I just finished another of my ‘senior’ courses (Instructional Design) about two weeks ago now and, through the class, I finally got a jump on the multimedia tutorial series I’ve wanted to work on since before I got Authentic Vision’s WebWorks up and running. I highly doubt the next ones will be Flash-based, but I do plan to update the WordPress tutorials I’ve done so far and add more as I can.

Meanwhile, here’s an introduction to the WordPress blogging platform, the ‘New Post’ page, a dash of HTML, and a good start to search engine optimization: Click here to view or right click and ‘Save As’ to download for later use.

I mentioned back here that I’m workin on a top secret design for Planet Zoron and, just tonight, I saw something that has me grinning from ear to ear.

From this, via MNTLPLX:

To this (mentioned above):

To this gem, reported by Zoron’s own Hygh Dephunychun:

Talk about transcendence!

I’m not exactly in a position to brag about it on Facebook (deactivated my account – again!) so here’s one for those of you who find this one on its own merit!

I’ve been working on Planet Zoron’s new design. While it’s not complete, yet, I (as the designer and all) am perfectly content with giving sneak peeks and glimpses into the overall process.

Shhhh, back here but remember – top secret!

So I’m in the process of reskinning one of our sister sites, Planet Zoron. This involves lots of nastiness – nitty gritty local server setups that don’t want to work the first 4 times (and ways!) tried. And, once that’s done, trying to work out the graphic in a way that a tutorial says will work.

Me, of course…it takes me time…I suffer from ADD, OCD, occasional dyslexia, and flat out airheadedness! A day of working off and on over about 8 hours (all told) I was about ready to pull out my hair and give in. But when I finally put together that last tiny piece of the puzzle…It’s just too hard to not brag about it and share how I did it!

Now, for those of you I’m working for (the select few I do, anyway) – if you want it, let me know when next your site is called for a redesign! LOL For the rest of you who might be coding or want to – those of you know you’re at least this brave and handy with image editing – here’s an awesome tutorial for doing rollover menus with CSS instead of Javascript!

CSS Image Rollover Tutorial on WebVamp.

It’s Wednesday, my fourth week of eight is dangerously close to being over, and I’m officially hooked on Illustrator. The assignment in Advanced Illustration is to come up with an illustration for a children’s book. It just so happens I have a project in the works that requires an Alice in Wonderland type theme so I decided to use this to work on that.

Painstakingly tedious but awesome.

If you’ve been tagged to read this, take a second when you’ve got one. I’ve selected each of you because you’re special to me and I want to share my next move with you real quick.

Most of you (musicians, poets, and professionals) fall into one of a handful of categories:

1. Paying for hosting through a company like Yahoo or GoDaddy (the nightmares that they are) so that you can enjoy having your own name/brand on a corner of the web.
2. Wanting to have your own name/brand on a corner of the web but haven’t followed through on it yet.
3. Utilizing ‘free’ blogs because you have a lot to say – more than social networks and micro-blogs allow – and don’t think you can afford (or want to pay) what it would cost to run your own site.
4. Having no online presence beyond social networks, music sharing websites, and things of that nature.

Major brands all across the board wouldn’t be caught dead with a URL that was anything but their name and you shouldn’t either. I’m on a mission to upgrade you all.

Over the next month or so, I’ll be working to get set up as a bonafide web host. This will mean that, instead of dealing with the big dogs trying to get your website set up and maintained, you can go through me. And, unlike the big dogs, I’m setting up on a sliding scale – ready to spread the wealth.

So, to start, here’s what I want to offer: $3/month (just $36 for the year) and $11-20/year for your domain name of choice, depending on the name and assuming it’s available for regular purchase/renewal. (Most will be $11 but there are some few and far between exceptions.)

And here’s the cool part: My goal is to have at least enough people to drop the cost for hosting to $1/month as we head into 2012. Once we reach that point, I’ll be rewarding my early birds with free hosting and, if they’ve brought friends in with them, free domain renewal.

Good? Good.

Whether you have your own site already or want one made, if you want to get in on this, email me with details and any questions you may have. kiva[at]authenticvisionllc[dot]com.

Let’s get it!

I have a slightly dated article back here that has some information relevant to processing your pictures before putting them on your website. Seven months later, I’ve decided to go ahead and actually write the Part 2 to all that – working with images in WordPress!

Let it be known, however, that I only endorse their editing tools for smaller jobs and easily updating your previously uploaded images should your sizing requirements change. It’s easier and far more efficient to edit lots of pictures offline then upload!

On to the Finale!

I wasn’t feeling any sort of inclination to mess with school last night so I decided I’d just go ahead start working on passing one more gem of knowledge on to the world at large: HTML Snippets I Think Every Blogger (and ‘Multimedia Designer‘) Should Know But Don’t.

Sure, push button editing of any sort seems ‘cool,’ and is supposed to make stuff easy but if you’re serious about writing out here on the Wild Wild Web (or coding it up) and being effective, you have to know some basics. Obviously, the book I mentioned before (and now over there —>) is one way to go about it but all you writers don’t need to get that in depth, especially if you’re working with WordPress and/or have me runnin thangs. For any up and coming code Geeks – please do yourself a favor and learn this stuff before you dive head-first into adoration and worship of Adobe’s ‘tools!’

But enough preaching!

For members of the Tribe and others who might be interested, here’s one of a series of tutorials I’m working on to help WordPress initiates get on their way to content publishing.

It’s long so I’m hiding it back here!

So, I just got done giving Leaf Qwembi a slight makeover.

And I actually thought to do before and afters! LOL

Back Here!