Just thought I’d put up a quick note before everyone else starts posting about it. The latest beta build of WordPress 2.3 is now available for download. Everything I’ve tested so far with 2.3 has been working superbly, and I’m really excited to see 2.3 go final and get it in use here on Devlounge. The first release candidate is due out next Monday (continuing with their new released every Monday pattern that’s been going on over the last few weeks), so we sure to watch for it. You can grab the beta here if you are interested.

Round two of the homepage updates have now been completed. You’ll notice that the homepage sidebar is now a little bit more populated than before. Header images have been added for each section, to give some visual identification to each section. You’ll now find the four latest news briefs and side notes in the sidebar as well. Lots to click on, but it is all leading on into the site. That’s good, right?

If you’re looking for something to go good with your Sunday breakfast, stop by Devlounge and have a look at the updated homepage. As promised, it was time to trash all of the extra stuff and put more focus on our articles. I still have some things to add (just a few more things to the sidebar on the right), and I’m still trying to determine the best amount of articles to have on the front page (more or less than right now…what do you think?). Let me know what you think of the change.

What an extremely slow week! I apologize for a severe lack of new material this week. My first week back at school, and it just takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. Without any more delaying, let’s just right into things this week since this is the only new material coming out of camp Devlounge.

Sites of the Week

Leading off week 44 is Varien. I’m loving the color scheme here, the site is very clean as well. The layout is nothing over the top or ground breaking, but it gets the job done and serves the purpose just fine.

Second is Kyan. I really like how it goes from blue to green, obviously representing the sky and the ground. And their Carbon Logic project looks pretty damn nice.

And finally this week is Worldways. The reason this one makes the list is because of how clean it is. Sometimes I just love how things are laid out, and this is one of those cases.

Digg / Design Float Weekly

Design – Web 2.0 Layer Styles
A bunch of Photoshop layer styles, with a bunch of gradients for you web 2.0 nuts. A time saver? Maybe for some of you.

Programming – 17 WordPress Plugins for AdSense
A Mashable article pointing out 17 WordPress plugins to help with displaying Google AdSense ads in WordPress.

Changes, Changes

You may have read it last week about the suggested changes that were on the way to Devlounge. Plain and simple, I’m removing all the bloat and putting 90% of the focus on what it should be on – the content. I feel right now, a lot of it falls by the way side. Currently if you land on the homepage for the first time, it can be difficult to navigate, and chances are you’ll end up clicking on content from somewhere else than from Devlounge, because there is so much more of it on the page. The homepage will be split into two columns, with a column on the right containing ads, recent interview photos (like they are displayed now but without the iframe), and some other goodies. The left column will feature someone between 5-10 articles, in large excerpt form leading to the actual full length articles. This should increase circulation of all of our content, which is always helpful, especially right now because I’m swamped with school stuff, upcoming SAT’s, college essays and applications, and a lot of other stuff that is going to be occupying most of my time. It should make it to the stage in a few weeks or less.

Late edition Friday Focus this week, and of course, it is all my fault. Please forgive me for a rare “Saturday” edition of the focus. Yesterday was my first day back at school, and after the seemingly forever when-the-hell-is-this-going-to-end day was over, I was out the rest of the night until early this morning. So no surprise I didn’t do any writing. The irony about the whole thing was all week I planned on writing about how helpful scheduling posts can be when a situation like this arises (like I knew it would), but I never even got a chance to write that one. Watch for it next week sometime. Anyways, enough talk. It’s Saturday Slice.

Sites of the Week

Kicking things off this week is Mobile Web Design, the store front page for Cameron Moll’s book on that exact topic. It was designed by 31Three. My favorite little feature is how you can actually use the More and Back buttons to look at some screenshots.

Next up is Peppermint Tea. The “official” repository for Mint Peppers. The design was recently updated, and has a much more “dark mint” appearance to it.

Rounding out this weeks Friday Saturday Focus is Rainfall Daffinson. A grid based portfolio layout, similar to Particles gives way to a nice collection of design work. Check them out.

Digg / Design Float Weekly

Design – Ultimate Web Development Cheat Sheets
Large collection of development “cheat sheets” in categories such as Javascript, CSS, Xhtml/Html, and Ajax.

Programming – Ruby on Rails vs PHP
The only top item in Programming for the last seven days. So here it is, a RoR vs PHP commercial.

Some Changes in Store

We are nearing the 300k unique visitor mark. Once we hit it, there will be some new and improved things in store for us here at Devlounge. The more people that come here, the faster we launch some of the new stuff and updates. I’ve been testing some of this stuff on the newest WordPress [beta] version, 2.3, and the site has been functioning just fine, which is only good news as we get ready to make some changes. Watch for them soon!

Have you advertised with us?

Without trying to sound too selfish, I thought I’d like to point out that we have a bunch of open slots right now for your advertising pleasure. This include 1 homepage slot and 2 sidebar slots. Be sure to visit our advertising page if you are interested.

That is it for this weekend. Enjoy it everyone!

Issue number 42. Exactly 10 weeks to go until we hit a year. Enjoy the weekend everyone!

Sites of the Week

Leading off this weeks top three is Kineda. How many times are we going to feature this place? I believe this is the third time Kineda has made the list, but every redesign looks cleaner and cleaner. I wish the Devlounge homepage was arranged like this, as I think it is very effective and helps tremendously with exposing a lot more content to the visitor. It gives me ideas, but as I said, I’m not redesigning this anymore – I’ve done enough of that already.

Next up is Challies. Another refreshingly clean magazine / portal style layout featuring lots of blues. Three columns and fairly polished up.

Wrapping up this week is Loose Stitch, an outlining app. It looks like the application interface itself is pretty clean, so I think I’ll be taking a look at this some time over the coming days.

Design Float / Digg Weekly

Design – A CSS Styled Table Version 2
Another great tutorial from Veerle. Nice and detailed, and comes with a clean final result (of course).

Programming – Image Browser Controls
Another tutorial, this time from Pup Image on the common right / left arrow controls found on a lot of images theres day when shown as a gallery / slide show.

Other News

Earlier this week I released Particles, our newest WordPress theme. As I mentioned, its lightweighty-ness (not really a word) makes it a great theme to build upon. If you didn’t believe me, check out this screenshot from a blog we’ve been watching via our refer logs that has been building off of the Particles theme to make a web gallery. Obviously, it is still a work in progress, but it’s only been a few days.

It approaches. The humidity takes a slight drop for a few days, and you can feel a refreshing feeling in the air. The leaves on the trees are still green, but a small portion fall to the ground and dry up. August is drawing to a close and September is coming. Another school year is upon us.

Many, if not most of you are way beyond this point. But for me, my final year of high school looms just a few short weeks away. The last few weeks of summer always seem to play with you – you know as days go by you are getting closer and closer to the start of a new school year, which puts a damper on the “fun” the last couple weeks of summer should really be about. Time is quickly running out, and before you know it, the 10 weeks of summer have vanished.

As soon as the school doors bust open, my motivation to do much design work usually seems to slam shut. Especially early on, that first month always seems to be a motivational killer. School requires a major refocus of time and effort, meaning books and school work take the forefront and Photoshop begins to collect dust.

Up until last year, it was that very reason which usually led me to take very few clients over the course of a school year. I usually did most of my client work in the summer, and let it take the back seat once fall hit. But beginning in my junior year, the on and off periods flip flopped. Last year, I found myself gathering ideas all day long, in various forms, while sitting in the back of a classroom. Pens, pencils, and pads are good for a lot of things.

The truth is, you don’t need a fancy to do list application or Photoshop in front of you to get your ideas down and out there in the open. I spent a lot of time throughout last year using the back pages in notebooks to draw up ideas for new sites, client work, and just about anything else I could think of. I’d sketch out design concepts (including some of the ones that later became versions of Devlounge), and label different sections with numbers, including notes on what I planned to fill each section with and how I could get it to work. Then, whenever I got the chance, I’d go into Photoshop and create rough mockups of my sketches and save them, so that even if I didn’t end up putting them to use, I’d have the ideas stored up for future work or projects. It turned out to be a fairly productive method, which explains why I took more clients last year during my “busiest” year of high school.

So my advice to you high school or early college kids who are still trying to become the best designer possible – don’t let school get in the way of your creativity. Of course set your priorities in the right order, but when you have time for it and ideas come to you, write them down! Whether it’s with words or pictures, it can really help you learn by storing all your concepts somewhere you have easy access to them. Here’s what I recommend:

• Extra Notebook – Score an extra notebook specifically for random things, such as sketches and notes. When you finish your work and your sitting there with nothing to do, rather than trying to sneak your iPod up through your sweatshirt so no one notices, take out your “design notebook” and start brainstorming. Get all your ideas down on paper.
• Don’t throw away any of your failed concepts. At the end of the year it will do you great justice to have a compiled notebook of failed and accepted designs. You can see what worked and what didn’t, and hey, you might actually learn something from yourself.
• Learn from usability mistakes right in front of your face. You’d be surprised, but you can pick up a lot of usability details from objects you use everyday. If you have a recently published text book, compare it to that old one from 1960 in the corner of the room. You’ll notice most books these days are much more clear cut; they draw attention to the important things and fill the pages with a lot more useful information then back in the day. Your likely to see just a bunch of jumbled text in the 1960 edition of the same book, but a lot more whitespace and vibrant colors to draw attention to details in newer editions.

The newest WordPress theme is now available for your pleasure. Scoop it up today, and use it for your site now! More information is available on the Particles page. Special thanks to Robert for helping me squash the final display bug yesterday. Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.

Friday focus…but it’s not even Friday!

Please excuse me for a rather late Friday Focus this week. It was the first time in a while that I didn’t pre-write the focus on Thursday, and when yesterday came around, I was out most of the day. Since I’ve wasted enough time getting this one going, let’s skip the pre-game pep talk and get right to the action.

Sites of the Week

Kicking off this week’s [late edition of] Friday Focus is 2G Media. I don’t know why, but I simply like this site. Maybe it’s the color combination, or some of the cool 3D work, but I just like it a lot.

Next up is Blog Action Day. A great design for an even better cause. Devlounge is being added as we speak. From the site: “On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.”

And finally this week is Problogger. Recently redesigned, Problogger now sports a very “portalish” look. It’s pretty neat if you ask me.

Design Float / Digg Weekly

Design – Hundreds of Free Icons for Webs and Desktops
Some really nice onces here. I like those gloss looking digg / technorati ones. I may put them to use. Just maybe .

Programming – Want to learn PHP? Easy!
A 15 part series that, according to the poster, are some of the best tutorials on php that they have ever read. I should probably look into some of these.

WordPress theme on the horizon

I’m working out one final css bug in my next upcoming WordPress theme, called Particles. It’s a very lightweight, speed and seo enhanced theme that allows you to quickly and easily build upon it. All together there are maybe six images used on the whole design, and it has a rather “unique” and different looking post setup than “most” standard designs. Watch for it in the coming days (possibly today if I get it fixed soon enough).

A new and fun little project / initiative from Devlounge that allows you to submit your favorite work piece to our [soon to be] large wall / quilt (think Million Dollar Homepage meets a design gallery) has gone live. Hopefully, this will help boost forum activity around here, and allow everyone to have a little fun (and get a link back ). You’ll find that the forums have a lot more information about the project, so you might want to check it out once you get the chance.

Here we are with week number 40, a little bit later than usual on your favorite night of the week – Friday. It was a good week for us, with quite a few really good articles, that you should probably consider looking through if you haven’t yet. Alright, enough chit chat, it’s time to kick off week 4-0.

Sites of the Week

You may remember that when GoPlan first launched, we featured them here on Friday Focus. The old design was white, with a lot of pastel color choices. The recent redesign took the darker route, but it still looks fairly nice.

Next up is Miingle, a one page, extremely vibrant design for a small advertising network. I think it is a very clean design, and perfect for the purpose of the site.

There was a rather small pool once again this week, leading up to a rather small Friday Focus. Hopefully we can come back big next week. Remember, if you want to get your site noticed and possibly featured here, please show it off in the forums!

Design Float / Digg Weekly

Design – Massive Collection of Photoshop Brushes
I know how most of you would probably want to make your own brushes, but if you are in need of a time saver, there are an abundance of brushes available from this site. Check them out.

Programming – Finally We Get New Elements in HTML 5
At look at some of the new things coming with HTML 5. It’s always good to stay ahead of the game.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the somewhat “coveted” digg-effect, it’s that it can either come in bunches, or not come at all. We had our fair share of good excellent articles that still have yet to receive the amount of traffic and recognition they deserve to have. I find it somewhat surprising, especially considering the amount of shit crappy, pointless things that are dugg frantically by the digg user population everyday.

Let’s take a look at what received a massive overload of traffic this week:

Digg in the 90′s – 8,618 Diggs
A photo – yes a photo – that someone put together showing what digg could have looked like in the 90′s, using tables and no css. The description says “very funny” but maybe it’s just me, because I didn’t find myself “ROFLING” after looking at this.

Girl’s boyfriend *accidentally* cooks her laptop in the oven – 5,157 Diggs
Another amazing story. I guess stupidity is more important than a well researched article for example. This girl lives in a high crime area, so she keeps her laptop in the oven. Yes, an oven. I hope you marked that down, as I know I did. Ever since I read this, I decided it be a great place to keep my wallet, house key, and birth certificate. If her laptop can survive when he boyfriend burns the shit out of it, I guess all my goods can too!

CRASH IE6 with one line of code – 2,613 Diggs
Check out this beauty. One piece of code gets IE6 to crash! That one really threw me for a loop. Really, I didn’t know that any code existed that wouldn’t crash IE / cause it display wrong / not display at all / etc. I thought that other people would realize the same thing, but apparently not, as close to 3,000 people found this interesting enough to make the frontpage of Digg.

What’s Better than Mouseovers? How About Scrollovers – 2,760 Diggs
Want a new way to annoy your visitors? Get scrollovers, the modern way to make your links do flips when you hover over them! My favorite part of all this is that a lot of the comments are all negative, but yet people still kept digging away. Bad publicity rules!

I’ve also noticed that many Digg users are deeply into lists. (But will this one get any love – probably not). Smashing Magazine, which very well could be called ListMAG, gets thousands of diggs on almost everything they publish, which very frequently, is a list of some sort. Not that I’m bashing any of their lists, as some of them are extremely helpful and many of them have included us, but a list is still just a list. We’ve listed some things too, but to no avail.

Then there are the digg users with a sense of humor. You know, the ones that laughed historically at that funny digg 90′s picture above. I’ve tried the “humor” route, and even that didn’t succeed all too well. I guess I won’t be doing stand up any time soon.

Occasionally, you get an article that shows the author really knows what their talking about. More often then not, people enjoy this, and show their appreciation. In our case, all of our authors (with the exception of myself probably) have a pretty damn good understanding of what they’re saying. Take, for example, and extremely large, full-length article series on building a WordPress plugin. With the amount of WordPress users out there, you probably would have figured this baby would have rocketed to the Digg top five in less than 24 hours. We came pretty close to reaching the top five alright, with a record shattering 4 diggs.

And, it appears that even when we take the serious / commentary type route, we still get shut out. It appears that digg really shows no love for us.

Is the World Over?

No, of course not. Digg is nothing more than a burst of traffic and a status symbol, and for any one of our posts to ever make the front page, it’d be like us playing the part of Ronald McDonald and robbing the crown right off the BK King’s head. It is a bit disappointing, considering if you found any of our best articles anywhere else, say Vitamin, they would have been crowned with front page status a long time ago. Instead, we walk down the red carpet alongside the other stars, but the reporters and paparazzi ignore us. We’re okay with that, because hopefully, sometime soon, we’ll be due to break out – and if this is the article that does it – well it’s about damn time.

What this post just did

If you just read this post, than I can congratulate myself for a mission accomplished. And more importantly, if this is the post that finally gets a lot of diggs, it just pointed out a few prime articles – that are all fairly new – for people to look into. For first time visitors, this is a key way to try and get them to stay, and “dig” (no pun intended) further into the site. I played it pretty sneakily (I don’t really think that’s a word), by dropping in in-site links mixed with some random sarcasm and a whole lot of pointlessness (another non-word?) to [hopefully] keep people interested and entertained. It contains a mixture of what everyone seems to love on digg – comedy, a partial list, lots of links, and even an image. That makes for one hell of a complete article, ehh? For regular readers, hopefully you didn’t find this post too annoying. Actually, I hope it got you to laugh (at least once would have been nice). All in all, the main goal of this commentary post was to make it to the front of digg, and allow our other, actual articles to enjoy the same benefits, and get the same kind of exposure they deserve to have.

Disclaimer: Digg doesn’t matter all that much too me .