Allchorn Design

Some readers of this blog might remember a concept I started a while back called Sitepress. Essentially it was to be a Wordpress website design solution offering, but with my other obligations, I chose to take it down for lack of time to commit to it.

I had a recent resurgence of interest in the idea and spent a bit of time redesigning the interface. I think it came out pretty nice, but subsequent to doing all that, I decided I’m going to publish the concept on a different domain and under a different name.

I just figured I’d share the design, and if anyone wants it to perhaps make a theme out of it, I can send them the layered PSD.

I came across this a while back, and for the life of me can’t remember where. Please let me know if you do, and I’ll give credit where it’s due.

Click on the image to view it larger.

It’s been a while since I last tried my hand at illustrating something from scratch. As far as I can remember the most recent was when I did that illustration of my fountain pen in my logo.

After viewing the work of Brad Colbow’s Bradz, and my buddy Chris Mugnai’s art, I thought I’d give it a bash. I honestly thought it would come out crap, but after drawing it in pencil first then doing it in vectors, I think it didn’t come out too bad!

I wonder what a more seasoned illustrator would think of it, but regardless, I like and thats what matters at the end of the day for me.

In my role as a web design consultant, I often need to do a fair amount of research into a specific client’s needs. In that research, I tend to come across a lot of really cool technology and parts of it that enhance a website in really useful ways.

As it seems Wordpress is the talk of the web publishing world right now, I’m busy with a lot of Wordpress related projects. I had to looks for some specific extensions for the system called Plugins. and in so doing, I came across some nifty addons that I’d like to share. Some I will use on client sites, some on my own, and others I’ll just keep a note of for future reference.

You might already know, but I’ve taken up office space in Durban with SA Web Design. A shared environment with Dynamo Africa’s Durban HQ. Things are great so far, and it’s nice to be working from such a professional environment.

Gone are the dogs barkling in the background, although I admit, I do miss working from home in some respects. Well, here are the photographs I took today with some captions.

Waiting room on the left and the corridor into the engine rooms on the right.

I found the first one interesting and the second one hilarious!

Dove Evolution

Slob Evolution

It’s suprising how much of a difference it makes when a client actually goes out of their way to write you an email about how happy they are with the job you did for them. Completely unsolicited makes it even bette…

Recently, I did a (very) small Wordpress driven website for a friend of mine for his up and coming laptop and notebook repair service. Things went anything but smoothly in some aspects like moving from his hosts at the time (no names mentioned) and then some controversy three quarters of the way through when someone criticised me to him sparking some doubt in his mind over my costs. This is what caused me to write about lowballers in the web design industry.

I won’t paste the entire email as there are some bits that are not related to this post (and personal stuff), but since he said:

6:45am at the 3 Sisters Guest Farm. Literally seconds before the sun poked over the peak and flared out the lens.

Well, for those that care, it seems like things are on the mend. Some pretty major adjustments to what I’m used to, but things are starting to look good.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about; We’ve (Wife, 2 dogs and I) relocated 1000 miles across the country to the land of curry, bananas and Zulu warriors. Also known as Durban.

Two and a half days on the road driving between 65 and 90km/hr was quite an interesting experience. Anything faster and the 3m long trailer started to get into a bit of a speed wobble. Anti nausea tablets for the normally motion sickness prone dog worked fine. Unfortunately Bobby the 4 month old puppy also suffers from motion sickness. He puked twice.