I started on a new theme for my blog months ago, but with client work and entrepreneurial pursuits and my trip to Asia, things just kept getting pushed back.  I finally spent some time to finish things up to the point that I’m ready to put it online, though everything isn’t completely done yet.  I would love some feedback, specifically around the points below:

• Do you like the design overall?
• Do you see any issues in your browser? (if so, what browser and OS?)
• Is the navigation confusing at all?
• Is there anything obvious missing?
• Are the fonts readable?

In case anyone is interested, this is a 100% from scratch WordPress 2.5 theme based on a design that my good friend Ben Lew whipped up for me almost six months ago.  So far, the plugins I’m running are just Akismet, Feedburner, and SearchEverything (to filter out pages and certain categories from search results).  The flash image slideshow is SlideShowPro with a custom script that pulls images from a set in my Flickr account.  If anyone is interested in the overall setup of the taxonomy, pages, etc, I’ll be glad to detail it all in another post.

If I had to do it again, I would use Drupal, primarily due to the better taxonomy control.  But Wordpress has worked out well and I’m excited to see things grow.  I still have a fair bit of content to get in here, especially projects.  Other things I plan on adding in the future are a specific page layout for projects, as well as leveraging tags on both posts and projects.  One other thing I would like to add is a place to list pages that fall under one of the five major areas of the site (Blogger, Consultant, etc).  Any ideas?

Anyway, I’m glad it’s finally done and I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks!

UPDATE: I’m getting reports from some users who are seeing just a big empty grey box in the header area of the site, instead of the photos that should be appearing.  If you see this, please leave a comment and let me know what browser / OS you’re running and what version of Flash you have installed (if you know).  Thanks!

My wife and I are both self-employed consultants, we have several investment properties, and we each have entrepreneurial pursuits on the side. All of these endeavors have income and expenses that need to be tracked, not to mention our personal finances, which are currently being tracked with Mvelopes and Mint. I took a bunch of accounting and finance classes while I was in college, so I understand accounting quite well, and I understand how important it is. I want a system that gives me a real visibility into my businesses and how they’re performing. However, no matter how hard I search, I can’t seem to find a decent small-business accounting solution out there. What I’m asking for isn’t THAT difficult:

• Basic features, without all the feature-bloat that is so common these days
• Track income, expenses, account balances, etc.
• Dashboard view with charting and recent / upcoming income / expenses
• Preferably web-based, but if not, with a solid OS X version
• Ability to import and export in a variety of formats, including xml, xls, pdf, and csv
• Available in U.S. with US currency and tax info
• Inexpensive or free

Yesterday, I spent most of my afternoon and evening surveying the available options and guess what I found: they all still suck.
Read the rest of this entry »

Bounteo.com has just relaunched with a new theme and is now running on Drupal. New posts will be going up soon, so please check it out!

Three friends and I just launched a new blog called MightyBrand.com where we’re going to share tips, tools, and techniques that we’re learning and using to build strong brands online, as individuals, for clients, and for projects of our own.

We’ve just thrown up a slightly modified template and there’s not much in the way of content yet, but please check it out and let me know what you think. We’ve got lots of quality content on the way, so stay tuned!

Oh, and we’re looking for guest bloggers as well, so if you have ideas for posts, please contact us at mightybrand at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Projects launched in May 2008: 2 (1 client, 1 personal)

One of my clients launched HowYouEco.com today, which actually includes a suite of sites (HomeEco.com, WorkEco.com, PlayEco.com) and is directory project that helps people keep track of everything going on in the green movement. I got involved late in this project and mainly helped wrap up some loose ends and clean things up a bit. The site is pretty simple now, but they have some very cool plans for the future. Please take a look and let them know what you think!

Projects launched in May 2008: 1 (1 client, 0 personal)