A little odd to be on this side of the ball, but our buddies at Fadtastic recently conducted and interview with me. We discuss a lot of different things, including the reason behind the creation of Devlounge, tips for young designers, the issue of age vs surving on the web, a few other topics. It was fun getting a chance to answer questions rather than type out my own this time around. The only downside was Andrew Faulkner (Fadtastic Admin) was recently interview for FT as well, so we couldn’t get a 1 for 1 admin interview switch. Anyways, enough talk, feel free to head over to Fadtastic to give the interview a read.
Devlounge 2006: Posts and Numbers
We’ll soon be ringing in 2007, and some of you have probably already reached the new year where you live, so for our last post of this year we’d like to put together our own post listing a few of our favorites, as well as some final statistical information for those of you that just love to know the ins and outs on how a site like this grows throughout the year. So here we go, our final year end review that we’ll call Posts and Numbers.
Favorites of 2006
WordPress Customization Series – This series was split into three parts and went over different customization options for WordPress. From headers, to advanced, even down to setting up and using plugins, we had WP covered and showed our affection for the platform right from launch day.
Are you tempted to soup your site? – So many times we find ourselves wondering “should I redesign, should I, should I, should I”, but what we really need to do is stop sitting around and thinking and get to work. But first, it’s important to understand how are users work with the current design before diving into a new one.
Designers: Protect your content – An article outlining the use of a WordPress plugin to prevent your content from being spread around the vast and sometimes dangerous and unfair internet.
Preview of Crazyegg – Even though the service is long since launched now, this write up was pretty popular and still covers most of the features that are found in the version of CE available today.
The Benefits of Mint – I’ve been using Mint on DL for over 8 months now, and it was probably the best $30 I could have spent. If you haven’t given it a try, you owe it to yourself to find out why it’s worth it.
The The Jekyll and Hyde Effect: Philosophy and the Internet – Sometimes we expose different parts of our designing habits. A very recent article, but a good one.
The Ultimate BBpress Guide – The child forum project of WordPress that we covered first. From setup to install, this is a nice one.
Of course, with a database full of hundreds of posts it’d be impossible to highlight them all, but these are just a few worth checking out. Be sure to scour through our articles database for more killer content from 2006.
The Numbers
For those of you that love numbers, here are the final stats numbers for 2006 (well it will increase a little bit more because there’s still about 5 1/2 hours before the New Year hits here, but it’s close enough ;)).
Total Uniques / hits per month (from Mint):
April – 1,513 / 18,714
May – 7,199 / 21,544
June – 7,636 / 25,130
July – 7,506 / 25,130
Aug – 10,546 / 31,318
Sept – 11,202 / 30,442
Oct – 11,296 / 34,442
Nov – 9,874 / 26,983
Dec – 15,859 / 41,722
Feed Subscriber Stats:
Current Subscribers – 292
Highest Amount – 328
File Downloads:
Prebuilt 2 – 2,967
Prebuilt 1 – 1,826
Wave – 1,629
Iceburgg – 447
Custom Reading Width – 34
That about wraps it up. Happy New Year Everyone!
Fresh Look for Fall
As some of you may have noticed (if not apparent enough), the homepage has undergone a significant update! We’ve rearranged things to make it easier to find certain features, and today is just the beginning.
Consider this the Devlounge 3 live testing period.
We still have a lot to be done, including unveiling new article & interview databases, restructuring the comment system, and finishing up integration of all the previous pages to the new layout. If you encounter any layout issues, please let us know. Everything seems perfect in Firefox, and Internet Explorer only smudges the size of the search box.
You’ll notice the extra’s page (not completed yet) has a feature called the job board. We’ll give you more insight on the job board in the coming days after we get the extras page fully squared away, but we hope it will really add some extra value and purpose to everyone that visits devlounge.
Please bare with us over the next few days while we finish things up! And be sure to let us know what you think of the new layout!
Support our work: Digg the new design!
Wave for WordPress
While I may have not been writing many new articles lately, I have been doing something else. With the success Prebuilt / Prebuilt 2 has had, I thought it was time to release a new theme, and that theme comes in the form of Wave.
Wave is a three column white / tan / red theme, sporting a clean look while remaining valid XHTML & CSS. Give it a look and download it today.
Leave all your comments about the theme here, as this is serving as the “Announcement Post”.
Note: This is not Prebuilt 3, but an entirely different theme. 🙂
