Friday, August 03, 2007

introducing Sakeena for WordPress

Download Sakeena from the Sandbox Competition site.

Sakeena is a very simple and elegant theme. The thumbnails at the top can be feed from a Flickr stream, so that they can be the users personal images.

I decided to enter the competition because Sandbox is a really great theme to work with, and although I don’t know Scott, I think I like him! You see, back before the competition was announced, I thought of building my first free theme and I decided on Sandbox as the base, I then emailed Scott to ask what he preferred in terms of linkage, I was pleasantly surprised when I got a thoughtful and helpful answer almost right away. I am even more impressed by the way the competition was conducted, I really appreciate the time and effort that went into both the theme and the competition.

More details on using Sandbox in an up-coming post, but for now, you can check it out here: Sandbox Theme

Sakeena is technically available for download, but since I did put it together in a day, it is missing a few key styles, so I will be working on a slightly modified version for a public release after the competition is over.

See the demo

Saturday, June 23, 2007

more site room with ExpressionEngine multi site manager

I only recently declared that I would not consider moving from textpattern and at the time, I had given some thought to leaving textpattern, but decided against it. I love the control panel, I know that it’s not for everyone, but I completely appreciate the simplicity of it.

I also love how easily I could create new blogs, customize my RSS feeds, and use textile, but I can also do all of these things with expression engine as well, and truth be told, I can do it better! Still, it’s sad.

The main reason that I decided to make the move was the new version of expression engine, with an awesome “multi-site” feature, which allows users to run multiple sites on the same install. I have to say, I am so completely in love with ExpressionEngine 1.6, it is a work of art!

So far, I have imported my motherhood blog articles, thanks to ee community support and Lisa Wess! I have to import my food blog posts still, and then work on the design, and figure out how to setup the domain. I will be also moving this blog, so that all my 3 core web properties would be managed from the same control panel. I think this will save me a lot of time.

I’ll give more details of the move once it is completed.