1. Backing up your database with phpMyAdmin and wordpress files

2. If you are moving it to GoDaddy, this is very helpful info for setting up the SQL database and importing your backed-up database from the old wordpress site

3. My final step is a fix for when you redirected to the old site after you have logged into the new site. This tutorial show you how to fix what is probably the issue using phpMyAdmin to configure wp_options in your SQL database. Note: go to the section called “Changing the URL directly in the database” and do all the steps. I was amazed at how much this fixed my issues

World Builder from BranitVFX on Vimeo.

Now, there are a lot of flash image galleries out there but you can’t see them on the iPhone and I personally like to be able to tweek the hell out of a gallery with CSS. Here is a killer list of jQuery image galleries that Steve Doll forwarded to me 25 jQuery Image Gallery/Slider Tutorials and Plugins

Today, Smashing Magazing posted a great article on black and white photography: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/09/beautiful-black-and-white-photography-2/

small screenshot of the new concrete wind home page

I redesigned the site for several reasons. To start, I am a different and more skilled designer than I was when I created the last version. It lacked proper contrast, needed more content, and I have a lot more tricks up my sleeve these days. Second, I have completed a lot of projects since my days at Jaman and none of them were in my portfolio. I had to make the decision to either update my portfolio and let clients interact with an interface that was not reflective of my current skills OR bite the mullet lie Joe Dirt and redesign the site from the ground up with good design and data architecture in mind.

After several sketches and some photoshop experiments, I had a good idea of the colors and shapes I wanted to use. My previous design had some good elements (city skylines, trees, faint sunburst) that I wanted to keep but they needed to mature and have some warmth. I took my old photoshop files from the previous design and cleaned up the layers so that I could see the bare essentials. Here’s what the site looked like:

screenshot of the previous version of concrete wind

Then I dug up an old screen background that I designed about a year and a half ago:

sunburst screen background

I combined the two files and added some extra polish that I learned from a fantastic design tutorial by Alvaro Guzman . The end result is the website you see today. I’ll write more about the streamlined architecture and jQuery effects I used in a later post.

This is a fantastic little film that inspired me while I was working on the itvirtualizationlive.com and sharepointvcx.com websites. I think it’s very helpful for the design process to absorb media that’s innovative and full of weird sh#t!