Arcane Palette Creative Design » :: creative web design

WordCamp SLC 2011 presentation video

chris — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:08:48 +0000

The video for my presentation at WordCamp SLC this year has now been posted on WordPress.tv. Check it out here or head over to WordPress.tv and vote on how great the presentation is.

How to upload a plugin from the WordPress dashboard [VIDEO]

chris — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:28:35 +0000

The second video in our screencast series, this shows you how to upload a plugin from a zip file with the WordPress Add New Plugin installer.

How to Update WordPress Plugins [VIDEO]

chris — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:07:54 +0000

We created a YouTube page where we’ll be hosting video tutorials on doing various different things — both beginner and advanced — in WordPress. In our first video, we walk you through keeping your WordPress installation up-to-date with plugin updates. Watch below or head over to our YouTube page so you can subscribe to updates. We recommend taking a look at the WordPress Codex article on Updating WordPress in addition to watching this video, as it goes into much more depth and provides some information on how to create a backup of your database before performing any updates to your site.

WordPress Theme Development 101 – Test Run

chris — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 03:35:48 +0000

WordCamp SLC is in one week, and I am speaking. In order to prepare myself, I have been talking to myself (which I refer to as “preparing my presentation”) and decided that filming myself might also be helpful. For the sake of anyone interested in the subject matter, people who might not go to WordCamp Salt Lake City, who don’t want to wait until the official session videos are uploaded, or who simply want to heckle in the comments, I’ve provided this video of a practice run of my presentation. Enjoy. You can also find the full presentation slides here.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Free September Calendar Wallpaper: Bean Hollow

chris — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:00:06 +0000

Bean Hollow is a rocky beach on the California coast near Pescadero. It’s an awesome place for climbing on rocks and checking out tidepools that isn’t overrun with people. We didn’t post a new wallpaper last month, because we were too busy going to beaches like this along Highway 1, so we thought we would share a tiny bit of that with this grungy wallpaper for your desktop, laptop, phone or tablet. As always, this wallpaper is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike license in the following resolutions:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×800
1280×800

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

Tablet
768×1024

Phone
320×480

download Bean Hollow 10.1 MB
downloaded 203 times

July 2011 Calendar Wallpaper: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

chris — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:43:58 +0000

Every month, we give you a free calendar wallpaper for your computer, tablet or phone. This month, we present A Midsummer Night’s Dream — a little surreal, a little dusky and a little summer-y. This wallpaper is free to use under the Creative Commons 3.0 license and comes in the following resolutions:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×900
1280×800

Standard Screen
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

iPad/Tablet
768×1024

iPhone/Mobile
360×480

download A Midsummer Night’s Dream 11MB
downloaded 399 times

Free June Calendar Wallpaper: Spacecat!

chris — Tue, 31 May 2011 20:51:27 +0000

I was working on an esoteric website design when I stumbled across this awesome cat. So, obviously we needed to put this cat in space, right? Am I right? This wallpaper has a little bit of everything for texture lovers, sci-fi geeks and fans of surrealism. But the star of the wallpaper is, of course, the cat, with an expression that says “don’t make me hurt you.” The wallpaper is presented in standard, widescreen, iPhone and iPad sizes under a Creative Commons License in the following resolutions:

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×900
1280×800

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

iPad
768×1024

iPhone
320×480

download Spacecat! 26.7MB
downloaded 251 times

Free Calendar Wallpaper: May Flowers

chris — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 14:32:20 +0000

The weather here in Salt Lake City has been a little crazy. We’ll have sun for a few days, then — suddenly — it snows. In the morning, the snow from the previous night melts slowly off the new flowers as the birds sing and make nests in the trees. In short, it’s Spring. And we thought we’d share the joy of Spring with a wallpaper that reflected the season. This wallpaper features some tulips from our garden on a marbled rock texture. As always, we have resolutions for standard, widescreen, and i-devices.

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×900
1280×800

iPhone
320×480

iPad
768×1024

download May Flowers 8.08MB
downloaded 652 times

Free April Calendar Wallpaper: Look to the Sky

chris — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:45:38 +0000

This is a grungy spring wallpaper to warm your monitor on rainy days. The bright oranges, yellows and blues provide an interesting counterpoint to the grungy textures and typography. Our April 2011 wallpaper is ready for your standard or widescreen monitor, iPad and iPhone and includes the following resolutions:

Standard
1600×1200
1280×960
1024×768

Widescreen
1920×1200
1440×900
1280x 800

iPad
768×1024

iPhone
320×480

Download Look to the Sky 20.7MB
downloaded 703 times

Free Facebook Fan Box Widget PSD Template

chris — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:15:33 +0000

As designers, we often find ourselves spending exorbitant amounts of time working on fake content. It’s hard to describe something to some people without being able to show it to them. Facebook fan page widgets are something you see everywhere, and yet, how do you incorporate them into a mockup without using someone else’s box or resizing it to fit into dimensions that fit your new design but aren’t the original widget’s proportions? I have found myself in this position many times and, yesterday, set out to find a PSD solution. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. There are a couple really good Facebook UI templates (like this one from Fuel Your Creativity which has you covered on everything you need for an actual fan page, or this one that was featured on Smashing Magazine and includes everything else, from pop up messages to chat boxes to “loading” boxes), but nothing — nothing — for fan boxes. This was a bit surprising considering the depth and detail of what was offered in those links above, but changing my query around got me no closer to a solution for what I was looking for.

So, I decided to make my own.

This Facebook Fan Box widget is fully layered and editable, down to the dividers inside the box. The background is a shape with a stroke applied to reproduce the border around the Facebook widget’s iframe. The size of the widget is 237 x 300 — which is what I generally use when I add fan boxes to sites I’m working on because it gives enough room to have an equal amount of padding on both sides around four columns of user photos. The photos themselves are generic Facebook avatars that can be swapped with any image you want (or not). All the text is editable and in Lucida Sans (which can be substituted with Lucida Grande for Mac-users).

This is version 1.0 of this PSD template, designed specifically for our own typical needs when we are designing mockups for clients. It only includes the face-box-style fan box, but leave your comments below, and we might consider updating the template to accomodate different sizes or fanbox styles.

Download Facebook Fan Box Widget PSD Template 2.05MB
downloaded 1163 times