You might not have noticed, but i’m working in most of my spare time on implementing all the external pages related to my blog into wordpress(portfolio/downloads/etc)

Good bye old portfolio, welcome new one!

My old portfolio was located at http://thaslayer.com/view/ and it was using MiniGallery v2. The script was a bit buggy, but it was great, simple and to the point. Development of MiniGallery is suspended for more than a year now -> no new versions/features/updates/bug fixes. For my old portfolio i used a pre-made theme downloaded from the homepage of the script.

I moved my portfolio to its new location http://www.thaslayer.com/portfolio/ and as you can see it’s implemented in wordpress(it’s a page actually). The new portfolio has the same design as the blog(duh, it’s a page created in wordpress) and navigation is much simpler now.

A quote from John Maeda beautifies the main portfolio page: “Designers solve problems for clients. Artists solve problems for humanity. The latter is the greatest problem.”

On the designs category page when you click a snippet from a design the lightbox javascript will start working nad it will display the image in a box in the center of the screen.

Not all designs made it to the new portfolio. I dropped quite many older designs that i found not really professional, or inappropriate to have the privilege to be present in the new portfolio(its better to have fewer professional designs than many NOT professional designs).

About Page

My about page is also completed. There you will find a bit older picture of me, and a little something about me(like that i live in Transylvania). You can notice that in the picture i’m wearing my Apache Mirrored shirt from Jinx(free advertising!, lol). I really like that shirt, it became one of my favorites from the day i got it.

All my released FREE themes are now present on the FREE themes page

I taught that it would be a good idea to post all themes in one place to save the visitor time on searching a specific theme. Each of the themes contains link to the official release post, live demo, and of course download link. This page will constantly be updated with new theme releases(official release posts for new themes WILL BE also posted.

speaking of themes…

it’s been more than a month since i released my last theme(Loveblog), so soon a new Free theme will be released. I didn’t make up my mind yet on which theme to release(there are a few themes that weren’t bought by customers) or to create a new one. Either way the release of the new theme will be in about 2 weeks, because BETng4U is currently working on a custom CMS for a customer, which will be finished till next week when he will start coding the design for my new image hosting website

New database server

The old database server was on servage’s 1047th mysql server. A while back when i had a nasty fight with servage support team i asked them to create a few databases on their 16th mysql server (mysql16). The differences between mysql1047 and mysql16 are HUGE!. I moved the whole database to the new mysql server, but haven’t linked it up with wordpress yet. I will link them together and then you will be able to see the differences yourself(shorter loadtime, no timeouts,better browsing experience)

what the future holds:

Jim sent me a mail a few days back with a suggestion of which my opinion is that it’s a pretty good idea:

Hey Tom,

I stumbled across your blog, checked it out and noticed that you only post themes released by you(as i saw you release a theme every 1-2 months). It would be a good idea if you would present themes made by other designers also.

Yours truly,
Jim

I considered Jim’s proposition and at the end of each month i will present 5 FREE professional wordpress themes released for free that month which are really worth downloading and using.

My main sources of themes will be Weblogtoolscollection , digitalpoint, and why not?, my blog(there will be a page where you will eb able to submit your theme). Registration at both websites is free and takes less than 30 seconds.

The only thing i’m worried about is that will i find 5 themes that are worth commenting, downloading and using of course.

PS:Thanks to the new theme my blog traffic almost doubled. Having a custom pleasant theme really helps in gaining more traffic.

PS2: any suggestions are welcome on how to improve the blog. If our idea is creative and i really like it you may get a reward(cash or design )

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