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I Will Be at WordCamp Montreal 2013

Stéphane — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:45:27 +0000

WordCamp Montréal 2013 is coming in late June and, as is becoming a tradition for me, I will be attending this great event for the 4th time! It seems that the more experience I get with WordPress, the more I get out of WordCamp. There’s always an great roster of presenters every year and I always meet interesting people. I was nowhere ready for it this year but I’m starting to think about presenting at WordCamp eventually. I’ve been working with WordPress almost exclusively for well over 3 years now and my experience with multisite used for multilingual sites could certainly help others. I know it’s a topic that will be touched upon this year but it’s a reality for almost every web site for me. We’ll see! The talks schedule looks like the best I’ve seen so far this year so if you are near or in Montreal during the last weekend in June (29, 30), don’t miss it! As I’ve said before, the Montréal WordPress community is truly awesome! See you there!

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The State of my 2013 WordPress Toolset — Themes

Stéphane — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:20:43 +0000

When I wrote the 2012 version of this post last year, I did not expect it to become the most commented post on this blog ever. It made me realize that there is a real hunger for information about premium WordPress themes and frameworks out there, a need for opinions from people working with some of these products every day and who are not afraid to speak their mind. I like to think I do that here. I also try to make a distinction between what frameworks would work well for professional WordPress designers and developers versus casual users. The former is what interests me and most reviews out there are targeted at the latter. Also, you often get a review from someone who tinkered with a framework on a test site for a few minutes or hours. I work with the themes I mention here all the time. Testing a theme framework for a couple hours will not give you a perspective on things like: How well do upgrades and updates work? Do updates typically break client sites layouts? Do you need to tweak your child themes every time you upgrade the parent theme? How does the framework perform [...]

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Learning from the Past and Looking Forward to 2013

Stéphane — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:21:28 +0000

I have done a few end of year / start of new year posts in the past but this one will not be a look back at the past year. 2012 has been a great year for me and my business, a year of growth and the pain that often comes with it. But I prefer to look forward and distill those lessons into areas of focus for the new year so I can improve where I can and do better in 2013. Planning the year ahead I read a great article yesterday that someone linked to on Twitter and the gist of it was that you should consider not setting goals at all for different reasons but define areas of focus instead. That makes a lot of sense to me. Here’s the paragraph that drove the point home for me: A goal defines an outcome you want to achieve; an area of focus establishes activities you want to spend your time doing. A goal is a result; an area of focus is a path. A goal points to a future you intend to reach; an area of focus settles you into the present. Again: “An area of focus settles [...]

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The State of My 2012 WordPress Toolset — Themes

Stéphane — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:03:12 +0000

The last few months have been my busiest since I started freelancing full time in August 2008 and I’ve also had to tackle some of my most complex WordPress projects. This means I had to re-evaluate parts of my WordPress toolset to be able to satisfy some of my increasingly demanding clients’ requirements and was forced to make some important changes to it. I also learned a lot about WordPress as a development platform in the last two years and, after working with ColdFusion for a long time, I’m starting to get far more comfortable with PHP now. This enabled me to appreciate how powerful, elegant and flexible the WordPress platform really is and how much easier it makes things when you use the tools and APIs it provides correctly. This new understanding forced me to look at some of the tools I was using with new eyes and rethink some of the early decisions I made when I first started to work with WordPress. This includes rethinking Headway, the theme framework I’d been using as I was starting to have issues with it and the theme is the most important component of a WordPress site besides WordPress itself. A [...]

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Get Headway Before November 25

Stéphane — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:52:21 +0000

Many of you know that, since I’ve started working with WordPress, the only theme I’ve used on any client project is Headway. Headway is not “just” a theme like the multitude of premade themes (free or paid) you can download and slap on a site with a few tweaks. Headway is a theme framework. It enables me to integrate any design I create or is given to me into a site. It affords me total flexibility as well as reliable tools I can count on project after project. To me, it’s not just a WordPress theme or a framework but a complete Web Site Design and Development System. So you can understand why I’m so enthusiastic about it and will recommend it to anyone who will listen here and on Twitter. I don’t recommend or advertise just any products on this site and Headway is one I really believe in. So, on November 25th, Headway 3.0 (affiliate links in this post) will be released and everyone who has seen the videos or played with the beta are raving about it and how much better it will be than it already is. The revolutionary Visual Editor will be even more powerful and flexible than [...]

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I Will be at WordCamp Montreal 2011

Stéphane — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:54:05 +0000

WordCamp Montreal 2011 is coming in July and I will be attending this great event for the second time. When I was there last year, I was just starting to get serious about WordPress and had done a couple of test projects including Isabelle’s site and this one of course. Now I’ve been working with WordPress on pretty much all my client projects for the last 14 months and it has become the cornerstone of my process. There are a lot of in-depth talks at WordCamp Montreal this year and it looks like I’ll probably be learning more than last time. If you are in the area during the weekend of July 9 and 10 and you are interested or already working with WordPress, you owe it to yourself to be there. The Montreal WordPress community is truly awesome! See you there!

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The Real Pixelyzed 3.0 is Live (and Back with Headway)

Stéphane — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 04:29:43 +0000

Sometime last week I finally finished the “real” pixelyzed 3.0 redesign and switched the theme of the site back to Headway. I’m very happy to be back to Headway and will talk about it more in future posts as I truly think it’s the best WordPress theme framework for professionals doing client sites on WordPress. The 3.0 design will probably be tweaked and evolve with time but I do not consider it transitional as I’d done with all the versions between it and the original pixelyzed 1.0 design (the one with the “pixels” grid). It is purposefully simple and I will help me concentrate on creating content. I’ve learned a lot in the last 18 months working in WordPress for all my client projects. It has really become the cornerstone of my business and I want to share some of my discoveries, tools and process with you all. So you can look forward to more frequent updates even if it’s shorter articles. Hope you like the new look and, as always, I appreciate any comments you may have.

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Any Interest in eBooks on Adobe Fireworks (and other subjects)?

Stéphane — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:45:41 +0000

To this day, my tutorial on removing image backgrounds non-destructively using Adobe Fireworks is still by far the most visited page on this site. I still receive email about it and questions from people requesting help with how to deal with their own images or more complex images than the ones the tutorial covered. So, I’m throwing an idea out there : Would anyone be interested in a reasonably priced eBook on the subject that would go much deeper into the issue and even include some video where I show some of the techniques live? If so, what would you consider a reasonable price? Furthermore, if you’ve had images that gave you trouble and would be willing to share them with me (an anyone who will read the eBook), feel free to contact me and you can then send me the images and I will choose some to use as examples. Any other feedback on this idea you want to provide is very welcome. Other Subjects If there’s anything else related to Web design, WordPress or any of the things I usually discuss here that you would like help with then share it in a comment or send a message [...]

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Coming Up On pixelyzed.com In 2011

Stéphane — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 02:33:47 +0000

To say that I have been busy in the latter half of 2010 would be an understatement… my lack of posting here or on my company blog is a testament to it. But I’ve been learning a lot and plan to share my best finds as usual. So, here are a few things that are coming up here soon… First, I’m working on yet another design for this blog. The one I’m using now has always been transitional… I just never planned on leaving it like this for this long But that will be implemented when it’s ready. Part of the reason I have not posted here in a while is I wanted to have the new design up before I did. I decided I didn’t care and will post anyway as I find the time. The first thing I want to do is share my best finds of 2010. I have several more client sites done in WordPress under my belt and my toolset and skills are of course evolving. Still a fan of Headway, phasing out Thesis (for many different reasons… this site is my only one left using it) and a couple premium plugins are rocking my WordPress designer world. [...]

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4 Essential Extensions for Adobe Fireworks

Stéphane — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 03:55:45 +0000

Here are a few of my essential Adobe Fireworks’ extensions. As much as I love Fireworks and work with it almost everyday, I find that its native creative toolset still has some gaping holes when compared to other vector based design application like Illustrator for example. On the other hand, Fireworks has a very dedicated and inventive user community and several of its members have create extensions to patch those holes or simply improve Fireworks’ workflow. The Extensions The 5 extensions below are some of those I use the most in my own work. Most of their creators have many others that might be more suited to helping you in your own work so take the time to explore their Web sites to find the other gems they have to offer. 1– Trevor McCauley’s “Transform Panel” Information and download: http://www.senocular.com/fireworks/extensions/?entry=572 This extension is probably the one I use the most often during a Fireworks design or editing session. Unlike Fireworks’ native Properties Inspector, the Transform panel lets you do 2 things that I find essential in my work. One (A) is to enter decimal numbers for location and size fields (W/H/X/Y). If you are working with a troublesome objet where a 1 [...]

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