Last night did not involve video games, movies, or reading. At least not all night

So I’ll start with the obvious, if you are a reader of this site I have switched over to using Thesis. While it is VERY clearly still on the default settings there should be changes coming over the next few weeks-months on this site to make things just a little more pretty.

At any rate aside from the Thesis install I was busy on a few other things.
For my friend Erin I helped install, modify the theme, and install plugins on:
Little Shop Of Zombies so she would have a central website for everything zombie related that she’s doing. I got to play with a couple of new things with wordpress as well. The first of which was Zazzle Store Gallery which lets you include a Zazzle store on your site. As this was something I wanted to test out anyway I was glad I had a time to play with it in advance though now am not quite as happy with it as I originally had hopes I would be. Second was the ability to incorperate an Etsy store into your web page so she could have pages as both shops.

Also while playing with plugins I updated the contact pages on the following sites to use Contact Form 7 which I have to say is currently my favorite Contact Plugin:
StuartConover.com
Little Shop Of Zombies
Buy Zombie
and other 3 projects I have in the works.

On top of the contact plugin on the above 3 I also installed the rough draft of the theme on 2/3 of the 3 above projects. The first of the 3 is down to just needing art and an updated about page while the second two need both of the above as well as a few other settings tweaked. Still, progress is being made!

…and some people think I’m lazy.

I know it’s been quiet around here as of late. Between a very hectic work schedule the past couple of months, a lot of things going on with the family, having my social life, AND keeping all of my actual projects this blog has fallen to the wayside. Of course as stated in the first post on this site it was mainly made for me so I’m OK with the lack of updates. Those that still come to the site may disagree as it’s still pulling in traffic on a daily basis. Which is kind of surprising.

What To Expect

This New Layout – I’m currently using Blog Theme from Woo Themes which I plan on customizing a bit over the next few months. It’s simple, straight forward, laid out nicely, and look decent by default.

WordPress Plugin Reviews – I plan, at the very least, to try to review one new plugin each week for WordPress. I test out at least one a week so I want to fit in at least one for a review.

Online Service and Application Reviews – More of the same! This is what I was heavily doing before I took a bit of a break from the blog. I am going to narrow my focus on these though. From this point on I will focus primarily on those services and applications that I feel would be useful to bloggers and entrepreneurs.

More Project Updates – For as much as I do on the projects I work on I never really got around to writing updates here on the major changes to any of them. This will be changing.

Friday 5 – While I do not expect to do this weekly it will be on my list of posts to work on. When I see 5 outstanding blog posts in a week I will be sure to share them with you!

With everything going on in work and projects right now I can guarantee you that this personal blog will not be nearly as active as it was for a bit. However I will have it back on track in the near future for at least a few updates each week.

The Shiny Swine Redesigned

While I am not the full owner on The Shiny Swine I am pretty much the co-owner. It is an entertainment blog I write for with a skew towards gaming, bacon, and anything we find amusing to write about on the Internet. While I am still under the full belief that we need to switch our hosting provider as Go Daddy, while great for registering domains, is HORRIBLE for hosting.

Even with horrible hosting though, The Shiny Swine is still pulling in triple figure traffic on a daily basis with little to no advertising being done for it. So changes aside from a completely new look visually (while still incorporating the pig’s that make it swine like in nature)?

New Additions To The Swine

Dedicated Recent Posts Sidebar Box.
Featured Video / Tag Cloud / Latest Post Box.
Latest Posts In Gaming Category (highest viewed category.)
An area at the bottom showing the posts with most comments.
Also an area in individual posts that make it easier to find- Related posts, Most recent posts, Most commented on posts.

We have a few more ideas in the works currently which should be filtering in over the next week. However I have to admit I’m pretty happy with the new look and interface. Now if only we could get it moved to new hosting to make it more stable… (Hate. Go. Daddy.)