My original plan for the redesign was to take down the site Jan the 1st, work on it for 16 days straight, then launch it on my birthday. Of course that didn’t go as planned, so instead, I just decided to release what I’ve got thus far and tweak from there. Currently it’s just the latest trunk version of WP Framework, but the theme will start shaping itself gradually into the “Atlanta City Theme” I envisioned it to be, which is a realignment of the previous theme, Atlanta2Jamaica. With the redesign, I wanted to take this blog into a completely new direction that allows a lot more flexibility for the different types of content I’ll be publishing. We’ll see how that goes.

That brings us to my second goal that I’ve already crossed off. Finally starting up my very own company, Design by Craftsmen. That too, was suppose to be finished during my birthday week but apparently it takes “several weeks to process,” (instead of the just a few days) to get my business license. Oh well, it’s done and Design by Craftsmen is born, a small web creative studio based in Atlanta, Ga. Of course that means that I’ll have to start calling part of my house a “studio” from now on until I actually get one

Third goal was to start working on DBC full time. Thus far, I’m a week into it and by Thursday the bulk of the  “administrative” stuff should be finished. The transitioning process of turning my hobby into a business has already shown it’s hiccups, but I expected them and came prepared. I’ve given myself a month to knock out everything on my DBC to do list before I open doors so time is ticking. I’ll do a full blown post on DBC asap once my time opens up.

Now onto the goals I have yet to accomplish.

Last year, I wrote that “If you don’t know javascript, now’s the time to learn it!” While I did learn a thing or two about javascript and chose jQuery as my JS framework of choice, nothing really sunk in. So this time around I’ll be actually building a project using these technologies (and when I say build, I mean write as much as possible, then revert back to Ctrl+C-ing/Ctrl+V-ing!) so it’ll be a great learning experience. In addition, I’ll be getting more acquainted with Ruby and Rails too so I can start building out my “big ideas.” It all falls neatly into the grand master plan.

Once I get back from WordCamp Miami, I’ll be looking for some designers to partner with (preferably locally) as I want to start focusing my skillset in development. I like being a jack of all trades, but trying to juggle being the project manager, the web designer and the web developer is insane and won’t scale for DBC. That isn’t to say that I’ll be stopping designing completely. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of user interface design work. I think UI Design will be more valuable to me in my situation so it should be fun.

Finally, this year I’m going to become more involved within the web industry as a whole. This means attending more conferences/local meet ups, become more active online, essentially building up my personal brand. Whatever the method, I’m really just trying to get my name out there, meet as many new people as possible, network, learn, and have a lot of fun in the process. So we’ll see how that goes.

Now on a more personal note, I’ve set a few goals for myself that aren’t exactly career related. Staying in college is one of them. I wasn’t able to take any courses this spring semester due to to limited time and working two part-time jobs, but we’ll see what the summer entails. Finishing college is very high on my priority list so hopefully I won’t run into anymore roadblocks. I also want to keep practicing my French and German. I learned those languages (plus a few others, but they suck) a few years ago when I lived in Europe (for several years) so I’m trying not to loose them. Rosetta helps, but talking to foreigners around campus is a lot more effective (and hilarious), so I’ll be doing more of that once I go back. In addition to that, later on this year I want to start learning Spanish again. It kind of sucks being half puerto rican and not being able to speak their native language. This year, I’ll learn the basics and go from there.

As far as traveling in ‘09, I’ve already got Florida (Tampa, Miami) down on my list. Actually, I haven’t really set any traveling goals as most of the time, it’s a spur of the moment kind of thing.

Finally, one of my last goals written down was to just have fun and make 2009 the best it can be. Play harder, get away from the computer more often, and just learn more about all the things I’m into. Kind of broad, but it’s one of my long-term goals and will probably take more than a year.

So far, this year is looking to becoming one of my best, we’ll see what’s in store in the coming months!

Internally, the purpose for this blog has changed several times since I first started this year. The direction which was once, write about WordPress, tutorials, how to’s, and more has changed to writing about my freelance gigs, interest and projects I’m working on. So trying to redesign my blog with all this confusion has been a hassle. I’ve learned the hard way that you won’t create a successful redesign if your blog doesn’t have consistent content. Write first, then the design will follow.

Content IS King so even though I’m not completely satisfied with the redesign, I plan on keeping it-as is so I can focus on building up my backlog and get a sense of what I like to write about. Once I have a good amount of content and some sort of organization set I’ll attempt to redesign ptahdunbar.com once more. I’ve noticed that with each redesign I attempt to roll out (along with a few others that didn’t make it public), I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to that holy grail in my mind so it’ll come eventually.

Speaking of holy grail, I started dabbling around with this idea on what I think is the holy grail for WordPress themes. Sure, I’m probably not the only one trying to figure this out, but I think my approach on this will be pretty slick. It addresses a lot of flexibility problems WordPress users have been requesting. I’m sure a lot of people will get a kick out of it, but more details in a future post.

Recently, I joined the WPCandy team to help Mike out with the site. My contributions won’t be daily or anything like that due to my crazy schedule, but when I do post there, I’ll make sure they’ll get something useful out of it for sure.

So looking back from last week after I released my first public WordPress theme called WPFreemium, it’s became pretty popular in terms of downloads so far. I received practically zero support questions yet so either my email address isn’t working or I left some pretty darn good documentation in the code. Not like it there’s anything hard to figure out anyway. But still, I’m proud.

With the possibility of me having to take two summer classes starting at the end of May, I won’t be taking anymore freelance work until my time frees up. For the next few weeks I’ll just be focusing on this blog, my side projects, and school.

What I’m currently working on for Ptahdunbar.com
So to end this post, I thought about just going over what’s cooking in the near future for this blog:

• finishing and releasing WP News Theme
• Tutorial on how I made WP News Theme in the form of a series
• 3 Custom WordPress Themes targeting different niches
• … and following each theme, a tutorial on how to make ‘em

Sounds like a lot of fun huh? Yup, I’ll be spending a lot of time in a dark room some where…

T.G.I.F. God I love Fridays. So I came into the office today and to my surprise, 5 books from Amazon came in! I totally didn’t expect it. Actually, to tell you the truth, I forgot I ordered them last week. Anyway, these are important books that I need to dive into so here’s a brief overview about why I got them.

NOTE: There’s no affiliate links on these books, so check them out.

Don’t make me think – A common sense approach to web usability 2th edition (Steve Krug)
I don’t know why it took me so long to get this book. It’s an instant classic that’s got 5 stars on Amazon. Since I’m really getting into usability this year, I knew I had to pull this book from my wish list bucket and get it.

Essential ActionScript 3.0 – Programming Fundamentals (Colin Moock)
I’m finally making the dive. Right when I got the fundamentals of AS 2.0, ActionScript 3.0 was coming out a few months later. They made a few changes as far as syntax, and some depreciated functions. It’s supposably much faster than AS 2.0 with a lot of new features like native support for Regular expressions, new primitive types, and DOM3 event model. I don’t think I could have gone wrong with Colin Moock being the author, he’s got a great track record on previous books I’ve read, and great reviews.

ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook – Solutions for Flash Platform and Flex App Developers (Joey Lott)
Knowing the fundamentals is one thing, but having some practical examples to really get you going is priceless. I always love O’Reilly’s cookbooks; they know exactly how to hand pick some great examples to show off the different things that can be accomplished with AS 3.0.

Microformats – Empowering your markup for web2.0 (John Allsopp)
With data portability about to kick off and with all these web 2.0 companies joining in, learning more about the technologies behind this movement didn’t seem like a bad idea. Reading more about Microformats got me very interested in trying it out on different projects of my own like some WordPress themes, or simple web apps I’ve got cooking in the oven.

Letting go of the words – Writing web content that works (Janice Redish)
Lastly, Letting go of the words, another 5 star book on Amazon. You know a book is good when Amazon’s price is cheaper than buying the book used. I wanted to read this book to improve my writing on this blog. Being trilingual does have its drawbacks when you can’t get your thoughts down fast and to the point.

If you’re interested in a review of any of these books, just let me know in the comments. I’ll post them on here once I’m finished reading front to back.

First let me tell you, today’s a special day. That’s right.
It’s my birthday! Exactly at 7:30am – Twenty years ago I was born! History in the Making I tell ya…

Not getting into any personal details (which some of it I don’t even know about), today’s going to be pure awesomeness!
A gift to myself, was to start this blog today and finally build an online present for myself and start doing big things.

So without further a due, I’ll tell you What this site is all about:

Ptahdunbar.com is my main presents on the web which will be focusing on things I’m currently into.
I plan on writing articles about all things web design, web development, wordpress, and everything in between.

A little about me

I’m a college student studying computer science and new media in Atlanta, Ga. I have about 3 years of experience designing, developing, and maintaining websites.
While I might not know everything in web design & development, I’m a fast learner and always look on improving/broadening my skill set.
I’m currently employed at georgia state university as their in-house web guy. (I manage GSU’s FIS department website.)

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That’s right. You know the drill. Add me to your RSS feed and you’ll be even cooler than you were yesterday.

P.S. Old school visitors, If you’re wondering where my portfolio is, it’s been moved to ptahdunbar.net, check that out!

This year is going to be fun.