This version of WordPress (2.7) has been eagerly awaited for some months now. The Beta version of the blogging software has been available for a couple of months, allowing users to install and bug test the software before it’s full stable release to the general public.

The WordPress admin is the most noticeable change

With 2.7 comes a brand new admin, completely redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up. We installed the beta version of 2.7 about a month ago and weren’t too impressed with the new admin design. It’s certainly an improvement on the last interface but a part of me was expecting something more, something to wow at, but maybe I’ll grow to love it.

WordPress also held an icon design contest, challenging designers to design a set of icons for the new interface, viewable here.

As always, back up your blog before upgrading.

The process by which a successful website lives looks something like this:

The cycle consists of analysis, updating and promotion. If any component if missing, your business will not achieve all that it could. Website promotion and maintenance are the keys to keeping the cycle moving.

In this post we’ll offer some advice and helpful tips on how to maintain a healthy cycle for your website.

Your Website as a Salesperson

Your website is akin to a living, breathing salesperson. If it receives guidance, achievable goals and the proper information, it will succeed. If it is left alone for months at a time, its productivity will slip.

Don’t let your site get stagnant or out of touch – as your business changes, change your site. Keep your content fresh and visits to your site will stay fresh.

1. Analyze what works and what doesn’t.
2. Brainstorm new ideas.
3. Implement your ideas and changes.
4. Promote your updated site.
5. See how the changes perform.
6. Start all over again.

Maintenance

Imagine your website is your car, if you buy a new site from the start, maintain and service it appropriately you shouldn’t run into any unforeseen problems. The same goes for website, neglect to maintain it and you could come out a cropper.

Promotion

A website doesn’t exist if it can’t be found! Website promotion is an integral factor to all successful websites. The following should be used to their full potential to achieve a successful website:

1. Pay per click (PPC)
2. Organic search (SEO)
3. Affiliate Marketing
4. E-newsletters
5. Blogs
6. Forums

Whether your website is a personal weblog, or an international ecommerce store, the same promotional tactics can be used to maximise your sites success.

Amaze your colleagues by making a Christmas Santa Claus from a piece of paper hanging around the office. Simply follow along with this video and become the resident origami master.

Christmas 2008 is nearly upon us, and with this nifty countdown timer we can count down the days one at a time.

Turning a street into a river

We’re sure you have seen plenty of amazing 3D street art creations dotted about the internet, but here is a chance to see one in development, from the very start.

What’s also great about this one is that it became the largest EVER 3D street art ever recorded. Have a browse, leave your thoughts then check out their other examples via the link below, enjoy and thanks for stopping by.

More 3D Street Art

© Copyright 2002-2008 | Edgar Müller & Manfred Stader Impressum | www.european-street-painting.com

In case you haven’t noticed, at the top left there is a new line ..

Try the new StumbleUpon. Learn more about the new features

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Copy/Paste from This Page: www.stumbleupon.com/promo/the_new_stumbleupon

StumbleUpon’s New Look

StumbleUpon have redesigned their home page, improved user profile pages and have optimized many other major parts of the site, based in part on community suggestions and feedback.

Major enhancements include:

Stumble *before* you sign up
Now, users without a downloaded toolbar can experience Stumbling and discovery. You can use their new topic-based navigation to find what you’re looking for on StumbleUpon.com, then click links and images to Stumble, share sites with others and rate content.

Fresh content on all category pages
Use the “Recently Popular,” “Most Shared” and “Recently Rated” tabs to locate quality sites submitted by others who share your interests.

Stumble on the go, save it to your profile
If you have a StumbleUpon membership with a profile and username, you can use the Web toolbar to Stumble, Rate and Share pages. Best of all, your ratings will now be stored with other content in your SU Profile! With this change, you can use StumbleUpon from any computer, regardless of whether the toolbar has been installed.

Enhanced User Profiles
They have made enhancements to give StumbleUpon users even more control over the look of their Profile Pages:

• More Customization Options: Embed images, sites and videos directly in your blog. Add titles to your blog entries. Choose from Grid vs. List view: they’ll remember your preferences, no matter what page you’re on. Plus, more new themes to help you personalize the look of your profile.
• Easier inbox management: Delete multiple messages easily to clean up your Inbox
• Delete Favorites and Liked sites: Now, you can remove Discovered sites from your profile!
• Preferences: change your password from your profile or exert more control over who sees your content

Users homepage

Users favorites and Reviews

See the dedication Frog has to his job and his clients after he abandoned his car 2 miles away from work and battled through 6 inches of snow in a gale for 30 minutes to get to work.

Hmm snow! Best defrost the car

A shot from the car

We abandoned the car and trekked along The Stray

Poor Zoe

Harrogate FC

Gridlock on Wetherby road

A car loses control and mounts a verge

Arrived, just one in I see

Work? Nah, snowman? Yes indeedy

The Antarctic trek to work, with soggy feet and a cold red nose I was glad to make it. Gradually half the team got in one by one, the other half quite sensibly stayed at home.

Other shots from friends from today

David Naylor

Patrick Altoft

Rich typography on the web

sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) is a mix of Javascript and Flash that enables a web designer to move away from the restrictions of on being able to use web-safe fonts and pick the one’s they really want to use. sIFR isn’t to everyone’s taste however, mainly down to the fact that it is heavy on server load, with the relevant Flash, Javascript and CSS files taking a meaty chunk out of the browsers performance. My current agency have taken the steps to ban sIFR from all future web builds, mainly due to these inefficiencies.

Those shoes are too big for you son!

This news broke my heart, the first signs of rich typography on the web and it’s taken away from me by technical issues. Whilst I argued day and night with the developers, asking them to look harder at a fix or an alternative my words seemed to be falling on deaf ears, so I, a mere designer whose job it is to merely ‘colour in’ and ‘stay between the lines’ decided to play sherlock and find an alternative.

Search for the Holy Grail

Well I didn’t find the Holy Grail, but I did find
FLIR (pronounced FLEER, Facelift Image Replacement).

Facelift Image Replacement (or FLIR, pronounced fleer) is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your web page in fonts that otherwise might not be visible to your visitors. The generated image will be automatically inserted into your web page via Javascript and visible to all modern browsers. Any element with text can be replaced: from headers (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to <span> ) to elements and everything in between!

It looks exactly what I’m after! It claims to automatically find what needs to be replaced and where (presumably through standard markup tags like a H2), with it’s nifty Javascript. I can’t see any flash at all in it’s downloads section so again I presume it isn’t required.

Explore FLIR for yourself >>>