme, it’s a simple website design for small businesses.
The purpose of this theme was to create a simple, clean, professional website design for companies who need an online presence without the clutter of a normal blog. It’s not a very exciting theme, actually it’s a little on the plain side but it does feature a simple single column design with widget ready footer and nice big text which will help people read the site.
I’ve also taken the time to include a lot of SEO features for beginner website owners, these search engine tools are built right into the template and will auto generate headers, META and titles suitable for Google to index effectively. It’s an ideal blog design for a church or community group, or a small business on a budget.
You’re welcome to download the template for free. If you like this theme but would like to have it customized or installed for you, why not contact me? I’m available for WordPress consulting, theme customization and freelance development.
18
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
WordPress Magazine Theme – Free Dark Version
So after I finished creating A Smashingly Good Free Magazine Theme for WordPress my first WordPress theme focused on Search Engine Optimization, I had some feedback from a couple of friends who liked it but found the theme a little effeminate. To that end I took a bit of time this weekend and put together a slightly darker version, hopefully this will inspire real men to enjoy the theme.
The theme still uses header artwork from Smashing Magazine as well as the icons. I’ve darkened the great tiling background I found online for free.
I’m not going to count this theme towards my WordPress theme focused on Search Engine Optimization but I am going to let you download it for free. If you like this theme but would like to have it customized or installed for you, why not contact me? I’m available for WordPress consulting, theme customization and freelance development.
17
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Smashingly Good Free Magazine Theme for WordPress
On Friday I promised to create some free SEO focused website templates for WordPress. The is the first in the series, a three column magazine layout style theme which you can use to power your business, community organization or church.
The header artwork comes from Smashing Magazine. They also provided the icons, but not the great tiling background that I came across a few weeks ago. The template design has been tested in WordPress 2.6 on Safari and FireFox as well as Internet Explorer. I’ve depended a lot on a series of article by Nathan Rice on Search Engine Optimization for WordPress as well as a few SEO articles of my own.
Some of the features of this design include:
- Widget ready
- Search Engine Optimized
- Gravatar ready
- Optimized Titles
- Optimized Keywords using Tags
- Optimized Page Descriptions
- Double Post Protected
You’re welcome to download the theme for free.
If you like this theme but would like to have it customized or installed for you, why not contact me? I’m available for WordPress consulting, theme customization and freelance development.
So what do you think? Tell me how you’d like to see me improve this template for future versions.
Update: October 18th – I’ve just added a dark version of this theme as well.
Update: October 20th – I’ve just added a the next theme in this theory.
17
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Five Free SEO WordPress Themes in Five Days
After reading a great series by Nathan Rice on the setup of WordPress for search engine optimization I’ve decided to spend next week developing a series of freemium WordPress templates for businesses to use on their own business websites. A few weeks back, I wrote an article on how you could put up a website for just $100, these templates would be wonderful for companies interested in building an affordable website for little money.
Free, Freemium or Premium?
Part of why I like being in the WordPress community is the co-operative nature of the community and how we support each other by building better plug ins, better templates and helping to improve the core of the software. To that end, the idea of Premium WordPress themes offends me just a little but I also appreciate everybody needs to make money so I’m torn. There are advantages to Premium themes and money does motivate people to make better themes so I guess I’m at a loss for how to release these themes.
With that said, I plan to release the next five themes as my own version of Feemium. For those who are WordPress experts already, you’ll be able to download them and use them under a license but for those who need help, I’ll provide installation and configuration for a consulting fee. Specifically, the new themes will feature a few things:
- They will feature strong designs with various businesses in mind. My previous theme was attractive but these will be better.
- They will follow heuristic rules, both my own and those of industry experts.
- The designs will be usable, with a focus on usability for the end user.
- Each design will be optimized for the web and search engines using the practices I’ve previously discussed.
You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to see the results or check back often.
The Themes:
16
Oct
2008
Oct
2008
Winter Wonderland Flash Animation Contest
November 16th – Thanks to everybody who showed interest in the contest, I had a lot of emails about it and there seemed to be some real interest but in the end, nobody sent in an entry.
What could be better than building awesome Flash animations? What about building great Flash animations that reward you with up to $1,000 and a free copy of the Adobe CS4 Creative Suite (Production or Web)? I was reading a great article over at Upstart Blogger this morning and I thought, what better way to reward my readers than to give away a copy of something we could all benefit from.
Create a Flash animation no longer than two minutes in length about winter, the winter season or holidays in winter. Contest closes November 15th and voting begins the next day! There are five different prizes, so best of luck.
Now, I have some ground rules that you need to agree to first.
- You must use legitimate, licensed versions of Adobe Flash to create your animation.
- You must own the content or permission to use the content of your animation.
- You may enter multiple animations in this contest, but only one per entry.
- You may have a team or work independently but there is only one prize per entry.
- Your animation may be no longer than two minutes in length.
- Your animation may not contain anything vulgar, vile, disgusting or nasty.
- Your animation must focus on winter holidays, the winter season or winter related subject matter.
- Your animation must be original and will be exclusively hosted here.
How to enter:
- Create your totally awesome animation in Adobe Flash.
- Send me your SWF of your animation by email along with:
- name
- age
- email address
- telephone number
- link to your website
- a brief bio (100 words or less)
- name of the animation
- a brief description of the animation
- Wait for the confirmation email. If you don’t get one within 24 hours, send me a message to confirm I received your animation.
- Once your animation is posted, I’ll send you a second email and you’ll be able to see it online!
Prizes:
- First Place wins $500 and a copy of Adobe CS4 Creative Suite (Production or Web).
- Second Place wins $250.
- Third Place wins $100.
- Most commented video wins $75.
- Most linked to video wins $75.
Legal stuff and things I’m required to say:
- If you don’t get a confirmation email from me, you’re not entered in the contest.
- Contest entry ends November 15th, 2008 at midnight here in Fredericton.
- Voting begins November 16th, 2008 at midnight here in Fredericton and closes on December 15th, 2008 at midnight here in Fredericton.
- Adobe has nothing to do with this contest, nor do they endorse or sponsor it.
- You grant me the right to display your video here on my website.
- No purchase required to enter.
- I have the right to limit, refuse or reject animations for any reason.
- I reserve the right to terminate or withdraw the contest at any time without prior notice.
- The contest is subject to all federal, provincial, and municipal laws.
- This contest is operated under the laws of the province of New Brunswick, Canada.
- Comments, votes, links etc. are counted based on the data available on my website at the time of closing.
- It must be legal for you to enter this contest in your own jurisdiction.
- The prizes must be accepted as awarded. No substitutions or exchanges for cash or other items of value are permitted.
- Winners will be selected by a panel of three judges.
Best of luck! If you have questions, feel free to ask.
