For those of you that don’t know – I’ve been a professional graphic designer for over 10 years now. That means I’m really well-versed in making things look awesome visually.

I’ve been building WordPress websites for about a year and a half, meaning every now and then something comes up where I’m gonna learn a new trick or two.

Today I had a little free time, and used it as an opportunity to tackle some admin tasks for Hearts and Laserbeams, including website updates to the latest version of WordPress and the Thesis theme.

The Hearts and Laserbeams site was down for a while this evening. (Mostly because when I broke the site, it was a perfect storm of laptop battery dying, Phil needing dinner, having an evening appointment, and folding laundry.) Lessons learned? Back up all your work, use child themes instead of editing the main theme when designing for WordPress and Thesis, and after a long day of work there is nothing better than a Drumstick ice cream cone with a caramel center.

But the bright side (you know how I do – there’s always a bright side) is that I had a reason to really tweak the css code to make some elements like the header and nav bar pop. They really fit in with my overall cmyk-themed branding now, and I finally got a couple minutes to customize my 404 error page. It’s the cutest error page ever!

Go check it out!

Don’t think I forgot to write my Craftcation Conference recap – things have been really busy getting the Road Less Traveled website ready for launch this week. I will say that one thing that I got a lot of last weekend was how much people appreciated the openness of the presenters with information – I’ve always been HUGE on sharing stuff. That’s how you learn, guys, is helping each other out. I have a couple of techie friends on Facebook that have been invaluable to my growth as a web designer, and I am so grateful for them. Alain and Michael, virtual beers to you.

Everyone else – be excellent to each other. Never be afraid to share what you know; you may need information yourself someday.

And with that, I’m going to bed. On tap this week is a brand new newsletter system, and if you sign up you’ll receive my notes from the Craftcation Conference workshops I led last weekend!