This week I released a new wordpress theme to WordPress called Clockwork. It was built on the Carrington framework, features a very clean interface and is perfect for your average blogger. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Download it!

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of people who want little changes on the theme Watercolor, today I’m going to address those changes, as well as update the theme. This is the biggest update yet, because I’ve changed the framework this theme was based off of. I had a little trouble with WP Framework, which is what I used for the previous versions of Watercolor, so I moved to Carrington CMS framework, which I’ve been using for all of my recent projects.

Because the whole theme was rebuilt, there are a lot of changes. Feel free to contact me if you see any bugs, errors, or want any changes to the theme. Most of the changes are behind the scenes, although if you are using a Webkit based browser such as Safari or Chrome, you may notice some new visuals. Ok, here’s how to change the way your title displays.

Using CSS

*requires a basic knowledge of CSS

1) Open carrington-text.css inside Watercolor>css

2) replace

#blog-description {
	line-height:60px;
	font-size:30px;
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
	color: rgb(83, 20, 55);
	text-shadow:0 0 1px #fff;
}

and

#blog-title a, #blog-title a:visited {
	font-size: 90px;
	text-decoration: none;
	line-height:120px;
	margin:0;
	padding:0;
	color: rgb(66, 53, 110);
	text-shadow:1px 1px 1px #fff;

}

with your own CSS.

Using an Image

*Photoshop or it’s free alternative Gimp is required for this

1)Download PSD below

Download PSD (11MB)

2) Open with either Photoshop or Gimp

3) Change image to your liking. (title, tagline, font, logo, etc.)

4) Save file as title.jpg

5) Place file in Watercolor>img (replace existing file)

6) Open header-default.php , located in Watercolor>header

7) Find the line starting in <!-- and delete <!-- and -->

That should be all. If you have any questions feel free to contact me and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can.

Download Watercolor

Sometimes the best applications around are free. Web design is one of the easiest jobs to get into, because there are literally no investments you have to make to get into it. If you look around enough, you can find the free version for anything. For example, you don’t want to shell out a few hundred dollars on Photoshop? Get Gimp. Don’t want to spend six bucks a month on hosting? Use a free host. Don’t want to pay $16 to register a domain name? Get one free. With all of the free applications out there, some of the best ones get lost in the mix though. Here are the three essentials for any aspiring web designer or developer.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim optimizes your images for size, without any change in quality. With its simple GUI all that you have to do is drop your image onto the ImageOptim icon, and you’re done. It’s great for PNGs and JPEGs.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a fast and free ftp client that beats all of its competition. Don’t be fooled by a childlish icon, Cyberduck does it all.

Text Wrangler

Text Wrangler is a fast, and powerful text editor, perfect for HTML, PHP, CSS, or Javascript. Text Wrangler is the perfect companion to Cyberduck, and when used together, can update files online without ever having to manually download or upload a thing.

In web design, one of the most important things to know is how to sell yourself. Some of the best designers in the world have the knowledge and skill to create beautiful websites, but they don’t know how to get out there. Here are three tips to getting your foot in the door.

1. Give Stuff Away

Here’s the best one to start off with. When you first start off as a web designer or developer, you don’t have a portfolio. Nobody is going to pay you if they don’t know what you can do. In almost all businesses you’re going to have to put a little  in to get anything out. In web design, it’s not actually materials or money, but time. Every time you give something away for free, you can put your name on it. You can even link to your own site. There are endless opportunities for offering free services.

My favorite is to create a WordPress theme and give it away on WordPress.org. If you searched my name on Google about five months ago, you would have gotten about twenty results total. Today if I search my name the results are around seven thousand, and the climb higher every day. That’s not because people are talking about me, it’s because I put my name on the bottom of every wordpress theme I make. People really do click on that stuff.

Another way is to do something for your local community. You could offer to do something for a local charity, like a food bank. Another great way to get your name out is to offer to do websites for your family. Chances are someone in your extended family owns a business, is in a school club, or has some sort of project they’d like a site for.

2. Undercharge Your Clients

This is a little harder to justify to yourself. You know your services are worth more, so why can’t you charge what they’re worth? Once you do have your name out there, you’re still not as credible as the local design company that’s been working in tables since 1996. They’ve done hundreds of websites, it doesn’t matter how bad they look. Your clients don’t really care if you’re the next big thing; they want someone they can trust. If they’re trying to decide between you and the local design company, who makes things look prettier is barely a factor in their decision. The two big things are money and reliability. You can’t provide them with the latter.

3. Word of Mouth

This is what the first two lead up to. The very best way to get clients is  from other clients. By giving your previous clients a good experience and an even better website, you’re getting the best PR available. Business owners will talk to other business owners, friends will talk to friends, bloggers will talk to bloggers, and in the end, you want that talk to be about you. Part of this is making sure that your clients are really happy with what you’ve done. Go above and beyond what you’ve promised them. Meet or beat the agreed upon completion date. Give them a reason to talk about you. You also have to make your information available to talk about. Give you clients a few of your business cards, create a portfolio, and make sure it’s on the first page of Google. After you’ve gotten all of this in place, clients will be seeking out you, not the other way around.

This is a project I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. It’s a flash game that Sean and I made for a Penn State Child Psychologist. We did it all in AS2 , which I don’t like as much as AS3, but it works. It was a good way to brush up on Flash since I haven’t been using it lately. We added a lot of cool features, like the ability to pick your own characters, drag and drop cookies, and a game where you could play ball with your friends. Now it’s time to start working on WordPress again.

Sean and I currently have a new design for BramblingDesign.com in the  works, as well as a new logo. We’re also pushing to get new clients, so if you have a website that you’d like done, be sure to contact us.

This summer I’m also set out to work on SEO, which means getting better results for my clients on Google. WordPress really helps with this. If you search for “State College Web Design” on Google, I’m now on the front page.

That’s all for now,

Tim Sainburg

I’ve been looking at two javascript libraries recently that I’m considering using for and upcoming project. The first, JQuery UI. Which has been around much longer is linked on the JQuery website. The second is a new library called JQuery Tools, created by the maker of the popular flash video player Flowplayer. They both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages which is what I’m going to discuss today. The article I’m writing is ‘JQuery Tools and JQuery UI’ because while I’m comparing them, they both have their purposes, and which one I decide to use isn’t based on which is better, but which is more appropriate of my current project.

What’s great about both of these libraries is the ease of use that they both have. They both give you a relatively small file, that makes all of your projects much faster. Rather than have to install multiple different javascript files for one page, all that I have to do is make a add one line of code to import the whole library. What’s even better is that I don’t even have to host the files myself. Google hosts JQuery and JQuery UI, while JQueryTools.org host JQuery tools. That means that I don’t have to expend bandwidth, and load times will be much faster.

The obvious advantage of JQuery UI is that it’s been around longer. It’s got more support and virtually no bugs. UI has many great feature such as the Datepicker. Which would be useful of contact forms (whereas previously using MooTools I had to load a whole new javascript file). It’s also got a few fun little effects which serve very little purpose, to me at least, but look cool. It comes with customizable themes, where you can create your own or use one of the many default themes it has. It really makes the whole experience feel like a desktop application over the traditional static web page.

JQuery Tools does plays more of an enhancement role in user interface. Rather than attempt to change the way the web works, Tools tries to simplify it. Tools comes with a myriad of simplifications to normal JQuery, as demonstrated on the demo area of it’s site. Some of the more useful of these to me would be the overlay, the scrollbar, tabs, and the flashembed. It’s easy to see why this new library has been getting so much attention since it’s release.

In conclusion, for my next project it looks like I’ll try out JQuery Tools. Tools has may of the design enhancements that could be useful in this project, whereas UI would be better suited being used in a larger, more structured website.

Today I submitted to wordpress.org an updated version of my Watercolor WordPress theme to WordPress.org. This update applies the WP Framework update, along with fixing back end problems. The updated theme will (probably) be available mid day Monday. Thanks to everyone for informing me of the bugs in the previous version. If any more problems occur or bugs are spotted, please send a message on the Contact Me page of the blog.

This blog/ portfolio has been around for almost a month now, and has brought me a lot of good recognition. This post is just to thank some of the websites that have featured my new theme Watercolor.

This is another example design I did for brambling. We’re working on finding a niche in the local restaurant market, so what better way to do that than show them what we can do? The whole restaurant is fictional. It was built on wordpress, from the Carrington CMS theme. The menu items are posts, which are displayed using special tags, categorized by using ‘categories’ and ‘tags’. Hopefully we’ll find a restaurant that’s interested in our work that we can implement this for.

Here’s another old one. This is my first wordpress theme ever. I actually really like this design, despite it’s defaultish blog feel. I built this one off of the default wordpress theme, and barely even touched the HTML. I did go back through it recently though, and added a few javascript effects. All in all, I really like it.

Heres the link to download it.

To be honest, the only reason I put this in here is because I can’t believe I stumbled upon it. This is the first websites I’d ever done, just after I had learned CSS. I made this as a template to show to any local companies as an idea of what we could do for them.

This is my old design portfolio. There’s not all that much to say here, what you can see is what it was. It never went live because I hadn’t finished it before I came up with the idea for this site.

This is a fairly recent design (as of the post time). I made it as something to help me learn a little more about wordpress, and it helped. If you want it it’s located at wordpress.org. It’s got a few features such as custom text, widget support, custom page width, custom color scheme, and a nifty little sign in feature at the top.

This one should be pretty familiar. I did the design, the Javascript, the CSS, the Html, and some PHP. I might just release it as a wordpress theme, if anybody wants it.

This is a little project I did for myself during April. It was just a fun little project, but I think It turned out well. If you want a copy of it send me a message. Otherwise it hasn’t been uploaded yet.