The GROW Academy is an initiative to educate and empower the youth of today through technology. The Bootcamp session covers everything from social media and setting up e-mail, all the way through to search engine optimisation and an internet super-user course, for those who wish to continue on with more advanced studies. The GROW website’s “About” page (built on Canvas and Canvas BuddyPress by WooThemes) has a detailed explanation of the initiative and it’s founding partners.

This year, Jeff and I will be making some exciting additions to our presentation. While code, to some, can seem dry and boring, I can assure you that there’s nothing dry or boring about our presentation. We had such a blast at last year’s Bootcamp and are really looking forward to getting into some code with this year’s recruits.

If you’re keen to get involved with GROW, I’d encourage you to contact the GROW Academy and see how you can help out.

Remember: it’s all easy, and there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

For me, a blog redesign means quite a lot. It means the opportunity to hone my skills, experiment with new ideas and techniques and put a fresh coat of paint and a new engine behind my blog. Let me elaborate on the paint and engine for a moment.

Over the past few months, I’ve designed and developed at least 3 new themes for this blog. By the time I reach what looks like the end of the theme, I’ve become bored with the design or feel the code is now “old” and would prefer to start again on a new design idea I’ve come across while scouting around online for inspiration. This has proven to be a vicious cycle whereby the ultimate goal is never achieved: a new blog design.

Why not just get someone else to do it?

It comes down to personal preference on this one. I’m a professional web developer and am trained and qualified as a designer, so why not design and develop the theme myself? In addition, am I not letting an opportunity to show my abilities get put aside? In addition, at the end of the day, I can say that I designed and developed the entire theme from the ground up, which makes the achievement that much sweeter.

The search for perfection?

Designers often run into this, from what I’ve seen. There’s always something that can be done to improve a design further. Pixels can be shifted around until blue in the face… but will it ever be finished? The same goes for development. That one line of code can be optimised, written and re-written over and over until it becomes almost meaningless. Does it really improve or contribute anything?

Yes, it does. Does it have to be done right this very second, though? If it’s not a life-changing development decision, or an integral part of the design, probably not. Having the code as optimised as possible is great… but if no-one sees it, what good is it doing?

Final words…

With that said, I’ve come to a new conclusion (and am writing it in this post for posterity): a blog’s design is never truly “finished”. With the web evolving at the rate it is, it makes perfect sense to revamp your web presence every few months… kind of like putting a fresh coat of paint on a house. Therefore, I’ve published this redesign as is and will continue to work on it and make improvements. That way, the design and development will remain constantly fresh, and I’ll be able to hone my skills and experiment on things on a more regular basis, rather than tying that down into a phase of “I am now redesigning my blog, therefore, let me experiment”.

If you spot anything that could do with some more cowbell, give me a shout and I’ll get right on it.

For those who haven’t been following the hype marketing campaign for Obox Themes over the past few weeks, Obox Themes is a premium WordPress theme store set up by the team at Obox Design, selling WordPress themes of a premium grade, with extensive additional functionality and keen attention to design detail. The Obox website has had an overhaul as well and now boasts an integrated theme store and support forums for customers.

It’s really great seeing hard work and late nights come together into a truly awesome project and collection of themes (my current favourite is the “Pinotage” theme). I look forward to seeing more themes from Obox Themes. I now feel inspired to put together an awesome theme.

P.S I’ve worked with Arcade and yes… it is as awesome as it looks.

What about the design then? Does having “good content” render the design of your website unimportant and “obsolete”?

My answer is “no”.

If content is king, then surely design is queen. I believe that if your website’s design is good enough, your content won’t be the only reason users return to your website. I’d say it’s a balance between the two. Get a solid design going (it doesn’t have to be incredible… just solid and well considered) and have decent content on your website. That way, users are visually attracted and will enjoy your content at the same time. I picture two types of reader scenarios in this context:

Reader A would arrive at the website and think: “Wow, this is a cool looking website, let me read the content”.
and Reader B would think: “Wow, the content on this website is cool… nice design as well”.

So there you have it. The best of both worlds. And beside every strong king is a strong queen, helping to rule the kingdom.

I find inspiration to be an enigma. It can come from anything (a walk in the park, your favourite band, a smell in the air) and can be channeled into anything. For me, I’ve discovered that inspiration usually stems from things where I appreciate the quality of the end result; for example, a really slick looking design, really neat and streamlined code that serves an amazing function or a song that makes every vein in my body jump for joy.

Channeling this inspiration is the next step. How do we do it without losing the moment? I find that I need to act on my inspiration. If I see a really slick design that motivates me, I need to get on with a task and, in a sense, attempt to make it “as awesome” as the design I’ve just seen. The task could be anything, I just need to do it with as much steam and passion as possible in order to truly fulfill my inspiration streak.

What is your take on inspiration?

It can be so easy for a layout to become bloated or cluttered. Hence, the reason for streamlining the blog navigation and reading process. The only thing is, everyone reads through a blog with a different process. How do blog theme designers and developers factor this into development?

A fresh look and feel. – I wanted a look that was clean and simple, yet fresher and more graphically driven than my first layout, while still echoing elements from the original layout.

More focus on content. – I like the feeling of logging in, typing a post and hitting publish. I felt that elements (such as having to create an image for each post) were holding this feeling back. Now, I have the option to add an image to a post, but I don’t have to.

Extendability. – Adding to this new layout is a lot easier, which is perfect for something like a blog, which I believe to be something that is constantly developing and evolving.

So yeah, those are some of the reasons for this new layout. I’d love to read what you all think of it. If there are any areas in particular that you like, or elements that just aren’t working for you, please let me know.

A while later, I expanded the above topic of synchronicity to the overall concept of beauty. How beautiful the synchronicity is. I then thought; “this is definitely a nerd’s definition of ‘beautiful’“. Hence, my latest nerdicle on Nerd Mag discusses this further, stating, “beauty is:”.
Read my latest Nerd Mag article.

With such a vast array of free (and paid-for) WordPress themes on the market today, it’s easy to get lost, wading through the thousands of themes available. As many of the themes are user created, and not everyone has experience or training as a web designer or developer, users get presented with many sub-par WordPress themes. In contrast to this, the themes market is becoming more and more advanced on a daily basis, opening doors for users to experiment with more advanced, theme specific, functionality, enhancing their themes and making them unique and personalised.

With this advancement in the “premium grade” themes market, users are also becoming more expectant, and critical, of the themes which they are presented. It is becoming more common and expected for a theme to have a clever design hook of sorts, some nifty Javascript or an additional “unique” custom feature, if not all three.

So my question is; “What makes a theme ‘premium grade’ in your eyes?”

“Hash One” has had an awesome amount of work put into it and is set to include several theme specific features, courtesy of the Obox development department (aka. Mr. Marc). The dudes (and lady) at Obox are running a competition to get a chance to own 1 or approximately 40 unique versions of the “Hash One” theme. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Find the tweet on Twitter sent out by @obox (or @MarcPerel or @NatPerel) discussing the Obox Signature Series theme, “Hash One”.
2. Retweet the above-mentioned tweet.
3. Visit your profile page and get the direct link to the tweet you just made.
4. Paste this URL  into a comment on From-the-Couch with a message.

That’s it. An easy 4 step process to get yourself in the running for this really cool theme. For screenshots of the theme and a bit more about the features and whatnot, visit From-the-Couch.