Ok – so I’ve been working with the Thesis WordPress theme for a few weeks now (I finally opted for the Developer package). It’s been a bit of a learning process but I’ve been making some good strides and will be ready to present the new and improved blog for a prominent Portland area figure here in the coming days.

There’s a lot to like about Thesis as a developer. For one, there’s a certain elegance to the theme that sets it apart from anything else. In fact, it’s hard to simply call Thesis a “WordPress Theme” because it’s so much more that a simple wrapper on the WordPress platform.

I realize there’s been plenty of write-up about Thesis so I’m hardly writing anything revolutionary or insightful here. If anything – this is more a post about my recent foray into this often-trod land of WordPress which, coincidentally (and hardly a “revelation” to anyone who knows what Thesis is) …this blog just got a Thesis makeover. Well…at least a beginning one. I have plenty of work ahead of me to spruce things up here beyond the default install but I must advance a step at a time.

In fact, I’ll see about doing a full write-up of my recent project to shed some light on what’s “under the hood” of this often-talked-about…rarely-understood thing called Thesis.

Stay thirsty.

5 Ways to Spice up Your Images with CSS
Great collection of CSS styles related to images including the inclusion of shadows and my favorite…a nice caption style.

Why Scrolling Isn’t a Bad Thing
Here’s an article that looks at the trends regarding screen resolution and how the old rules are being refined as the typical screen sizes change. Sick of the old 800×600 rule? Me too.

Typesites
Typesites is a weekly showcase of websites with interesting typographic design. This is a great resource for any web developer to understand typography and how it relates specifically to web design.

Vitamin
A resource for web developers and designers.

SOFTWARE: MacUpdate Promo Holiday Bundle
Just in time for the holidays…this is a great bundle that’s available for a greatly reduced price for limited time. Get it while it’s hot… My personal favorites are KeyCue and LittleSnitch.

As one who’s doing more and more work with email marketing campaigns, this is a good and quick article on what the infamous (but widely popular) Outlook 2007 email client CAN’T do.

ARTICLE
“Outlook 2007. Most businesses use it every day as part of their communication with clients and the outside world but its effect on email marketing campaigns has been significant…” [ read more ]

What is it with Microsoft and their unwillingness to follow simple web standards?

The folks over at Sitepoint are offering a free eBook on CSS called “The Art & Science of CSS”. From my initial review, this is a great primer both for those learning CSS and those who currently use CSS but are on the look-out for more resources. When it comes to stylesheet design, I don’t have a “too-much” scale when it comes to the tools and tricks of the trade. The link to acquire the free book/download is over at http://twitaway.com.

On the matter of free eBooks – there are often many opportunities for “free” stuff if you keep your eyes open. Chris Garrett of chrisg.com has a free offering if you subscribe to his RSS feed – there are currently 2 free eBook offerings in exchange for a simple (free) subscription.

These days (or any day for that matter) … free is a great price.

In my day job – that as a web developer and graphics designer for a Portland Oregon church – one tool that I’ve experimented with and have found more and more use for is something called Yammer. It was a recent winner of the TechCrunch50 award, which is one of the larger yearly events that recognizes the best web tools being developed by cutting edge companies around the world.

Why Yammer? One of the great challenges in any organization with teams of people working on projects is communication. Essentially, what Yammer provides is Twitter-like services to organizations so you can track your team – what they’re working on plus anything they want to pass along – via a simple web interface and/or a desktop application (available for all platforms). The service itself is domain-name based which means that it’s limited to JUST your organization and only users with an email account under your domain name can be a part of your Yammer network.

Example: If I ran a cool company like “Snowboarding Year-Round, Unlimited” and our domain name was “snowyearround.com” – I can create a Yammer network for my domain name and add anyone in my organization to the network like “joe@snowyearround.com” and “katie@snowyearround.com” and even “slacker@snowyearround.com” to make sure he stays on task.

Cost? It’s free unless you want some of the advanced features such as the ability to add a logo and do some other higher level management tasks. The free version is more than ample to accomplish the tasks we need.

Side-note – for all you fellow geeks out there, this was a bit of a controversial choice for TechCrunch because Yammer shares a LOT of similarities with the already popular Twitter. Many were upset that they didn’t pick a company doing something truly “new” and “unique”… Personally, I just like it when people see a need and set out to fill it. Good job Yammer…