Laura Blalock

Newness

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:58:44 +0000

I've finally finished moving all my sites to Wordpress 3.0 using the new multiblog feature. This will let me manage all my sites from a single interface and skip installing software updates multiple times. It was a lot of work made possible at all by liangzai's post giving step-by-step instructions on how to use the same Wordpress install with multiple domains. Moving the content wasn't that difficult with my other blogs but because I'd used so many different forms in so many places on this one I had to figure out how to integrate it all. The media library is doing fine so far to manage my images. I've taken my CSS templates and uploaded them to the library as zip files for download attached to new posts (sorry for the spam). My portfolio is taking advantage of another new feature, custom post types. This allows for linking to a particular piece as well as using larger images. You may not see much difference up front but this change-over should make things much easier for me on the back-end.

Expanse

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:12:45 +0000

Download expanse.

Nice and Clean

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:11:34 +0000

A minimal blog layout. clean

Photo Blog

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:10:01 +0000

A simple photo blog template emphasizing the daily photo. photo

Blog Co.

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:08:27 +0000

A CSS layout for the popular corporate design with three columns. blogco

Business Layout

Laura — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:06:50 +0000

A sample business webpage layout created with CSS and available for download. business.html

Hello world!

Laura — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:11:13 +0000

I’ve moved over to WordPress 3.0 so there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Please forgive the hiccups.

WordPress 3.0 Roundup

Laura — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 05:45:14 +0000

The blogosphere has been spending a lot of time lately talking about the upcoming release of Wordpress 3.0. It includes many new features like a new default theme, the ability to manage multiple blogs from a single code installation and an easier method of creating custom menus. I'm personally looking forward to the multi-site ability as I have several different blogs using Wordpress. Keeping up with blog and plugin updates on all of them can be a little tiring. I expect it will be a lot of work to set up but worth it in the end. I'm planning to use the custom post type option to redo my portfolio in a more accessible manner. The addition I'm not anticipating but I should is the ability to name your administrator account whatever you want. For years the first account created by Wordpress was called "admin" by default. Hackers have been taking advantage of it to try to crack Wordpress-based websites. There have been tutorials to change the default user name but these have been hacks needing you to make changes directly in the database. Letting people create personal ids at installation makes the site far more secure with no scary hacks needed ;-). I'm listing some useful tutorials for Wordpress 3.0 and others that work for earlier versions too.

Oh no, an AD!

Laura — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:17:16 +0000

I once said I’d never do it but if you look over in the sidebar you’ll find an ad for Bluehost.com. Worse, an animated ad.

The fact is that as a freelancer I need to make money however I can and the payoff affiliate funds I get are nothing to sneeze about.

The important part though is that I’m very pleased with the service. It’s less than ½ of what I was paying previously with all of the services I need and the ability to do what I want. Security settings were a problem with my previous host and it’s refreshing to know I’ll be able to use all of the services from social media on my own site. It’s also a relief to not wonder when I’m going to get hacked the next time. To be fair, that could be a function of moving to smaller host but it’s still one less worry.

To sum up, yes I sold out.

But I did it out of true love as well as necessity and isn’t that the best you can realistically hope for? You can be sure any ads that might creep in here will be for services I’ve actually used and enjoyed.

At least until they offer me more money

How to create a 3D stained glass effect in Illustrator

Laura — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:16:28 +0000

I came up with this technique while designing a glass art logo. The results were pretty nice so I thought I'd share. This is written in Adobe Illustrator CS3 but it should be fairly simple to implement in other programs.

First, create the basic shape using the pen tool:
Next, slice it into chunks using the knife tool:
Third, select the chunks with the direct selection tool and color them separately:
Now select the whole and change the transparency to "Overlay." Use the direct selection tool to select the edges of the sliced pieces and "stretch" them to create the color overlap.
Give the whole piece a Diffuse Glow. I've included a screenshot with the settings I used.
Copy the object and apply a white to black radial gradient:
The gradient is being used to create highlights where the light is shining. Finally, after it's set, align it over the original shape and reduce the transparency. I used 6%.
And you're finished! You should have something resembling the pic below: