When I first began my business, I had the pleasure of designing a blog called “The Broke Socialite” for a very discerning and talented client I’ll call Mrs. S. She describes herself as an extraordinary, upwardly mobile, thirty-something Renaissance woman. She’s a loving wife, dedicated daughter, loyal sister, cool step-mom and consummate girlfriend— who prefers the fabulousness of life.

How can you NOT fall instantly in love with her from that description alone?

She truly has her finger on the pulse of how to live a fabulous champagne lifestyle for a fraction of the cost — and in addition to that, she’s been chosen as one of Atlanta’s TOP bloggers in the People’s Choice category, and also by the Staff Picks at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Quite an honor — and very befitting to this wonderfully talented client.

If you’re not following her blog, hop over and visit her – you can follow her on twitter or you can even follow her on Facebook, where she showcases her newest project “Gasp. Swoon. Faint.”, a Blog Talk Radio Show that debuts Monday, November 16th.

She keeps dropping hints on her blog about her first guest and I’ll be the first to admit I’m more than a little curious about who it’s going to be. With hints like “The First Lady”, “Fashion”, and the “White House”, one can only guess.

So congratulations, Mrs. S! We’re so proud of your accomplishments thus far and can’t wait until we go on the Oprah show with you!

Dreamhost, who hosts my website experienced a major crash on several of their servers this week and had to build new hardware in order to move existing clients to a more stable server.

This affected mail servers, FTP, and web clients — which is why the site has been down for approximately two days.

My apologies if you’ve tried to contact me and I’ve not replied – you might want to shoot another email my way and I’ll respond in kind.

***UPDATED TO ADD***
I will be moving hosts in the next week, so if you need to contact me, please do so by submitting your request/email via the contact form.

Cheers,

Karen

Click the image for a larger preview:

This is totally free for your personal use only and not to be redistributed. Background compliments of  Jen  Furlotte.  *Any modifications or alteration of credits will result in removal of template.

Here’s your download link:

Click on the image for a larger preview.

This is totally free for your personal use only and not to be redistributed. Elements compliments of Shabby Princess. *Any modifications or alteration of credits will result in removal of template.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and comments on what you’d like to see here in the future.

Here’s Your Download Link:

***Update*** This design has been sold! Please stay tuned for more Pre-Made Templates — subscribe to my blog feed to stay abreast of new freebies rolling out, as well as new Pre-Mades for Sale!
Cheers, Karen

A sneak peek…the very first Custom Ready-Made Template for sale from Simply Amusing Designs!

Whether you like chic, hip, modern, girly, or eco-friendly, this could be the design for you! It can be used on either Blogger or Wordpress (self-hosted sites only) and is available now for a one time purchase. It is a 2 column, widget-ready theme that includes installation.

Please Contact Me for a full preview of this gorgeous blog and pricing details.

She sent me examples of sites she really loved (Country Living, Southern Weddings) and I reviewed them to see what elements they had in common. I was looking particularly at colors, style of layout (was it clean, cluttered, somewhere in between?)  and navigation styles.

The most common elements were then extracted (horizontal navigation,  colors, and layout elements) — and a custom color palette that complimented her existing website and logo colors was chosen. Then came the real fun – the mockup and revisions by the client, then the coding and testing of the blog.

Rebecca was truly a “delight” to work with.  She was very engaging and laid back, and gave terrific feedback, which made the design process so much fun. If  you’re getting married and live near Door County, Massachusetts, or are looking for a wedding destination — you should consider utilizing her services.

Here’s the finished product:

A girly, hip, chic, and cheeky custom wordpress blog design

Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.

If you’re still reading this – please go update. NOW. Yes, it’s that important. Don’t wait.

Cheers,

Karen

I have the best of intentions to share the information I find, or to write an article or two on my blog here, (it almost always makes its way into my stumbleupon account or my google reader if it’s really good) but I seem to stop short of writing about it.

So I’m starting something new for the weekends called “Weekend Links”…sort of like David Letterman’s “Top Ten”, only not so funny. These links will mostly have to do with your blog or website, but occasionally, I’ll post something totally unrelated, because I am a firm believer in variety.  I won’t be writing the articles…I’ll simply be pointing you to a few I’ve discovered over the course of the week that I think will be either interesting or informative.

Here’s a few I discovered this past week:

1.  Twitter Study: 40% of tweets are “pointless babble”

2. From Smashing Downloads: 20 Useful Resources to Download Free Website Templates

3. Cool Hand-drawn Social media Buttons for your blog: by Woo Themes

4. 65 Popular and Professional Free Fonts to download and use

5. Maximize your Wordpress Performance – 13 Tips and Tricks to get the most out of Wordpress

Okay, so that was only five, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Maybe there will be something on this list you’ll find interesting, maybe not. But keep checking back because I’ll be posting more links every weekend.

Cheer

What we did:
Laurie and I chatted about the direction she wanted to take with her blog and her future goals. We decided she needed a blog that could grow with her advertising needs, as well as really spotlight her five main categories: Spa, Products, Organics, Travel, and News.

So I created custom “channels” to highlight her best content and added a second sidebar to give her the ad space she so desired. I also revamped her header and created a fresh new look for her entire site. There were lots of little touches added to help make her blog stand out, without “overdoing it”. Here’s the final outcome:

Laurie was recently featured in the International Cosmetic News June/July 2009 “The Beauty of Blogs” issue. I’m so pleased for her and pleased that her design was ready in time for the abundance of traffic she’s sure to get from her exposure in a premiere cosmetic magazine.

Here’s what Laurie had to say about the experience:

Karen is competent professional who seamlessly performed every task I requested at a minimal cost. Though we never actually spoke on the phone, we communicated through email and IM. She hit every idea, whim, and look that I was going for. Furthermore, she performed the installation in such a way that the posting and tweaking layouts on my part is virtually exactly the same as it was before the re-design. Finally, when I requested the margins be after the process was over, she did so from her iPhone on a Sunday night in about one minute. I’d recommend her to anyone!