There was a unanimous choice for 3, with the small revision of adding an actual “lynx” to the image.  Which can be seen in the final version here :

I’ll be developing the site as well, and will post links to that as it get’s completed.

I’ve been working contractually for Public Strategies here in Austin since about February, usually helping with tweaks and back end stuff on several different sites by now, and this is the first site I was asked to build out all the CSS for the theme.

They have a full “digital” team over there, I was sent a .psd(seen above) from the designer and I cut it up and coded the rest, the joomla install was readied by the project manager and we very swiftly turned around the site.  I really enjoy working with the team at Public Strategies as opposed to only myself and being solely responsible for every single aspect of the design and implementation, being a useful cog in a well working machine is extremely gratifying in it’s own, and I’m happy to part of such a useful team of people from time to time.

Chompers is now available, and will be available in Wal-Mart’s nationwide starting this summer. I updated the products page to include 3 more products on the chompers line. I replaced the LivePipe rollover tabs with Spry tabs, and also used Spry to make the sliding panels, turns out Spry is quite handy.

• WordPress Flickr Manager

I use flickr for photo sharing just because of the sheer amount of people on flickr, and it easily syncs with most other services, and especially with this plug in. It allows you to set and organize all your photos on flickr, and then those changes can be seen on your blog.

• All In One SEO Pack

I always use this plug in to create the titles and urls, and set site wide keywords and such. Pretty straight forward and easy to set up.

• Google Analytics for WordPress

If you have a google account, then you should be using analytics on your site, with this plug in you can simply enter your anayltics tracking code and you’re done, everything else is taken care of.

• Twitter Tools

If you twitter, and this really only applies if you do, you can tweet from your blog, or blog from your twitter, a lot of features makes this handy for tweetheads.

• WP-DBManager

Backing up your WP database seems important, so I install this too.

• WordPress Mobile Pack

Simplest way to set a site up for mobile browsers, it can detect and change the CSS depending on the user’s browser, and comes with a collection of mobile ready themes.

Let me know if there’s any plug-ins your WP blog can’t live without.

And I breathe a sigh of relief, but only for a moment, I’ll feel great when they’re all shipped and accounted for, and I won’t get another, “I ordered sometime in july, just wondering wtf?”  We’re still going through lost orders and backtracking all the shipments to make sure everyone gets their package, but we’re no longer taking any more orders, surprisingly enough we managed to get rid of them all(through several different efforts).

We dropped off a few pallets here at the 15 Rose for awhile, and that turned into an interesting experiment.  Leaving them out, then encouraging people to take as much as they want, worked well for the first round of pallets.  Three pallets sat in our breezeway for one month before they were taken by the locals willing to grab a few, we ordered three more pallets and they lasted only 4 days, I don’t really know how that happened.

Finally got around to fixing some of the graphical/style elements of the HeadShot Blog and our Impulse One Blog.  Both were in need of some tweaking, so check ‘em out and let me know what you think of the progress so far.

I’m now in the process of learning adsense, because we don’t actually have any money to pay for adwords, so let’s see if there’s anything to placing unobtrusive text ads on our blogs.  I’ve started by testing a few banners on iNeed while it’s still operating.  Next I’ll learn to start placing it unobtrusively on all of our blogs, and then to any other blog that I make in the future that may need it, seems to be the thing to do these days.

Currently testing out a few adsense plug-ins, but nothing’s really standing out as a useful solution yet, maybe I’ll find it out there, and then actually post that plug-in article I’ve been working on, but that’s all in the future, unless your reading this now, then it may be in the present or past, or may not have happened at all, the unknown has yet to decide, or has it already been done….ooooeeeeeooooeeeeeeeuuuuu…..

Step 1: Make Design

Obviously you need to start with you design, you want to remember that you’re making a stamp, so you can focus on clearer letters, thicker lines, making sure it’s a very clean and legible, because the stamp can leave a thick blob of ink on too fine of a design, smudging your design and leaving you upset.

Step 2: Order Stamp

You can do your own research if you want, I went with Ideal 300 from Rubber Stamp Champ because for some reason or another I thought I needed a self inking stamp, upon receiving my stamp and making my first round of cards, I can say that I will order a HandStamp once this one dries up on me, the self inking is nice for doing a lot of cards at once, but its hard to control the precision of the stamp and how much ink is being transfered, also you can’t change the color of the ink.  So I would recommend going with a traditional hand stamp for something that will last longer, then again, if you plan on changing you card design every so often then it doesn’t really matter either way, order what you think is easiest for what you have in mind.

Step 3:Draw, Stamp, Cut

Draw your outlines, stamp within those outlines, and cut according to those outlines.

You’re done, in 3 steps you have a never ending supply of business cards(as long as you have some form of thin cardboard material lying around).

Let me know how it works for you, and if you know any place I should be ordering my stamps from.

Some minor visual fixes and suddenly a site can turn feel so much better.  I finally got back to cleaning up the visual flaws that were bothering me on 15roseave.com, and added some new functionality as well.

Re-worked the header,

added a global translation plug-in,

polished the social sidebar and now it includes the recent tweets,

Made the reservation button a fixed tab, and easy to understand,

and did a complete overall to the Rooms & Rates page, as well as the room pages themselves.

The wall is getting some action,

and I was finally able to write a few posts for the experiences.

And using the wonderful Twitter Tools plugin I have a tweet digest reporting all the tweets of the day, which is actually quite useful as I’m using the 15 rose twitter to RT any and all awesome things happening in the Venice/Santa Monica Area, so follow us if that’s your thing.

Head over and check out 15roseave.com sometime, let me know what you think.  And if your looking for a place to stay in California, well, you know where you can go…

A small touch up, made the ’1′ more like a ’1′, fattened some of the limbs, and took away the “ave” in place of a rose.  The change came about when making Scotty’s business card, and he asked if I could change the logo and make the ’1′ look more like a ’1′…

Still plenty of work to do on it, but the framework is in place, and that’s what matters at the moment, the graphical fixes and extended features will come in time, but for now I’m focusing on the filling it with some content.