General

Phew! I’m finally finished with re-uploading all of my content! Both the paid (web templates) and free (everything else) content is back at your disposal!
If you would run into mistakes/inconsistencies while browsing around, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Website design

WordPress

First, the biggest change to gawariel.com is the switch from a notepad-file based website to a website with a real CMS (Content Management System).

In the beginning, I organized this website through notepad-files containing all my content. When I wanted to make an update, I had to edit that specific notepad file and then re-upload it to the server.

Later, I wanted some more interaction with my visitors.
To that end, I installed Cutenews as a news manager. I had seen a couple of portfolio websites using this script and was quite eager to try it.
The installation was far easier than I had expected and thanks to this news manager I could add news to the site without constantly having to edit the notepad file and re-upload it. Also, Cutenews gave the blog at my website a bloggier feel thanks to the comment option, so that my visitors could reply to my updates.
At first, Cutenews worked like a charm and I was very happy with it. But, as you all might know, it suddenly wouldn’t let me login into the admin area, which made it impossible to add news to the site.
I tried deleting and reinstalling, but to no avail.

So eventually I contacted my host (Jenny), asking her if I would be allowed to work with WordPress, another thing I had been dying to try out.
Jenny was enthusiastic from the start declaring that – and I quote – WordPress would be the greatest change I could ever make. She was also the one suggesting I do not only use WordPress for its blogging feature, but also use it as an entire content management system (no more updating site content through notepad files).

And now I’m at this stage, with WordPress fully installed and all my content back up, and so far – I’m knocking wood here – I’m loving it.
WordPress is easy to use (like you will not believe!), structured and has lots of features of which I haven’t even explored half. So far so good, I’m not looking back !

The Design

Second, gawariel.com has a new look! *shocked gasp*

Installing WordPress meant that using my current design, without adjustments, wouldn’t be possible. As I was a bit sick of the design anyway – I’m using a similar one at gawariel_design – I decided that, before I do anything else on WordPress, I would try my hand at creating a wordpress theme.

There are literally hundreds of free WordPress themes available which could have made it easy on me if I just used one of those. But, in my opinion, it doesn’t really look good if a site on design uses a template made by someone else. So, I set out on my quests for tutorials on the creation of a WordPress theme. Having found this tutorial at wpdesigner.com, I learned that it isn’t really as hard as I had thought!

Next thing was designing a look for the theme.
When I browsed the available themes at WordPress, I ran into Michael Tyson’s Elegant Grunge theme. I really loved the simplicity and elegance (*duh*) of the whole look and decided I wanted something similar.
So with that look in my mind – together with my desire to have something with an Asian feel – I started creating my own design. And this is what I came up with:

If you compare the original (Elegant Grunge) with my design, you’ll see all I kept was the colour scheme and the grungy separators.
I made my design slightly wider, added a pattern – found at Ming-Ling and edited by me – to the background and made a more fancy header using the beautiful floral vector from magicmarie and kanji brushes from Obsidian Dawn.
Even though I used Elegant Grunge as in initial inspiration, I think I made this design sufficiently my own to not make it look like a rip-off.
I hope you all agree!

As for the coding, that was all done by me – from scratch – through the tutorial mentioned above and my former knowledge of HTML and CSS.
As always, the whole thing is best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. I checked it in Internet Explorer 7 and it looks good there as well, with a few minor faults (as I have seen so far) that I still need to look in to:

• Dropdown navigation doesn’t work in IE
• When viewing images (icons or wallpapers) the padding doesn’t seem to be showing in IE

If you see anything else, do let me know and I’ll look into it when I can!

A little fait divers perhaps?
The Kanji in the sidebar weren’t randomly picked. I based myself on their meaning – according to the brush maker – and then picked one for each different section in the sidebar:

Image	Next to	Kanji meaning
	About	Welcome
	Search	Truth
	Donate	Wealth
	Credit	Glory

The little image next to Tag Cloud is obviously not a Kanji and the reason why I used it is quite obvious as well, I would think .

Layout

And now I have a little disappointment for some of you, I’m afraid .

It seems that, when I posted the previews of this layout at gawariel_design, some people didn’t read the whole post and assumed I was making this layout to give away there.
However, this layout was always created with the intention of using it on my website and didn’t think about livejournal when designing it.

Of course I’m very pleased that so many of you really like the design, but for now (at least) I would like to keep this layout for me alone. Maybe in time I’ll create an LJ layout out of it. I’m sorry…
But I promise, I have plenty of new ideas for layouts! I just lack the time to make them, lol . Ah, for the days to be 30 hours or more long. I could achieve so much more. *wistful sigh*

The content

For now, the content is exactly the same as in the previous version. No new goodies have been added yet. I did make some changes in the arrangement though:

1. As I intend to write tutorials on coding as well as Photoshop in the future, I decided to separate the tutorial section from the freebies section.




2. It has now become easier to purchase one of my website templates. Just a few clicks, payment and download!
   I’m not finished with writing the guides I’m intending to write (only finished the one on the purchasing process), but for people who are confident in their knowledge and want to buy one of the templates, they are available!




3. In the previous version I had installed a small php script (found here) that counted whenever someone downloaded something from the site (brushes or textures). When moving to WordPress I forgot to save those scripts, meaning I lost the count.
   Now I have found something I like even better: Star ratings!
   Why better? Because now it serves two purposes, namely (1) whenever someone rates, the number of ratings is counted. Assuming someone only rates when they actually downloaded, the rate counts can serve as a sort of download count; and (2) I can have an idea how much someone likes the downloads through their ratings, so I know if the product is liked or not!
   So a small request from me to you: If you have downloaded anything from this site that now has the star rating included, please make a rating!




4. I’m thinking of adding a new section to the freebies: PNG cut-outs.
   Do you like this idea, or don’t you think you won’t have any use to that?
   You can request a cut-out at the appropriate page by linking (not posting) to the image.

Also, if you have any other ideas for content (I know you all want layouts, so don’t say that ), do let me know! Freebies? Tutorials? etc…

Summary?

Phew, I think that’s it for this post. Congratulations to those who actually stuck with me to the end

For those who just skimmed through, this is what you need to know :

• All content is back up!
• Star ratings: If you have ever downloaded something from here that now has a star rating, please give me a rating!
• PNG cut-outs: Like/dislike? Request?
• Any ideas for new content (excluding layouts )?

Much love,
Charlotte

THE END *collective sighs of relief*